Dear Uncle Sef,

Our family reunion is next week, and every family member, spanning three generations, has been invited except one: my aunt Annabelle.

To tell the truth, the entire family is shocked, embarassed, and afraid of her and her recent odd behavior. During the past year, aunt Annabelle has developed a $700-a-day cocaine habbit and has been walking the streets as a whore to suppliment her income.

The embarassing part is, she also joined the Republican Party.

Is there any way we can help her overcome her Republican Partyism?

Signed,
-- Ashamed of his red aunt

Greetings, Ashamed.

I'm sorry to hear about your poor aunt. Republicanism shouldn't happen to anybody, but God allows these things to happen for reasons only He can fully understand. We must have faith that such tragedies are all part of God's plan for his children and that when God finally calls her to His side, her suffering -- and your family's embarrassment -- will finally be at an end.

Uncle Sef wishes he could offer some words of encouragement or some suggested plan or solution to your problem, but the shame of a family member who votes Republican can't be alleviated or addressed with mere words of encouragement. I'm sorry to have to say that medical science has yet to find a suitable treatment beyond euthanasia, and a cure is so far in the future that we can only hope that future generations will find a cure.

If it helps, rest assured that you and your fellow family members aren't alone in your shame and embarrassment. In fact there's a joke that's been around for decades, going back probably when the first case of Republicanism was diagnosed. I'll offer the joke because it so mirrors what you're going through and in the hopes that maybe it will lift your family's spirits. You could share the joke at your family reunion. Hope it helps.

-=-

Three guys were sitting at a table in a crowded bar, having been there drinking beer after beer for several hours when the question came up as to whose turn it was to buy the next round. All three had drunk so much that none could remember who had bought the last round.

One of the drunks came up with a solution, saying, "We'll figger it right out now whos' got the honor of buyin' the next by seein' who wound up married to th' worst bitch, okay?"

The other two agreed so the guy who came up with the plan stood up swaying a bit, holding up his empty beer glass while waving it around over the table.

"My wife," he says, "was a professional whore before she gone done and married me aftern she gone done and got herself pregn't, and so's now I got myself a negro son and me white as ma sheets, he is.

"Now I done told her to stop wi' th' whorin' 'cause my job at the mill pay 'nough for us all and the rest of the church congregation laugh at me behind my back.

"Think she mind' me any?" the first drunk goes on, "no fucking way! She comes home stinking of crack cocain every night just dripping jizz across the floor before passing out on the bed besides me."

The first drunk collapses into his chair, straining the wooden legs which creak, leaning forward and looking bleary eyed at the other two drunks, daring them to come up with something worse. The first drunk's story is pretty pathetic, they see, but the honor of buying the next drink is at stake and both figure -- in their drunken daze -- that since the first guy was willing to tell an embarrassing truth, they could, too.

The second drunk stood up, leaning forward with his knuckles pressed against the table to keep from falling over. "Well damn," he says, "that's pretty low but I've got it far worse than that, I wreken'.

"I have me a wife that goes out whorin' every night, too, only she does it while sober and, God damn her, she takes her Johns straight to th' house for the fucking and many have there been mornings when I'd wake up with some of her Johns still sleeping beside me in my own bed.

"That aint' so bad in itself but when they wake up, my wife and her tricks usually start going to it again, right there in front of me, laughing at my stupid face. And if that ain't the most shameful, embarrassing thing ever, I don't know what is!"

The second drunk slowly lowered himself back into his seat, trying hard not to fall down. The first and second drunk turn to look at the third drunk, wondering if his wife could top either of theirs.

"Well now," the third drunk says, still sitting in his chair and waving a five dollar bill at the barkeep, "A crack whore who drips semen when she comes home to her husband every night is bad, true. And a wife who'll bring her tricks home to fuck in her husband's own bed is pretty pathetic, too, I can see..."

The barkeep came over with three fresh mugs of beer, setting them down and taking the five dollar bill from the third drunk, then walked back to the bar.

"But my wife," says the third drunk, "votes Republican."