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Dear Breakup Girl,

Help! I am feeling somewhat un-girlish these days. My boyfriend just broke it off with me on the answering machine, and I need to blow off steam ... in his direction. Do you know of a site that has form letters that can be polite, while still shredding every ounce of manliness my guy thinks he has? I love to vent with words, but the fresh hate is still blocking my creative abilities.

--Kelly

Dear Kelly,

Oof! Assuming you two have actually met and gone out significantly, the answering maching breakup is bad. (Worse, perhaps, than the form letter breakup.) Mainly because it's not only cowardly -- oh, all right, "sissy" -- but also dumbass. Why? Because I read somewhere that men's worst fear is not, like, war, or Camille Paglia, it's being laughed at by women.

And so: Hey, Answering Machine Breakup Man, how many of Kelly's galpals are laughing their asses off right now at you and the lame breakup message they've in fact already memorized and begun reciting to others?!? People you don't even know, even. Ha, ha. Lame.*

Ta-da! BG has done the shredding you've requested -- and prevented everyone involved from wasting energy/dignity by Googling around for castratingformletters.com.

See, even though my response may have sounded more "Bad Men!" than is my style, I'm actually just trying to help you without hurting someone else, to give you what you want without [directly] giving him what for. (In any case, I'd give pretty much the same type-lashing to Answering Machine Breakup Woman, so no one's off the hook.) But main thing is, I'm trying to keep the venting -- especially BG-verboten "Bad Men!" venting -- up here in the column, in other people's words, where it's safe, where I can defuse. Not in a mean form letter in his e-mail box, which he can print out or forward around at will to reconstruct his own sense of being in the right. In other words, "fresh hate" should steam itself out as a victimless vent, not as a backfire.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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