Welcome, dear readers, to our regular letter column; a series of missives from and to the internet, delivered by a series of tubes. We welcome your comments and questions. About anything! We’ll answer it, and at least one of us will take you seriously. Maybe.

It doesn’t have to be about comics, though I will tell you right now that Brandon and I are FULL of Patsy Walker Opinions(tm) and shockingly few questions to date have let us unveil them. Did you know Patsy Walker: Hellcat isn’t even available on ComiXology? Maybe you want to send in a question about how that’s bullshit. Come on, Marvel! [Editor's note: but it is on their Unlimited service! [Ed. Ed. Note: Brandon, you're not an editor.]]

Or, you know, you can send us questions about anything else. TV! Movies! Sports! Cooking! Sexual escapades! Soul-crushing loneliness! It’s all ripe for the picking.

You’re welcome, internet.

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Allene (@allenechomyn) asks: What’s in a name?

James: Lots of things! I mean, mostly just consonants and vowels with the occasional space or bit of punctuation through in for laffs, but it’s what’s in between those where the real story is:

Even smaller spaces. Think about it.

Guys have you ever just really thought about the meaning of the spaces between letters?

Brandon: Look at you, being David O. Russell. Good for you, James.

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Sherri (@sherridrewe) asks: What the fuck is a bitcoin? Please explain using a kitten analogy so I will understand/pay attention.

James: Okay, let’s do this…

Imagine a website that allows you to buy kittens for a certain amount of money with the tantalizing possibility of selling this kitten to someone else later for a lot of money. This website also tells you that these kittens are the currency of the future: any day now, you’ll be able to walk into a Best Buy, hand over a kitten and get a 70″ TV, because you were so smart and got in on the kitten game on the ground floor. You’ll have all these wonderful kittens that are worth so much PLEBEIAN money and people will be clawing at your feet to give you ridiculous sums of it in exchange for your kittens because you were a Woman of the Future(tm) who got in on the ground floor of the kitten game. And if you want to spend your kittens, they’ll be valuable and wonderful and the GUVVERMINT/Illuminati won’t be able to track your purchases like they would if you’d used a debit card. Bank accounts are for suckers; only kittens are foolproof!

Now imagine that you drop a few grand on a passel of these kittens, sit around and wait for the offers to start rolling in. It never happens. So you take one of your kittens to the store and pick out a new iPad. You take everything to the till and put a kitten down on the counter. The Apple Store employee stares at you blankly.

“Miss, what is this?”

You try to suppress the indignation in your voice. ”These are bitkittens,” you say. ”They’re worth a lot of money and are in the news a lot. They’re the wave of the future. Soon, you’ll be able to walk into a Best Buy, hand over a kitten and get a 70″ TV, because you were so smart and got in on the kitten game on the ground floor.”

“I’m sorry, Miss, but we don’t accept kittens as payments. But if you have debit or a credit card, I can ring you through.”

“Wake up, sheeple! The dollar’s going to collapse any day now! The only thing worth anything will be gold and kittens! And the government can’t track your purchases made with KITTENS! Ron Paul 2016!”

Things go south from here. Let’s just say you’re going to have to get your iPads at Best Buy from now on. If they even accept kittens. Any day now…

Months pass. Nobody is making offers on your kittens that you find are worthwhile. You turn on the news and see reporter reading a headline: KITTEN MARKET COLLAPSES, ADORABLE SMALL CATS NOW WORTH ALMOST NOTHING.

You start to panic. You check your email inbox. There are some offers for your kittens, but they’re for like $10 each. You paid $400 each for them! How can this be?! You hurry down to the local independent coffee shop to get a latte and pain au chocolat to calm you down. No good. Even Roast won’t take your kitten, as worthless as it is. All the emotions flood to the surface. You’re broke. These kittens cost a lot of money and nobody will let you buy them with you. You feel like the world lied to you when they told you that kittens were the currency of the future. Tears well up in your eyes. You grab your kitten - out of habit more than any real care for it anymore, as you kind of wish you hadn’t bought those kittens, but only for a moment, like a true Randian warrior you are - and leave.

A few more months pass. You’re evicted, because your parasite looter landlord won’t barter for kittens like a real patriot would. You have nowhere else to go. You stink. Kittens in your arms, you end up in front of the Apple Store, shouting about how the real culture warriors will get into power eventually. You babble about some new wave of the future you heard of called Kickstarter…

You wonder if they’ll accept kittens.

[tl;dr version: This is literally the stupidest thing.]

Brandon: Fun fact: Remedy (a local food/watering establishment) accepts kittens as payment for things. And look, I get the whole BitCoin thing, and I get what it’s trying to do, kinda, a little bit, but one of the only people that I know who has been super into the idea is a dude who also told me that I should try and get the store owner to pay me in gold and bury it in a secret place. Oh, and that also the world is going to end roughly any day now, but you won’t hear about the how’s and why’s by any “so-called real astronomers”, because they’re on the take, you see. Not sure who they’re on the take from because… whelp, if the world is gonna end, really, what are you planning on taking with you? But whatever. BitCoin. I wish they were kittens.

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Jay (@jayrunham) asks: Should I ever forgive Vince Carter?

James: Sure you should. And hey, I get the anger. You’ve explained me why you, as a Raptors fan, felt ripped off and taken advantage of by Carter. At the same time, I definitely see the other side. Vince Carter’s side. The one that still professes love for the city, but who was frustrated with the direction the team was going in, and who felt lied to by team president Richard Peddie. The one who didn’t like GM Rob Babcock’s statement that he didn’t really care about getting wins right away, who was frustrated at hearing the new guy basically declare a new rebuilding era while still in the middle of an old one (and Babcock was a pretty terrible GM, let’s remember.) The one who called up Babcock anyway the night before his trade to the Nets basically saying, “Okay, I give. I’m with you. I want to stay in Toronto,” and who was basically lied to by Babcock, who told him that nothing could be done to reverse the trade when it totally could have. I see that side, but it also has to exist with everything else about Carter, including the bad stuff - especially the bad stuff - and I guess that what I am saying is that the issue is complicated but you’ve got a rational way out if you want it.

And I think you should, because at this point, it’s literally been a decade since Vince Carter left the Raptors. He’s moved on to other teams, including a team the Raptors beat just this week. The Raptors are looking better than they have in a long time. A decade is a long time to stay angry, and I think that having that kind of background resentment has gotta poison the well a bit. At some point, forgiving (or at least just letting go) is the best way to stay happy and keep liking stuff.

Except for Bob Kane and Mike Love. Fuck those guys.

Brandon: I have the capacity to hate very few things and people, mainly because we’re on a ball of something rocketing through nothing and it’ll all end with blackness, you dig? So hey, maybe hating folks is a waste of my time, when I could be dwelling more upon things and people that I straight up love. I’ll die with relatively little money (because, as my parent is fond of saying, I “just” work in retail), but what the hell do I care about money, so long as I’m happy?

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Jay continues: Is there anything that could fill the Gravity Falls void that has been left in my and my wife’s life?

James: Since, judging from the animated gifs you text me already, I’m guessing you’re a fan of Adventure Time, I won’t bother suggesting that one. You know the Ice King is the business. In the similar vein of weird, funny cartoons with a true all-ages approach, I’d suggest digging deeper into the Frederator/Cartoon Network business. Bravest Warriors, about teens with feelings having adventures in space. Steven Universe, about a little boy with weird powers and a bunch of cool big sister figures having adventures. Regular Show, about a weird, surreal world where two slackers (a blue jay and a racoon) constantly get themselves into bizarre scrapes and get out of them with the power of friendship, keytars and pop culture. All of these shows are pretty cool.

Of course, if you want something that’s less outright goofy with a good emphasis on plotting, I’d suggest Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series, The Legend of Korra, if you haven’t watched them already. Avatar is basically perfect (especially that final season) and Korra has some fun ideas and a lot of really wonderful characters, in a different structure and tone than the series that came before it.

All of these series/worlds also have comics, too. So there you go.

Brandon: Nothing. Let that hole grow until it consumes everything, Jay. Like a fire, except blackness.

This has been “Brandon is just the worst kind of downer” week on Um, Actually. Join us again next week where maybe I haven’t listened to as much Welcome to Nightvale.

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That’s it for the one hundred and twenty-seventh instalment of Um, Actually. Check in every Monday and Thursday for a brand new column. If you have anything you’d like answered, hit up our contact page! If you submit anything via Twitter – to @blogaboutcomics, @Leask, or @soupytoasterson – remember to include the hashtag #UMACTUALLY so that we don’t lose it. Remember: you can ask us anything. Seriously, anything.