Lemondrop

Every year after the Oscar nominations are announced, and we're inundated with stories about what the nominees were doing when they got the call: in bed, making coffee, sticking pins in a Meryl Streep voodoo doll, etc.

But every year -- including this Tuesday -- most of us wake up to discover that we've been cruelly snubbed by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. What of us? Whither the stories about what poor Emily Blunt was doing when her award dreams for "The Young Victoria" turned to ashes? Where are the articles about how Diane Kruger coped with being passed over for "Inglourious Basterds"? And how they -- and the rest of us who got slighted AGAIN -- expect to handle this crushing disappointment without throwing in the towel and buying a yurt in darkest Canada?

Don't despair. We have a few tips.

DON'T: GET MARRIED. The worst time to get hitched for publicity is after a major career tragedy, when you are vulnerable and desperate for someone -- anyone! -- to describe you using words like revelation and glowing and good.

For one thing, it significantly decreases the chances of marrying someone with whom you are actually already involved and/or whose middle name you can remember without the aid of alcohol. For another, it means that your probably inevitable messy split will dominate the gossip grapevine and totally overshadow the fact that you once had talent (ahem, Lindsay Lohan). However, if you, like Blunt, are already engaged, we will allow you to carry on, and just amend this to ...

DON'T: GO WEDDING-DRESS SHOPPING. You might think trying on a bunch of pretty white gowns will cheer you up, but no. It will only remind you of all the pretty white gowns people have already worn on awards night or are going to wear at the Oscars. Give yourself six months so a cooler head can prevail, or else you'll find yourself walking down the aisle wearing a bejeweled white meringue with a crown made of live kittens in a desperate attempt to make people really notice you.

DO: SURPRISE PEOPLE. We're not saying that Diane Kruger should play herself on an episode of "Jersey Shore," nor that her equally snubbed co-star Melanie Laurent should chuck it all to become a figure skater. But it's always fun to bounce back by doing something slightly out of your wheelhouse to prove your versatility -- say, a role as Alec Baldwin's love interest on "30 Rock," a two-episode arc as a surgeon with personality problems and a penchant for scrub-room nookie on "Grey's Anatomy," or a turn as a Mormon fundamentalist-turned-stripper on "Big Love." And hey, taking a TV gig can always win you an Emmy, and those spiky wings could totally beat up someone else's dumb Oscar anyway.

DO: PRETEND TO GO OFF THE RAILS A TAD. Walk around with leeches on your back and tell Jay Leno your life has been changed by the power of Elizabethan medicine, then claim you were being brainwashed by a shaman in a remote corner of the universe. Or make a student art film that requires you to bark like a dog and have bizarre semi-nude scenes in the wilderness, and then go on Ellen and tell everyone that you wounded yourself so badly for your art that you were hospitalized and had to drop out of sight for four months. Whatever floats your boat. The point is, everyone loves an underdog story, so write yourself one that isn't just, "Wah wah, no one wants to give me an Academy Award."

DO: CONSIDER ACTUALLY GOING OFF THE RAILS A TAD. This one is the nuclear option, or as we like to call it, The Kanye. Remember when he started shouting about how he was going to boycott the Video Music Awards because MTV didn't give him enough of them, and then turned into a crazy-hilarious all-caps blogger and fashion-designer wannabe who wore sunglasses that looked like Venetian blinds, dated a model who dressed like Bjork's less-tasteful cousin, and barged onstage during people's acceptance speeches to announce who should've won instead? Yeah. And GUESS who won a VMA after that? Right. If you keep yapping, eventually people will give you an award just to shut you up.

DON'T: JUST QUIT. The temptation might be to take a very long hiatus from the movie sets that have proven so thankless. Take Uma Thurman, who didn't get nominated for her popular work in both the "Kill Bill" installments; after volume two, she dropped off the radar so quickly that we erroneously thought she had quit acting altogether. (In fact, she merely cut back to one flick a year.) Spending time with your family is great and everything, but think of it this way: After you get dumped by a boyfriend, do you want to spend three years on the couch eating Ruffles, or do you want to date a ton of really hot guys until you FORCE them to name you to People's 100 Most Beautiful People list? Yeah, we thought so.