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I
need your advice. My parents are bugging me to come home for
Thanksgiving. The thing is, as a kid I always hated holidays.
No, I loved holidays; what I hated was my parents. Growing
up, I was ignored on holidays except when my mom would order
me to wait on my brothers and dad. As an adult, it’s no better.
My family spends most of the time talking about work, but
I’m not allowed to talk about my job because it isn’t a “real
job,” since I do low- paying social work. (My dad and brothers
work in computers.) Despite my mom being so sentimental about
Thanksgiving, she and my dad don’t “do” Christmas because
it’s “too much trouble” to buy gifts. And several years ago
my mom curtly told me the day before my birthday that we wouldn’t
be celebrating my birthday, “since no one will have a good
time.”
When I told them a few months ago that I wouldn’t be coming
home for Thanksgiving due to the complete lack of consideration
for me (last time I was home my dad demanded that we all go
to a steakhouse even through he knows I’m a vegetarian!),
my mom angrily denied that any of this ever happened. When
I tried to argue with her she screamed, “Are you calling me
a liar?”
I’m an adult. Do I still have to swallow my mother’s lies,
my father’s tirades about my job, and their insistence that
we’re really a happy family? The only thing making me even
consider going home for Thanksgiving is the guilt. My brothers
are no help—they’re too spineless to stick up for me. Please
give council, and soon!
—Give
Me Any Dumb Name You Want
You
don’t need my advice, GMADNYW. What you need is your very
own spine. No one can force an adult to go home for Thanksgiving
if she doesn’t want to go home for Thanksgiving. Since no
one can force you go home, there’s no need to bore me, my
readers, and the whole friggin’ planet with a long list of
scab-pickers about your awful parents, your miserable childhood,
your miserable holidays, dad’s steak dinners, and all that
unwelcome career advice. So your parents are grade-A, gold-plated,
lemon-scented assholes. Then don’t go home for Thanksgiving.
If they lay a guilt trip on you, try saying something like
this: “You know what, mom and dad? You suck. The only way
I’d spend Thanksgiving at ‘home’ this year is if I knew for
a fact that Russian security forces were going to fill your
house with gas and put me out of my fucking misery.”
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Quick etiquette question: I am house-sitting
for two friends. Given that I’m using their internet access,
is it okay for me to occasionally cruise for a little porn?
Nothing disturbing or illegal, and purely for self-gratification.
Bear in mind that I’m not writing anything, or posting any
pictures, or paying for anything. I’m just cruising for a
few free pictures and stories. Is this cool? What’s the etiquette
on this?
—Please
Opine Regarding Nudes
It’s
not the porn or the stories or the relatively harmless fetish
pics that are going to bother your friends when they inevitably
discover what you were doing at their computer. Knowing that
someone was looking at porn on your computer doesn’t bother
most people—it’s knowing that someone was moving his hands
back and forth between your keyboard and his genitalia that
unnerves. No one likes to sit down to their personal computer
and think about trace DNA samples a “friend” may have splattered
all over their keyboard. If you just can’t live without your
daily does of internet porn, PORN, do what I did: Buy yourself
a laptop and take it everywhere.
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I totally agree with you that PISSOFF,
a Canadian, was coming across as smug in his/her letter, re:
America’s religious jackasses. True, the United States has
a lot of freaks and extremists, but what country doesn’t?
That said, why did you attack French Canadians in your response?
How could you imply that there’s no difference between French
Canadians and your country’s religious jackasses? Granted,
French-Canadian history is deeply rooted in Catholicism, and
that fact used to impact their government, but they’ve come
a long way:
1. Quebec is leading the way on gay marriages.
2. French Canadians are more sexually liberal and tolerant
than most.
3. The legal drinking age in Quebec is 18.
4. Lap dances at strip clubs in Montreal are on average 50
percent cheaper than in clubs here in Toronto.
Granted, as a pedestrian, you’re more likely to get hit by
a car in Montreal or see someone with a mullet or acid-wash
jeans, but Quebec is a fun place and religious jackasses exist,
of course, but they’re ignored. Were your misguided rantings
due to the Xanax you were popping on that plane?
—EGM
P.S.
I agree with you about Canada importing a new royal head of
state. I vote for Prince Harry. His older brother is going
to be King of England and Harry won’t have anything to do.
He also might enjoy our more lenient pot laws. Furthermore,
he’s starting to become cute in that “we-never-see-the-sun-here-in-England”
sort of way.
Thanks for writing, EGM, and a shout out to all my Canadian
readers who took time out of their busy fur-trapping, dope-smoking,
and same-sex- nuptials-attending schedules to send me e-mail
complaining about my Xanax-impaired jab at French Canadians.
(“Yes, you’ve got fewer religious jackasses [in Canada] and
you’ve got porn and pot and you’ll have gay marriage a lot
sooner. But you also have a lot French Canadians up there.
As far as I’m concerned, French Canadians and religious jackasses
are six of one, half a dozen of another.”)
For the record, I never meant to imply that French Canadians
were religious jackasses, even if that is exactly what I wrote.
(Damn Xanax!) My point was that French Canadians, like America’s
religious jackasses, can be annoying. While ARJs annoy the
shit out of everyone down here, French Canadians annoy everyone
up there with their constant threats to break away from Canada,
not to mention all those bilingual toothpaste tubes, cereal
boxes and road signs. Still, I believe I speak for the overwhelming
majority of Americans when I say that we would gladly swap
Canada our ARJs for your French. We’ll take the Quebec off
of your hands—we know how to deal with secessionists down
here, let me tell you!—if you’ll take the Rev. Jerry Falwell
and all of his ARJ followers off our hands. Is it a deal?
(In all seriousness, EGM, one of the great tragedies of U.S.
history is that the we got stuck with the pleasure-hating
Puritans and you Canadians got the fellatio-loving French.
It’s just not fair!)
Finally, I agree that dreamy Prince Harry would make an excellent
choice for Canadian head of state—provided, of course, that
he will marry a French royal and produce lots of bilingual
royal babies. So how do we get a “Make Prince Harry the King
of Canada” movement off the ground?
Confidential to Justin at the HH: “Please let me know if there
is anything I can do to help your pursuit of happiness during
your stay.” Geez, Justin, do you know what kind of trouble
a line like that can get a guy in?
Dan
Savage’s new book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah (Dutton),
is on sale now. (More info at skippingtowardsgomorrah.com.)
Send your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net
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