Presenting poems that make words do what they are supposed to.

‘If Only Out of Vanity’ by Stayceyann Chin If only out of vanity text

Stayceyann Chin’s vision of who she wants to be sounds like fun.  My version is one who can finally dye her hair bright purple (or maybe green) without needing to stew in bleach for six hours.  Defy all attempts to be reductionist with reality (and magic).  Ride a bike with a trailer and bright flags (and possibly a diamond tipped pointy thing).  And cross roads with a brood that knows to look on all sides before it walks.

‘Not your erotic, not your exotic’ by Suheir Hammad Not your erotic, not your exotic text

I like a lot of Suheir Hammad’s work but this one has a particular resonance for me.  For the many times I have felt like my beauty is invisible, replaced by a mirage of almond-shaped eyes and curls.  Every day I add to my list of ways in which who I am is reduced to someone else’s version of what I must be like – a cardboard cut out could replace me without most people noticing the difference.  But some will, because they know I have the kind of beauty that moves (bonus geek points if you know who I’m quoting here!).

‘The Low Road’ by Marge Piercy the low road text

Recently, Maia posted this in solidarity with the defendants in the Operation 8 trial.  If you have no idea what Operation 8 is, this is a basic introduction, this is what wikipedia has on it, and this is the best writing I have found on the subject.  The trial is a farce (ask me how) and I believe the charges should be dropped.  Marge Piercy is one of the most accomplished writers I’ve read.  And few people can read her better than Stayceyann Chin.   I have nothing to add to what has already collectively been said.  Except perhaps to state that I would like to be counted among the thousand who have solidarity with those demanding justice for the raided, Tino Rangatiratanga and Te Mana Motuhake O Tūhoe.

I spend a great deal of my time in pain.  Not earth-shattering pain that makes functioning impossible, just the normal kind that makes functioning difficult.  This a caused by congenitally odd bone structure that has lead to a couple of surgeries and spirals of rehabilitation.  For the most part my pain is invisible, partially because the wrist is far from the most important part of my body and partially because living with my wrist means that I am an expert on how to compensate for (or protect) it.  This is helped greatly by the fact that even though my wrist continually* causes me pain, it doesn’t (usually) restrict my range of motion.  Nor is the pain I experience continuous or constant.

When I do certain movements or carry weight, my wrist inevitably hurts.  When I do other movements often enough and over a sustained period, this inevitability is maintained.  This means that I can change/manage the levels of pain I experience by changing the activities I engage in.  And of course, this means that what I do becomes a subject open for discussion.  There are some things I need to do on a day to day basis that make pain unavoidable… these include brushing my teeth, dressing, putting clothes out to dry, washing dishes, writing reports and the like.  There are others that are discretionary, like crocheting pretty things (or writing a blog).

I wish I were better at navigating my relationships with people whose presence makes my life more manageable.  At my last flat, I didn’t do dishes – I cooked an extra night instead.  My family assumes that I’ll not be lifting and carrying anything heavy and that on some days I won’t be lifting anything heavier than a fork with food on it.  I am grateful for the help I get and I don’t know what to do with the guilt I feel when I want to spend the day making a scarf that I know will make my wrist hurt when I could be resting and helping clear away the dinner table.  I compromise.  I don’t crochet for three hours the day before we have guests over.  And when we have unexpected guests I take painkillers and lift things.

Guilt is not often a useful response in me.  So I tend to channel that into learning how to crochet flowers and making things for the people who make my life better.  This strikes me as a somewhat hilarious option in that it maintains my overall levels of pain while increasing my moment to moment level of joyfulness!

*as distinct from an unbroken continuum, it has a the nature of repetition with pauses.

Last week also marked the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Tent Embassy in Canberra.  And dear Tony Abbott took the opportunity to question its relevance and suggest that it was time to ‘move on’ because ‘“I think a lot has changed for the better since then … I think the indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian”.  I have no expertise as to the state of first nation peoples in Australia but even I know that the inequalities that were being protested in the 70s when the tent embassy was being set up have not been ameliorated or even dealt with in any respectful way by the governments since.  The benefits to first nations people have been hard won and fought for by them.  And mainstream media and the Australian govt. have been opposing them every inch of the way.

The story being told in the media is about the ‘violent mob’ of indigenous rights protestors who put the c-in-c of the country in danger.  (Let me take this moment to not care about the dominant narrative or the security of the c-in-c)

The protestors were in Canberra to attend a convergence at the tent embassy to celebrate it’s existence, seek support and solidarity from each other and look towards what campaigns/yarns need to occur.  They were there for two days and spent a miniscule fraction of that time being pissed off at Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard.  (Dear over-inflated govt., it really isn’t about you.).  There was no ‘violent mob’ – just a lot of really annoyed protestors who took the opportunity to bang on the glass windows of a restaurant and yell.  The only violence witnessed at the protest came from the police and was directed at the protestors (what a surprise).

Which brings me what really bothers me about the way protest in general and indigenous protest in particular is constructed in the mainstream.  And to a lesser extent in more radical spheres.  As far as the mainstream narrative is concerned, protest is unnecessary in civilised countries.  The only places that protest is valid is in those backward-third-world-countries where they haven’t got it all sorted out like we do.  Even then protest is only acceptable if it is non-violent and is going to ‘achieve something’.  So people in Australia/New Zealand who are protesting a) should just shut up and realise how good they have it, b) should be sensible, rational and strategic about it and c) keep to a liberal non-violent narrative.  I find this deeply problematic.  Not the least because it makes the whiteness of the paradigm for protest so glaringly obvious.  Where I come from, we throw rotten tomatoes and eggs if we disapprove.

A protest can fulfill many functions.  It can bring people together, it can express rage/disappointment/joy, it can make demands, it can create space for dissent and it can show that there is no space.  A protest can come in many forms.  It can be violent and brutal, it can be quiet and peaceful, it can be invisible unless you know where to look and it can lurk in a corner for years until it finally jumps out at you.  When a group of people privilege one form of protest over another, they are revealing their own prejudices, not saying anything about the protest.  And them that thinks collective organising and community building is less worthwhile than throwing molotov cocktails are as shortsighted as them that believe that only a peaceful protest and rational argument will lead to change.

Those in power like to protect their power.  And they are not going to give it up easily.  And before someone quotes Gandhi at me, can I just point out that he’s the guy who said that inaction is rank cowardice and to be shunned at all costs.  And that the blowing up of a train containing blood money is an act of liberation, not of violence.  My point, is that protest needs must be whatever it has to be for the people there.  The protest on the 26th was an outlet for the anger and hurt and grumpiness felt by many.  And the days around it were full of orgnising and talking and planning.  So I for one am glad it all happened.

Also, I wish I had been in Wellington for Waitangi Day.  There would’ve been a tau iwi support for tinorangatiratanga bloc.  And maybe even cookies and a riot!

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Meet the first love poem that made sense to me.  Because most of what people call love I call syntax.  And syntactic freedom makes me joyful.   And just for the record, there is no such thing as the absence of syntax.  But poetry, like life, should be revolutionary: an exercise in building your own.  And paragraphs of kisses can follow.  You see how?

My book reading and movie watching taste is varied.  I will read pretty much any kind of writing that comes my way.  This means that while I have read some excellent books I have also read several truly awful ones.  This does not bother me.  I don’t tend to decide the worth of a book prior to reading it.  I also don’t tend to assume that I will like a book based on its politics.  I think Oscar Wilde had a point when he said – “Books are well written or badly written.  That is all.”  This does not mean that the politics of the books I read are irrelevant to me… they add to my personal sense of emotional resonance and enjoyment.  And the politics give me plenty to rant about when describing them to other people.  But literary criticism goes beyond what I like.  I could talk about a number of excellent books that I truly abhor, but I shall desist.

The Twilight Saga books are appallingly badly written.  I was fortunate in that I didn’t have to pay for them.  Some kind soul had uploaded the whole lot onto their livejournal page and I got to read them in amongst writing my thesis.  It’s not often that I find the writing and pace of fiction worse than a PhD thesis on the aetiology of sex offending – but this was one of those times.  So I’m not going to engage in any conversations about the literary value of the books – whether the argument is intrinsic (the book is excellently written and comparable to Wuthering Heights, I’m not kidding, it has been said) or utilitarian (so few books make young people read – we should embrace poorly written drivel for the sake of the youth).  I am however going to engage with the feminist discourse that has surrounded the books ever since their release.

There are two key issues that have come up/come under fire in feminist discussion as regards the Twilight series.  The one focuses on the obviously misogynistic themes of the book as exemplified by the role of Bella and her relationships with other characters in the Twilight world and second is the deeply problematic portrayal of Bella’s decision to continue or abort her pregnancy.  Another point made by feminists of colour (and allies, yay for allies!) focuses on the role of race, colour and indigeneity in the books as seen in the relationships between the werewolves and the vampires.

On the subject of race: When I read the first book I actually burst out laughing when the first-nations-peoples-as-werewolves story arc was introduced – it was just such a tired formula.  Where do I begin: the werewolves were the original custodians of the land, the vampires (the good ones who don’t eat humans) turned up and called it theirs and (like all good liberal vegetarian vampires) formed a treaty with the werewolves that involved the vampires having the right to parts of the land that used to the domain of the werewolves on the understanding that they would keep to the boundary and not kill humans.  This was done in spite of the mutual antipathy these species held each other in.  Only some of the members of the tribe (sigh) turn into werewolves and turns out the werewolf (/aggression) gene gets activated when there are too many vampires around.  The vampires are white and they sparkle (I suppose I should just be grateful they aren’t blue) and are cold to the touch, democratic and stoic and individualistic.  The werewolves are warm-blooded and instinctual with a pack structure wherein there is an Alpha who is in command and the entire pack can hear each others thoughts (thereby lending weight to the Great-Wavelength-of-Colour theory).  Race relations are not engaged with in the books and the portrayal of the Quileute tribe I would describe as racist, imperialist and unforgivably unimaginative.

Now about gender roles: The roles outlined for Bella and her two suitors are typical and banal.  It has been said that Bella is a strong character and what makes her so attractive to readers is that she goes after what she wants and gets it.  It has also been said that the things that she goes after are part of her false consciousness under a patriarchal framework.  I don’t think that there are many feminists who would suggest that the world that Bella inhabits is not a misogynist one.  However, so is this one, so Bella’s decisions are made in a bounded world that has shaped her desires as well her decisions.  The only saving grace I can find is that, on one level at least, what Bella wants is equality.  She may want to be a vampire so she can live all her unlife with her boring controlling stalker of a boyfriend, but she doesn’t want to be the weaker part of the equation that is pitied or protected.  Plenty has been said on the stalker score – anyone who needs to know what should happen in that situation please watch this video of Buffy Vs Edward – so I’ll just skip past that.  Bella’s desires are not revolutionary – they are the desires of a person trying to get the most power they can within an unjust system.  The key point is that they are her desires and if I have to choose between a Bella whose desires fill me with horror and an Edward who acts as gatekeeper to her desire with a driving need to ‘protect’ (cough control cough) her  - I pick Bella every single time.

Oh and about the politics of pregnancy:  I don’t care what Stephanie Meyer’s personal politics on abortion are.  The book presents the abortion as necessary and Bella as being entirely opposed to having one.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with Bella making the decision to continue with her pregnancy even when ‘science’ and other people are telling her that hers is the wrong decision.  Bella has heard what they have to say (she’ll die, she’s being irrational, she’s being selfish and leaving Edward alone etc.).  Pregnant people always make their decisions in a context, and if the context is untenable the solution is to make the context less skewed, not to tell the only person who has the right to make the decision about their body that their decision is wrong.  It has been suggested the world of Twilight is a subversion of the real world because it is the men in her life who’re urging Bella to abort her pregnancy rather than the ones pressuring her into continuing.  Do I need to point out that the issue is not to what purpose the pressure is being applied but the fact that pressure is being applied?  And that in our non-Twilight-world, I have met many men who’ve pressured women into aborting pregnancies when they would rather continue?  Edward wants Bella to abort the pregnancy because the baby is killing her.  I have heard this argument.  I have also heard that the guy is in medical school and doesn’t really want to deal with having a genetic link out in the world even if he does not need to take on any parental responsibility.  Bella (and anyone else who’s pregnant) is well able to make their own decisions based on whatever yardstick they  happen to employ.  And if I don’t like the decisions being made then I have work to do on changing the context (so it is no longer life or death/the odds are improved/whatever the hell else) and live with the fact that other people having agency means that their decisions will be their own.

So that is my rant.  Thoughts?

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind ride for me.  And of course that has entailed more than its fair share of people saying incredibly stupid things to me.  So here is my joy for the same period in the shape of smart people saying things about stupid people saying things to them.  Thems that apply to me.  See?

1. I really hate defending bollywood.  And it annoys me that it seems to be the one thing people know about India.  And don’t even get me started on Slumdog Millionaire.  Or that a friend once told me that she couldn’t believe I was from India (she’d just finished her obligatory spiritual journey there).  And meant it as a compliment.

2. Everything on this list I’ve had addressed to me at least once.  Most several times.  After a point I just start getting snarky.  Okay, not really so much of the after.

Do you have a list of stupid things people say to you based on their own ignorance?  Feel free to share!

Books are a constant surprise.  I astonish myself by what I read and what I don’t and what surprises me when I’m not looking.  So I’ve decided to make a list of books that I want to read this year.  These are a combination of what smart people I know have suggested and what I’ve decided for myself.  Some of them I’m going to have to buy, most of them I’m hoping to borrow.  Either from a library or from you!  More about that later, but for now – the list (so far).

1. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
2. Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
3. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
5. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
6. The Shattering by Karen Healey Thank you Karen!
7. The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels Thanks Chally!
8. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
9. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto by Alfred Taiaike
10. Colonising Myths – Maori Realities: He Rukuruku Whakaaro by Ani Mikaere
11. Your Average Nigga: performing race, literacy, and masculinity by Ashanti Vershawn Young
12. The Time-traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
13. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Thank you library.
14. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
15. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
16. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
17. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
18. Vida by Marge Piercy
19. Woman At The Edge Of Time by Marge Piercy Thanks Chally!
20. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood
21. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
22. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai Thanks Ma!
23. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Also Ma!
24. The Days That Run Away Like Wild Horses Over Hills by Charles Bukowski
25. The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities by Ching-in Chen Yay internet shopping!
26. Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein
27. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
28. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever By James Tiptree Jr. Thanks Chally!
29. Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree Jr.
30. Koiwi, Koiwi by Hinemoana Baker
31. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
32. The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman Yay internet shopping!
33. Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman Yay internet shopping!
34. Poet in New York by Frederico Garcia Lorca
35. The Collected Poems Vol. I by William Carlos Williams
36. * Chemistry by Damien Wilkins Thank you Opshop.
37. * Conquest: sexual violence and american indian genocide by Andrea Smith
38. * Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging (Gender, Culture and Politics In The Middle East) edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, & Nadine Naber.

So stands the list of books that I know as of today that I want to read within the coming year.  I have cheated and put ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ on there even though I have already started reading it.  I do this when I write a list, it makes it less daunting because I know that at least one thing is going to get ticked off reasonably quickly.  Yes, I am a strange person.  I have also pared this list down to mean that here sit only the books that I want to read within the year, not books that I need to read at some point.  This I have done by a combination of taking an emotional forecast of the year and the book and matching them to fit.  How comfortably, the year will tell.  I have also left space on this list for fifteen books that other people suggest to me so that I can read things that people think I would enjoy.  So if you have suggestions, be pleased to share them here and I shall put them on the list.

I am probably going to be able to find at least some of these books in lending libraries.  But some I will need to buy… so here is my suggestion… if you feel you can spare any of them and have them, send them to me!  I shall read them and return them in the condition received and you can have a choice of a) a zine, crafty item or food that I make; b) a book on my shelf that you’d like to read; or c) something else entirely that you wish for or need that is in my power to give.  This would be a good place to mention that all my life I have depended on the kindness of (those who started out as) strangers.  Bonus crafty present if you recognise the reference!

I like books, swaps and book swaps.  Also presents.

Key:

blah (who’s giving me this book, usually with thanks!) blah  (book read and reviewed with link to review) *blah (book added to the original list post conversations).

The most important days in the year for me fall somewhere between July and October.  And there are rituals and traditions associated with those and other days that I observe each year.  Some have fallen away with time and distance (e.g., I thankfully no longer have to carry on my tradition of locking myself into my house with my mother on holi since we no longer live in India) and we’ve made up some new ones to the their place (e.g., boxing day sales have become the day each year that we buy things on sale that have been on a list all year).  And this year I am going to be breaking one of my newest and jealously guarded of these rituals.

A few years ago I found a sister.  Every year since, she has made me a feast on christmas day and we have spent a significant part of that day together.  I even managed to weave her into my family boxing day tradition, I guess as she has woven me into hers.  This will mark the first year that I have not spent with her.  Bad, bad, bad.  So that falls under the category of stuff that is going to have to change while staying a little bit the same.

This year I was finished with many years of study; lived in a country where I had to learn the language before I could speak; watched a relationship that was so close to the centre of my life as to be almost at it, end; spent time exploring new dance styles; and had a grown up job.  No wonder there are cobwebs that need clearing.  And time for another Five Year Plan.  Believe me, that isn’t as Stalinist as it sounds!  It’s just a series of maps of possible lives I could lead that help me figure out which parts of which ones I want or need the most.  And it means I get to have a lot of fun with bright felt pens and large sheets of paper.  What is accomplishes apart form making me happy (my life today bears very few points of resemblance to any of my cumulative five year plans from five years ago) I am not sure of, but then perhaps making me happy is sufficient purpose?

Let me begin with an acknowledgement of the limits of my opinion.  I have not read the short story by George Moore that is the ultimate source of the story of Albert Nobbs.  Nor have I read script or watched the play as adapted from the short story by Simone Bermussa.  So all my criticism is limited to the movie by the same name.

I was invited to see the movie by a friend and so I went.  This I state as one of my list of acceptable reasons for going to watch the movie before having read the book!  Of course I tried to find a copy of the original short story or the screenplay for the play in my local library (yes, I knew this to be a long shot; but thems the rules) and on the internet but failed on both counts.  I was excited to watch the movie because it had Glen Close in it, which at least meant that the character would be saved from two-dimensional banality (I hoped) and because I would learn something about 19th century Ireland.  I was to be somewhat disappointed on both counts.

The movie takes the stance that it is telling the story of a woman who dressed and lived as a man in order to survive 19th century Dublin.  Albert Nobbs is a butler in a hotel and telling his story opens the door for viewing the stories of working class struggle as well as particular personal relationships.  The movie mostly tells the story of a moment in Albert’s life where his options are changed by the presence and actions of one Hubert Paige.  And the storytelling is at times compelling and at others spectacularly misses any chance of resonance (or rocket launchers!).  So there were parts that I loved and parts that annoyed me and a whole lot that I could have just done without.  This in spite of an impressive ensemble of actors with the capacity to play complexity any way it’s written.  How did that happen?  I have a theory (this brings me up to two Joss references in one post, ain’t I awesome?!) …

To me this was a story about a complex person in a complicated and complex situation.  And trying to be reductive with gender, sexuality, class and desire is a pretty good recipe for disaster.  So in some ways the movie was excellent in that it wasn’t a disaster, it just did nothing and no one justice.

Albert was introduced as a butler (performing masculinity) and then revealed to have breasts (essentially female).  He introduced himself as Albert (even when he was asked his ‘real’ name) and seemed to have made a decision after a clumsily portrayed attempt to clothe himself in and perform femininity.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough of Albert showing us his story.  Which kind of made sense because he was very much coming to grips with his own self.  But the eye of the film-makers was not neutral.  Every time there was an opportunity to delve into gender, the film shifted its eyes towards drama.  Which works once, but then feels like a cop out.  Mr.Paige’s story gave Albert hope and opened up questions… but these questions weren’t answered or even really asked by the film.  I guess what I’m saying is this: I don’t need Albert to ask these questions, his character was shown to be quiet and hesitant; the filming on the other hand was assured and shouldn’t have run away from posing the questions as well as exploring the answers.

Albert Nobbs transgressed gender.  Which is to say that he did not fit the neat boundaries created around him for gender roles and presentation.  I don’t know exactly what brought him to the life he led.  But I do know that to suggest that his decision was solely about his desire to gain access to better pay and less trauma can only ever be one aspect of his truth.  There is safety in constructing a different time where the rights of women were so compromised that only living as a man gave them any level of freedom.  This is a story often told not just about a different time but also a different place.  It’s a nice way to tell ourselves that we should feel lucky to live in the time and place that we do, and that decisions about gender are nothing but a pragmatic means to an end.

Neither the story of Albert nor the treatment of it by the writers and actors is singular.  And I mean that in the opposite-of-plural sense of the word.  Throughout history there have been stories of people defining, redefining and sculpting gender until it meets their needs.  And throughout the same time there have been people desperately trying to maintain the hierarchy and safety of a defined binary.  And I have not the least intention of defining the gender or sexuality of anyone else, but this makes me very suspicious of storytellers who tell the tales of women living as men and leave out the story of everyone else.

Perhaps this is a limitation of fiction, it is only as good as the biases of the writers.  Which is really to say that the writers in this case were limited in their fiction writing and truth-telling and their biases tended towards the status-quo banality.  Life is usually more inventive. All this to say… if you haven’t seen the movie, I would suggest that you do, if only so we can talk and you tell me what you thought!

I grew up in the military.  So I’m quite familiar with ridiculously codified and specific means of communication.  When my family is out of town I’m required to send them a daily sitrep normal message.  We have SOPs for organising chores (and most of the rest of our collective lives) and quite a few EVAC procedures.  When I’m asked for a quick response in the affirmative I will often say wilco (and wonder later why I didn’t just say ‘okay’).  The point is, that I’m okay with specific and general codified conversations.  And for the most part this is what most of everyday polite conversation is: a fixed series of call and response codes.  What makes it interesting to me is that most people don’t like to think of them as such.  Any suggestion that they don’t actually care to hear the answer to their question usually results in either blank incomprehension or defensive consternation.  I have to work hard at understanding this.  And cultural and class differences in the worlds I inhabit do not make it an easy task.  Just when I think I have mastered the rules of one context, I am confronted with a variation that I then need to figure out the magnitude of.

Coping with polite conversation has become just another exercise in how to be inoffensively disingenuous.  Which just keeps taking me closer to my when-in-doubt-lie theorem of social interaction.  Which is occasionally underrating the intelligence and interest of the persons you’re talking to, but mostly safe!  Which still leaves me the far greater problem of how to deal with the things that people say that go beyond confusing me to outright offensiveness.  Like when they use words like ‘lame’, ‘gay’, ‘crazy’ and ‘gypped’.  Whether or not I challenge them each time they say something offensive often depends on how many spoons I have on me at the time.  And how angry it makes me.  I have this mechanism by which an excess of anger either leads to the spontaneous generation of a tiny ball of energy or a deluge of tears.

I have therefore come up with a few things that you should probably think about before saying to me that come under the umbrella of polite but problematic questions, namely: How’re you feeling?  How’re you doing?  How’s it going? What have you been up to?  These are problematic because I could be having a really messy time and you may not be prepared to hear the response.  General rule of thumb… don’t ask me a question if you don’t want to hear the answer.  Also don’t ask me a question if there is a correct response that you have not advised me of.  And don’t expect me to be the filter in your brain that determines whether a question/response is appropriate or offensive.

There is a another list of things that you should not say to me.  Or to anyone else.  At all.  Ever.  This I shall compile at a later date.  Right now it is enough that I have posted something this week.