Spineless Canadians

...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 Thanks-giving 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 counsel, 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 to 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.” Quick etiquette question: I am housesitting 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 their computer doesn’t bother most people–it’s knowing that someone was moving his hands back and forth between their keyboard and his genitalia that unnerves. No one likes to sit down to their personal computer and think about the trace DNA samples a “friend” may have splattered all over the keyboard. If you just can’t live without your daily dose of Internet porn, PORN, do what I did: Buy yourself a laptop and take it everywhere. I totally agree with you that PISSOFF, a Canadian, was coming across as smug in his or her letter re: America’s religious jackasses. True, the U.S. 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 PS: 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 the 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-nuptial-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 of French Canadians up there. As far as I’m concerned, French Canadians and religious jackasses are six of one, half a dozen of the other.”) 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 Quebec off your hands–we know how to deal with secessionists down here, let me tell you!–if you’ll take the Reverend 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 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 the Canadian head of state–provided, of course, that he 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?