If you’re unacquainted with Judith Butler, you’re in for a real treat. Judith Butler “is an American philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory.” If you don’t agree with her ideas about gender, you are a fascist.

Her latest pronoun of choice is they, but I will refer to her as she because (1.) she is a single, and not plural, unit and (2.) I  just feel like it. She is a professor at Berkeley and has received 14 honorary degrees. In other words, she is a big deal. According to many, she is among the most influential intellectuals alive today.

Let’s start with this: In her book Gender Trouble, Butler claims that biological sex, like gender, is socially constructed, with its physical manifestations mattering only to the degree society assigns them meaning. Well, no. I would say nice try, but no.  Gender critical feminists (i.e. feminists who aren’t on board with her ideas) come in for some of her most scathing attacks. They are the victims of “phantasmatic” anxieties and also are big stupid liars whom she compares to Richard Nixon, of all people.

Personally, I don’t give a shit about gender, or not enough of a shit to ponder its meaning. I came across Butler in a critique of her assertion that the events of Oct. 7 constitute “resistance.”  Reading her put forth this idea, I thought, “Who is this pretentious idiot?”

I was delighted to find that she had won first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature – a prize given to “the ugliest, most stylistically awful” sentence submitted by its readers . Here is her winning sentence:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

You have to love her, right? I mean, she gave us the concept of gender performativity!Wikipedia notes that

Butler also explores how gender can be understood not only as a performance, but also as a “constitutive constraint,” or constructed character. They ask how this conceptualization of an individual’s gender contributes to notions of bodily intelligibility, or comprehension, by other individuals. Butler continues to discuss bodily intelligibility by means of sex as a “materialized” entity, upon which cultural, collective ideals of gender can be built. From this angle, Butler interrogates value conscription upon various bodies as determined theories and practices of heterosexual predominance.

Whatever. I suggest that you don’t waste your brain cells trying to decipher this gibberish, just be aware that you’re not allowed to object to any of it. If you’re a woman (a human born with a reproductive system that produces eggs) or a non-man, as some gender identity theorists might say, you are a TERF  for taking issue with Judith Butler. If you’re a man, I don’t know what happens. Probably you’re just a homophobic colonialist defender of the patriarchy.

Please do your own research on Judith Butler, I promise you it is more fun and rewarding than anything you can do online besides getting into arguments on Instagram. Also, note that I didn’t title this “Judith Butler: What a fucking cunt!” She’s more of an irritant, albeit a uniquely flagrant one. And I realize she is low-hanging fruit, but try to resist taking a whack at her!

© Stephan Andrade

I went to a Christmas party at the home of one of my husband’s friends, even though I was close to backing out at the last minute. Backing out of things has been my m.o. for most of my life, but I’m making an effort to get out and socialize. God knows I’m sick of my own company.

The host was a lovely and talented young man who can play any stringed instrument and cooked up an incredible feast, including a salmon mousse. His apartment is right beneath the Hollywood sign, and was cozy and festive. I greeted him and his family and went straight to the food.

I met his mom for the first time and fell in love with her. She confided that having retired, all she does is read 19th century novels and watch murder TV! THAT’S ALL I DO, TOO!!! She has read all of Trollope, twice. I would marry her if I could.

A guy named B overheard us talking and later came up to me to say, I know you like 19th century novels but do you also read any modern novels? I replied that I have no interest in contemporary fiction because I’m too much of a book snob. You’d think that would be the end of it but no.

He proceeded to mention a few writers I’ve never heard of but even their names were middlebrow. He asked, Don’t you want to know what younger people today are thinking about? I said, “No, I have younger friends so I already know their perspective.” He didn’t like this answer and then told me about Jennifer Something, who has written three novels, and went on to describe the plots of each one.

I stood politely trying not to have a heart attack from anxiety and frustration. Why was he torturing me? When he finally paused, I asked him if he likes short stories, thinking maybe we had that in common. He said he occasionally reads the fiction in the New Yorker. Now here was something I had an opinion on! I said, “Don’t you think that the New Yorker fiction is always” but he turned and walked away.

I sat down next to a nice woman I’ve met before and we talked about the stress of being online. We agreed that the current climate is especially tense and divisive. She noted that it annoyed her how many people denied there was a “genocide going on in Palestine.” As a Jewish Jew, I countered with, “Yeah, and the people who don’t believe Israeli women were raped and tortured!” Luckily, we agreed that miniature donkeys are adorable.

Later, I met a lovely couple who had family in Jerusalem. The husband, who was French, confided, “I hate Netanyahu” to which I interjected something like Duh, it’s a given, “but I hate Hamas more.” We talked about the worldwide explosion of antisemitism. They both has interesting jobs and asked me what I do. I blurted out, “Nothing. I am nothing.” Luckily my husband was in earshot and he leaned in and said, “She’s a writer.”

I noticed a very thin woman dressed in black and wearing a big fedora. Women who wear hats are one of my pet peeves so I instinctively disliked her. I heard her say, “This is my husband, Steve.” Suddenly, I recalled an awful woman on Instagram who used to keep referring to her husband Steve. I remember that Steve bought her a $10,000 engagement ring. I sat down with my phone and went to Instagram. Yes, it was that awful woman! I was so pleased with myself that I looked around to see if there was anyone I could gloat to. Obviously, I restricted gloating to my husband.

Back at the food table, I started talking to a debonair looking guy in a black shirt who had silver hair and a matching beard. I asked him if he was a musician, since most of the guests were musicians as well as the host. He said yes, and we started talking about song lyrics. He was saying something about how you often didn’t know what your lyrics were really about until you performed the song. I went on a short rant about how a bad lyric. or even a stupid word in the lyric, ruined the whole song for me. I ended with, “a stupid cliched lyric is like an electric shock!” He looked kind of bemused.

While driving home, my husband praised me for ignoring a guy named Richard, who I hate with the force of a thousand suns. I was flabbergasted. I said, “WHAT? RICHARD WAS THERE?” I  was stunned. I couldn’t believe I never noticed him!

I asked my husband if he knew a guy named Jackson, who I discussed lyrics with. He said, “Yeah, that was Jackson Browne.”

What a night! Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and even to those who don’t. xo

Can anyone think of another female vocalist who complained so much about being dumped?

If you happened to see her perform on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, you are probably wondering how you can get those ten minutes back. A tedious new version of some song that her fans loved back in the day when it was only 5 minutes long, it was the stupidest thing ever. My husband and I both laughed and groaned throughout, wondering why there was a video of a couple mooning around in the background. Didn’t she think she could hold our attention with her big chunky white veneers and hair-flipping?

Anyway, if you didn’t see it, the new song is about her break-up with Jake Gyllenhaal, when she was 21 and he was 30. Apparently, the 9 year age difference is one of his felonies, like keeping her scarf. 21 and 30 sounds pretty normal to me. Do couples have to be within a couple of years in age these days? Is anything else exploitation or a power imbalance? Poor Jake really takes a beating, because he dared to get tired of her. But victimhood is her brand. First it was Jon Mayer, boo hoo, then a million other bad, mean boyfriends.

I admit that I don’t know why she’s a star. She seems like such an awful person, obsessed with making money and shifting genres to suit the times. I also admit to a visceral dislike of her physical self. She looks like a rodent and her hunchback or scoliosis is disturbing.

I further admit that she’s been annoying me for years and years. Here’s something I don’t even remember writing!

But it’s so nuts to read a fawning appreciating of her in the New York Times, which I thought was a refuge for normal adults.

“All Too Well” parallels the emotional work that many women have been privately undertaking in the wake of the #MeToo movement: Looking back on past encounters or relationships that left them with a seemingly outsize feeling of unease; wondering what exactly constitutes exploitation or emotional abuse; wishing they could go back and extend some compassion or wisdom to their vulnerable younger selves.

Haha, whatever. If this break-up song is a masterpiece, what is Back to Black?? To paraphrase Etta James, I’d rather go blind than see Taylor Swift perform again.

I wish I had something incisive to say about her as an “artist” or phenomenon, but I’ve always been at a loss, urging millennial friends to explain her appeal. But they always hate her too, because none of my friends are idiots, I guess.

What if all her mean boyfriends got together and wrote a song about dating her?? Why can’t we have that? All the guys would get cancelled for their toxic masculinity, sure, but why can’t they sacrifice themselves for the greater good?

If you can explain Taylor’s success, please, I would love to know! Mean while, enjoy Amy and Etta, who know how to take a romantic punch.

*Scarf exegesis here.

A zoo in Antwerp has asked a woman to stop visiting the chimpanzee she claims to be in love with, in the hope of forcing the chimp to engage with his own species.

Alice Timmermans has been seeing, I mean visiting, the chimp for four years, standing outside his enclosure and exchanging air kisses with him. She says they are in a relationship, and who are we to argue with her? Zoo authorities say the relationship is turning the chimp into an outcast among his peers, who are starting to avoid him.

Alice has taken to social media to protest the zoo’s ban, insisting that the chimp loves her and characterizing their relationship as an affair. The 39 year old chimp has lived at the zoo for thirty years, after his owner surrendered him for “behavior issues.”

Listen, chimpanzees only have a lifespan of around 40 years. WHY CAN’T THEY LET HIM BE HAPPY??

Let him have a private enclosure where he and Alice can continue dating. They may be ready to take the relationship to the next level; it’s been four years, after all. Why this speciesism, Antwerp Zoo? Should we start a Move On petition for Alice and Chita the chimp?? Or a GoFundMe to pay for her to file a lawsuit? The heart wants what it fucking wants, don’t forget, as if we could.

Meanwhile, in Loango National Park, chimpanzees in the wild have started attacking gorillas, behavior that anthropologists have never seen before. Until now, interaction between the two species has been peaceful, even playful on occasion. But these chimps formed coalitions and attacked the gorillas, killing the infants who were separated from their mothers. Fuckers! What is their goddamn problem? Are they mad because they want affairs with attractive humans? Are they sick of being discussed in the media? Can’t we all get along??

Maybe we can.

A lion sanctuary in Harrismith, South Africa, is placing visitors inside Plexiglas cages stationed at the center of the lions’ lair, granting animal enthusiasts a palm-to-paw encounter with their menagerie of 77 rescued big cats.

Tourists are locked inside a “professional photography cage” for 45 minutes, paying around $150 for the chance to snap close-range pictures of the lions as they claw at the enclosure’s acrylic walls. The [cage] is regularly checked by an engineer to ensure it can safely carry the weight (up to 570 pounds) should a lion jump on top of it. And the round breathing holes in the plexiglass cage are “totally safe.”

Hahaha! Totally safe, famous last words.

Isn’t it too binary to have “people” and “animals”? Some people are barely human, and some animals are good people: witness my dog, Boris. Maybe we should reconsider who to fear and who to love.

Or maybe those lions should get together and crush that plastic cage, eat the tourists, and start dating chimps, but not the ones in Loango National Park. Those fuckers are way out of order.

As I continue to literally sit out this pandemic on my couch, I spend more hours scrolling through Instagram than I’m going to admit. It used to be just photographers and African models. Then, I expanded my interests to jewelry, and now to antique jewelry specifically.

I used to be interested in antique jewelry but then I felt I had enough and forgot about it as a category of desire. I was content to wear two rings, my grandma’s and my wedding ring. I have a nice collection of Victorian tiger claw jewelry, which I have bitched about here. But Instagram triggered my lizard brain propensity to hunt-and gather. I wanted more jewelry. I needed more jewelry.

I discovered a whole bunch of antique jewelry vendors who showcased the stuff they sold on Etsy or Ruby Lane. Then I discovered vendors who only sold their pieces on Instagram, which meant a hectic competition to DM your interest. All these people called their rings “she.” This is sickening, obviously, but not enough to put me off my new obsession.

I realized that these people, mostly women, formed a community and knew each other by their first names. So a compliment from Something Something Jewels brought a reply of “Thank you Judy!” or in the case of a ring, “Yes, isn’t she a nice one?”

Then I found the worst kind of Instagram Jewelry Woman in existence: The collector (i.e., hoarder) who is just there to show off her stuff, which tends toward the dazzling and shockingly expensive. They will photograph their hands festooned with fifty thousand rings, captioning them with casual descriptions like “Saturday stack” or “Can you guess which ones are new?”

One of these collectors posted a literal stack of gold rings, a type I personally love, and remarked giddily, “I just can’t stop buying —–rings!” I restrained my self from commenting, “TRY!” I asked a friend to leave that comment but she has the same reluctance to identify herself as an asshole, and refused.

I came across a woman whose passion is mourning jewelry. She is quite scholarly about it, and has written a book on the subject. She sells the occasional piece but is mostly there to educate. Her account led me to a person who collects and sells mourning jewelry, who captioned one photo with “Love me some sad ladies and urns!” Ew, I thought. I looked at her jewelry with a mixture of envy and irritation. You can go look yourself at @yulianaeternalmourning.

I began to ponder the attraction of mourning jewelry. Victorian regalia is so romantic, let’s face it. And mourning was part of Victorian life

The average lifespan during the Victorian era was 40 to 45 years. Europe was in a near constant state of war, and cholera, typhoid, smallpox, and scarlet fever were common killers. Approximately one in three children died before the age of five, and epidemics sometimes brought that number to one in two.

Simply put, death was a constant companion in the Victorian era. Mourning jewelry brought a little solace to the survivors who had to cope with frequent losses.*

Without thinking about any of this, years ago I put some of Max’s hair into an old gold locket, and I wear it wherever I go, just to keep him with me. It was and remains “a little solace.” I’ve actually become superstitious about it…a whole other story.

So I began to feel upset about the procuring and flaunting of mourning jewelry. Yuliana was the worst of the worst, I felt. I looked at her stacked fingers and read her smug captions and decided to comment.

Naturally, she blocked me! I wish I could remember my exact comment, which was actually a stern lecture. It was something like, “Do you realize that each ring is a token of someone’s grief and loss?? Do you think the owners of those rings ever imagined that they would adorn the fingers of a stranger showing off on Istagram? I wear a piece of my son’s hair in a locket, and I’ll be damned if it ends up with a bunch of other lockets around the neck of a gloating stranger.

Oops, I pissed her off. Nobody likes a sore loser, I guess. Nobody likes real mourning, or real pain and bitterness. But when people are awful, I have to let them know. It’s my calling. That and hideous denim.

I’m just going to jump in with Adam Driver.

I know he’s not the world’s biggest threat or even irritant, but I’ve been wanting to complain about him for ages.

First off, I find it hard to remember if his name is Driver or Diver. I just had to google it. I’m sick of being corrected when I say the wrong one. Second, why is he so popular? Isn’t he a guy from the Girls TV series? Why is now the leading man in so many movies?

He is too tall and his voice is annoying. It sounds like he’s speaking through a Muppet costume. He is both too much and too little. His performance in that movie about Marriage is excruciating. I just don’t want him. Is he somehow an appendage of Adam Sandler, who I obviously also hate?

Here’s my next  choice and I don’t know if there’s an actual term for this. It’s the Instagram girl with a zillion followers who appears to offer nothing more than an array of plastic surgery and cosmetic debacles. Huge boobs, gigantic lips, voluminous hair extensions, pounds of make-up, long pointy nails and fake eyelashes. What are these girls for?? I can’t tell them apart except for the two categories of hair color. The brunettes are usually exotic/ethnic looking and the blondes look like generic porn actresses.

Speaking of Instagram, I’m also sick of the positivity posts. They’re all like,

“I’ve worked so hard the last year and there have been pitfalls along the way but I’m learning to love myself more and I’m so grateful to god for bla bla bla and I know my path is bla bla bla.”

Who gives a shit? Can’t they save this for their shrink or life coach or BFF? It’s so faux-spiritual and pointless. Do they think that social media is a cheering section for them personally? I don’t even get it but make it stop.

I would like to stop seeing the term gut-health. Nothing about gut or guts. Nothing about prebiotics or inflammation. People should only discuss their digestive system with close friends and medical experts.

As a human being and a female, I don’t need to read about how women are powerful, with a list of this year’s Most Powerful or a list of women’s accomplishments. Women make up half of the world’s population so stop trying to position them as a rare population. I mean, Jesus Christ.

I don’t want any more think pieces about tribalism. We get it already!

I don’t want to hear about your best life. I don’t want to hear about optimizing anything. I don’t want to hear about micro-dosing. I DO want to hear about which strains of weed are the best for creativity or relaxing, so hit me up if you know.

I hate myself for writing “hit me up.” So many of our trendy expressions are contagious! I now say the word “ew” with two distinct syllables, “ew-uh.” But I will never, ever, describe something good as “fire.” Ew-uh!

I’m through with tracking the latest Twitter beefs. It’s exhausting. And when I try to tell someone, “guess who everybody’s mad at on Twitter!” no one wants to know.

Obviously I’m through with wellness and self-care. Everyone needs to redirect themselves to care for OTHERS! We already care far too much about our own selves. Trust advertising to persuade us that we’ve been neglecting ourselves. It’s the greatest ruse since “rinse, repeat.”

I’m planning a list of banned words for 2020, to publish at Miista. Feel free to share yours, as well as shit you don’t want any more of. Extra points if you can explain why we have Adam Driver.

Once upon a time, there was a family whose gifted child, Smarty, started a new school. He made a new friend, Icky, who was very sweet but had a number of physical and behavioral shortcomings. He was unattractive and moody but got along well with Smarty, an extrovert who tended to be dominant with his peers.

Icky had a play-date at Smarty’s house, and was picked up by his dad, Pervy, a smarmy voice-actor with an overly familiar manner who told Smarty’s mom that she must’ve been a “helluva sexy teenager”.

Smarty spent more time with Icky, encouraged heartily by Pervy, who confided that Smarty was a good role model for the sullen Icky, who spend most of his time playing video games.

Whenever Smarty went to Icky’s house, Pervy took them out to restaurants and bought them gifts. He soon made room in a closet for Smarty’s clothes and gave Smarty a spare key to the house.

One day, alone with Mom, Pervy said that he might be able to “give her what she wanted.” Shocked, she nervously replied that she only wanted a chartreuse suede Chanel handbag. Pervy asked what that cost, and then backed off.

Smarty began to gain weight and his mom asked Pervy to stop taking him out to huge meals of barbecued ribs and potatoes. Pervy ignored her. Smarty discovered religion and Pervy found a Jewish synagogue for Jews who didn’t believe in god. Mom and Dad agreed to attend a service there, where prayers omitted the god part. Mom and Dad were atheists but wanted to let Smarty work out his own belief system.

Then, Pervy had an idea: He would have a Bar-Mitzvah alongside Smarty! WHAT?! Here, Mom stepped in and said no, that will not happen.

Meanwhile, Dad had a group of old friends who got together to play music one night a week. He brought Pervy with him once, and Pervy soon began to come on his own, installing himself as one of the groups key vocalists.

Smarty’s family was struck by tragedy, and Pervy invited him to stay with him and Icky for a month. When Mom wanted Smarty back at home, Pervy said, Well, I promised him a month. I can’t go back on my promise.

One day, Smarty was very angry with his parents and called Pervy to come pick him up. Pervy came and even though Smarty swore at him, he obediently took Smarty away.

Mom now despised Pervy. Smarty moved away and fell in love. He told Mom and Dad that he might ask Pervy to officiate at the wedding. Mom screamed, “NO! I’m not coming if that happens!”

This caused a rift between Mom and Smarty, one of many that should have healed but kept erupting.

Time passed.  Pervy still sang in the music group, using hand motions like Celine Dion. Mom missed Smarty and one day, emailed Icky to ask how Smarty was doing. Icky immediately reported back to Smarty, who angrily demanded that Mom stop contacting his friends. Icky blocked Mom on twitter.

More time passed and Pervy started a Kickstarter page for a movie he wanted to make about a log lady. He offered a grand prize of dinner with himself to the highest donor.

Go and see it if it gets released! Just don’t let him play with your kid or come to your music group.

Today there’s an article in The New York Times called “Madonna at 60“.  I am pleased to report that I didn’t, and will not, read it. Madonna is canceled.

Madonna has already taken up too much of my time and emotional energy. I used to rant about her being a cultural scourge, a terrible role model responsible for every subsequent blonde sexpot who made a career out of hardly being able to sing. Plus Lady Gaga.

When I wrote gossip for a living, I found that on any given day, there was some Madonna news. Her family problems, her Instagram provocations, whatever. I was both fascinated and grossed out. I watched her face swell with fillers and took it personally. I flipped out when she appeared on awards shows wearing revealing outfits. I rejoiced when her legs got chunky.

Now I can stop. I don’t even need Chantix. I’m just going to take my business elsewhere. Hating Beyonce is a pretty good substitute, actually.

Who gives a shit about Madge at sixty? She’ll just insist that she’s still relevant and still sexy. Ew.

However! I have collected Madonna pictures to accompany my made-up stories and just for my own entertainment. Please enjoy or disenjoy them before I delete them. And if you’d like to give me an award for canceling her, I graciously accept.

To launch this new category, The Stupidest Thing Ever, I’m going with “glamping“, a concept that comes with its own stupid word.

“Glamping” is a portmanteau of glamorous and camping and describes a style of camping with amenities and, in some cases, resort-style services not usually associated with “traditional” camping.

Apparently, this stupid practice has been going on so long that the American Glamping Association launched in August, joining World of Glamping (whatever that is) to promote the growing “industry.” There’s also Glamping Hub.

It looks like I’ve been totally out of the fucking loop, as usual, but I’m trying to catch up. As I understand it, glamping is for people who want to be outdoors but don’t want to rough it. In millennial speak, it’s for people who want unique experiences.

Now here’s where I know I’m not a millennial: I DON’T WANT A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE! If I’m traveling, I want a 100% normal  experience! When I went to London in September, I didn’t think, “Shit, I’m staying in a nice hotel in a nice part of the city, right near an underground station”. I didn’t wish I were in a teepee in the countryside or a barn with sheep. I have actually had some “unique experiences” while traveling, such as someone pointing a gun at me (England), a stranger slapping me (Italy) rape (Greece) and a really terrible acid trip (Wales.)

No thank you!

Also, how stupid would you feel to stay in an actual cave that had room service and a designer bathtub? How could you pretend this wasn’t stupid, you know? I discovered the cave hotel while scrolling through the offerings at glamping.com. The destination for this experience is Sextantio Le Grotte Della Civita, in southern Italy.

The restored ancient caves will provide “an out-of-time journey through the traces of the uninterrupted presence of the man in this area, from Paleolithic times to the present.”

The hotel rooms occupy the caves themselves. What separates Sassi di Matera from merely sleeping in a cave is a certain dedication to luxury. Your bathroom may be a bare rock cavern, but you can trust in your Milanese host’s taste in fixtures and fittings: your bathtub is the finest money can buy. Prehistoric man might never have ventured outside the caves if they had bathrooms like these!

For fuck sake.

But let’s say you don’t want to pretend you’re Fred Flintstone. What else is there? The co-founder of the American Glamping Association notes that people have different needs.

For example, if you really need complete isolation, then a glamping location that has just one very unique tent is the place for you.

What kind of motherfucker needs one very unique tent???? The kind that takes an hour to describe what kind of beverage he wants at Starbucks? As if such a person would even go to Starbucks when he/she/they/it/x could only be happy with single origin coffee, reverently prepared in a kabuki ritual by a barista wearing a crisp hemp apron.

So much privilege. So much stupidity.

Are you a glamper? Is glamper even a word? If you have any firsthand (or secondhand) glamping stories, let’s hear them!

Recently, I’ve been wasting my time on Instagram, because it’s the ultimate passive diversion. Mostly, I follow handsome African models, tattoo artists, and jewelry designers. It’s pleasant eye candy, and it enables me to spend hours on the couch without moving or having to think.

A woman who seemed to share my sensibility started to chat with me there. I told her that I’m a grieving mother, as I consider this to be a significant part of my identity. So anyway, in order to soften the blow of this, I added that I have some pretend adopted children, (Chris, Ali, and Simone, xoxo)

Here’s this woman’s reply:

She went on to elaborate on how well the adoption has turned put and how nice the person was to “open her house to an orphan.”

I was so disconcerted that I continued to chat with her about this and that. I hate when I do this. I need to get better at going, ARE YOU CRAZY? But anyway, let me ask you:

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE????

Why do people say such awful things?? “Because they’re uncomfortable” isn’t good enough. Can you imagine if someone’s cat died, coming back with, Oh, a friend of mine had a cat that was torn to pieces by a coyote! No, you can’t imagine, because you’re just not that awful.

One of my loved ones was diagnosed with cancer, and is now cancer free and in great shape. But when they told people about the diagnosis, they were often caught off-guard by the stupidest and cruelest responses. I can’t repeat them here. But the correct reply is not “My grandma just died of  cancer!”

If someone confides in you, regarding some misfortune, it’s not hard to just say, “I’m so sorry. Are you doing okay?” I find myself saying this fairly often, since bad things keep happening to friends and complete strangers. Please, please try this next time you are lost for words.

Next up is the non-compliment. A friend told me today that when she tried on some new sparkly eye shadow, her husband noticed and asked her, “What have you done to your eyes?” I laughed at the hostility of this response, partly because I know her husband and it’s a perfect summation of his personality.

I think it’s a good rule to not comment on anyone’s physicality UNLESS THEY ASK YOU TO WEIGH IN! Don’t say anything about my shoes if it’s not a compliment. Don’t call anything I’m wearing “fun.” I know what fun means, motherfuckers! Don’t say to people, “Is your hair different?” If their hair looks great, you can say so, but otherwise, just shut up. Never, ever, say to anyone “If you like it, that’s what matters!” under any circumstances.

There are so many expressions that strike me as inherently out of order, like when I was stroking my husband in my sleep and he muttered, Keep still. “Keep still” is what my dentist used to say when I was six years old and terrified. “Keep still” is what someone says when they’re lasering your eyeball or operating on your brain or getting ready to shoot you.

Thoughts? What do people say that bothers you or makes you wonder what the fuck is wrong with them?