No Offence, But...

1. I cannot celebrate your religion or your race or your specialness.

(Borderline:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoGXPPzWWTs)

2. If you are highly intelligent and build a clear case for something, do know that all you built was a clear case for that thing. And it will eventually be replaced.

3. If you are a fundamentalist you are reductive about everything in the meal. Too much reduction and the sauce gets pasty, thick and opaque, smothering all the tasty bits.

4. If you cannot enjoy someone else's work or ideas, no matter how hard you try, no matter how generous your intentions, fuck it. Be light hearted about it and tell them, "Not my thing."

5. If you think the Bible was written by people who were not writers, with the same propensity as the simplest Hollywood writers who try to teach a moral or to push hard to inspire greatness or to ink up big explosions in order to encourage fear, all in a colorful narrative, then you are just not using your mind to see common cause.

6. I cannot celebrate your children. I love them from a distance. I care about them as human beings. I adore what is adorable about them. I love passing by children in the park, their spark so incredibly endearing and enlivening. It is the same excitement that is riled up when watching the cutest puppy, but even better, really. Kids are an absolute thrill as they excitedly fly by on their scooters, hair in the air, smiles beaming wide for the gift of aliveness. But kids are messy. We were all messy kids. Kids can be lovely and generous and vulnerable and smart and original, too. But, they can also be selfish, sloppy, loud and irrational with little impulse control. And the ones who exhibit grace at an early age are most probably achieving this feat by the use of a great mimetic impulse that will insure their survival: imitating adults in order to please them so the adults will give them what the kids really want: money, freedom and pleasure.  So, though your kids are amazing to you, (and they are amazing in that they are alive on earth), the path of the fascinating child has been well worn so mostly...I see the same dust.

7. If you think your politics (or your religions) are better than anyone else's, remember, you are just trying to feel safe by making everyone in the family follow the same rules. You want everyone to agree with your idea of how the pecking order should be managed. This is a survival technique that you believe will help you to not only feel included and harmonious, but perhaps give you a solid unquestioning earth that you can eventually dominate. You are an animal. Be careful.

8. When you take yourself too seriously, remember, there is a drunk woman in a bar in Brooklyn who would be more than happy to tell you, "Go Fuck Yourself!" I know her. Her talent is laser. And it works.

9. If you are not laughing by now or wanting to kill me, one or the other, or both, you're a douchebag. Even though I cannot believe that term has boomeranged back into usage. A free drink the next time I see you for anyone who calls me a douchebag in the comments.

10. There is no ten. I don't care how many fingers you have.