Dumbledore, The Queen of Hogwarts

I can't believe she didn't put it in the books. Not that fact that he was gay, specifically, but the fact that he was in love with Grinewald. It's relevant, it's interesting, it makes illuminates why Dumbledore behaved the way he did towards him. Their relationship (even non-romantic, as it was) and it's dynamics occupied a huge part of book seven. It's certainly more interesting than the forced, hurried, pointless Remus & Tonks relationship and it's just as sudden end (which had no relevance to the plot whatsoever).

Yeah, second the anonymous poster. Dumbledore is a great character. Rowling didn't write in any queen-like behavior (not that there's anything wrong with that), so why the sudden sneering just because she said he was gay?

To me, the Dumbledore/Grindelwald relationship read as very slashy from the start. G. is constantly described as attractive and magnetic in a way that reads oddly because no other character is described that way. I kept expecting him to turn out to be good, just because "attractive" usually reads as "good" in the kiddy-lit context Harry Potter is placed in. But he turned out to be bad in spite of his looks. "Huh," I thought--"what's up with that?" Now I know. I think Rowling didn't overtly discuss the relationship because, possibility A, she was chicken, or possibility B, her editors were chicken. And with good reason, given the responses of some readers.

Apparently Rod is comfortable using slang terms out of context when it comes to groups that make him uncomfortable. It's disappointing, but unfortunately not unexpected. And it makes such a good witness for Christ.

As far as anyone (except JK Rowling) knows, Dumbledore was a celibate homosexual. Aren't those OK by you, Rod? Maybe he was a member of Courage.

The rumor now is that Dumbledore and Voldemort were once involved

Shhhh....

Don't tell anyone, but ... Gandalf is gay.

(Or at least Ian McKellen is.)

Wherever you have children gathered, you have the Gay Agenda sooner or later following. Every Christian on earth, knew this was coming.

I'd love to say my gaydar picked up that this was coming, but I was very surprised.

In the books, I loved what Jo did with Dumbledore at the end. Harry's idol-of-sorts and trusted mentor (and for us, the wise and virtuous moral figure of the book) is shown to have come by that wisdom only as the result of a serious misjudgement on his part that resulted in tragic consequences he'll regret the rest of his life. I think we must admire Dumbledore's self-knowledge of his flaws, and his rejection of the power that so many would have willingly given him.

Perhaps the point of informing us that romantic love was involved in his misjudgement is intended to help reinforce our sense of Dumbledore's horror at his mistake and how much restraint he exhibited as a result.
In a similar vein, Dumbledore acknowledges that his love for Harry causes him to make the mistake of shielding Harry for too long from the knowledge of why Voldemort singled him out.

Personally, of course, I am gratified to know that Jo would choose to characterize as incidentally gay a character who is undeniably one of the moral authorities in the book, and that she would be willing to challenge those readers who may only see people who are gay as fundamentally evil or Objectively Disordered.

But the part of me that loves the books and wants everyone to read them is a bit saddened that some people will now most likely choose not to let their kids read the books because of the "gay angle", and that's a shame. The overall message of the books is so good.

Further, I guess I can understand the feelings of parents who may feel like they've been betrayed in some way: they've loved the books, shared them with their children, trusted the author, and now the author has brought in a subject that they're going to have to talk to their kids about that they don't WANT to talk to their kids about. Plus, they have to condemn *Dumbledore* of all characters for goodness sakes; how will their kids accept a condemnation of Dumbledore? Their feelings are probably akin to those of the folks who went to Ted Haggard's church.

If I am allowed to have a letdown re: Obama's decision to include Donnie McClurkin on tour and a letdown that a musician whose music I liked is preaching an unmoderated Ex-Gay message, then Rod and company are certainly entitled to their letdown.

Looks to me like Rod has jumped the shark with this one.

Jeff Weiss's article is excellent.

My complaint about this whole incident is that it's not playing fair to one's readers to reveal major character elements outside the text of the books. If Dumbledore being gay was important to the story it needed to be revealed in the story. Revealing his orientation after the fact smacks of a mixture of cowardice and pandering.

Of course, I make many HP readers mad by sharing my opinion that these books are barely passably-written escapist young adult pop fiction and hardly worthy of the thought and analysis poured into them, so now I suppose I can make even more of them mad by insisting that any literature worthy of the name doesn't seek to bend the rules by disclosing major character traits after that particular character is dead and the books are finished and published. I make the rest of the HP critics mad by my adherence to the belief that whatever flaws the books contain, Satanism isn't among them. Wouldn't want anyone to feel left out. :)

I rarely comment but the publishing topic caught my eye. To reiterate what I said on David Kuo's similar thread: the books have already been written and now stand on their own as cultural artifacts. What their creator does or doesn't say after the fact would seem to matter very little; the books themselves may be discussed and interpreted for as long as readers remain interested in doing so. (I have little interest in either Harry Potter or J. K. Rowling, but such blatant attention-seeking by an author leaves me with a negative impression.)

No one was objecting several months ago when Jo spoke in some depth about what becomes of the characters in more detail than is in the book; you did not seem to object to her discussion in Louisiana about the Christian themes in the book. But all of a sudden, it's too much information in general (vs. too much information specifically that Dumbledore is gay)?

Because the Christian stuff is in the book, from what many, many people have said, and anyway, Rowling herself pointed out clues. Look, I didn't read the HP books, and don't care about them. I wouldn't care if Dumbledore did poppers and coupled with Joe Orton in the men's room at Victoria Station. Inventing something out of whole cloth about your character, something you didn't see fit to put into any one of SEVEN books when you wrote the series, is a silly stunt -- and, as Erin puts it, pandering. If she had revealed in that press event that, say, Dumbledore had been secretly married, and his wife had been killed by Voldemort, and that was his secret cross to bear, I would have thought it dumb and unnecessary and also a stunt. But that she made him gay struck me as pandering to contemporary mores.

And I'm also not surprised that some of you can't hear criticism of anything involving homosexuality without concluding that eek! it's homophobia! I've never talked with Jeff Weiss about homosexuality, but knowing him as I do, I would be extremely surprised if he disapproved of homosexuality in the slightest. His argument is a literary one. If Rowling revealed that Dumbledore had once been a pro-life campaigner and slayer of Islamic terrorists, it would have been just as dumb, and just as pander-y, because there's nothing in the book to suggest those things.

Some of y'all are showing why what she did was pandering. If Philip Roth gave an interview in which he said oh, by the way, Alexander Portnoy was for a time a born-again Christian, wouldn't you think that was weird and uncalled for? Would you think for half a second that born-again Christians were obliged to defend Roth's stunt, and that criticizing it was an act of anti-Christian bigotry? Come on, people.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't she, ex post facto, make up a gay episode from Dumbledore's life? If so, that's just bush league. And I'd feel exactly the same way if she had said last week, "Oh, by the way, Hagrid converted to Catholicism in college."

Again, I haven't read the books -- that's what my wife and son do, but I couldn't get into them -- but I recall people discussing the Christian allegorical aspects of the books for years. I have never once read speculation on Dumbledore's sexuality. I know that at least some gays have an ideological tendency to look for evidence of homosexuality in anything -- I once sat through a roundtable press interview with Peter Jackson, on the "Lord of the Rings" junket, and heard a ridiculous correspondent for a gay newspaper start the interview by asking if Frodo and Sam were lovers -- but it seems to me that the "news" that Dumbledore was gay came as a bolt out of the blue for most people. I would say that not too many people were surprised when Rowling acknowledged the obvious Christian allegory in her work.

I am really impatient and put out with people on the left and the right who see art's purpose as forwarding an ideological point of view. It's like the Christians who insist that a story has to have a happy ending, or has to lead people to the Gospel. Or gays and gay-friendlies who cheer for an author who violates the rules by reading into her completed work ("Oh, by the way...") something that suits their ideological purposes. Ideologized art is not art at all.

Question to you who think Rowling did well with this: if she had said not that Dumbledore was gay, but that he had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior as a young man, how would you feel about this revelation, as a matter of literary integrity? I know how I would feel about it: it would be stupid, and cheap.

Then Rod maybe you should hold comment until you read Book 7. While it isn't "in your face", Dumbledore's leanings are in there in much the same way as the Christian allegory--not explicit, but noticeable to anyone doing a bit of deep reading. And the subject has been discussed on the forums at the Leaky Cauldron, pretty much the premiere HP discussion site. So no, it wasn't after the fact pandering; it was explicitly acknowledging the backstory for the character that she always had in mind.

I suspect some of the cries of homophobia are specifically engendered because she's been making plenty of revelations of backstory at post-publication events--but only this one has gotten a backlash.

"but I recall people discussing the Christian allegorical aspects of the books for years. I have never once read speculation on Dumbledore's sexuality."

That's, arguably, because you hang out with a lot more Christians desperate to find their lives and beliefs reflected in literature than you do gays desperate to find their lives and beliefs reflected in literature.

I'm not arguing that it isn't pandering, but it is worthwhile to figure out why a religion writer (and you) have your knickers in knots about the gay issue but not the Christian question. That charcters who lived in her mind had internal lives that didn't make it into the book doesn't mean, to her, that there wasn't more there. If you know anything about writing fiction, you'd know that writers have a fairly complex understanding of their characters that never make it into the book, but still "speeak' to the writer during the process.

"Yeah, second the anonymous poster. Dumbledore is a great character. Rowling didn't write in any queen-like behavior (not that there's anything wrong with that), so why the sudden sneering just because she said he was gay?"

LOL!

Sig, looks like you're channeling Castanza and Sienfeld here (not that there's anything wrong with that). Please say it was intentional.

The whole series turned gay by about book three or four, in direct proportion to the books' length.

I should clarify: the first paragraph of my last is about what is in Book 7 and is an important plot point. The second paragraph is comments about the pertinence of the revelation. (And I second whomever it is that pointed out that this detail was offered in response to a question from the audience)

Item: Rowling mentions Dumbledore's sexual orientation in the context of having made a significant revision to a screen play.

Item: in a work of this length, notes and backstory elements could easily be longer than the work's length.

Item: Rowling's work is hers, from her imagination and expressed according to the dictates and limitations of the literary mode she chose. She could have made this much more adult in tone and scope. With that choice, she might have written a series twice as long. There is clear evidence that she had plenty of material that did not make it to the final draft because of her choice to aim the story at younger readers.

Question: can anyone doubt that this "revelation" would have come out at some point, most likely by way of someone catching the scent from the screen play revision, and working that speck up to a mountain in record time? Question Rowling's "pandering" all you like, but if I were in her shoes I'd much rather be the direct source of that sort of information than let others create and drive the topic.

"J.K. Rowlings is wrong to introduce this theme into her book after parents have already bought and read the books to their kids without that idea being explicit in the story."

But do you feel the same about her revelation that this was a Christian allegory, the kind of thing you despised having to find in college English? How does your Muslim friend feel about the fact that Rowling has now explained the Christian themes in the story, which will require her to go back and explain Christianity to her kids?

Okay, it's official.

We need a Don't Ask - Don't Spell policy.

Max - have to LOL spluttering coffee at that one! But that makes the acronym DADS -> you want to go there? :-)

Condemn him for what, Jim? He didn't even a have a romantic relationship with the person he was in love with. He committed no sin to speak of. He's just gay. What are the parents mad about? The fact that their children will know gay people exist? I'm going to hazard a guess that pretty much every kid old enough to appreciate Harry Potter is already aware of that fact.

The "Ted Haggard" comparison is false. Haggard lied to his congregation repeatedly, cheated on his wife, hired prostitutes and used hard drugs. How is that comparable to saying a benevolent fictional character is gay?

The only imaginable "letdown" here is in the eyes of those who don't like gay people. They feel Dumbledore as a character is "tainted" or "ruined" by being gay. Rubbish.

I thought Franklin's itemization of facts about fiction was excellent. And, speaking as a writer, I'm interested but startled to see how many people here feel sure there are "rules" about how writers are supposed to speak and act. I always thought we got to say and do whatever the heck we wanted to, related to our own work. It is my planet, monkey boys--if y'all don't like the way I play here, go make up your own.

This, of course, is what many fans do. They take the characters and run with them, whether in their own heads via idle daydreams, or online in reams of fanfiction. Some writers are outraged by this misappropriation, but I think it's just what people do. Stories are seeded into the wild, and hybridize into weird forms. I'd really love to link to some educational fansites, but I don't want to be responsible for a rash of deaths from apoplexy among Rod's faithful readers.

For those who feel Rowling broke "the rules," I wonder how many of you have read the letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Readers wrote to him with endless questions, and he often did his best to answer them. Some very interesting and moving commentary on the nature of suffering and temptation in his letters was sparked by fan questions about what was going on in Frodo's and Gollum's heads, and what would have happened if this or that non-canonical event had taken place. Tolkien is, overall, the classic example of a writer whose creation took on a reality of which only a small slice made it into the canonical print version of his work. That may irritate some of you, but I think the world would be a poorer place if he'd been a man who played by rules devised by smaller imaginations.

(And yes, Max, my earlier comment was, of course, deliberate. ; ) )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stars_My_Destination

In this book by Alfred Bester, the main character -- having been surgically enhanced in a manner similar to "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman", experiences synesthesia in the extreme at one point. The author, being limited solely to text on a printed page, struggled valiantly to convey the character tasting sound, seeing scents, etc.

My point is that the best writers know and use the benefits of structure, and abandon them immediately when the benefit is even greater (with, albeit, a greater risk as well).

Terribly sorry for my triple comment earlier--from my end it looked as though Beliefnet wasn't loading at all, so I tried shortening the comment (since my computer is elderly and slow and sometimes chokes on the book-length posts I write).

I agree with Rod, with Mr. Weiss, and with the anonymous poster at 12:28, not because I'm a Catholic who is therefore ordered by the secret monkeys in the Vatican to hate gay people (celibate or not, fictional or not) but because I'm a former Lit major, dash it, and this sort of thing Simply Isn't Done. It's a mindbogglingly arrogant disrespect for the readers to go tacking on MAJOR character traits after the fact. Now, if you want to argue that D. being gay is just a minor irrelevant detail like whether he prefers coffee or tea in the morning or whether he has strong opinions on the subject of eighteenth century poetry, fine--you probably won't convince me or anyone else, but it would be the ONLY rationale for JKR to reveal D.'s gayness in this way at this time.

Major character traits by definition must be revealed in the texts. If they're not, then when the final book is closed the author should be silent about them, because by definition they're no longer major character traits of importance to the story. And, like Rod, I would feel the same way if we were to be told that Snape had a secret common-law wife who never appears. It.just.doesn't.matter.now.

Oh, some may have thought that is was concern that the souls of these characters might not be saved.

Someone should sue this woman for slander and libel.

This is probably an untruth, and she is defaming this fictional character! Money damages are in order.

The.nerve.of.the.authoress.

For me, it's a joke. If JK Rowling really wanted to be progressive and/or controversial, she would have made Dumbledore obviously gay in the books. But I agree that it does sort of violate literary rules, except if you consider that maybe she is just speculating - he could be gay.

I don't think that JK Rowling has committed any kind of offensive that requires her to be told to "Shut Up" but then, I'm not freaked out by the idea that Hogwarts could have a gay Headmaster.

I have to say, for the most part, I'm not losing a lot of sleep over this. It wasn't an important enough characteristic to be revealed in the text, and Rowling hardly walked into Carnegie Hall with the intent of having it written in the sky--she had promised she'd answer any question, and somebody asked. That was that. There's no evidence in the text of Dumbledore having ever been anything (at least since Grindelwald, whatever may or may not have happened between the two of them) but celibate, and I'm content to leave it there.

Having to explain "it" to our kids is something that we're all inevitably going to have to do anyway; not being in the actual text, it may or may not come up as something we have to explain when we read the books to our kids. One way or the other, in many respects I'd rather do it in the context of a character like Dumbledore than a fetish parade like the one about which Rod posted a couple of weeks ago.

I'll also suggest that in many respects, given Rowling's ideals as (to me) they are clearly communicated in the text, I'm not sure this should necessarily take anybody by surprise. I have a strong suspicion that Hermione's passion regarding the rights of house-elves is very much Rowling's own voice, for example.

For a thorough and thoughtful treatment of the matter by Looking for God in Harry Potter author and Orthodox Christian John Granger, see http://hogwartsprofessor.com/?p=198. It's worth the read.

Richard

Alicia's got it. It's a joke. Not to worry -- he's not really gay.

(He's not real.)

Heifer

"Honestly, if it was the failing of a previous age not to want to see sex in anything, it's at least as great a failing of our age to want to see sex in *everything*. Can't two boys/men be close friends without being gay lovers? I can tell you from personal experience that the answer is YES."

Bingo, David. Thank you. I don't understand why the homo factor is in the back of so many people's minds when considering the fact that two men can be close friends. It's really annoying.

No reason for me to commment, Erin said everything I might say better. For sure, this is cowardice and pandering.

And of course these books are barely passably-written escapist young adult pop fiction and hardly worthy of the thought and analysis poured into them. Exactly.

"Can't two boys/men be close friends without being gay lovers? I can tell you from personal experience that the answer is YES."

Anthony Esolen has written very eloquently on this very issue here:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-07-021-f

When I left the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them - thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. And the poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same reason that I was superior to the politicians.

Rob G,

Re: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-07-021-f

This is a laugh. So instead of people avoiding same-sex friendships because of an unnatural panic instilled by society that they would be thought gay, we can blame those lousy gay people for spoiling same sex friendships for just daring to be visible, and thus making it reasonable for society to be suspicious of same sex friendships because -- gasp -- they might be ..... (in a whispered voice) gay.

It is interesting that we are all lamenting something that we see has been lost ... namely an ease with deep platonic friendship between men ... and find such different causes (and implicitly, I imagine, solutions as well).

IMHO, we're simply going to have to wait for men in general to grow up a little bit more. Gay men: stop the gossipy speculation about who is and who isn't that feeds this whole stupidity. Straight men: get the heck over yourselves and have a little confidence. ONLY SILLY PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN SPECULATING ABOUT YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION, and the rest of us either know you or we don't really care.

When it is no big deal, we're all going to be a hell of a lot freer to get on with this business of living, befriending and loving.

Isn't everyone getting exhausted talking about this subject? I'd much rather be getting back to an insightful, useful discussion about healthcare, for instance.

And of course these books are barely passably-written escapist young adult pop fiction and hardly worthy of the thought and analysis poured into them.

There's better-written children's lit out there, no question. But any series of books that gets millions of non-reading children to discover the joy of reading is okay by me. And not only do children read the HP books, they talk about them. They talk about good and evil, humility and self-sacrifice, courage and loyalty. These are good things. I don't see much point in sneering at Rowling's writing.

Mrs. Pringle

The best movie review show I've ever seen, and I've seen a bunch, had an adult movie critic surrounded by appropriate age-range kids giving their reactions and opinions about a movie intended for them.

I compare that to movie critics who review made-for-kids movies from his or her adult perspective.

Rowling was asked, it was on her mind because of the screen play issue, and she responded honestly. Would you rather she lied by omission? How would she then look when the screen play issue came to light?

Sheesh.

I think what happened here is that Rod, being totally and willfully ignorant of such matters, totally missed the subtle signs that the author gave in her books. Not surprising, especially since he admits he has not read the last book in the series, that he jumps to a conclusion based on partial (and quite biased) viewpoints regarding homosexuality.

You see, folks like Rod can only quantify homosexuality in terms of the sexual relationship. They focus on how the two homosexual partners partake of sex, and stop their thought at that point. Yet in discussing heterosexual relationships they have no problem with exploring all the nuances of human relationship and love. If it had been a female that Dumbledore had an attraction to, Rod would have no problem at all with it being revealed after the fact.

Rod, a news flash for you...homosexuality is about more than sex. It is about love, caring, communication, and yes, even romantic longing. Homosexuals experience every aspect of human relationship that heterosexuals experience, it is simply directed at a person of the same gender.

It's unfortunate that your first image regarding this revelation was of two men having sex. To me, it simply opened up yet another facet of Dumbledore's life that made him who he was. And who better to get that information from than his creator, the author of the series.

I'm sorry you cannot find it within yourself to focus on something besides sex when talking about human relationships. Maybe you need counselling.

Eric W,

I need to have read the book to get this? I might be a little slow at finding symbolism and allegories, but this really isn't all that complex.

Author writes a story and gives subtle clues in the LAST book of the series that a main character is gay. Clues must have been subtle because poster Jim(who BTW is gay) didn't pick up on it. I didn't hear any parents who saw the first 4 films or read the first six books mention it. It wasn't explicit. Many parents go out and buy the 7th and final book, read it, and still have no idea that Dumbledore's gay. Author decides to confirm during an interview that those who suspected her character of homosexuality are correct. Yes, he's gay!

I think that it's cheap. If she wanted to bring him out of the closet then she should have done that in the story.

I agree with RJohnson that it's not about sex. Why couldn't Dumbledore have a friendship with another man & not be gay? Why did JKR have to bring his sexual orientation into it at all?

Rod, you may like this post by Thom Palmer, via gather.com:

New York, NY, 16 July 2001

Toothy, beloved actress Elaine Joyce, known for her roles in such popular shows as “Match Game” and “What’s My Line,” revealed during a 50th anniversary celebration of the publication of Catcher in the Rye that J.D. Salinger said of his character, Holden Caufield, that “the poor kid had a goddamn nut allergy!” Ms. Joyce, after her second marriage ended in divorce, was “hot and heavy” with the reclusive American author through much of the nineteen-eighties, after Salinger wrote her a fan letter upon seeing her in the short-lived sit-com “Mr. Merlin.”

“You know, Jerry himself is lactose intolerant, so he had a real interest in the behavioral effects of food. He told me one night while we were, you know, snuggling, that before the whole story starts, Holden has a couple big fistfuls of cashews. And from there the whole thing just flowed,” said Joyce to a room of national and foreign press correspondents. “The whole ‘phoniness’ and disaffection thing in Holden, it’s really just a mild anaphylaxsis.”

“I really think this places Holden in a wholly new and, quite frankly, even more deeply tragic light,” says literary critic and biographer Janet Malcolm. “And it dovetails more appropriately with what we know of Salinger’s eclectic spiritual, medical, and nutritional beliefs. Homeopathy, macrobiotics, Vitamin C megadosing, vomiting to remove impurities, urine therapy. It’s a more poignant read, when you think about it.”

Said Ms. Joyce (currently married to playwright Neil Simon): “Jerry was very specific that it wasn’t legumes, but tree nuts. He was emphatic about that. ‘Tree nuts!’ he’d say, over and over. He kind of hinted that Holden may have been snacking on sesame sticks, too, with the Pency Prep fencing team just before the narrative begins, though he wouldn’t come right out and say it. But I surmised.”

I think it's telling that many commentators here cannot seem to deal with the fact that Jeff Weiss's complaint, and mine, have nothing to do with the moral status of homosexuality, but about the way an author approaches her work. As I've said before, if Rowling said that Dumbledore had converted to Christianity or something, I'd feel the same way. If you're going to dispute me, fine, but argue with the point I'm making, not the point you wish I were making so you could ramp up the satisfying moral outrage.

Like Ann Coulter calling Edwards a fag, I'm not sure your public profile on such issues is strong enough to use the "I was just joking" or "some of my best friends are gay" excuse. While you may be able to get away with it among friends you know, as a public figure whose track record is not exactly going to get you the HRC Straight-Ally of the Year award, you probably should be more responsible. You aren't at the New York Post anymore, where homophobic "jokes" are de riguer.

Sometimes calling a person a "queen" is a joke and funny, and sometimes it is a slur and mean. Just like calling someone a "cracker" can be a joke and funny, and sometimes it is a slur and mean. It's all about the context, but surely you already know that.

Well, we've all had some fun here, but I'm going to close this thread. Any further posts here will be deleted as soon as I see them. If you have any further comment you'd like me to receive, you know how to e-mail me. Thanks for playing! Turtle Wax, Rice-a-Roni and other lovely parting gifts are on your left as you exit the thread...