Suzy Says

Last report of the Day

I was halfway through watching Hannibal (is there anything more fun than watching a creepy movie with a purring cat curled up on your stomach?) when I got a craving for ice cream. I threw on some clothes (can’t run out in an old t-shirt and sweat pants), and ran to the corner store where I purchased the following essentials:

-a package of Pepperidge Farm Montauk Cookies (Chocolate Chip & Walnuts)

-a tin of Blue Diamond Almonds (Smokehouse, of course)

-a 4-pack of Calistoga Sparkling Mineral Water (Wildberry Flavor)

-a 6-pack of Canada Dry Ginger Ale

-a pint of Haagen Dazs Chocolate Ice Cream

While I was there, this old bag clutching a couple of wine coolers smiled at me with what looked like her four remaining teeth. It was awful. She was wearing a beret, a tight dress that made her look like a linen bag filled with broken sticks, and so much cheap perfume it made my eyes water. I waited way at the back of the store with my sleeve over my nose until she left. Thank God the cash register is near the open door.

As I was paying for my stuff a stringy, dirty specimen wandered by the door screaming, ‘Fucking buses, FUCK YOU!’ Of course, anyone who has had to deal with the San Francisco Municipal Railway has felt like that at one time or another.

“Some perfume, huh?” I said to the guy behind the counter, one of the seemingly endless supply of sons of the owner of the store, all of them great guys.

“Yeah,” he said, without thinking. Then he paused. “You could smell that back there?”

“Man,” I replied, “I could taste it.”

At his feet his dog, Archie, seemed to be trying to hide his ultra-sensitive canine nose under his paws.

As my stuff was being bagged two other guys came up to the cash. They seemed to know each other.

“Big night, huh?” the first guy asked. He’d been perusing the same shelf of cold sodas the whole time I was there and now approached the guy behind me in line- with nothing to show for his time (and I half expected him to say something like, ‘Hell, I don’t have to buy the sodas to enjoy ’em. I just like looking at them all chilled and shiny in the cold case.’)

The second guy, who was about as wide as he was tall (most of that mass a solid gut encased in a strained and stained t-shirt) was holding a gigantic glass screw-top bottle of urine-hued wine (probably from Maison de Getting-Some ce Soir) and a package of soda crackers. He smiled through a beard so thin it looked like some sort of affliction and said, “Got a heavy date tonight, my man!”

In cases like that, an imagination as active as mine can be a disability, and I was glad to finally get home to the cats and purge my mind of the atrocious imagery flashing through it.

We now return to Hannibal, already in progress…

A Crumb of Information Posted for No Particular Reason

If the original casting choices had held, The Silence of the Lambs would have starred Gene Hackman and Michelle Pfieffer. I like ’em both, but if they had portrayed Lecter and Starling, the movie would have sucked balls.

Cat Update

Yeah, this one’s gonna be short. I fell back asleep earlier and now I’m all fucked up. I had a dream that Suzy and I had taken a trip somewhere with the cats but we hadn’t taken any cat carriers (how we got there without those cardboard wonders is a mystery). Anyhow, we finally gathered everyone up and got home, and when we opened the box we discovered that we had an extra cat, a skinny orange kitten like a young Hannah. Of course, this felis bonus immediatly became part of the family. It was nice waking up today, even though it was late, because all four of the girls were on the bed with me. That’s yet another wonderful thing about cats. They understand the joy of sleep, and invaluable, uh, value, of napping.

Things That Still Piss Me Off After All These Years #333:

The fancy plastic containers that Nestle’s Quik come in. Yeah, I know they are recyclable, and reusable, and that they would be handy for storing odds and ends in, but there was just something so great about the old cardbord box with its metal top and bottom. And what’s with that new name? NesQuik? Yeeeech!

Women Are Strange #231:

In most parts of the civilized world, sales tax is charged on tampons and other sanitary products. Now, there’s no tax on food, which means I can go to the supermarket and buy, well, the kind of pure garbage that I always eat when Suzy is away, and not pay any tax on it (I know snacks are taxed, I’m talking frozen pizzas and chocolate milk and shit like that, food yes, necessities no). Unless we want polite society to take a stinky and unsightly turn for the worse, I think we can all agree that feminine hygiene essentials are NOT luxuries. So why is it that more women have not risen up en masse to demand a change (as the women of Australia did a few years back when encountering this situation)? Lets face it. If penises drooled 24/7, you can bet that there would be limitless tax-free options for men, made law by men, that made the purchase of such items as absorbent shlong-sleeves, pecker-pockets and cock-caps, an action of necessity, not luxury.

Random Notes

I always smoke out on the back stairs because I don’t want Suzy or the cats getting messed-up by my bad habit, second-hand, and because the house would smell like an ashtray if I didn’t. Anyhow, there are these lights over the back stairs that come on with a timer. For years the light on our floor was slowly fading, and my eyes adjusted to it, as I smoked, always with a book in hand. Well, that light crapped out the other day and was replaced by a new one, and this new one is like something out of a 50’s sci-fi flick. It’s The Incredible Atomic Light. Now, I appreciate the fact that the light was replaced quickly, but The Incredible Atomic Light is damned intense. The first time I was exposed to The Incredible Atomic Light I could hardly stand it. I felt like putting on shades to read my book, like the words were printed on sheets of magnesium that had just been ignited. And this morning when standing under The Incredible Atomic Light, I turned my back to it and looked down, and I could see my last meal being digested, moving like a slow subway train through the tunnels of my intestines. Cool!

This thing has taken forever to write today, because I’ve had Hannah in my face. Literally. Sometimes when I’m on the computer, Hannah, our green-eyeed orange tabby, gets jealous of the attention that could be expended on her, and she takes action. She jumps up on the desk, rubs her face against mine, reaches up and touches my shoulder and my face with her paws, and walks on the keyboard, resulting in a lot of instances where I have to go back and edit out things like “OOOOOOOOOOOO” and “sajkgsaagakjaakag.” When those tactics bear no fruit, she begins to play dirty, biting cables, sitting on my hand as I hold the mouse, biting the space bar, and BITING MY THUMBS (I type with my index fingers, just call me a pecker, and the unused thumbs, twiddling with boredom, are just big juicy targets). That’s it. I’m outta here.

Final Question

Why in hell does our youngest cat, Jack the Hellion, like biting through litter bags? I do not know, but it’s aggrivating as hell, picking up a bag and having crushed clay spill everywhere. Maybe it’s her idea of a joke. I haven’t seen her actually chewing any litter, either, and I checked for a reason. If you ever see your own cat chewing litter, take he or she to a vet right away, because it could be a sign of illness. Like people, cats usually only act really weird when there’s a good reason. Of course with Jack, her reasons are all her own.

-Rufus

Jeez, look at the time. It’s just past four-thirty in the morning. Saturday. I just finished an hour-long phone call with Suzy, and she is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Jeez, the last time I got up this early on a Saturday was to watch cartoons. Of course, I was just a little kid then, eating junk food, laughing at fart jokes, watching horror movies late at night, being rendered stupid by beautiful blondes, making fun of dumb-asses… come to think of it, not all that much has changed. Except I married the beautiful blonde. Ha! …more later. Must sleep now.