Suzy Says

microburst––why is it that every god damned idiot I work with has to take their %@ing lunch religiously every day and then sit outside or in cafe windows staring into space and looking exactly like the mindless pecking pigeons they wander among as they come and go from their precious one hour break? as Billy Bob Thornton says in Tombstone ?Nerve wrackin? sons of bitches!? i hate them all and you can relax cause I?m not gonna go postal but it annoys me that they are such sheep you know ?Gotta take lunch Gotta work to the last nanosecond of every day Gotta discuss work endlessly in the office or in the elevator or in the can while taking a honking huge dump Christ I?d rather skip most lunches for the chance to escape the hell of working for someone else a few minutes early each day! R

Cat Update:

Poor Jack. I noticed the other day she was squinting a little, and yesterday afternoon I took a good look and she has a mild eye infection (sort of looks like pinkeye) so I slapped some Teramycin (that we happened to have in the fridge, expires next year, probably originally used it on Hannah) on it. Of course, being Jack, she freaked, and tried to get away. It’s always a bummer when the cats are sick, because you can’t explain why you are doing what you are doing. It also sucks when they are young too, and hit with something for the first time. Of course, this has in no way hindered her appetite, or her apparent need to run around like a goddamn maniac the moment I turn the lights out and try to sleep.

Things That Still Piss Me Off After All These Years #5:

Here’s another entry from near the top of the list. When I was a kid and we were moving from Germany to Canada (the life of an Air Force brat) a box filled with all my best toys went missing, and was never found. I mean, I had a die-cast Thunderbird 2 (with all kinds of neat stuff inside the small cargo pod), a couple of GI Joes (and not the wimpy shit of a few years ago but the big 12″ guys from decades ago, complete with accessories, like the desert jeep and desert gear, including a pith helmet) and a lot of other cool things, including clothes (but who gives a shit about clothes?) I was around 10 years old when that happened, and whenever I think about it, it still pisses me off.

Women Are Strange #250:

Wouldn’t it be funny if, after all the rodents we have sacrificed to science, the end of the human race was brought about by a little mouse? The whole stem cell research debate is a joke anyway. As long as abortions are going to be carried out, why not benefit from what would normally be discarded? If an individual can sign a donor card to bequeath their organs to others after they die, why can’t a woman undergoing an abortion exercise her right to decide what happens to the life she is ending? Surely this most difficult of decisions could be the slightest bit easier to live with if a woman knew that one day, someone with a debilitating or fatal condition could find relief through her donation. And yes, I know some people will say there exists the possibility of a black market opening up for this, but, news flash, it’s already here, and you can’t fight the opportunism of human nature, so why not salvage some good out of a situation that has the potential to be all bad? Perhaps more women should speak out on this issue so a resolution is found among them, and not among a bunch of silver-spoon-fed white men in Washington whose closest brush with abortion is knowing someone who paid for one (Hint: today’s secret word is ‘Shrub’) and kept things quiet?

Random Notes:

Well, we have new neighbors next door. I can’t tell if they are knobs or not. The woman who moved out was great, always polite, easy-going. The new people, I’m not so sure about. Negative- The guy has the same last name as me. Since our postman appears to suffer severe communications skills, let’s bet he fucks up at least one piece of mail, every day. Or, at least on the days he actually shows up. Positive- The new people have a cat. Does that not greatly redeem them? He’s a nice black cat too, very curious whenever I got out for a smoke. The girls haven’t noticed him yet, but I’m sure they will. Negative- I was smoking the other day and heard classical music. I thought it was our downstairs neighbor, Shithead, blasting his stereo as if he were stone deaf and standing naked in his living room, letting Rossini or Bach feel him up with their compositions, but no, it was the new people. This is not good, as I have found that almost everyone who gets off on blasting classical music is to some degree, a douchebag. I’ll have to keep my eye on them to continue assessing their knob potential.

Final Question:

What in name of Christ is with the stupendous gut on the new guy at work? He’s one of those tall, thinnish sumbitches with a big round stomach. He looks like a fucking anaconda that swallowed a steer. I swear I’m not making this up. This guy looks like he’s taking part in some revolutionary science experiment, like he should be taking Lamaze classes because his due date is coming up fast. Jesus!

-Rufus

Why do I love Suzy so much? Well, she’s the only person I know who could come out with a line like this when talking about the hot, humid weather in London–

“It was 36 C yesterday, which is good for

a bra size but shitty for weather.”

-Rufus

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.

Cat Update:

Let me tell you, science is never going to find an alarm that can get a man out of bed in the morning anywhere near as effective as a hyperactive cat using a fellow?s scrotum for take-offs and landings. I ate some really disgusting crap for dinner last night. It was gelatinous and chunky at the same time, with a greasy sheen and a heady aroma. It was viscous enough that I ate it off a plate, but runny enough that I had to use a spoon. Oh, and the cats liked it too, so I was able to share a few leftover, umm, gobbets. I watched some garbage TV, and then got cozy with a book (The Quiet Game by Greg Iles, out a few years now, pretty damn good so far) while being the Far East. I had asians all over me, Jack and Cleo taking turns sitting on my chest and purring, while Hannah sat at my feet like a cat who thinks she is a good dog ?I should have named her Spot the way she follows me around- and glared at them. I guess I hit the alarm when it went off this morning and immediately fell back asleep, after which Jack, watching the clock and listening to her tummy growl, decided a testicular assault was in order. What is it about Siamese cats? Our previous Siamese, Josephine (her years were measured in quality, not quantity) had the same knack for knowing the time, and getting my ass out of bed when I slept in, which pretty much always happens when Suzy is away. When I left the house this morning they were all enjoying their treats, which they get before we leave for work. Sophie, Cleo and Jack were crunching away on chicken flavored Pounce, and Hannah was eating her cake- her treat of choice. Plain white cake. The Betty Crocker stuff. She loves it. And she is also the messiest eater I?ve ever seen. Within a minute she can convert a piece of cake the size of a jawbreaker into a field of crumbs covering a couple of square feet. Amazing.

Things That Still Piss Me Off After All These Years #287:

The removal from circulation of two-dollar bills. I miss them.

Women Are Strange #199:

Why do women keep using PMS as a defense against charges of assault, murder, etc? Don?t they realize they are turning the clock back on everything ever achieved by women (and the occasional man) who fought for equal rights? There have been a couple of cases in England where women have been acquitted of murder charges because of diminished responsibility resulting from PMS, and a case in the US where a woman was released after being charged with DUI even though she swore at a state trooper (and tried to kick him in the balls) saying, ?You can’t do this to me, I’m a doctor. I hope you [expletive] get shot and come into my hospital so I can refuse to treat you, or if any other trooper gets shot, I will also refuse to treat them.” She also failed a Breathalyzer test (and had been driving drunk with her kids in the car), yet her lawyer told the court that women absorb alcohol quickly during their premenstrual cycle and women with PMS became more irritable and hostile than other people. She walked. Doctors will testify in court that these women had no choice when their hormones drove them to do what they did while suffering from PMS or PPD, such as the postpartum defense being used in the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas woman who drowned her five children. If these arguments are going to be accepted and we all have to live with this as a part of every woman, fine, yet there is the other side of the fence to consider. If women have the potential to become this unbalanced, perhaps they should be barred from certain pursuits in which they could wreak havoc if struck with PMS. Maybe women should no longer be allowed to drive big rigs on the highway, or carry guns, or be crew members on the space shuttle, or airline pilots, or police officers, or soldiers? or maybe we should accept that women are just like men, having bad days and good days, and like some men, some women act in ways which should result in appropriately severe punishments.

Random Notes:

Not much happening. I walked in to work today, thinking it was nice out, wearing just a shirt (well, yeah, pants too, I mean just a shirt as opposed to including a t-shirt or coat), and it turned out to be about fifty degrees and foggy, so it was chilly and the air was full of moisture. Oh, and for breakfast, I had a four-day-old slice of cheese pizza. After nuking it, it was like chewing on a thirty-year-old piece of linoleum pulled up off of a kitchen floor somewhere. Oh, and when I was in the bathroom at work taking a leak some ridiculously tall guy raced into one of the stalls and unloaded with a barrage that sounded like what you hear when you watch old newsreels of air bombardments in WWII. In fact, he did his own air bombardment, and from his size, and the smell he created, I wouldn?t be surprised to discover he was actually just a sasquatch with a hair-loss problem.

Final Question

Why do I hate corduroy so much? I mean, it?s just a fabric. It can?t do anthing to me. It can?t hurt me if I pass by or attack me in the night. I do hate it though. Touching it makes me shiver with horror as my mouth dries up and I grimace in revulsion. Just thinking about it is disturbing. And that sound corduroy pants make when someone is walking along? whssk! whssk! whssk! whssk! Horrifying!

-Rufus

Cat Update:

Not much to report. Quiet day yesterday. At one point, before lights out, I had everyone on the bed. It was cozyville. Of course, as soon as I tried to sleep Jack went nuts, and she continued the psycho theme this morning, once again proving herself a very efficient alarm clock. There’s no way in hell I’m gonna sleep in when Jack has an empty tummy. Oh, and there was a bug the size of a fucking B52 buzzing around the place this morning, but before I could catch it and toss its annoying ass outside, it was thoroughly disassembled by our small pride of lionesses.

Things That Still Piss Me Off After All These Years #1:

Disco. Forever holding the number one spot on the list.

Women Are Strange #111:

A friend of mine, lets call her Confection (who runs one of the best websites ever), has her own personal blog. In it, she recently announced her wedding plans (and congratulations to Confection & Brain!), and among the positive replies was a (perhaps unintentionally) very snotty email in which a regular reader of her blog criticized Confection’s writing style. This ‘language major,’ let’s call her Angilas (AKA Anguirus, although any relationship to the mutant dinosaur that appeared in many Toho films alongside Godzilla is purely coincidental), appears to have a few major language problems, however, so I am posting her email here, along with my notes. And remember, the names have been changed to protect me from getting shat upon.

“I’m just dropping you a line, actually, cuz { slang – ‘because’ would be better in this case } I just got caught up with your blog and I HAVE to point { I believe the missing word here is ‘out’ } a grammatical error that you use often { you make errors, you do not ‘use’ them } and it just makes me totally batshit! The reason it gets by you is because you SAY it that way, which is also incorrect, but unfortunately becoming the standard usage, much like “It is me” rather than “It is I”or “between you and I” rather than “between you and me”.

There are many, many misspellings and incorrect usages that proliferate { I believe the missing word here is ‘in’ } our bastardized US English, and they will all end up being correct one day (“Let me AX you a question”), but for now, they are still incorrect and I must do my duty as a language major to point these bastardizations out and eradicate them where I can. 🙂

So, what do you write that is incorrect? I’ve seen the phrase “should have went” several times in your blog { this could be considered a colloquialism. Perhaps she is one of the few language majors in the U.S.A. who has not read ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ or ‘The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn’ }. The correct usage is “should have gone”. Past conditional tense. Americans misuse this tense all the time, so it’s not just you, but I figured you’d want to fix that in your blog since it is perused by so many.

I know, I know, I’m a goddamned uppity { should language majors really use words like ‘goddamned uppity’? } grammar Nazi who has no business running around correcting people’s grammar and pointing out misspellings. But { never start a sentence with a conjuction, such as ‘and,’ ‘but,’ or ‘or.’ } I do. And without mercy. Everyone from bloggers to corporations have gotten emails from me about this { and just how long will it take for the message that you are an annoying pain in the fucking ass to sink in? }. So there. :-> “

Oh, and yesterday I got in the elevator with a frumpy woman with a heinous red dye-job, an almost fluorescent orange. She took one look at my hair, the real thing, and spent the whole silent trip to the ground floor staring at the wall and looking pissed off. Hardee-har, bitch.

Random Notes:

Yesterday- Saw The Cool Old Black Dude on the street on the way home yesterday. When Suzy isn’t around I always wimp out and take the bus to and from work instead of walking (it’s boring without her, as are all things), and every once in a while I see TCOBD, on the street, on the bus. He uses a cane to get around, wears a battered old hat, little round-lensed shades, and all of his pants are for some reason, gigantic. We’ve chatted a few times, and he is one of those old black guys with a beautiful cadence in his voice that is completely unconscious. He sounds especially great when he is off on a tirade- the last one was about people smoking crack and messing up the public parks. I could listen to this guy talk all day.

Today- Early morning bus. A 70’s time-warp dude gets on the #19 going down Polk Street. Unreal. The guy had a bowl-cut, just like that annoying little bastard-child in Eight is Enough, a John Holmes moustache, and he was walking like something approximately the circumference of a Colt 45 40oz bottle recently blasted out of his rectum at Mach 2. He stank too, like a full ashtray that had been left out in the rain. It’s days like this I’m glad I don’t eat breakfast, because I’d be wearing it today.

Final Question

What’s the deal with testicles? They hang outside the body because the perfect brewing temperature is a few degrees less than that found inside the body, and yet they are constantly exposed to threats of violence, occasionally creeping up in a pathetic attempt to get out of the danger zone. Why not just have gonads that are able to produce microwigglies at body temperature? That’s one hell of a design flaw if you ask me.

-Rufus

Cat Update:

Business as usual when I got home. Everybody went nuts, playing and chasing each other. Hannah couldn?t get enough of me (she really does have good taste) and kept rubbing against me for attention. Jack started ringing the dinner bell at 3:30, which is exactly one hour early. I watched the tube after dinner* with everyone dozing on the bed? which means that by 8:30 when I was trying to get to sleep Jack and Hannah were flying through the air like bullets in a war zone. They seemed pretty bummed when I got ready for work this morning? I guess getting only half the attention they are used to means they want me around twice as long. And I have to agree with them. If I won the lottery, I could become one of those crazy hermits who stay inside day and night with a bunch of cats. Oh well, I can dream, I guess. (* 2 Taco Bell Baja Chicken Burritos, which gets you a free soda, all for four bucks and a dime. I?m Batchin? it baby!)

Things That Still Piss Me Off After All These Years #201:

Yunno, that whole Madonna/Marilyn comparison we were hearing about in the 80?s was such bullshit. Remember, after she did the Material Girl video spoofing Marilyn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, how everyone (even her) was saying shit like, ?It?s almost like she is Marilyn Monroe reincarnated.? Crap! Heaps of it!

Women Are Strange #98:

Yeah, women are strange, but so are the men who find them disturbing, if this posting from Insectnet.com is anything to go by.

Posted by Erick Ayilla on June 11, 2001 at 02:57:52:

: The most CRAZY & THIEF WOMAN Known as AGNES SOLON . She is the head of THIEF`S of Insect Dealers from around the WORLD. Get the whole story from ; “”philippe.oremans@swing.be”” Philipie Oremans.,of Belgium, and , “”ldc.peroni@wanadoo.fr”Jean Paul of FRANCE. from there you will judge whois the thief. I still demand from Her more than 1200$. and she refused to pay me ,claiming that the beetles I sent to her did not lie Eggs!!!!!t!!!!! AGNES SOLON IS A THIEF WOMAN AND SHE DONT PAY MONEY IF YOU SEND HER BEETLES!!! Her address is bluebeetle2@hotmail.com “” BE AWARE WITH HER “” DONT SEND ANYTHING TO HER>!!!!

Random Notes:

Yesterday- So, on the bus on the way home there was this loud-mouthed scuzzy white-fuck wigger who looked like the exhumed corpse of a beatnik interred at about the time Jack Kerouc hit the road, and he was bellowing and sucking brew out of a brown paper bag insulated can and spitting lungers the size of dinner plates out the window? and beside him was what looked like one of those Incan mummies, until it moved and crowed laughter at something he said. It was his wife. And across the aisle from them was their kid? a foster kid, I?m assuming, since the kid actually looked normal, and once or twice the guy said something about being a guardian. Jesus. What a role model this kid has. I mean, exactly how spectacularly unsuitable do you have to be before you are turned down as a foster parent?

Today- In my job I have the near unbearable displeasure of having to talk to brokers, who are basically salespeople, and as we all know, anyone in sales is to be detested. Anyhow, this one woman at Lehman Brothers I call every morning for 15 seconds to get an interest rate from, is a hyperbitch. Man, she must have her bed pushed up against the wall, forcing her to always get out on the wrong side, because whenever I call she snaps and snarls like she grabbed her pepper spray instead of her economy-size canister of feminine hygiene spray and gave herself a couple of hot shots. What a bitch! I try to cultivate a good phone relationship with the people I talk to every day, and every one of them is pleasant except for this nasty twat. Snarly, raw-voiced, short-tempered, humorless cow!

Final Question

Why aren’t blueberries called purpleberries? I mean, they aren’t blue, they’re purple! Hmmm. Maybe in the olden days, the proper name would have sounded more like a disease.

Olden Days Guy #1, Going Down The Road: Greetings, Farmer Edmund. Why are you walking crooked and bent like that?

Olden Days Guy #2, Coming Down The Road: Ah, my good man, I am bent by the weight of my swollen sack. I have purpleberries!

Olden Days Guy #1, Going Down The Road: Perhaps you should stay on that side of the road then, kind sir!

-Rufus

While Suzy is away, I’ll be blogging for her, so expect a bit of a change in tone…

Cat Update:

Well, I got home from work yesterday (Monday, 8/20/01) and of course the cats were sniffing around for Suzy, all of them acting like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, looking at me like I bumped her off or something. Then, of course, they went apeshit because it was playtime. After I fed them, they all sat on the bed with me while I ate NVGTO* Pizza and did a Tony Soprano, watching a documentary on World War II. I tried to sleep around 8pm, with the phone on my bedside table, anticipating Suzy’s call to let me know she got to London okay. I suffered through intermittant Jackattacks all night as our Siamese 1 year-old leaped around the bedroom and kept messing with the cords attached to our window blinds. The cords have this little plastic ball on them that makes a spectacularly annoying clacking sound whenever they strike the wall, and of course Jack found this to be great fun. I believe that in some third-world countries this is considered a cheap and effective torture technique. Suzy called sometime after 11pm, to let me know she reached her destination safe and sound. I think everyone slept on the bed last night, including Hannah, who slept on me. To her I’m just furniture. This morning I didn’t want to get out from under the covers, but the cats kept running and jumping across the bed. It’s an old, very effective technique. I leap out of bed in a rage and chase them down the hall. They run into the kitchen, and by the time I get there they are sitting quietly, thinking, ‘since you’re here, why not break out the food?’ Works every time. (*NVGTO = Not Very Good Take-Out)

Things That Still Piss Me Off After All These Years #112:

It irks me that the X Files got moved from Friday night to Sunday night. It happened years ago, but it still sucks.

Women Are Strange #76:

The following letter, and reply, were found on a website that deals with testicle trivia (yeah, like YOU don’t surf the net for weird stuff?). The note at the end is the perfect capper to this bizarre entry-

“My husband is getting a vasectomy and we’re going to ask the doctor if we can keep his balls and I’m going to cook them and eat them because I love him. Can you suggest a recipe for human testicles?”

NO!!! When I received this mail the first time, I was sure it was a sick joke. After several years of receiving many variations on this same theme, I’ve begun to figure out that there are people who have perhaps seen their dog (or cow) neutered and misunderstand the process for men. All of these letters are written seriously and earnestly, I’ve decided to include the answer in my FAQ and mail sections. For all the loving wives and girlfriends (and the one boyfriend) out there who want to eat their husband or lovers balls after he has a vasectomy, I’ve got news for ya. Medical science has progressed a li’l bit faster than animal husbandry. Doctors these days simply snip through your vasa deferentia which will keep your spermies from mingling with your semen. They won’t snip through your jewels, not even if ya ask them nicely. Here’s a page which explains the process. NOTE If you have been to a doctor who removed your balls and called it a vasectomy, you should call a lawyer, not a chef. (and I’m neither 🙂

Random Notes:

I hate our downstairs neighbor. This knob has a deck the size of a trampoline, and yet it is always dirty and covered with leaves. The guy will go out there in his fancy designer togs [expensive pullover with the collar turned up, blue jeans with creases ironed into them (jesus), work gloves that come in an assortment of delightful colors (jesus squared!)] and then he will spend, no joke, an average of 10-15 minutes trying to tidy things up before dropping his rake and trashbag and leaving them there as he heads back inside his cigar-rank home. He is useless, and yet has a lot of money, so he must be some whiny executive. He has actually paid consultants to come out and discuss the deck situation, hoping for some radical solution to the dampness and rot, when all he really has to do is clean off all the leaves and slap down a few cans of Thompsen’s Water Seal. Oh, and he bought a super expensive leaf-VACUUM on the weekend. The fucking thing sounds like an F16 taking off and he kept interrupting his work to pointlessly fiddle with it, and Christ, I’ve seen chimpanzees with the munchies use sticks to draw termites out of old logs with more skill than this guy showed. Considering his apparent complete lack of friends and longstanding zero-ranking on the dating scene, maybe he should just turn the damn vacuum around and use it on himself. The stupid fuck. We call him Shithead, because that’s what his actual name sounds like and, well, he IS a shithead. In fact, I think he should be a shithead for real. If I could get one of those window-washer safety-belts, I’d rig it so I could hang out my window while he is uselessly puttering around on his deck and relieve myself right on his goddamn head.

Oh, and here’s the beginning of The Shithead Song (sung to the tune of the Flipper theme):

We call him Shithead, Shithead, greasy and bal-ding

Who’d ever want to be, friends with someone like he…

-Rufus

A few words about Doc

I did not know the professional Doctor David Peakall, the scientist, the toxicologist. I saw glimpses of this side of him from time to time, as he worked on his journals and letters in the quiet of the morning, a cup of tea at his side, body and mind rapt in concentration, or when he discussed issues beyond my comprehension with colleagues, conversing in numbers and values, the hard language of science.

The man I knew was Doc Peakall. The Doc I knew was a family man. He was a man who loved watching birds, understanding their fragile inner mechanisms while at the same time reveling in their song, their plumage, their simple and marvelous act of taking to the skies. This love of beauty also extended to art, and he often gleefully traveled thousands of miles to see a favorite piece in a rare exhibit, expending time and money for a few moments of quiet contemplation before a piece of canvas daubed with color. He got immense enjoyment out of cricket matches, both current, and those from the past, which he could experience through his collection of Wisdens, the bible of cricket. He was a man who always enjoyed a brisk walk across a field or over a hill, and in this pursuit he walked the ground in far-flung lands which many of us will only ever dream about. He was a man who loved to cook, and when in the kitchen his dual natures worked a wonderful harmony as science and art came together, the wizardry of blending elemental compounds being balanced and fixed not by any formula or law, but by the intangible, immeasurable sense of good taste with which he was born, the final result being wonderful dishes that defied description and served no other purpose but to be a feast for the senses. In the kitchen, and afterward at the table, he would work another much more subtle form of chemistry, making people like myself who came late to this family, feel as if I had always belonged there.

Like many great men Doc Peakall could be frustrating, vexing, an occasional pain in the ass. Like all great men, these qualities, which we all have to some degree, were made insignificant by his professionalism, his intellect, his joy of life. Doc had a remarkable ability for self-animation, be it telling an old story and nearly losing track of his narrative in laughter, or venting his wrath upon aspects of modern life which irritated him until he would pound the table with his fist or furiously strut about while tucking his shirt, declaring explicitly, and without shame, exactly how he felt about the object of his ire.

Francois Rabelais once said, ?Nature abhors a vacuum,? and indeed, when something is removed from existence it is always replaced by something else. Yet this particular void can never be filled. With Doc Peakall gone there will always be an empty place inside of us, but we should not treat this emptiness within as a bitter wound. We should instead consider the pain and sense of loss a testament to his warmth, his vigor, his intelligence, and his love, all of which we will miss, even as time tempers the hurt and blends it with the sometimes inexpressible feelings we all had for the Old Bear, feelings that will always be with us in some form, as he himself will be. I know Doc didn?t believe there was anything after this life, but I think he has been proven wrong, in a most wonderful way. If, as a man of science believes, life and thought and spirit are mere energy, then he will go on, transformed and transported perhaps, to some state we can only try to imagine, but he will continue to be, for as the first law of thermodynamics tells us, energy is never lost, it is just transferred somewhere else.

I think no more fitting final words can be spoken than those of Winston Churchill, a man Doc Peakall greatly admired, in a quote which he delighted in passing on to others.

?I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.?

-John (Rufus)

My father passed away this morning. My brother and I are going to London on Monday, and are planning to come home on September 5.

Thank you to everyone for your concern & caring. I’ll be on hiatus until sometime in September.

There are no words.

And you thought family reunions and high school reunions were weird? Worried that you’ll have nothing in common with those people you were forced to co-exist with for all those years? Try a reunion of Alcatraz’s guards and prisoners, an annual event held at the Rock itself. After all this time (the prison stopped being a prison in 1963), the guards and their former charges now have a common enemy: age. Don’t we all?

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler got lost 2 blocks from the San Francisco Ritz Carlton Hotel and flagged down a Muni driver to ask where it was. Good thinking, Steve! Next time, get a map.

According to a quiz complete with adorable little cartoon dog found on Zalary’s blog, I live right where I’m supposed to! Do you?

The quiz picked San Francisco, followed by Oakland, San Jose, and oddly, Albuquerque, then Sacramento. I must be meant to be a California girl.

Sometimes my dreams are so weird, I wonder if I’m actually insane. But then I think, maybe it’s just mental garbage and having dreams is just the mind’s way of taking out the trash. If you wonder about this stuff, too, check out the Dreambank. Thanks to Becky’s always fascinating and informative blog.

Last week, I had a couple of very vivid dreams — the kind that are so real you can’t believe they aren’t for a few seconds after you wake up. The first one was about my good friend Candi. I dreamed she had a beautiful, redhaired little baby girl on August 17. I guess it’s not going to happen this Friday, but maybe in the future? For added weirdness, Candi told me later that August 17 is the day she and her wonderful fianc? Brian met! And I didn’t know that before I had the dream. {Cue up “Twilight Zone” music here.}

The other dream was about my godfather, Spencer.

He was a truly Renaissance man, an architect who graduated from Cornell and was on the Board of City Planners for San Francisco (it is partly due to his efforts that there are no further abominations like the Fontana Towers

marring our shoreline); a Lieutenant Colonel in the Navy; a connoisseur of wine, women, and song. I never asked him a question he couldn’t answer — his knowledge was far-ranging and diverse and he was a brilliant, amusing, once in a lifetime kind of guy.

He left us in January, 1993, and we had to wait for three weeks to scatter his ahes in the Bay he loved, because Nature seemed to be mourning the loss of this great man along with us, in the form of torrential rain and high winds.

In my dream, Rufus and I were visiting Spence in his house, but not his real house, a dream one with huge glass windows. We were all sitting together drinking Champagne and watching a giant thunderstorm together. Usually thunderstorms terrify me, but with my two guys there, I wasn’t scared at all. We were just laughing and having fun. It was great. It was a visit from Spence.

In search of distraction, and feeling that I couldn’t stand to be in the house one more minute, we went to see “The Others” (the new movie starring Nicole Kidman, not the all too short-lived TV series). It was at the Presidio Theater, which was a real bonus, since I hate patronizing those multi-plexes. And since it’s one of the few small, independent theaters left in the city, there were probably about a dozen other people in the audience.

The movie was great, really really creepy, and definitely scared the crap out of me (but in a good way). Just thinking about it makes me all shivery. Go and see it — you’ll love it!

Dad is doing better, but we still have a long way to go. He is having his gallbladder removed on Tuesday, and in the meantime our fearless Megan is finding everything out about the surgeon (how many of these operations has he done? Success rate? Where did he go to school? How many years experience, etc.). She is set up to talk to the cardiologist and anesthesiologist on Monday. And she just got there. She was lucky enough to get four seats across on the plane, but hasn’t had much sleep. Not that it stops her.

The surgery is really scaring me. The gallbladder is too inflamed and enlarged for the keyhole surgery, so he has to have the big scary opening him up one. But if he doesn’t, it will rupture and he’ll die. Some choice.

I hope Dad will be OK. And I hope Megan will take care of herself as well as everyone else. I am holding them very close in my thoughts, and always in my heart. Please let him get better.

It’s 2 am, and I’m awake and fretting, as Rufus calls it. Just the situation with Dad would be bad enough, but it’s also what we call “crunch time” at work, insanely busy, long days, so I should be getting some damn sleep. Maybe I’ll do something useful, like the laundry, since I’m up anyway.

Dad is doing better, but still in intensive care.

M is for Marvellous Megan. My little sis is heading to London tonight. The Californians in the family just aren’t happy with how the English side is handling things: not asking the doctors questions, not calling us with updates, leaving Dad alone at night. When Dad was in the hospital here after his stroke, one of us was there day and night, even if we had to sleep on the floor in his room. It never occurred to us not to. Yesterday I waited until 6:00 pm London time to call my older sister Beth, and she mentioned she had been back from the hospital for more than an hour! So it’s definitely time to get a Yank over there to kick some ass, and it just happens to be one of Megan’s specialties.

So even though she just got back from visiting Dad on July 20, even though she has to drive nearly 4 hours to get to San Francisco and then get on an 11 hour flight, she’s already on her way. No wonder I love that girl.

Am going to cry and do the laundry, like a disillusioned suburban housewife. Wish I could just sit around and watch soap operas and eat bonbons like said housewife instead of going to work, picking up Meg’s ticket from the other side of town, changing money to UK pounds, and the million other things I gotta do tomorrow. Oh wait — TODAY.

Thanks to everyone for the support and caring. You know who you are.