Suzy Says

Of course, he’s still looking up the hard words. Thanks to my friend Kathleen in Motown for locating this gem !

Good luck, pal! Bush has never met a death sentence he didn’t like — what makes you think he’s going to change his mind now? Especially for someone who isn’t a rich white Republican (not that anyone of that description would have landed on the Row anyway) AND someone whose case was set aside for review by Bill Clinton. I’m not taking those odds.

Can anyone explain to me what an erotic wrestler is? It seems like such an oxymoron, like “erotic sanitation worker”.

All three redheads are fast asleep, cuddled up together. That’s Rufus, Hannah and Sophie…our two orange cats! They look adorable. Almost makes me want to go back to bed, but think I’ll dye my hair instead. I think I saw an actual grey hair in my dark roots. Not a reassuring sight with another birthday looming on the horizon. Still feel 18, though! And with the wonder of hair dye, the grey hair can be our little secret.

Will the Republicans *ever* give up on “getting” Bill Clinton? It’s over, you redneck losers. You got your boy in the White House and we are all trying not to think about how someone who is dumber than dirt and more corrupt than the New Orleans police department can be the most powerful man in the WORLD. That way lies madness.

But the Republicans — notice how they are always anonymous? — are still trying to get Clinton in trouble like a mean big brother who can’t stand his smartass little brother’s popularity and ability to skip school without being caught. So either itemize your damages and submit them to the Clintons like a man (I know you’ve heard of them even if you aren’t one yourself, Georgie) or shut up, you hear? I don’t want millions more of my tax dollars going to prove that Bill had more fun than Dubya ever will.

It might be a reflection on my parents’ parenting skills that of their four children, only one has children, and they are very nearly grown up. Doesn’t look like the rest of us are going to reproduce either. I know for a fact that I won’t, and unless my brother hurries up and finds a girlfriend soon, he’ll be 40 before he has any. Though he would be an outstanding father. He’s probably the only one that has reproduction potential. My little sister has been married for nearly 10 years now, and if she decides to have children, they’ll be adopted, like our mother was. Our grandparents always told our mother, “Other parents have to take what they get, but we chose you out of all the children in all the world.” Needless to say, my mother was never traumatized by being adopted.

She has, however, been traumatized by recent events. For those of you joining our program in progress, the short version is that her second husband left her and his employers, the US Marine Corps, simultaneously and without warning (see the archives for more about this). I don’t think either party even got a note. But what else can you expect of a guy who dumps his wife when she is facing an extremely radical mastectomy by asking her to pop the trunk of the car and then taking out his bags and announcing, “I’m leaving you”? The only thing more incredible than his exit was his return, which my mother allowed because she didn’t want to be alone. Even though he flat out said he only came back because he couldn’t afford to live on his own in non-military housing. Hmmm, this isn’t really the short version, is it?

Anyway…she is penniless but for an annuity she received in the divorce settlement from my father and the money she gets from the state to care for two worthless kids, one of which is a total psycho. She wants to move north to where my brother and sister live, but she expects us to drop everything NOW, regardless of our jobs and other obligations, and go and get her and fix everything. She further refuses to get a job, sell the unnecessary crap she has bought, get rid of the kids, etc. So even though she has overspent her way into the mess she’s in now, she doesn’t want to help herself get out of it. She’s just looking for someone to give her money and solve her problems.

I feel like a bad daughter because my pity for her situation is mixed with anger at her poor choices and refusal to deal with them. I think that if she expects us to save her ass, she has to give us power of attorney to control what little money she has and give up the foster kids and most of her pets, get a job that makes little enough not to jeopardize her welfare payments, and face up to reality. Guess my inner and outer child are BOTH bitches.

A Monet painting which hasn’t been seen by the public in more than 100 years is being auctioned off at Sotheby’s in London on June 27. If you have 5 million pounds (around $7 million), you could be its next owner. The painting was first bought by Paul Gallimard from Monet himself, right after it was painted in 1890. Although M. Gallimard was generous enough to lend it to exhibitions over the next 5 years, his descendants were not, and hence it hasn’t been seen by anyone other than their family and friends since 1895.

The painting, “Meules, Derniers Rayons de Soleil” (that’s “Haystacks, Last Rays of the Sun” en anglais) is a striking one, with the haystack in question a deep red from the setting sun and casting dark shadows in strong contrast. Monet’s popularity has made him almost commonplace to us now, so that we don’t really see how extraordinary these works are. We now have the opportunity to see this “new” one with new eyes and really appreciate the brilliance of his technique and how daring his paintings were, especially more than a century ago. No-one before Monet had gone into the open air and studied the changing effects of light with such passion and dedication. (Even on his honeymoon, he was painting outside, and the National Gallery in London has a lovely painting he made of his new wife on the beach, in which you can actually see the sand that got blown onto it as it was painted.) This rediscovered painting is the opportunity of a lifetime to see the work of a master in a whole new light.

When I visited Monet’s house and garden at Giverny several years ago, I had a very old taxi driver who had been a young boy when Monet died in 1926 at the age of 86. He said that Monet wanted to be treated like one of the villagers, and had his coffin carried to the graveyard on the same old wooden cart as everyone else. He said, “Monsieur Monet was one of us.” It was a charming tribute to a humble genius. I hope Monsieur Monet knows that his paintings are still being seen and loved, and that he still has the power to surprise us.

It was a pretty interesting walk to work today. It often is, because we leave the house at a very early hour, when night meets day. So the hookers are still out and people are also going to their jobs and you see a whole spectrum of people’s lives.

Our route takes us through the Tenderloin (hookers and massage parlors and divey bars) to the Financial District (tall buildings and guys wearing clacky shoes and suburban people hemmorhaging out of BART stops). Today I noticed that the fetishwear’n’sex toys store had finally changed their display from the Easter one. The Easter one had a girl in a pink and white gingham bra and thong carrying an Easter basket filled with candy colored sex toys. At her feet were pastel rabbits in flagrante. It was adorable. Now the mannequin is dressed as a cowgirl, with frilly denim undies, cowboy hat, a toy gun, very high heeled red cowboy boots, and with a bunch of little cowboys in the palm of her hand. Some of the cacti at her feet are styrofoam, and some are green vibrators (without the spines, though). Their window dresser must have a great time.

After we passed the sex shop, we saw a very short, very old man negotiating with a hooker who was at least 50% taller and 50% younger than he was and looking very bored. He was blabbing away about something and holding his wallet, and all I heard her say was, “uh-huh, uh-huh.” She was probably thinking, you’re wasting my time. If I were her, I’d tell him he was on the clock already, like a cab at a stoplight. So pay up or get lost already. I’m working here!

Outside the little coffee shop a few blocks later was the old guy who seems to spend his entire day sitting in a chair and drinking coffee. I often see him still sitting there on the way home 10 hours later. Imagine drinking all that coffee, all day long! Today as we walked by, I heard him say to the guy who works in the coffe shop, “It was so pretty it made me want to breakdance.” I’ve never seen anything THAT pretty.

This really pisses me off. It’s not my vice of choice (that particular distinction belongs to champagne), but I truly think smoking pot is really no worse for you than drinking. You’re just damaging your lungs instead of your liver, and possibly gaining weight from the munchies, but that’s about it. In fact, a case could be made that smoking pot is better since you never hear of guys firing one up and then beating their wives, which seems to be a fairly common effect of drinking.

I think it’s a shame that the courts are too puritanical to see the benefits of marijuana to those enduring chronic pain or nausea caused by chemotherapy. When I was in my teens, my family had a dear friend who had bone cancer which had spread throughout his body. He suffered the tortures of the damned and could hardly keep any food down. The only thing that kept him going was smoking pot and then eating Breyer’s vanilla bean ice cream. This was actually given to him by his doctor, and we’re talking 20 years ago. How have we managed to regress to the point where this natural substance is unacceptable when prescribed by a doctor?

Happy Mother’s Day, Ma! Consider the latest bump in the road pay back for all the diapers you changed and nail-biting visits to the emergency room when we were kids. We love you.

I tend to be smug about not having kids, pitying those harassed parents with kids having snotty fits in public places and thinking, “Well, at least I haven’t given up sex, sleep, and all my disposable income for the next 20 years.” But is having cats really all that much different from having a perma-baby?

Instead of diapers, there is the endless chore of cleaning and scooping out the litter boxes. And when you have 4 cats, it’s pretty much a 24 hour poop factory. OK, *I* almost never clean out the litter boxes (that’s one of Rufus’ chores), but still, I know all about it. I even had to clean them out MYSELF for a whole WEEK when Rufus went to visit his parents two years ago. Not to mention locking up at night and everything.

OK, so we have the litter box=diapers thing. Cats are as dependent on us as small babies are when it comes to being fed, so there’s that, too. Though our cats have more than once broken into the food bag when we weren’t looking, whereas you hardly ever catch babies heating up their own bottles or breaking open a jar of Gerber’s. Babies spit up, cats leave hair balls where they’re sure you will step on them in the middle of the night in bare feet. It’s a draw as to which regurgitation is more disgusting.

So cats and babies are both dependent on us for food and cleaning up the food aftermath. But that’s about it. Cats don’t grow up and tell you how stupid and/or uncool you are, they just know it from Day One and it’s in the subtext of your whole relationship with them. Don’t ever think you’re in control of the cats.

It’s very easy to protect your cats from unwanted pregnancy and precocious sexual activity. Just spay ’em and keep ’em inside. End of story. It’s pretty hard to neuter your teenaged daughter with impunity, except possibly in China or India,and even if you give her a gross of condoms and birth control pills, there’s no knowing if she will actually use them, seeing as how she’s immortal and all. But you always know where your cats are when it’s after midnight.

You don’t have to pay for your cats to go to college or have a big white wedding including everyone they have ever spoken to more than once in their entire lives. And cats never grow out of sitting on your lap and purring, no matter how old they get. They are also never too old or dignified to play with you. On the whole, I think we made the right choice.

Oh, this is a tough one for me. While I do feel for the poor guy who lost his wife and baby-in-progress, I don’t think a 12 week old fetus is a person, I’m sorry. But if the father is bringing a lawsuit based on his bereavement, what else can he call the fetus? Calling it property is distasteful, to say the least, and it was a living creature.

But lawsuits like this lead inevitably to the issue of abortion, and in the current political climate in this country and with our state appointed leader doing everything he can to overturn Roe versus Wade during the next four years, it really scares me that a Supreme Court would rule a 12 week old fetus a legal person. It’s the thin edge of the wedge, and puts all of us women at risk. It isn’t much of a leap from there to the back street abortionists. Sometimes I feel we’re going backwards rather than forwards, and if Bush has anything to do with it, we’ll be back in the 19th century before we know it. Kiss your right to vote, own property, and have any control over your body good-bye, girls! Here comes the second Victorian age!

Are Julia Roberts and Richard Gere the new Doris Day and Rock Hudson? Consider the evidence. Both couples are most famous and loved for their romantic comedy romps, featuring beautiful locations, great clothes, and no nudity. Both have a similar, semi-innocent formula (boy meets girl; they are instantly attracted; there’s a misunderstanding; they make up) which gives the audience a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Both Doris and Julia are/were America’s sweethearts. Everyone loves their perky, girl next door prettiness, but both women have/had somewhat dark personal lives. Julia’s many romances, apparent inability to resist any male co-star, and disastrous marriage to Lyle Lovett are all well documented. Doris had several marriages herself, including one to a guy who stole all her money and another who beat her. But both actresses kept their shiny surface intact.

Both Rock and Richard are/were conventionally handsome actors. Rock Hudson, as everyone knows now, was gay and was firmly kept in the closet by the Hollywood machine. No-one knows if Richard Gere is gay or not or something in between, but there is much speculation. So both leading men have ambiguous sexuality though they both play(ed) the leading man very convincingly.

I think it’s safe to say that the torch has been passed.

Sorry about the past/present thing — couldn’t see a way around it! Almost as cumbersome as he/she…but that’s another story.

I don’t which is weirder: that someone even WROTE a special “pre-requiem” for Timothy “No Regrets” McVeigh and went to extraordinary lengths to make sure the inspiration for this little ditty gets to hear it before getting in the express lane to hell, or all the parallels he draws between McVeigh and Jesus. For the entire, demented story, check out this link and see if you can resist saying WTF or equivalent.

The author of “The Rules”, the retro guide to tricking your guy into marriage, is getting divorced. I wouldn’t find this at all ironic — after all, “The Rules” was about GETTING a guy, not KEEPING a guy — except E Fein, the author of these misanthropic works, has just published a tome breathlessly entitled “Time-Tested Secrets for Making Your Marriage Work”. However, and I’m not kidding here, she doesn’t think the fact she is getting a divorce damages her credibility. Would you hire a contractor to work on your house if his had fallen down around him? I didn’t think so. Can we expect “The Rules IV: Secrets for Making your Divorce Work”?

You still can’t beat Jackie Kennedy for timeless elegance. I would *love* to see this exhibit, but my guess is the clothes won’t look as good in glass cases as they did on the incandescent Mrs. Kennedy. It will probably be a lot like the exhibit at Althorp with Princess Diana’s clothes on display. Sometimes you could hardly believe the dress in the picture — with the Princess wearing it — was the very same dress in the glass case. Both Jackie and Diana added a certain glamor and radiance to the clothes they wore. My friend Alice, a former model, is right. The person wearing the dress makes all the difference.

If you live in a city, or even a big town, you’ve probably noticed random items of clothing abandoned on the street at one time or another. If your mind is as frivolous and shallow as mine is, you probably wonder what the story is behind that left-behind clothing. Where did that guy go after shucking off his jeans? Why couldn’t he take his underwear one more second? Maybe it was, as the French say…insupportable.

Today on the way to work, I noticed a single, very high-heeled yellow patent leather mule lying on its side in the gutter. What had happened to its owner (and its mate)? Was she swept off her feet by her lover, or abducted by aliens? Did she notice the missing shoe? I will never know.

When I was a child, I remember waiting for a train with my father in England. When the train arrived, it was one of the old fashioned kind which you still occasionally see over there, with compartments and a corridor. A woman got in and sat down next to the window in our compartment. As the train pulled out of the station, she noticed that one of her gloves was lying on the platform. Quickly, the pulled down the window and tossed the other glove onto the platform to join its mate. This made a big impression on me — it was the first time I had ever seen a grown-up act so spontaneously. And I still think it’s cool.

Americans’ productivity drops by 0.1%. Must be all that time I’m spending on my blog.

Why can’t it just be a great story, and leave it at that? All this over-analyzing the Harry Potter books annoys the crap out of me. I have never lost my love of children’s books, especially the magic ones, and I still re-read the great E. Nesbit (the grandmama of Harry Potter and others), Edward Eager, and the Narnia series (though the Narnia series is rather heavily tainted with religion. We *get* it, Aslan is Jesus!). Children and adults respond to the Potter series because they are great, imaginative stories, told well, with well-drawn characters, and because we all need a touch of magic in our lives to lift us above the mundane. Isn’t that enough?

Here’s a twist on the traditional jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge . Wonder why no-one ever seems to jump off the Bay Bridge?

A ring was enough for me. But some guys really went the extra mile!