Ask Cruella Dearest!

O Cruella Dearest;

Have you read any different books recently? I'm tired of you recommending the same stuffy people that you read all the time.

Literary in Lilburn

Dear Literary;

First of all, the authors I read are not stuffy, and I do try to read new things occasionally, but some of the new things I read are not things that really could be recommended to others. If you are interested, for example, in reading "King Tiger (really) alarm owner's manual" you already know who you are and don't need my help. By the way, I have excellent and catholic literary taste; I will attempt to read anything, almost, except for things like "People" magazine or Jack Kerouac's "books."

So Daniel recommended that I read a book recently, and it was just about the stupidest book I ever almost finished reading. I still remember only one other book that I got disgusted with and did not finish reading; I even finished reading that idiotic Ya-Ya book. The other book I did not finish reading was "Lolita."
This book was almost as bad, except this book was called "The Ruins" and featured instead of a pathetic pederastic professor, vicious voracious vines. Yes, children, this book has made it to the top of the best seller list and I will ruin the plot for you so you don't waste your time or money. There are vines, and they eat people.

Anyway, I would go into a long critique of the book but when you get down to it, Vines that Eat People- - - that's all you need to know, isn't it? And trust me, it's even dumber than it sounds.

I told you pot made you stupid, and here's ample evidence of it.

O Cruella Dearest;

I have desperately fallen in love with a man who owns a coffee shop that I like to frequent. He is also attracted to me, and I feel like we really have potential! In fact, we've gotten together a few times and done a few things, as in, I don't know if I'm a vegetarian anymore, because can you still be a vegetarian if you just put the meat in your mouth and then take it back out? Without really eating it.

I really don't always feel comfortable in this relationship, because I'm really ready for love and want it from him, but he doesn't pay as much attention to me as I think he should, like when I go into the coffee shop, he doesn't say hi to me! And he doesn't send me cards, or flowers, or call me. What do you think I should do?

Anxious in Alpharetta.

Dear Anxious;

I am writing a reality check right now, made out to you, Anxious in Alpharetta, in the amount of Get the Hell Over Him.

What is with (some) women? There are men whom they would not look at twice if they weren't married, but then once these men are married, they suddenly become desireable.

The only good option here, truthfully, is to regretfully sigh and walk away and perhaps write bad poetry about this. There are a couple of other paths this could realistically take.

A) You could continue your position as The Other Woman for a while. The definition of being The Other Woman is that he'll see you how and when it's convenient for him! If you want a Real Relationship, defined by women as one in which the man is available when she feels like it to talk about her Feelings, that is hard to achieve with ANY guy. You are coming into his highly gossipy workplace and flirting with him; he simply cannot reciprocate in the way you want. Get over it.

If you are hoping that he will break things off with his wife and start a relationship with you- - - who are you trying to kid? Visit www. AIN'TGONNAHAPPEN.com for some more information. Even if men who, let us be charitable, are having marital difficulties, leave their wives, they don't end up with The Other Woman. The Other Woman may be the Catalyst which helps them along, but truthfully, way back in Men's brains they think if the woman would go out with a married man, she's a slut. OK? Not "respectable" not trustworthy, not the kind of woman they want to Marry. Watch some old Bette Davis/Joan Crawford movies. THE RULES STILL APPLY.

Honestly, you're a nice lady, straight men seem to find you attractive, you can do better. Yes, you are going to have to compromise. Cute, sexy guys don't always make a lot of money. Guys who make enough money aren't always sexy. Nice guys aren't attractive. Sometimes, people are late, or unreliable or whatever. Start with AVAILABLE and work with what you get.

O Cruella Dearest;

I want a tattoo, pony, a pair of cowboy boots, and a four-wheeler for Christmas. And a mohawk. I am 37 years old.

Silly/Sexy in Suwanee

Dear Silly/Sexy;

Wow! Cruella Dearest is going to have to reorder reality checks! She keeps having to write them, along with the regular checks!

First of all, you hate needles and your newer nipple ring STILL hurts. Tattoos are no longer an emblem of Fierce Individuality and Rebelliousness; Any poser can get a tattoo and often does. For example, John Roberts has a finely detailed tattoo of Antonin Scalia on his ankle; and lots of other really dorky people, like Bill Gates, and accountants, have tattoos. OK? Mr Rogers had a tattoo of the Make-Believe train encircling his upper right arm, and you really don't want to know about Dick Cheney's tattoos. Trust me. The last person who spoke about his tattoos, was that lawyer who got SHOT IN THE FACE for it.

If you really want a tattoo I will draw a nice bull on your arm with a Sharpie. FOR FREE.

You can't have a pony.

I guess you can have cowboy boots, but I hope I see some nice ones at Value Village between now and Christmas.

You have a vehicle with four wheels, a new minivan, and you should be happy. There is nowhere we can ride a four wheeler and they are dangerous besides.

Remember darlings, Christmas is a time to remember those Less Fortunate than us. (In all the world, there are currently only 3 people in Bangladesh and only one in lower Sudan who are Less Fortunate than we are, we are really scraping the bottom here.) What you might get for Christmas, if we are lucky, is I MIGHT pay the gas bill and we MIGHT continue to have heat.

O Cruella Dearest;

I need new friends. All of my friends are stone losers.

O Cruella Dearest;

How can I be more like you? I, too, want to be Piercingly brilliant, strikingly beautiful, and have a magnetic personality.

Don't wear brown shoes with a blue suit.

Don't eat at restaurants that feature singing animatronic rats.

Don't suffer fools gladly.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Don't wear clothes to school/work that you changed your oil in.

Don't twitch.

Don't mumble.

Don't make people divine what it is that you feel or what you want. You can't complain that you aren't getting it unless you come right out and tell them, often, and at full volume.

Your pets are NOT your children, OK? NOT. And you may love them, and that is wonderful! Really! But other people do not have to love your leaky cat or dog that farts. And are likely not to.

Don't go out of your way to be shallow and center your life around celebrities and the lives of people who don't actually exist, i.e., TV characters. If you can't gossip about people who you can actually get drunk and call at inappropriate times, you need to get out and meet some more people.

What conservatives see when they read the NYT

I think I've probably read a few newspapers this way myself. Good satire.

Piebar

For Naomi's birthday we went to Piebar; http://www.piebar.com/ which is some newish and heavily hyped restaurant here. It is located in a former bank building, which features Jetsonian Architecture. Also for some reason there is valet parking; which I just don't get.

This is a Very Trendy restaurant, which means A) Pricey B) Dimly Lit, and C) LOUD. I have no idea why all of these qualities are thought to appeal to the Young and Trendy, unless the idea behind this is that Old people don't like it, therefore it must be Young and Trendy. Oh, ok. I guess needing to shout at your table companions to be heard over the surrounding din is Young and Trendy. I don't have anyone to impress with my Young Trendiness so I really don't care, I'd rather be comfortable.

At any rate, this seems to be one of those restaurants designed for very jaded restaurant critics, the type of person who eats out 3 meals a day 7 days a week and has seen and eaten it all too many times to count. As a result, it features the kinds of pizzas that Trey would come up with and in fact enjoyed; Duck pizza with grapes, Shrimp and grits pizza, that sort of thing.

Trey, of course, loved the Shrimp and Grits pizza- to me, it had that sour taste of food that has gone off. It, like the duck pizza, struck me as one of those unhappy marriages between two people who are perfectly good by themselves but make an absolutely wretched couple. Like Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. (Didn't think I'd pull THAT analogy off, did you? HA!)

As you may be able to see, the building is circular. Everything except for the restrooms is on one level, and all the tables are at the outer walls around a huge bar. This means that all the traffic and crowd in the restaurant is crammed into a tiny space between the backs of diners and the bar. This also means that the serving staff has to pass through the tremendous crowd, and to order anything takes FOREVER. We would have had a few more beers but it took so long to get the first ones we gave up.

The decor is post modern minimalist, which might have looked cool 10 years ago, but now just looks cheap and unimaginative. If I were doing it- bear in mind my house is decorated in Things Other People Gave Away For Immediately Obvious Reasons- I would have put the tables on a spiral, like the Guggenheim, and taken advantage of the height, and decorated it with as much retro-space-agey stuff as possible. At least I would have put some colour into it; Nowadays, when appliances at Kmart come in Brushed Stainless steel, it's not really an interesting accent anymore. OK! So stop with it already.

Personally, if I had a restaurant/bar, which is something Cathy and I occasionally discuss after we've had a few- it would be brightly, or at least reasonably, well lit, because I am legally blind in several states (seriously) and do not like nasty surprises or to peer, Mr Magoo like, at my food, and it would be hushed and reverent so that you could discuss your tablemates' intimate personal affairs and everyone in the restaurant could hear you, and Alex would try to hide uner the table, or you could encourage other diners to sing Happy Birthday and they would join in, and you could sit on their laps if it were their birthday also (we did this at my last birthday) and it would serve the least innovative foods possible, but all prepared to perfection. There would be no bizarre combinations of things like foie gras and caramel pudding or parmesan cheese and horseradish. Also the drinks would be very strong. And I think it should be like those restaurants that you see in movies from the '30's up until about the '60's with singing ladies and cigarette girls. We could have Carmen Mirandas. Whatever happened to those restaurants, anyway? All of the employees would dress like flappers/in '20's clothing, and it would be decorated like the Fox in a Deco theme. Alternatively, I think it would be fun to have a restaurant that was multi-tiered and looked like a Busby Berkeley set.

New House Rule

We have to implement a New Rule In the House: No Molesting Bread.

Sailor Moon returned from Missionary School, I suppose he graduated and now is free to smack people on the heads and pronounce them HEALED! which is what I would do if I had a ?degree? ? diploma? from Missionary School. I wonder if your certificate is produced on stone tablets. That's what I do anyway. But he and Alex came over to drop off some food I had left in Alex's fridge and then Sailor Moon saw some kaiser rolls Trey had brought home. Then he started caressing it, and rubbing his face in it. "It's SOOOO SOFT," he said. Ewwww, I said. Luckily, the rolls were still wrapped in plastic, but he made out with them like Body Heat. It was like performance art without the pretentiousness.

I didn't know he needed a girlfriend THAT badly; aren't there nice girls in Missionary School? Aren't there nice girls at this Dental lab where he works? He doesn't need to make out with my bread! Ewww! I didn't think about it at the time, but I gave him bagels to take home, and I do NOT want to think about what he did with the bagels. Alex and Trey: Bagels have a HOLE in the Middle. Ok? Think about it, don't hurt yourselves though.

Paris Activity

I plan to use this with both my 1st and second year classes, there are a few monuments they can identify and put in the right order, and they can identify how many red lights he runs, and then they can look at the map and put the right directions. I think for 1st year I'll probably do V/F with the directions, I.E. il tourne a droit Boulevard Rue Pascal-

Why Me, God, why Me?

So the reason for the question above is that God sent me another dying baby animal on the porch. Why, God, Why? Surely in all His wisdom, He must realise that we are spectacularly unfit for taking care of animals, right? I mean, we've done so well with the poor dog, right?

No, then He sends me a kitten, so tiny it would fit in the palm of your hand and with its eyes still closed, mewing piteously for its mother and scrabbling blindly about.

This made me feel just awful. I can't stand to see poor innocent creatures suffer. I do love animals, although several people would say I am better at that in theory than in practice.

I hoped that this kitten's mother would come back and rescue it, and it had just moved the kitten part way - you know how cats move kittens- but I waited, and the mother kitten didn't, and it was mewing to make my heart break. So I called Sheridan.

Sheridan once rescued some sort of horrible vicious stinging bug from freezing to death, so she would be a good candidate for rescuing a tiny kitten. She talked to some people online and eventually found someone named Shanna? who agreed to take the kitten and take care of it. we also went to Kroger and got some skim milk to feed it and then this lady was supposed to come and get it. So I hope she did, it would make me feel much better.

We are still trying to rent out our spare room. I painted it beige (yuch, but that's the colour I had) and put up a ceiling fan and then I have been making curtains. This necessitated a trip to IKEA to buy curtain rods and such, and somehow I managed to talk Alex and Sara into taking me to IKEA- I actually needed Sara's advice about how to decorate my windows and what to put up. On the way to IKEA, Sara was talking about how she had to go to the doctor, something about cholesterol, and she might have to go on a special diet.

Or what, I wanted to know, you seem very healthy.

Or I might have a stroke, she said.

I did not believe this. You can't have a stroke, I said, only old people have strokes.

No, she said, I've seen babies have strokes.

Well, you're well past THAT point, I said, I don't think you should worry about that.

I might have to eat a special die, she said.

What is in the special diet, I wanted to know.

O there are a lot of things you can't eat, she said. But I can't eat fish anyway - - - (She's allergic to fish)

I had been waiting for this all week! I'M allergic to PUSSY, I announced, If I eat one-little-tiny-bit of it- my throat will swell up and I could DIE.

Alex nearly drove the car into a bridge abutment.
There are good reasons for having dumb people around you. Smart people always say the "right" things, and the "right" answers which is a fairly narrow and uninteresting range of things, but dumb people might say or do any damn thing. This makes for MUCH more interesting conversation.

Note: I am not saying that this person that I am about to mention is dumb, I am just saying that they have interesting, um, "outside the box" opinions. Ok? Not dumb, just, 'outside the box."

This certain person that I know expressed the interesting view that "before the Flood in Biblical times, they were all advanced and had high technology, but then the Flood also covered it up." This person also said that "in the 1970's and '80's, we were all primitive and stuff." Like way back in 1972, people were still debating about whether or not fire was a good thing, and pounding mastodons to death with boulders. The best part of this experience was when Alex started rocking back and forth like Rain Man, and then I said Don't DO that, and then this other person started to do the same thing. Then he told us a story about how some Japanese dude wins some hot dog eating contest by shimmying to move the food about better, and demonstrated this in public, for quite some time. Everyone in the restaurant turned round and pretended not to stare.

Trey read the posting about the raw potato, and now has the ambition of coming up with increasingly inedible food combinations. He announced this in tandem with his latest accomplishment, dipping a hot dog into a jar of peanut butter and eating it.