Just Say No

"Hey, you Jewish?" a homeless man with approximately four teeth asked Husband as we waited with Dr. H at the bust stop last night. He blew cigarette smoke in Husband's direction for emphasis.

"Why yes I am," Husband answered, to my surprise. It wasn't that I was surprised that he admitted he was Jewish; it was that he didn't realize that by answering in the affirmative, he invited a life story saga from the guy that would eventually end in a request for money. Dr. H and I looked at each other the man went on to ask Husband if he's ever been to Atlantic City ("Yes," Husband nodded) and then said something about being the homeless Jewish comedian of the Boardwalk.

"Um, I don't like the cigarette smoke, so I am going to move," Husband finally choked out. The man frowned and tried to dissuade him, promising to stop blowing smoke in his face, but we were already walking away.

"Why did you tell him you are Jewish?" I asked Husband when we got farther away.

"He was wearing a weird little Yarmulke thing," he replied.

And that, folks, is why I love Husband. Wednesday is our eight year wedding anniversary. I'll be in Chicago, visiting my family, and Husband will be in New York, working, so that is a bit of a bummer. But he'll meet me in Chicago on Thursday, so we can celebrate then. Lots of exciting things coming up this week, plus guaranteed Reisman wackiness.

The Mad Hatter

As an American Jew with Eastern European origins, I am pretty damn pale. I also have very dark hair on my arms and legs (if I don't shave the gams, which usually don't, but did recently so I could wear a skirt to work), not to mention my pits and nether regions, and increasingly, my chinny chin chin. I decided that the dark hair is nature's way of protecting me from the sun. Other people have pigment and melanin, I have lots of dark hair for the rays to penetrate before giving me skin cancer. It's almost ingenious, except that I do not really have enough hair on my face, neck, shoulders, chest, and back to wander about uncovered without endangering my supple and youthful skin. (Uh huh.) So it's either sunscreen, which I hate on my face because I swear I constantly feel it, or a large hat.

After discovering yesterday that wandering around the Upper West Side does looking like Little Bo Peep in a wide brim straw hat with black ribbons that tie under my chin does not deter people from asking me for directions (perhaps if I had taken Missy's suggestion and ate the strawberries in my cooler/"basket" while walking around and sweating profusely, that would make me scarier, not that I mind if people ask me for directions), I wore a different hat this morning. I figured that the good people of the south Bronx are significantly more likely to mock me while I walk down the street to work than the batty old ladies wearing similar hats in my neighborhood. My blue fisherman-style hat (reversible to orange!) is also ridiculous, but it does have the Mets logo on it since I got it free last year at a Mets game. The orange side (which I never wear facing out - I'm a winter, and I learned in the modeling class that I took at the community center when I was in 4th grade that winters should never, ever wear orange!) also has a gas company logo, but on the blue side, I glued a Cubs patch over the Gulf patch so that I could show my dual team love. It's awesome.

Anyway, by the time I arrived at work, I was a sweaty mess, and I was sure that I would have a vile case of hat head that would be hard do fix once the sweat dried into a hair-spray like substance. I immediately ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to fix things up. To my surprise, my hair actually looked better than it did before I put the hat on and left my apartment. Go figure.

Storytime Delay and Lessons from Bubbe

I discovered that documents written in pencil on lined paper in 1986 or 1987 do not scan well. Since the story is much better when read in its original form (and includes an important drawing), I am going to photocopy it and make it darker, then try to scan it again.

In place of "A Treaser Hunt with THE Girl Who Wanted To Be In Professional Baseball," CUSS instead presents the following conversation with Bubbe:

"Hey Bubbe, how come Bob* isn't married?" I asked her, knowing full well what the answer would be. Bob is a friend of the family who is in his late 50s. He attended her birthday party with his mother.

She learned forward, her eyes gleaming with bochinche.** "Because he's a feygelah!!!"

My sister snickered. "Ask her why he's gay?" she said under her breath. I like instigating, so I followed her directions. "Bubbe, how come he's a feygelah?"

"Because," she leered. "His mother didn't hide nothing from him."

"Huh? What's that mean?" I asked, knowing full well what she meant.

"She let him see her naked, and that made him a feygelah." She nodded and leaned back into the cushions of the rust colored couch. "Yes."

And this concludes our lesson on human sexuality with Bubbe. Next time, tune in for a diatribe on why Barack Obama hates Israel. Or better yet, I'll get my story scanned and posted.

*Name changed to protect the slandered.
**I'm not sure how to spell this, but it is Puerto Rican slang for juicy gossip.

Oh, Diarrhea on the Wall!

My friend's grandmother passed away on Sunday. In accordance with Jewish tradition, she was buried as soon as possible. The funeral was Monday, and then the family sat shiva, which is pronounced "shivva," not "sheeva" like the Hindu god, and is a lot like a Catholic wake, minus the body.

Yesterday afternoon I took the train to Connecticut to sit shiva with my friend. The nicest thing about sitting shiva is that people really do focus on helping the family through their grief, and so a shiva is usually very jolly. Lots of food and laughter are shared as people recall happier times. Thus it was only sort of completely inappropriate when my friend's brother told people a hilarious story about how he accidentally shit all over the wall of his parents' bathroom a few weeks ago during Passover. It seems that when his stomach rumbled, and he realized that an eruption of a geyser of crap was imminent. He ran for the toilet, but stopped to grab the newspaper on his way. This would have been fine had he just taken the whole paper, but instead paused for 15 seconds to find the business section. Unfortunately, those precious seconds cost him dearly. When he got to the bathroom, he barely pulled down his pants before a stream of liquid feces emanated from his angry ass, splattering all over the wall. "And that's how I got diarrhea all over the wall of my parents' bathroom," he concluded while beaming with pride.

After hearing this story, I decided that I must use the phrase, "Oh, diarrhea on the wall!" when something goes horribly awry. (This would also work in place of, "The shit hit the fan," I think.) Prior to attending the shiva, I experienced my own metaphorical diarrhea on the wall incident. After weeks of waiting, I learned that the grant that funds my 50% of my job was revoked by the issuing foundation. I am not surprised by this turn of events (and in fact had a first round job interview that morning which went very well, anyway), but I think I am entitled to say, "Oh, diarrhea on the wall!" in response to the news.

Cue the Eerie Music

My email in-box had a very nice email in it this morning from a woman who read on one of the various MFA forums that I obsess over that I was wait listed at the New School for non-fiction. She is also a non-fiction wait listee. I instantly felt less alone as I read Catherine's email (for no good reason, I was convinced that I was the only non-fiction applicant who was not immediately accepted), and checked out her blog, A Fly on the Wall. Cool stuff, plus her last entry was about poached eggs and hot cocoa. Hello! I love me some poached eggs and hot cocoa.

After my email checkings and various bloggings, I headed downtown to buy a discount suitcase at the infamous Century 21 department store, a place that I swore I would never shop at again because it is owned by crazy Syrian Jews who look down upon Askenazi Jewish riff raff like me who cannot prove our Jewish lineage because everyone was fucking killed in the Holocaust. (I read this last year in a New York Times Magazine cover story that I cannot find a link to at the moment.) I probably shouldn't have to show birth records signed by rabbis going back three generations to prove that I am Jewish because I went to Century 21 anyway because they have the best prices on luggage. If that is not a Jewish trait, sue my Katubah maker.

Anyway, while I was downtown, I decided to eat at Little Lad's Basket, a vegan cafeteria in the basement of a fancy office building near Wall St. that is run by Seventh Day Adventists from Maine. I love that place because it is cheap, and full of interesting characters. Generally, the tables are bustling with hippies, Muslims, Jews who keep kosher, Hindis, and random office workers. Today, it was empty due to Passover and the fact that I arrived just before it closed. Nothing was left on the buffet, though. I grabbed on of their oddly addictive bags of "herbal" popcorn, and went elsewhere for nourishment.

When I got home several hours later, I had an email from a nice woman named Kat who found CUSS while googling images of egg poachers. She also asked if I could provide the exact address for Little Lad's Basket, which she learned about from the blog.

Woooooooo.....

In Defense of Gefilte Fish

Stop making those retching noises! One of my favorite things about Jewish holidays is the opportunity to indulge in gefilte fish. I realize that I am the only person below the age of 50 who enjoys this delicacy, but that is because my generation generally was forced to eat gefilte fish from a can or jar. That is truly nasty, vile, and disgusting shit, and it has as much to do with gefilte fish as potted meat food product does with steak.

In truth, gefilte fish resembles pate more than an actual fish. It is a ball of ground up whitefish, carp, and/or pike, mixed with salt, pepper, and onions. The recipe deviates a bit depending on which part of Eastern European it is made. Some people add sugar, others add beets, and still others might throw in some ground carrots and parsnip. Whichever derivation is used, the resulting fish ball should be sweet, and not covered in gelatinous goop. (This is exactly where the foul canned or jarred fish goes very, very wrong.)

Back in the olden days, when I was a young girl growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, we spent all the Jewish holidays at my grandparents' apartment. My bubbe cooked for days on end to prepare the feasts. Since I was lucky and only was served homemade gefilte fish, I never understood why people thumbed their noses at the humble dish. Then I got out to New York and was served something from a jar. If someone was unfortunate enough to believe that this was what the dish was supposed to taste like, hatred of gefilte fish made total sense.

At my in-law's Passover dinner on Saturday, they served gefilte fish freshly made at the fish counter of the local grocery store. (At least I think that is where my mother-in-law said it came from; she may have said a Jewish deli.) It was moist, sweet, and free of gelatinous goop. Delicious!

Get Your Popemobile Off My Highway!

Important things are occurring tomorrow. Passover begins at sundown, and we'll be heading to Husband's parents' house for what counts as a Seder in our lax Haggadahs: recite the Four Questions, sing Dayanu, then chow down. Mother-in-Law doesn't even bother getting desserts that are kosher for Passover. Wisely, she believes that if you are going to eat dessert, it should taste good.

Prior to my Passover eating fest, I will attend a baby shower in Yonkers. Yonkers is a city just north of the City. It is the 4th largest city in New York State, but since it lives in the shadow of New York City, it gets shit on a lot as a suburb. (Sort of like Newark, but Newark is even more screwed because it is in New Jersey, but that's another story.) Most likely I will eat a lot of yummy foods at the shower.

The problem is that two leaders of institutions of evil will make it difficult to get to the baby shower, and then to Long Island. It seems that the Pope and Dick Cheney will be visiting some seminary that is just off the Cross County Parkway, thus forcing the highway to possibly close. We need this highway to get there. There is one alternative, but no one wants to read my rants about the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was built by Robert Moses and killed communities in the Bronx. (Cheney and the Pope belong on the Cross Bronx, believe me.)

Hopefully, we'll get where we need to go. (By "we," I mean Husband, who is going to drive me to shower and run amok at Costco for about an hour, then pick me up again.) What also concerns me is how low energy Tycho, my 13 lb. rabbit, is today. I think he is depressed that the Pope is in town. He heard a rumor that a distant relative of his, the Easter Bunny (perhaps you heard of him?), was molested by a priest. He's not down with the excuses that the Pope made that these incidents are the fault of a permissive American culture. Can't say I blame him.

Foreskin and Seven Days Ago

Last week, I attended my first bris. Given my semi-rigid belief that generally people are born with what they need and we should just accept that bodies are hairy and not typically in need of improvement (e.g. - breast or butt implants), it seems like I should be against circumcision. Oh contraire, mon frere. I'm no connoisseur when it comes to penises, but I do prefer them to be foreskin free. The whole smegma thing just grosses me out too much and I don't trust most guys to be clean enough. Yeah, it makes me a big fat fucking hypocrite. Oh well.

Despite my support for circumcision (not that I am against the uncircumcised), I was a little queasy when I thought about attending a bris. Due to my incompetence (I forget that cars need to be cleared of ice before they are safe to drive and one must budget time for the task), I arrived at the bris a wee bit late. As I was taking my boots off in the hallway outside my friend's parents' apartment, I heard the baby begin to wail. "Oh, I guess I missed it," I thought with a mixture of relief and regret. I was wrong - who knows why the baby was screaming his sweet little head off at that point - and eventually witnessed part of the procedure. Oddly enough, the baby barely cried as his foreskin was removed. He was then given a nice rag soaked with liquor to suck on, and drunk, he slept like, well, a baby. It was interesting.

This past weekend, Brother-in-Law (BiL) and Sister-in-Law (SiL) borrowed our PT Cruiser, Fred the Red, to drive to New Jersey for their new nephew's bris. I'm pretty sure that this was the first bris that BiL attended, other than his own, which I am sure was a very different experience. I don't know exactly what happened at this bris, but BiL must've been either overjoyed at his nephew's pact with God or distraught at the penis chopping, because he had an overenthusiastic encounter with a curb that circumcised Fred' wheel well and prevented him from driving straight. (While none of this was funny on Sunday, the little scenario I postulated here is sure slaying me now.)

My point is that I don't think circumcision really hurts anyone (unless its botched, which is always a possibility), and at the same time, I completely understand why a parent would not circumcise a kid. When I wrote on BlogHer a long time ago about a study that showed some very minuscule health benefits from circumcision, some extremists accused me of being a callous genital mutilating monster.* Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also help kill unborn babies. What can I say? I'm just a bad character all around when it comes to the defenseless.

*It strikes me as hilariously ironic that one women yelled at me about the sanctity of preserving genitals as nature intended and months later emailed me about her scheduled Brazilian wax, but I digress.

Cutting to the Chase

For a variety of reasons, I recommed not holding a bris on a very cold day in Chicago. (Insert your own immature shrinkage joke here.) My personal bias against frosty bris events is that I will have to drive to them. Since I don't normally drive, I will forget that cold weather means that ice forms on windshields. Then I will be 10 minutes late to the bris because I didn't budget enough time to scrape the windshield clear.

When I finally did arrive at my friend's parents' apartment for the bris, there was a little sign on the door telling people to leave shoes and boots in the hall. As I removed my non-snow appropriate leather boots, I heard the baby crying. "Shit," I thought. "I'm missing the first bris I was ever invited to." I knocked on the door and discovered that the ceremony was just starting, but no cutting was yet happening. The baby was just crying for no reason. Or maybe it was because he saw the contraption that babies get strapped into for the procedure. I'd cry, too.

Since I arrive late, I hovered in the doorway behind the table that the circumcision was being performed on. The mohl (a rabbi who specializes in foreskin removal, which I possibly spelled wrong) took the baby's pants off. His little socks came off at the the same time, and the mohl put them back on, explaining that he didn't want the baby's feet to be exposed and cold. We all shared a hearty laugh. Then the baby was strapped into the stabilizing contraption. He didn't like this and began crying. More things that I could not see took place, although at one point I noticed a clamp thing. If I had a penis, I'd probably cross my legs at that point. The baby's crying never intensified, so I was surprised when he was declared kosher (not the mohl's words) a few seconds later. Grandpa gave baby a wine soaked cloth to suck on, and soon the kid was peacefully asleep. Happy words were spoken by a non-mohl lady rabbi, the guests sang a happy song in Hebrew which I knew half the words to (they also sing it at the end of Jewish wedding ceremonies), and then the eating commenced.

After hanging around for a while, I left the bris and headed over to Granny's. Since she usually keeps the temperature in her house somewhere in the 80s so that she can hang around in her "diaphonous dusters" (as my mom described them) with no undies on, I brought a t-shirt to change into. I was quite surprised when she answered the door fully clad in a sweatshirt and pants. "I turned the heat down a bit so you wouldn't be too hot," Granny explained as I hugged her. (When I told this to my mom later, she said that I must be my Granny's favorite person in the world, as she turns the heat down and dresses for nobody.)

We had a very pleasant visit, except for when I found out that she leases three telephones from AT&T for $27 a month. The woman struggles with money, and she's throwing away over $300 a year on phone rentals?!?! I felt like she was a victim of elder abuse (who else fucking rents phones?), and made her promise me that she would cancel the lease and return the phones if I bought her ones. Sigh. Then I ate too much chocolate, which was left over from the stash we brought her back from our August 2005 trip to Israel. Although it expired in June 2006, it was still delicious.

Tomorrow morning, I plan to share a fashion epiphany that struck me last night as I was dozing off. (Not long after that, I decided that I needed a snack and nearly died in the kitchen, where I swear my feet froze to the floor, but I digress.) In the afternoon, I'm taking Bubbe to lunch and then to return a down coat that she bought a few weeks ago, which she insists all the feathers came out of after only two wears. (I believe this based on my own coat.) I also hope to pick up a new pair of Dansko clogs. Then I'm going to see my friends Rachel and Jenny for dinner. Sadly, Sister and Sister's Husband will not be coming in from Iowa, as it is supposed to snow like a mad motherfucker. Bah.

Come Light the Menorah

Hanukkah begins tonight at sundown. Over the last few years, Husband and I have become less and less interested in Hanukkah. We managed to get each other one small gift this year. I hope he will like the $10 glass Mets mug that I picked up last week. I have no idea what he is giving me. I'm sure it will be far more clever than a $10 glass Mets mug.

Husband and I may not be taking the religiously insignificant holiday of Hanukkah seriously enough for the likes of the Holiday Sales Industry. Cartier, Macy's, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Barney's all have ads on pages 2,3, and 5 of today's New York Times wishing me a Happy Chanukah. They all spelled it "Chanukah," too, which makes me wonder if the Times issued some sort of guidelines for luxury good purveyors who wanted to sell me shit. Macy's, Lord & Taylor, and Bloomingdale's went an extra step and wrote little Chanukah poems and greetings. The sentiments bring a fucking tear to my eye, I tell you. Tiffany's has an ad, but it doesn't wish me anything. Instead, it reads, "'Tis the Tiffany Season," and depicts a "dreidel in sterling silver, 3" high, $200."

After seeing all the ads, I realized that I never again need bother look up when a gift-giving holiday officially begins. (Last night Husband and I debated whether Hanukkah kicked off tonight or tomorrow night, and I googled it.) From now on, I'll just look at the ads in the paper and go from there. None of the department stores or jewelers would let me forget an important religious occasion, would they? How thoughtful of them.

If You Say So

More wisdom from replies to my inquiry as to why people google search "Jewish pussy" even though it looks no different from other pussy:

What's so surprising? Everyone has their preferences. Some search for "black pussy," while others search for "white pussy," or "latina pussy," or one of myriad other possibilities. You're right in that, physically speaking, there isn't anything especially different about Jewish pussy, but Jewish women do tend to be an attractive bunch, In my opinion. Don't make more out of it than needs to be made!

There are two things about this reply that crack me up. The first is that this person acknowledges that Jewish pussy is "physically speaking," not different from other snatch. Although I like that my anonymous horny commenter pays compliments to us Jewish ladies (stereotypically, we are not held in high regard for our appearances), it slays me that people just believe that porn model is Jewish merely because a site says so. Since we all acknowledge that Jewish vulva looks like any other vulva (and comes in a variety of colors - Jews aren't all white), why bother searching for Jewish pussy? I guess porn is about buying into a fantasy anyway.

Someone else, however, has less flattering things to say about the hunt for Jewish pussy:

men only have enough blood in their bodies to have a thought or an erection yet not both. you can figure out your hit rate from that

This makes me laugh for different reasons.

On a semi related note, I read a book this weekend ("Maps for Lost Lovers" - very interesting; reminded me how all religious zealots are equally evil and batty in their misogyny) about a Pakistani Muslim in small town England. At one point, their is a section about pubic hair. According to the book, women must keep their snatch hair clipped very short or shave it all off. I guess if someone searches for Muslim pussy and sees a hairy snatch, he will know that the model is a doubly bad woman. I don't really take this so lightly, but I'm still mulling over the whole forced shaved snatch thing. I never thought my blog "protesting" the popular Western pressure for unshaved snatch would have religious implications.

My (Not So) Dumb Ass

Since the book is done for now, I am turning my attention to my applications for graduate creative writing programs. Yes, I am psyched that I wrote a guidebook/travelogue, but next I want to write something with a plot and characters and all that jazz. To do that, I gotta learn more about writing and shit.

One of the schools I am applying to requires the GRE, which I never took. (When I hustled off to policy school, the places I applied to took my LSAT score, sparing me the agony of learning GRE math.) The admissions decisions are not really based on test scores, but I still need to do well enough that the university at large agrees to let me enroll in the case that I am admitted to a writing program. I bought a study book from Kaplan and took my diagnostic exam this morning. For the 12 math questions, I basically guessed on every one. I managed to get half correct. The verbal portion went much better, although not the results were not sterling at 75% correct. I did unusually poorly in reading comprehension, so I'll chalk that up to a fluke. More studying to come.

I also learned this morning that Nov. 29 is officially recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People. Fuck that. The same New York Times article mentions that "711,000 left Israel-controlled territory in 1948 and 1949" and in 1948, "856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries." The World Jewish Congress submitted a memo to the United Nations Economic and Security Council in 1948about the danger facing Jews in the Middle East in response to a 1947 draft law composed by the Arab League "that called for measures to be taken against Jews living in Arab countries" including "imprisonment, confiscation of assets and forced induction into Arab armies" as well as beatings, officially incited violence, and programs. However, the memo was buried by the Lebanese ambassador and president of the council.

I don't need a good GRE score to understand how unfair and biased the world is.

Suzanne, The Busy Beaver*

I forgot to note that the wedding I went to was for one of Husband's co-workers, hence we drove for 5 hours plus with three of his colleagues and sat for another four hours with almost everyone from his office, including the boss man. The boss man is someone I am always nervous around for a variety of reasons. First, he used to have a photo of himself with Karl Rove prominently displayed. Terrifying. Then, I fear that I will say or do something totally inappropriate and make Husband's situation uncomfortable. Remember, I can't even get through a ribbon cutting at an affordable housing development without sighing and rolling my eyes. Can you imagine what spending time with someone who admires one of Satan's prime henchman is like for me?

Thus when boss man's very kind wife asked me what I was up to these days and I started talking about my book (for which I have launched an extremely lame temporary blog until I can work with the publisher to get something spiffier and more official), it was a relief. However, that led me to admit that the next travel book I want to do is "Medical History Museums of the United States and the World," which would be absurdly expensive to write given the international travel component and probably find a very limited audience. That audience seems to include boss man, as we wound up avidly discussing medical history for 15 minutes while everyone at the table stared at us. It seems that most people don't like thinking about the horrors of non-modern medicine while they try to eat steak and crab-stuffed shrimp. Ooops.

Anyway, back to beavers. Answers to my long ago posted question (What the fuck do people think they will find when they google "jewish pussy?") continue to trickle in. I found these two responses in my inbox this morning:

It's simple. I am a Jewish man who appreciates Jewish women and want to see Jewish pussy which physicall is no different than any other I suppose except that it is connected to Jewish women. I think it is like any other ethnic, cultural fascination, hence porn site dedicated to Latinas, Blacks, or Indian women. It's the pussy I prefer and I have a hunch it's the same reason for the other hits you've received.

On to the second comment:

I want to see photographs of nice naked Jewish women up close and personal. I like pubic hair and good personal hygiene. My life is empty.

I hate to shatter the illusion, but just because something is labeled "Jewish pussy" doesn't mean the models are actually Jewish. Some probably are, but given the general dearth of Jewish women in the world, I tend to doubt that the vast majority of "Jewish" porn truly features Jews. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my point: how the fuck do you know what "Jewish" pussy looks like compared to gentile pussy? It's just not possible to tell. (And as I learn more and more about the Jewish Diaspora, it's important to note that not all Jews are white. But I digress.) I did laugh my ass off at that "My life is empty" line. Dude, I write about unshaved snatch and spend time analyzed people's comments about their online Jewish pussy fetishes. What does that say about my life? Oy vey....

Thanks to Des for her comment on the last post for this hilarious title.

Vim & Vigor or Vinegar & Piss?

It's obvious that I have a lot of anger towards other people that I consider to be morons. (Another reason why it is such a bummer that I do not speak Yiddish. A book review in yesterday's New York Times notes, "Yiddish parses the stupidity of others in a thousand ways, and find distinctions matter." Damn, that makes me laugh and beam with pride. This shit is in my genes, even if I don't speak the mama loshen - mother tongue.) Something happened yesterday that made me rethink some of my rants.

My friend Logan is a certified sex educator, completing her PhD in Human Sexuality at NYU. She has worked with hundreds of New York City school kids, covering the full range of the socio-economic spectrum, and wrote an awesome book about how to talk to kids about sex. A few nights ago, she was on TV discussing birth control. Her honesty about what kids are up to these days and her frank approach to helping kids make safe, rationale decisions about sex caught the attention of a conservative blogger. Needless to say, the kuneh-laiml didn't agree with her and took it upon himself to launch a written assault on Logan's character. His minions chimed in, and reading their nasty attacks literally made me ill. (I'm not going to link to him because if people click through and he tracks referring links, I have no doubt that I will get hateful comments, and I don't want to deal with these shmendriks.) Later, Logan received an email from a yold who ranted about how he can't wait to meet her in person because she's a horrible person and he's going to sue her for sharing her ideas that result from the fact that her parents don't love her. He ended his misspelled and grammatically incorrect missive by noting that he didn't "need a college degree to make him dumb." (Obviously not.)

At first, I felt morally superior to conservatives because I don't write such vile personal attacks on my bl.. oh wait. I do. Maybe I am not better than these judgmental douche pipes who confuse "having morals" for "being a shithead." While I am pretty certain that I've never gone as far as these right-wingers do in character assassination, I still call them names. (Sometimes even in Yiddish.) On the other hand, I've never sent anyone an email threatening to sue them because I think their ideas are stupid, and certainly not insulting their children. Hmmmm....

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Yet another fine comment as to what people hope to find when they search for jewish pussy on the internet:

i wanted to learn about jewish pussy. so far, i have been afraid to
find out because they are attached to jewish women.

Husband claims there's good reason to be afraid. Of course, he'll pay for that snarky bit. (Just kidding.)

Today I spent part of the day lost in a literal and metaphorical woodland in upper Manhattan. (Long story, which I will post tomorrow night after I get back from the Mets game. Those fuckers better not fuck up like they did this evening or I'm taking them into the woodshed.)

Mmmmmm...

While I eagerly anticipate a delicious meal and fine company at my in-laws' house tonight, I would love to celebrate the New Year with them:

After Rosh Hashanah services this morning, Shirley Kehimkar has invited family and friends home to enjoy an Indian feast she planned to get up at 3 a.m. to start preparing, including rice pilaf, chicken curry and grouper fish.

"A Jew is a Jew. We're the same everywhere, but I do like spicing up my food," Kehimkar, 65, a retired civil servant who came to Canada in 1969, says with a chuckle.

The rest of The Star's article on the the teensy Indian-Jewish-Canadian population in the Toronto area is very interesting as well. (How many times can I tag a post "Hindi" and "Jewishness?!?" A very unique opportunity here indeed!)

If you have any desire to read more about my thoughts on Jewishness, this time in conjunction with feminism, I wrote about the subject today at BlogHer.

L'Chaim, Jewish Pussy

Any Jew worth his horns knows that "L'Chaim" means "to life." Anyone who has seen Fiddler on the Roof may remember the fine song sung to celebrate when Tevye agrees that his daughter Tzeitel, who is maybe in her late teens or early 20s, will marry Lazar Wolf, the lecherous old shtetl (that's ghetto) butcher who ogles Tzeitel like a choice cut of kosher meat every time the poor girl has to go to his shop. Tevye thinks that this is a good arrangement for Tzeitel, since his family is mired in poverty and the widowed butcher is rich, so she'll be comfortable in life. (And one can always hope that the old fuck will die quickly and just leave her with the money, a la Anna Nicole Smith, but I don't know that this actually crossed Tevye's mind.)

The point is, there's a big song called "L'Chaim" that celebrates life. I was thinking about this last night (and now can't get the damn song out of my head) because sundown marks Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, 5768. Traditionally, apples and honey are eaten at the start of the New Year in hopes of it being a sweet year. Last night, Husband compared Jewish pussy to this custom, saying that he likes to dip his apple in the honey, then laughing sleazily. (Update clarification: because it was a funny joke! He's not creepy!) I'll never be able to think about a sweet New Year the same way again. Ah, I adore him.

L'chaim and shana tova.

Hocking Some Family Jewels

Call me Scarlet O'Hara. In less than two hours, I will be pawning a family "jewel."



This 1950s or '60s Baume & Mercier watch has a sad story behind it that of course turns somewhat ridiculous when in my hands. Basically, my grandfather was born in Warsaw and fled to Russia when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. My bubbe evacuated Minsk when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Both wound up in the Ural Mountains. They got married, and my dad was born in Magnitgorsk after the war. When he was less than a month old, the family left Russia to find my grandfather's family. No one was alive, Jews were killed on a regular basis in Poland, and so they joined the tide of other refugees and lived in displaced persons camps for five years until they came to the US.

While living in the DP camps, my grandparents befriended another couple, Norm and Helen. With no blood relatives, they became family to each other. Norm and Helen eventually relocated to South Haven, MI where they owned an orchard. Happily, my family wound up not far away in Chicago, and my dad spent many happy summers in the fresh air with Norm and Helen. Fast forward 50 or so years, in preparation for her own death, Helen began giving her jewelry to my bubbe, including this watch. To me, this is horribly morbid, but apparently a common Jewish practice.

Once my bubbe has the watch, she becomes obsessed with giving it to me. Except that it is not my style and I don't particularly want it, so I repeatedly refuse it. When Bubbe semi-accepts that I am not going to ever wear the watch, she decides that I need to hock it. I take it to some estate jewelry buyers in both Chicago and New York. All say the same thing: I'm not the only person who thinks the style is dated, and they can't sell such an item. It is worth only the gold from which it is made. The best offer I get is $200.

Bubbe, however, is convinced that it is a priceless object d'arte and is very displeased with what I report.

"Don't let them cheat you!" she intones in her Eastern European accent.

Dutifully, I continue schlepping it to different jewelers until I accidentally overwind the watch and break it. Since the value of the watch is in the gold and not the time-telling, this appears to have no effect on its value, but I use it as an excuse to stop my aimless wanderings, although I consider selling it and lying about the price. The watch thus sits on my nightstand for another few years.

In the past few weeks, I see a number of ads for an estate jewelry buyer in New York City. On Sunday, I decide to email them and see if they are interested in the watch. Yesterday afternoon an extremely chipper woman calls me and asks me to bring it in. I call my sister and tell her whatever I get for the watch, I'll share with her 50-50, and she tells me to just sell it already. I decide that I am going to give my portion to charity. Originally, I thought Planned Parenthood, but Husband suggests that I select a Jewish organization, which makes sense.

At the end of the day, no matter what the watch sells for, it will never undo the loneliness and torment suffered by Norm and Helen as they rebuilt their shattered lives in America, and celebrated their success with a gold Baume & Mercier watch. Reflecting on this saga on Sept. 11 and the day before Rosh Hashanah 5768, it is obvious that they already paid the highest price.

Saturday Afternoon Picture Show

I'm feeling much better today, so I'll share semi-gross photos. Yay.

Last weekend, my cousin and I indulged in a vat of Monster Cookie Dough. Monster Cookies are basically oatmeal, peanut butter, and generic M&Ms. It tends to be delicious. However, this batch of dough went through an unfortunate defrost-refreeze-defrost process that caused it to look like the results of the shit bucket test ( see Part I and Part II for more details and no pictures) I took a few years ago in attempt to figure out what was wrong with my digestive system.
Although it seems like I am about to eagerly eat diarrhea, I think I look pretty fucking adorable in this picture. It's so rare that I am happy with photos of me.

As for my latest bodily failure, here's my broken tooth:*

It was finally fixed on Wednesday by my hot dentist's significantly less hot dentist father. At least the snaggletooth Jewish white trash look is gone.

*For the record, it did not break as a result of eating the generic M&Ms in the Monster Cookie dough. It broke for the 4th time in three years because my mouth is too little and when I clench my teeth when I am pissed off or merely eat, it seems to put too much stress on the little guy from the bigger tooth above it.

Corned Beef on Wry

"Eat kosher corned beef!" the sign in the delicatessen window across the street from the Bronx bus stop I was at commanded. I snickered in my head because I am infantile. When my silent laughter subsided, I resolved to do as I was told after I visited the Judaica Museum at the Hebrew Home for the Aged, on my way back to the subway, and before I went to the dentist in Brooklyn and received a face full of Novocaine, rendering any corned beef - kosher or not - impossible. (In fact, the right side of my face is numb through my ear as I type this. My only consolation is that the dentist is fucking adorable.)

The Museum was nice. More important for the purposes of this story, the deli was kosher. I knew in my heart of hearts this meant that they would not have white bread. No Jew worth his circumcision eats corned beef on white bread. When I tried ordering corned beef on white at a deli a few weeks after Husband and I started dating, both he and the waiter stared at me. The waiter shook his head in disgust, and I wound up with a roll.

"Who orders corned beef on white?" Husband marveled as the waiter scurried away from the embarrassment I caused.

"I do. The bread gets all mushy and yummy..." I explained.

Husband wrinkled his schnozz. "That what rye bread is for."

"I hate rye bread," I wrinkled in response. (They say people in successful relationships mirror their partner's body language, you know.)

Husband stared at me for a good minute and then spoke slowly. "Are you sure that you are Jewish?"

And that, my friends, is how Husband learned that he was dating Jewish white trash.

Back to the present day, I stepped into the narrow entryway of Loeser's Delicatessen.

"What kind of bread do you have?" I asked tentatively.

"Rye, wheat, and rolls," Fredy the owner (who I recognized from all the newspaper clippings and family photos on the wall behind me) said.

"I'll take corned beef on a roll, please."

"Coming right up."

It didn't come right up, though, and I was getting nervous about being late for the dentist. I definitely needed time to brush my teeth once I got there. Can you imagine how horrifying it would be to have corned beef stuck in your teeth from a sandwich you ate on the subway on the way to the dentist's office when he goes in to shoot Novocaine in your face to drill out a cavity and fix a broken tooth? Thus when the sandwich was ready, I grabbed it without checking what it was and ran out after wishing Fredy "L'shana tova" (that's "Happy New Year," which is right around the corner for us who celebrate Rosh Hashana).

Only on the subway did I discover that he put it on rye. It was delicious anyway.

Jewish Pussy Expansion

I am pleased to announce that people are becoming slightly more discerning in their Google searches for "jewish pussy." Over the past week, CUSS had several hits based on searches for "kosher pussy" and "beautiful jewish pussy." My pride is overwhelming. I can't wait to see what people come up with next.

Pause.

That was a short wait. So my friend, who is a liberal like me, keeps being contacted by a guy who read her profile on jdate. (Jdate is the Jewish online dating site, for those of you who might not be in the Jew loop.) His profile explains that he is a Republican, and likes football, red meat and the stock market. In addition to being a Democrat, my friend tends toward chicken, fish, and other non-meat products, has zero interest in the stock market, and is one of four Americans who doesn't watch the Super Bowl.

Not that opposites can't attract, but the kicker is his blog, which describes his interests as:

Blogging is a shameless ploy to get what I really want, which is to be sandwiched between two hot republican Jewish brunettes. If I only get one of them, that is good enough, provided she gets pregnant and the kids end up with her loveliness and my last name.

My friend did point out that he might not be that bad, as the woman might be able to keep her name as long as the kids get his. Oy vey.

The Seventh Deadly Sin

Rarely does pride come after a flood, but the Reisman family frequently defies conventional wisdom.

"I think we have the more trash than anyone in the neighborhood!" my mom reported to me breathlessly yesterday when she described their clean up efforts.

In chimed my dad, "It covers the entire front lawn!"

See? Jewish white trash like us can be #1 at something in the upper-middle class neighborhoods in which we dwell.

I'm off to catch an express bus to the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, which has an art gallery full of residents' work.

For shande!

It pleases me to no end that the answers are rolling in for my question as to why people are constantly getting to CUSS by googling "jewish pussy". Yesterday, this very earnest (or promotional) anonymous comment made me laugh and laugh:

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE..
PROOF..
go to: www.askjolene.com
which is a porn search engine, type "jewish", you'll see jewish porn actresses and girls pussies..
There is nothing uncommon or special about them.

Thanks for the proof. It is important to back up exertions on Jewish pussy with cold, hard (snicker) scientific evidence.

Blinded by Brilliance

Question (posed months ago at CUSS): What do you expect to find when you search for "jewish pussy" on the internet?

Most recent anonymous answer: the answer is simple: there are tons of people researching 911, a lot of them are commming to the conclusion that the true financers and pushers of that event were jewish zionist.. after doing all that research one gets tired and bored and starts to desire some pics of cute jewish womens pussy. because the word jew has entered the mind.

New question: Why, God, why are people so fucked up, disturbing, and scary?

Aint' Nothing Like Kosher Honey

Seriously, I love people. Months ago, I discovered that a very high portion of the hits to CUSS came from searches for "jewish pussy." Who wouldn't be curious about this phenomena, so I posted a request for information. (I'm not even going to bother linking to my original post, but it more or less asked people what the fuck they expected to find when searching for the chosen poon.) Anonymous replies were encouraged, partly because I don't want to know who is obsessed with kosher snatch and partly because I thought people would be more honest.

Honest to God, the replies continue to trickle in. I got these two gems over the past few days:

Although I am not jewish I have had my share of jewish pussy. I find that jewish women are very horny and thus when I search jewish pussy I associate the lust of the women which I've had to the pics I seek.

I think our horniess is due to consumption of gefilte fish, but maybe I am wrong.

being a member of the tribe- and orthodox, if i am going to be human, and desire a look at a woman other than my wife, it HAS to be jewish...besides, I agree, Jewish women are the best looking though I might be slightly predjudiced!! As to the questiom What would my wife think of me looking at other women...she doesn't care where I get my appetite as long as I enjoy only her great cooking

I actually don't care what his wife thinks of him looking at porn, but I found the answer to unasked question horribly depressing even though it was also hilarious. (And again, I'm nominating for gefilte fish as the cause of Jewish lust.)

You know what I hate though? I hate when people get all pius about porn and sex. Does it really matter if you ogle titties and snatch of another ethnic group or race as long as you respect women? Not really. If I believed in this God, I'm guessing that God has bigger concerns than whose photos you spill the precious seed on. It is always the people who are the most sanctimonious who are the most deviant at the end of the day. All the politicians and religious leaders who rant and rave against homosexuality, porn, adultery, masturbation, etc. turn out to be addicted to jerking off over gay porn while "legally sinning" with escorts. Yes, I sure love people!

Lesson from the Gritz Synagogue

CUSS loves fun, so let's play a word game. What is the first word that comes to mind when you hear "Waffle House?" Jewish? No? Well, until my last supper in Tennessee, that was the last word that came to my mind, too.

Although Husband and I spent the weekend with my family exploring Memphis, we flew in and out of Nashville because no NYC airports fly directly to Memphis. We thought it would be easier to rent a car from Nashville and drive a few hours than to freak about possibly missing connecting flights at O'Hare, St. Louis, or Dallas. On our way back to the airport, we stopped at a nearby Waffle House for dinner.

As we were chowing down on cheese grits and a waffle (me) and scrambled eggs, toast, hash browns, and two chocolate chips waffles (Husband), one of the two Waffle House staff approached our booth, sweeping. (Why is it that all Waffle Houses are filled with debris every time I visit?)

"Is the food good?" he asked.

"Yep, it sure is," I said.

"Real good?" he queried.

"Real good," Husband answered.

"Tovashomoyentigd?" he asked. We had no idea what the hell he said, so we didn't say anything.

"Oh, sorry. That's Hebrew for 'Is it real, real good?' My son is studying for his bar mitzvah, so Hebrew is on my mind," he blurted out. He was now sweeping the same patch of floor next to our booth over and over again. "It's hard to get him to concentrate when his grandma is always giving him money. I only have 50s, so I said, 'Stop giving him 100s, ma!'"

Husband and I just stared at him. He went on. "Once in school my son asked the teacher if she knew the real name of Jesus Christ. She said everyone knows it is Jesus Christ, and my son said, 'No, it is Yosef Benedictine, which means son of Joseph of Nazareth.' The teacher said that was not true, and my son said, 'It is,' and she said, 'No, it isn't,' and he said, 'Well look it up in the Torah! It's right there!" He beamed.

"Uh huh," husband said.

"When we first moved down here, there was a sign at the pool that said, 'No blacks, no Jews, no dogs,' so my dad took me there and said I was only a half Jew, so could I wade in the pool?" He brayed. "But no dunking me!"

The man was just getting started with his stories. After he rambled a bit more, he told us how he served in the US Army Reserves in the military intelligence unit in Iraq and in Chechnya. I decided I needed to pay the check.

From the register, I heard him apologize to Husband. "I hope I didn't offend you when I spoke Hebrew, but I thought you were Jewish."

"We are Jewish," Husband cheerfully replied.

"Aha! I knew I could recognize my own kind!"

"Bye," I said and yanked Husband toward the exit.

"Shalom aloheinoo," he waved, then went to man the waffle irons.

Yeah, thanks to our a completely surreal experience, "Waffle House" and "potentially mentally ill Jewish man" are forever linked in my mind.

Tired Dogs, Horns, and a Husband for Dr. P

Foot massages never appealed to me. I hate feet in general, so I recoil at the thought of subjecting a stranger to my tootsies. My opinion on foot massages changed around 2 pm. At this point, my feet hurt so bad from walking every day for hours and hours that all I could think about was how nice to would be to have my feet rubbed. And then I walked around for another 5 hours. (Incidentally, when I travel with others, I don't subject them to this insanity.)

The day began with a visit to a church that has a statue of Moses carved by Michelangelo.Isn't his dedication to anatomical correctness in the face of policital correctness inspiring? I mean, I've seen another Moses that he sculpted, and Michelangelo always captures his Jewish horns so perfectly. It seems that since Moses was thrown into a basket and sent down the river to save his life, his parents didn't have time to do the ritual horn removal that all Jewish boys undergo when they are also circumsized. (Might as well take everything off while the baby is wasted, right?) Girls have ours chopped off or filed down at birth since we don't get any other infant surgeries. My parents have the cutest picture of me right after I was born with my little Jew horns sticking out through a tiny shock of hair. I should post it some time. (Sigh.)

Anyway, it wound up being a day of Jewishness for me, although first I stopped off at a very cool 12th century church built on a 4th century church built on a 1st century structure used by a cult. The layers are excavated and you can go through them. While I was wandering around, I somehow wound up tailing a high school group from Texas, which was great because I learned a lot from their teacher.

My next stop was the synagogue and Jewish Museum, although on the way I stopped at another church, which surprised me by having the relics of St. Valentine. My photo will make the greatest Valentine's Day post ever, assuming I don't forget that I have it. I learned about the sad history of the Jews (is there any other kind of history when it involves Jews?) in Rome. The first Jewish community documented settled in 160 BC and evolved into a special Italian Judaism similar to Sephardic Jews, but with its own culture and traditions. I won't bore/depress you with all the ups and downs of Roman Jewish life over 1,850 years, but I was psyched to see that a tour of the Jewish Ghetto (1555-1870) was offered in the evening.

Only two other people signed up for the tour, a Jewish couple from Ft. Lauderdale. When I mentioned that I would be in their 'hood next week helping my friend Dr. P move to start a fellowship down there, the woman was excited.

"Is she married?" she asked.

"No," I replied.

"Oh, my son is a doctor. I'd love to introduce them!"

I nearly fell down laughing. Dr. P may not be as amused.