Posts Tagged ‘mortification’

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Get Out of My City! Out!

September 7th, 2010 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in Damn, I love New York, mortification, yummy eats

The weather on Sunday was perfect – sunny and in the low 70s. Husband and I set out for a stroll around 2 pm. We began by heading to Central Park. Upon entering at 72nd Street, I overheard a visitor to my fine hometown talking on his cell phone.

“Yeah, there’s some kind of upscale McDonald’s on Columbus and 77th Street. I’ll meet you there,” he bellowed.

I scratched my head. While I knew that many McDonald’s locations in Manhattan had undergone renovations in the last year and were pretty snazzy, I couldn’t think of any on Columbus Avenue, let alone 77th St. We walked on. Then it hit me. This douche bag was talking about Shake Shack!

Yes, Shake Shack is a burger joint. It is not any fancier than the Golden Arches. Yet for the same price as a quarter pounder, Shake Shack serves us some serious quality meat, custom blended for them by a renowned butcher shop. It’s like comparing Long John Silvers to, uh, Red Lobster. Or something like that.

I wanted to turn around and slap him upside the head. Upscale McDonald’s! Tourist, be gone!

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It’s Here!

March 16th, 2010 by Suzanne | 1 Comment | Filed in Uncategorized

The Census form arrived yesterday! I am very excited. Instead of working on my thesis, I am going to fill it out tonight. After all, it says in block letters on the envelope that it is required by law to return the Census. Am I a law breaker?* No I am not!

Besides, it is very important to be counted. Every day when I read the news, I despair at the state of the nation. Texas just re-wrote standards for all textbooks to emphasize the importance of Phyllis Schlafly; drop Thomas Jefferson because he wrote that church and state should be separate; and remind people that women and people of color got the right to vote because white males were kind enough to let them. Seriously. A dentist/”historical expert” on the committee that rammed through this abhorrent crap challenged people to show him where the Constitution calls for a separation of church and state. (He said he’d donate $1,000 to a charity of choice of anyone who can “prove” that this concept exists. Yeah, and he’ll sooner believe “evidence” that dinosaurs and Jesus played together as children while unicorns swarm in rivers of chocolate.)

Blah. The point is, I want to be counted because I know damn well that evil people who believe that the US is a Christian nation are going to be counted. I didn’t open my Census form last night, but I’m pretty sure that the Census does not ask about religion. I’m bummed about that because even though America is predominantly Christian, it would be nice to know how many people aren’t so we can be sure to protect everyone’s rights. Husband always says that we should be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. I used to think he was insane (“This is America!” I’d tell him), but history has shown that even the stablest democracies can turn, and of course, Jews have been kicked out of pretty much everywhere except North America (not that Peter Stuyvesant didn’t try really hard), so we’re probably due someday.

Um, yeah. Anyway. This sure turned into a downer, huh? No one is going to hire me to write ads for the Census if I keep this negativity up, so… The Census is here! Rah rah! Don’t forget to get represented! YOU matter! Woo!

*Well, if I could steal my political adversaries’ Census forms, I totally would. That’s the kind of bad ass law breaker I am. Except that I’m not, because that would be wrong. Sigh.

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Another Disturbing Ripple in My Universe

March 4th, 2010 by Suzanne | 8 Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, Damn, fuck, Jewishness, mortification, What is wrong with people?

>My mother and I are planning a trip to Warsaw in mid-June. We will visit the Jewish cemetery and try to find my great-grandfather’s grave. (He died before the war, so he probably is lucky enough to have a burial place unlike my grandfather’s sisters and mother.) We will see the few remnants of the wall of the Warsaw ghetto. We will visit the Jewish Historical Institute. We will do a records search. We will pass by the address where my grandfather’s family owned a butcher shop and/or lived.

We will also go to Treblinka.

I always assumed that my grandfather’s family died in Auschwitz, if they even lived to be deported from the ghetto. But, one of the dangers of Holocaust hagiography is that the fame of Auschwitz dwarfs reality. Deportations began in 1942, and when Warsaw’s ghetto was liquidated in the spring of 1943, everyone left was sent to Treblinka, 2 hours outside of Warsaw in an isolated forest. There was no work at Treblinka. People died within an hour of their arrival.

Husband has a friend who lives in Warsaw who is very kindly helping me arrange my trip. He sent me a link to the Treblinka Museum. One of the things that fascinated me when I first learned about the Treblinka site is how noncommercial it is. Auschwitz, to me, is tourist attraction at this point. Tour groups go, people gape at the convent built on site, they exclaim over the signs proclaiming how much the Poles suffered* because it was initially built for Polish political prisoners. Treblinka was completely destroyed by the Nazis, so there’s nothing “fun” to see. It is a sober monument to the 800,000 Jews and thousands of Gypsies and Romani murdered there.

Anyway, as I read the museum’s website, I was taken aback by this statement:

The memorial should be visited with due seriousness and respect.
Within the area of the museum it is forbidden to bring dogs, smoke or eat ice cream.

Damn, I can’t eat ice cream there? Well, I guess I’ll have to pack ham and cheese pierogies and chocolate kolacky.

I hope that this was a translation error and in Polish it says, “no eating.” Otherwise, WHAT THE FUCK? How weird is the focus on ice cream? Even weirder, it reminds me of a fucked up Hasidic monument I visited in Israel:

I mean, they are not the same thing, but the utter randomness of what is forbidden strikes me as similar. (In case the photo does not appear, it is a sign that says that it is forbidden for women to dance at this site.)

Anyway, it is going to be an intense trip. I believe we will also take a trip to Krakow, as Husband’s friend recommended.

*Oh yeah, and some Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals died there, too. But whatever. (This is written in the vein of signage at Auschwitz, so pardon my bitter glibness.)

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Heads Up!

February 26th, 2010 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in hilarity, I love New York, mortification, random

>For a nanosecond, I wanted to scream when I stepped onto the subway on Tuesday morning. In a seat between two disinterested women lay a disembodied head, face down. Its black hair stood up at odd angles, and its brown neck was evenly sawed off from a torso.

I quickly realized that the reason that the women were so nonchalant about this horror was that it was a severed mannequin’s head. Further inspection lead me to notice that the mannequin’s little bud nose rested on a cosmetology magazine. The head seemed to belong to the woman on its right, who thoughtfully gave it its own seat so that actual humans had to stand.

At 42nd Street, the woman gathered her shopping bags, scooped up the head and magazine, and exited the train. I sat down in the seat formerly occupied by the lifeless head. I love living in New York City.

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Things I Do Not Understand, Part 794A

February 1st, 2010 by Suzanne | 6 Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, mortification, What is wrong with people?

>1. The YIVO Institute has the records of American Displaced Persons Camps in Austria, Germany in Italy from 1945-1952. Since my grandparents and father lived in camps in Austria during that time period, I am eager to see what is in the archive. YIVO is conveniently open Monday-Thursday from 9:30 am to 5 pm. However, the reading room is open until 7:30 on Mondays. I called and asked until what time the library was open today and was told 7:30. After work, I rushed down to get as much time as possible with the records.

After passing through the metal detector and sending my bag through the x-ray machine, using the mandatory coat check, and providing photo ID, I took the freezing elevator to the library and reading room on the 3rd floor. The woman at the information desk informed me that since YIVO closed at 5:00, I could not get the records I wanted. I am extremely confused as to why a reading room is open when the records that one is supposed to read in that room are unavailable, but there were people in there using computers and looking over books from somewhere, so what do I know.

2. On the subway home from my failed trip to YIVO, a woman rushed onto the train with a stroller and four or five year old girl in tow. After mowing people down to get the stroller in the middle of the car, she wedged herself in the small space between me and the extremely large man on the other side. She struggled to pull her daughter onto her lap.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Would your little girl like to sit down?” I gestured at my seat and moved slightly to get up.

“I HAVE TWO KIDS WITH ME AND I NEED TO SIT,” she yelled in my face. That is when I realized that she had earphones on. They were blasting music. Not only could she not hear me, but if her kids needed something, they were shit out of luck.

Resisting the urge to slap her, I tried again. “Yes, I see that you should sit. Would your daughter like to sit also?”

“DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME? I SAID I GOTTA SIT DOWN BECAUSE I GOT TWO KIDS WITH ME!” One of the earphones slid out of her ear slightly when she pulled her daughter up higher.

“Yes, I heard you,” I sneered. “But I am asking if your girl would like my seat.” At that, I stood up and tried to wiggle around the stroller to get away from this cuntface.

“Oh, naw. She’ll just sit on my lap.”

Since there was really no standing room, I sat back down. The woman standing in front of me who witnessed the whole scene sighed. “Yeah, no good deed goes unpunished,” I said.

“She’s probably just used to people being rude,” the stranger replied. The woman, of course, could not hear a word anyone was saying. The stranger was very kind, and chatted up the little girl about Valentine’s Day. For all the mother knew, she was soliciting the kid. When she got off the train, the little girl kept waving and saying, “Bye bye. Have a good night.”

It broke my heart. I know that there are times when parents don’t want to hear their kids, but the girl kept trying to talk to her mom, who just nodded, unhearing. So awful.

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I Don’t Even Know What to Title This

January 19th, 2010 by Suzanne | 6 Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, Damn, fuck, mortification

>Granny is mostly OK. Sunday the cardiac doc came to discuss her options. Her blood work indicated that she had a very small heart attack, so he wanted to do an angiogram. Depending on what he saw, he would insert balloons or stents into her arteries. Everyone agreed that because she needs oral surgery soon, he would use nonmedicated stents because the medicated ones would basically cause her to bleed out if she had dental work.

On Monday morning, the doctor told us that the test went well. He said that her heart was strong and that there was no damage from the heart attack. Then he said he saw a lot of heart disease and inserted a balloon and two medicated stents.

My mom and I recoiled. “What do you mean medicated stents?” she asked.

“Oh. Ooops. I forgot. I even wrote it on the board and I forgot. Sorry about that.”

Yes, that is actually what he said. “Ooops… sorry about that.”

“What about the oral surgery?” my mom asked. She was trying not to punch him. (She later told me that she was more angry about his flippant tone than the fuck up, not that she condoned the fuck up.)

“Oh, she’ll have to wait at least six months, but I really recommend a year,” he said as if it’s no big deal to have a mouth full of rotting teeth. “Maybe you can find a dentist who would be willing to do a procedure while she’s on Plavix.”

I pictured some back alley dentist ripping up my Granny mouth and leaving her to bleed out when things went awry. I wanted to slap the doctor. (Husband suggested slapping the doctor – with a lawsuit.) I know it could be worse, but this really, really sucks.

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My Stash

January 6th, 2010 by Suzanne | 2 Comments | Filed in hilarity, mortification, random

>I sorted my stash tonight, and made a horrific discovery. One of my maintenance inhalers (Qvar) expired in October 2006. Even I’m not messing around with that – in the trash it goes. I also discovered that the sample of my regular inhaler (Ventolin) given to me in December by my allergist expired in June 2009. Harumph.

Ironically, earlier in the evening, while chatting with Dr. P on the phone, I discovered a jar of pasta sauce that expired in December 2007. It was unopened. Dr. P advised me to toss it. I put it back in the pantry. (It was unopened!*) I did, however, toss out the jar of pasta sauce that expired in June 2009, which seems to be a busy month for products to expire in my household. (It was half empty, and I thought I spotted mold in it, although it was refrigerated.**)

Fortunately, my ‘stache stash is stocked and ready to rock the world, should I ever need a clever disguise or seven. Steph gave Husband a new extra long fake mustache and a mini mustache comb for the holidays. Between the asthma meds and the synthetic hair and glue, we are good to go.

*God, I am turning into my aunt. If I ever serve salad dressing that expired two years ago, then claim it is fine because it is unopened, I give the recipient of said dressing permission to slap me.
**There is hope for me yet.

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It’s No Accident that “Stupak” Looks a Lot Like “Stupid”

December 2nd, 2009 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in evil, fuck, mortification

>Two of my favorite organizations, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Planned Parenthood are holding a National Day of Action today to lobby the Senate for health care reform that ensures women’s access to reproductive health care. Right now, things are not looking good.

Basically, the House passed a horrible amendment sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak, an anti-choice douche bag. The amendment would prevent women who currently have health insurance plans that cover abortion from obtaining the same coverage if they buy it through an insurance exchange. This is a problem for me, but even worse is that private plans will likely drop abortion coverage in order to participate in the exchange. People who like imposing their religious beliefs on others are proposing the same thing in the Senate.

Planned Parenthood explains the situation (it’s a long one):

The Bottom Line

  • Under the Stupak amendment, millions of women would lose benefits that they currently have and millions more would be prohibited from getting the kind of private sector health care coverage that most women have today.

  • Millions of women would lose private coverage for abortion services and millions more would be prohibited from buying it even with their own money.

The New Health Insurance Exchange

  • The new health insurance exchange is intended to provide a new source of affordable, quality coverage for the roughly 46 million uninsured Americans and the millions more whose current coverage is unaffordable or inadequate.

  • The House bill is expected to cover 96 percent of all uninsured Americans by offering subsidies for private coverage or the choice of a public plan. Depending on their income level and the final package approved by Congress, individuals would receive subsidies on a sliding scale to purchase private insurance through the exchange.

  • Not everyone in the exchange would have subsidized coverage — a significant portion of people (for instance, those currently purchasing in the individual market and those working for small businesses) who would buy insurance in the exchange would not receive any subsidies, also known as affordability credits.

The Stupak Amendment

  • The Stupak amendment prohibits any coverage of abortion in the public option and prohibits anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a health insurance plan that includes abortion. It also prohibits private health insurance plans from offering through the exchange a plan that includes abortion coverage to both subsidized and unsubsidized individuals.

  • The Stupak amendment purports to allow women to purchase a separate, single-service “abortion rider,” but abortion riders don’t exist.

  • Women are unlikely to think ahead to choose a plan that includes abortion coverage, since they do not plan for unplanned pregnancy.

  • Realistically, the actual effect of the Stupak amendment is to ban abortion coverage across the entire exchange, for women with both subsidized and unsubsidized coverage.

  • Example: Currently, a self-employed graphic designer or writer, buying coverage from Kaiser Permanente in the individual market, likely has abortion coverage. Under the health reform plan amended by Stupak, she would purchase that same plan from Kaiser Permanente in the exchange, but it would not include abortion coverage because it would be barred. This ban would be in effect even if she were paying the full premium. Similarly, a woman working for a small graphic design firm, who currently has abortion coverage through her company’s plan, would lose it under reform if the company decides to seek more affordable coverage in the exchange.

For more information on health care reform and the Stupak amendment, visit us at http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/healthreform.

End of Planned Parenthood info, and back to my ranting… If this pisses you off as much as it does me, call your Senator today. (Or email him or her, as I suspect the lines will be busy.) Perhaps yelling, “Stop the stupid Stupak amendment bullshit,” is not the thing to say, but it does have alliteration, which is a good literary technique.

In all seriousness, something like this is NOT going to stop women from having abortions. Instead, it will force more women to wait longer for their procedure while they figure out how the hell to pay for it. If we want more late term abortions in this country, then by all means, support Stupak. But that would be stupid.

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What We Saw at a Bus Stop in the West Village

November 21st, 2009 by Suzanne | 4 Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, fuck, hilarity, mortification, random, What is wrong with people?

>Warning: This is likely the most disgusting thing I’ve ever posted on CUSS…

As Steph and I strolled through the West Village this afternoon, she pointed out all the things that had changed since she moved. One of new arrivals is fancy bus shelters. We walked up to a glass and metal bus structure, and Steph gasped.

“Do you see what I see next to the bench?”

“Um, yes. Yes, I do.”

“That’s a dildo.”

“With shit caked on it, yes.”

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Naming Names: A Cautionary Tale

November 18th, 2009 by Suzanne | 1 Comment | Filed in Asshole idiots, mortification

>The number one rule of blogging is not to use people’s names unless they tell you it is OK. Generally, I follow this rule religiously. Some of my friends and family are identified by their real names; others get fake ones. If I link to a blog, I use the blogger’s blog name, which may be different from his or her non-blogging name.

So I have no idea what I was thinking back in February, when I wrote a post about why I hate Valentine’s Day. Not only did I use the real names of guys I knew in high school, but I lost my mind completely and also put in their last names. Perhaps this was due to a carb deficit, as I was in Phase I of the South Beach Diet, and Maurice (the hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain) was unable to perform at the minimal level he usually offers. Whatever the reason, not cool.

Even less cool is how this came to my attention. The gentleman now referred to as Mr. X was displeased that I shared this story. It seems his in-laws and maybe also fantasy football league googled his name and then mocked him, although I don’t see why he was mockable – I’m the total fucking shit in the story. Whatever, he was not amused. I felt awful and took his name out, but we all know the problem with the internet – once it is out there, it’s not entirely erasable.

I sincerely hope that this will not cause Mr. X any more grief. It was incredibly bad judgment on my part.

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