A Letter to the American Catholic Church

Dear Powers that Be in the American Catholic Church:

I read today in the New York Times that you are urging your bishops to challenge Obama regarding legal abortion. While obviously you have the right to free speech and to advocate for your religious interests, please remember that this is not the Vatican City nor Europe. In fact, the same amendment that permits you to urge your bishops to challenge Obama also says that you don't have the right to force your religious beliefs and practices on the population through the government.

I find your constant bitching about legal abortion to be hypocritical. I understand that you feel that a fertilized egg is equivalent to a life. However, I cannot understand why a woman who would otherwise die if she were not given an abortion is not considered a life worth saving. When you advocate to ban abortion, you don't make exceptions for women who would die without one. This infuriates me because it shows me that you could not care less about the lives of actual people who happen to be female. Once a female fetus is born, you write off her right to life.

Also, when you threaten to excommunicate or withhold communion for politicians who represent their constituents who believe that abortion is a personal decision based on a woman's religious beliefs and moral values, and not from politicians who support the death penalty based on their constituents' belief that it is OK for the state to kill people that we are pretty sure committed murder, I don't believe that you value all life equally. If it is wrong to take a life, why aren't you pulling the same punches with death penalty supporters? Or, for that matter, politicians who deny health insurance to children, which certainly leads to at least some deaths per year?

Quite frankly, all your double standards, combined with your parent church's 2,000 year history of enthusiastically killing Jewish people (or at least keeping quiet when other people do), provides you with no moral authority to lecture Obama, me, or anyone about the value of life. Please stop interfering in my democratically elected government.

Sincerely,
Suzanne Reisman

My Super Sweet Socialist Revolution

I battled the laundry room today. It was me, three maids, and eight driers that refused to dry anything. We took turns. We shared tips on getting the driers to work. We commiserated. I dreamed of a washer dryer in my own apartment.

Hours later I was folding laundry in my bedroom, watching a My Super Sweet 16 marathon called the Blingiest Bling. Going back a step, throughout the election, I kept reading op-ed pieces about how rich people shouldn't have to pay high taxes because they earn their money through hard work, and asking them to pay their proportional share of the benefits they reap from society is an outrage. So as I watched 15 year old girls whining about how they "earned" a $350,000 party and a car. Then their parents reinforce their misguided beliefs by saying that their daughters "deserved" such riches.

As my anger mounted, I realized that anyone who watched this show and wasn't enraged by the ridiculous inequities in society must be brain dead. Then it hit me: MTV must be crafting the boilerplate for a socialist revolution. How awesome is that?

A Blue State

In my 32.75 years of existence, I've only lived in two states: Illinois and New York. Appropriately, these are both states that are "blue" - i.e. have gone Democratic in presidential elections. New York as a state is turning even bluer, as out of 29 House seats, we are down to sending only 3 Republicans to Washington.

My mood for the last few days has matched the color of New York. Sure, I'm ecstatic that Obama won the election, and every morning I'm devouring the news as to who he's appointing to his administration (Rahm Emanuel is a fellow liberal Jewish New Trier graduate, which is a rarity) and what his next moves are. Still, it's been raining and gray and I've been sitting around with not enough work to do, which is upsetting. In this exciting time, I want to be doing public service work again. My consulting job owes me money and more work.

I'm hoping that I am offered the position that I interviewed for two weeks ago. But that's stressing me out because I know that I can't really handle a full-time job, school, and my other commitments. I could do it, but I'd never see Husband, socialize or go to the gym. That's not good. The problem is that there are no part-time jobs that are in my field at my skill level. Frustrating.

Plus, I know that Steph moved away five years ago and Dr. P has been gone for 18 months, but I still miss them like hell. My other friends are great, and I appreciate them immensely, but last night we had a post-election celebration party, and I felt their absence acutely. As Husband put it, there was not enough cackling without them in attendance.

Hence, I spent the day stuffing my face with chazerai: jelly beans, chocolate, cookies, and other goodies left over from last night. All that junk food is both comforting and also makes me feel worse. It certainly is negating the 6 mile run I did in Central Park yesterday. Bah. I hate being old, unemployed, and lonely.

Too Real

In my dream, I accepted a job at the place I interviewed at a few weeks ago. While in real life, the organization is in a small office and employs fewer than 10 people, in my dream it was a large government agency that my friend J. worked in. I ran over to tell her I was now her work colleague, and as she introduced me around, a large albino spider got on my hand, crawled up my arm, and ran on my head. It was so realistic that I woke up itching, and semi panicked that a spider or other bug really was on me. (You know how dreams work - if I have to pee in real life, it works its way into my dream, in which I constantly run to a bathroom until I wake up and run to the bathroom.)

I'm still itchy as I write this.

Wow, 2 Years Later, I Am Still Grossed Out

From November 7, 2006, although I can't believe that I didn't comment on how prepubescent the model looks, not only lacking pubic hair, but also hips:

From completely bare, a dementedly popular torture chamber - er, I mean waxing salon - that seems to believe that people are not mammals:
Like all fashion trends, beauty treatments come and go, one day they're hot, they next day they're not. The need for hair removal doesn't change, but how you get to be bare down there and the style you choose, like fashion, changes from season to season. The experts at completely bare know that the Brazilian bikini is out. Now it's time to go completely bare with a flair. Accessorize your own jewels…with crystals.

Whether your choice of hair removal is completely bare's core treatment - EpiLight™ permanent hair reduction - or a French wax, - you can be sure that your bikini area will sparkle.

Accessorizing your privates is the hottest rage. From crystal flowers to customized favorites, you too can now decorate your own jewels. Whether it's a special occasion or you just want to sparkle everywhere, you can choose from an assortment of real swarovski crystal designs so you can shimmer and shine.

There are several points at which I refuse to believe that the proprietors of completely bare are not falling on the floor as they shriek with laughter. "Can you believe that women pay for this shit?" I imagine them asking themselves, wiping the tears from the corners of their cosmetically enhanced eye sockets and high-fiving each other. I mean really, who on earth can, in one paragraph, admit that beauty trends come and go, but that they have the secret to the one trend that will stay cool forever?

Another response: is there not something frighteningly childish about tearing out all your pubes and gluing sparkly things on in their place? If I were a guy (or woman) about to engage in some hot action with someone and I saw that, I would run away screaming. As fast as I could. Because this is something that 8 year olds think is cool. And this is coming from a woman who really likes sparkling things and bows and ribbons. It's not like I am the most mature and age-relevant person out there.

(Incidentally, when I showed this picture to Husband, he thought that it was a tatoo of a zipper. I admit that would be kind of cool, as it demonstrates some bitchin' humor.)

Ladies: crystals on the cootie are creepy. Show some fucking respect for yourselves and your adult "jewels."

What Would CUSS Readers Do?: Election Time Dilemma

(Sorry about the sideways picture, but its a long story of technology snafus and swearing.)

As an election activity at the elementary school at which my sister works, a "Wishes for Our Country" tree was set up in the lobby. The idea idea is that kids would decorate a paper star on some side and write a message of hope for the nation on the other. It would then be put on the tree. Sounds good so far, right?

The day before the election, Dana was surprised to notice a Cristmas tree in the lobby with two boxes of lights.

"Why is there a Christmas tree?" her co-worker, who attended Catholic school as a child, asked Dana.

Dana wondered the same thing. It turns out that the Christmas tree was the voting tree. She felt very uncomfortable with it, as it obviously represents a Christian holiday, especially with all stars hanging from it and a pseudo angel topper. The school is not supposed to have religious displays. However, since she is neurotic like I am, she is worried that she is overreacting although obviously she is insanely pissed about it since she's obsessed over it for days now and asked me to post it on my blog.

What do you think? Should she say something to the principal, who she has a good relationship with?

Digging Deep

"What does this mean to you? Dig deeper!

Numerous people in my workshop wrote this comment on my story about developing breasts and being tormented by their ginormous size and then undergoing breast reduction surgery (if they bothered to give me back my paper at all, which one person did not, but that is another story). It vexes me because in many cases I don't say what the situation means because it means (or meant) nothing.

For example, I talk about how breasts have not worked out so well for the women on my maternal side. My granny is a short women who walks around stooped over, maybe partially from the two watermelons stuck to her chest. On the other hand, my mom is a woman of average height with a very small frame who had two small boobs until she lost one to cancer when I was 4 years old. The people in my class wanted to know what I thought about her scarred chest when I was growing up, and the honest answer is that I didn't. It was just a fact of life that I accepted. My mom had cancer. They had to cut off one of her boobs. The end.*

The point is that this made me realize two things. First, I am not a deep person. I really do often accept things for their surface explanation. This is not entirely true, as I also analyze certain things that happen until I've beaten the dead horse to a bloody mixed metaphor, but still - I'm shallow. The second thing is that I am lazy. I'm probably not as shallow as I claim (see dead horse metaphor), but digging deep means extra work and maybe even painful revelations, and I'm not going there. Sometimes I just want to tell a funny story. Why look for the underlying pathos just to make the story more literary? It's all very distressing to think about.

*Now you know the truth, so if I ever do write a best-selling book about puberty and there are paragraphs describing how I didn't want to get boobs because I was scared of cancer and blah blah blah, you can all go to the tabloids and say that I am a liar just like James Frey. And then I will have to lie and say that I had recovered memories in the process of writing the book and blah blah blah and it will all be very scandalous. If you do sell me out, I hope that the tabloids pay you good money. Then you can take me out for afternoon tea and we can laugh about it.