Toast

Is what Pretty Lady's hard drive appears to be, at least until the diagnostic come back. Pretty Lady herself is off to the beach. Toodle-oo!

Solving the World's Problems

Despite rumors to the contrary, Pretty Lady will not be voting for Paula Abdul for President.

RYAN SEACREST: Welcome, everyone. I’m your host, Ryan Seacrest. Thanks to the overwhelming success of “American Idol,” our panel of judges has been asked, by the international community, to rule on issues affecting us all. So let’s get started: What’s the deal with Iraq?

PAULA ABDUL: You know, I love the Shiites and the Sunnis and all of the other sects. I just think they are all so special and I just wish they could all get together and realize how special they are.

RANDY JACKSON: But, man, that Saddam Hussein dude—I was not down with that. He would not be my choice for Iraqi Idol. For a bloodthirsty tyrant, he was just average, just so-so.

PAULA: Randy! Saddam has his fans—I just think he needs to find the material that’s right for him. We always say that: it’s all about song choices. Saddam isn’t Whitney.

SIMON COWELL: Paula, a question: Were you raised by pumpkins?

PAULA: Simon! You are so mean!

RYAN: O.K., people. What about gay marriage?

PAULA: I love gay marriage! I think everybody should marry a gay person!

RANDY: Yo, dawgs, I like gay marriage, it’s cool. I mean, O.K., it’s kinda Broadway, but it’s like gay people can make marriage their own. Maybe funk it up. Or rock it out.

PAULA: Wouldn’t it be neat if gay people could get married and then adopt other gay people? And make families?

SIMON: I really don’t care if gay people can marry. I just want to rip out Paula’s hair extensions with a pair of pliers.

Seduced and Abandoned

Pretty Lady is devastated to report that there is a Dangerous Libertine lurking around Manhattan. Innocent, or not-so-innocent, ladies all, beware.

This fearsome cad goes only by the name of M. He is a smallish man, mesomorphic, with dark hair and a charming smile. He pretends to be interested in subletting your apartment; he will appear clean-cut, wholesome, solvent and single.

Believe nothing of what you see. This man's only designs are to purloin your honor--what is left of it.

His modus aparandi is the Direct and Bold. He will sum you up with an admiring stare. He will run obligingly to fetch a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and confidentially remove his shoes while swigging it upon your couch. He will press all the correct buttons, psychologically speaking. Words like 'commitment,' 'community,' 'law degree,' and 'spirituality' will fall trippingly from his tongue. He will take advantage of any pause in conversation to press your palm confidingly.

Once this shameless operator has observed, with cynical eye, the fact that you have drained your second bottle of Sierra Nevada, and are regarding him with sanguine complacency, his assault on your virtue moves into high gear. He feigns a neck injury, and pleads for your assistance. Once you have demonstrated the power of your healing hands, he chivalrously offers to return the favor.

Run, my darlings, run for the hills. Throw this man out of your apartment, and his six-pack with him. Do not let him approach your neck. Anything but that.

Because, my friends, this man is nothing but a humbug. It is only after he has charmed, snuggled, swarmed and sweet-talked his way into the place you were determined he should not go, after your last vestige of resistance has been overcome, after you have recklessly thrown caution to the winds and succumbed to his overweening advances--only then, at 6 AM, will he casually mention the Prior Attachment.

Someone he hasn't seen in years, true, but he has his hopes. And you, with your manifold charms, can only be a second-fiddle snot-rag in comparison to that.

I repeat: approach this wolf in Zen clothing with extreme prejudice. Do not offer to invest money in his visionary schemes; he is the sort of man who will make off with your nest egg, and suddenly remember a Prior Debt that must be fulfilled. Do not be fooled by his wide-eyed musings about the mythic Girlfriend that he wishes he were cooking with. Be blind to his apparent appreciation for thunderstorms in the wilds of Coney Island. Turn a deaf ear to his acute assessment of your wit, your Grecian form, your strength of character and glorious hair.

Pretty Lady only hopes that her eternal shame will serve as a beacon to ward other susceptible ladies from the jagged shoals of this man's perfidious charm.

On International Co-Dependency

Darlings, Pretty Lady doesn't usually read this sort of thing, because it engenders a sense of helplessness and despair, but she did today. And now, difficult as it is, she encourages you to read it, too.

The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60.

The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.

Sadly, this is not a terribly surprising outcome, given our nation's well-intentioned but hopelessly naive attempt to bring peace, stability and democracy to a 'nation' with no intrinsic understanding of these concepts. Problems can generally not be 'fixed' from the outside in. This is true of individuals, and it is true of nations.

Someone very close to Pretty Lady recently noted that nearly every nation goes through a historical period marked by genocide. The United States is no exception. This person remarked that even if enlightened aliens from outer space had arrived and forcibly prevented the Americans of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from massacring the Indians, they would simply have waited until the aliens' backs were turned, and stepped up the importation of smallpox blankets. Elimination of the 'other' appears to be an ineradicable symptom of human adolescence.

Pretty Lady knows, from empirical, personal experience, that when another person is behaving insanely, he cannot be reasoned out of his behavior. You cannot go in and tell him, "Look, you're making yourself miserable; if you'd just stop doing this, you'd be happy." You cannot love him out of it by allowing him to abuse you, either. As painful as it is to sit back and watch, you have to let him experience the consequences of his actions. The best that can be done is damage control; getting young children out of his vicinity, for example.

If a person finally comes to the realization that he is making himself, and everyone around him, miserable, you can then be of some moderate assistance by supporting him in his decision to help himself. You can provide a listening ear, the occasional bit of practical advice, the discretionary economic boost. But he has to do the work himself.

Pretty Lady offers no solutions for the current state of world affairs. She merely offers the observation that attempting to solve a problem often makes matters infinitely worse. The best, and only, solution she has ever found is to let go, and let the Holy Spirit sort it out.

Cherchez la femme

See the Mystery Lady in the background? C'est moi.

Cary Tennis Rocks

Go to Salon.com. Allow them to force-feed you an ad. Go become a Cary Tennis fan, the way Pretty Lady's sister is.

Dear Cary, My wife of 15 years has developed a deep, not quite sexually intimate relationship with an enlightened man, with whom she says she can talk like a girlfriend, share soulful conversation and feel a very deep spiritual connection like we never did.

...I am freaking out. Sometimes I deal with this OK, once I become trusting that she and the other man have not and will not become sexually intimate. But then I see she wishes she could. In fact, she wishes she could with more people!

Dear OK--

Your wife has met a man and fallen for him. They are having an affair. It is what you might call an "unconsummated" affair, but it is an affair.

As a result, you feel bereft, abandoned. Not only that, but you are also confused, because your wife is treating this as something other than an affair -- as a spiritual quest, a chaste apprenticeship, a healthful seminar in better living good for the whole family.

Terminology is important. So let's call this an affair, and let's refer to her lover not as "an enlightened man" but as "the cheater."

...I don't trust your wife. I fear she is the kind of person who broadcasts her deep unhappiness in complicated, deniable ways, so that people around her don't really know what to believe or how to feel...

Cary Tennis has Been There and Done That. He has Lived on the Edge, and has the wisdom to show for it. Pretty Lady has actually done a reading on the same programme as Cary Tennis, once upon a time. He's a rather nondescript little man, in person. But the man can write; he can advise, he can clarify.

Go. Be a fan.

Moody mood

If any of Pretty Lady's readers are in the mood to Wallow, she highly recommends AMC's new album. It seems as though the band has managed to drag Mark back from the abyss of total lack of artistic discipline; the results are quite listenable.

That is, if one is lying on one's back in a darkened room, staring blankly at the lights from passing patrol cars making eerie flickers of despair upon the ceiling.

(BTW, something is wrong with the first track; skip it and proceed directly to "Only Love Can Set You Free.)

How to get to Philadelphia

Find the Manhattan Bridge, at the end of Canal Street. Go under it. You will discover Forsyth Street. A Chinese lady will come running toward you; she will ask, urgently, "Philadelphia?"

Answer "Yes."

She will point you toward a bus. Get on it. Get off in Philadelphia.


While in Philadelphia, go to the Book Trader, at the corner of Market and N. 2nd, and find the strange people with antique cameras and costumes. Get your portrait taken.


Get back on the bus. Return to New York in time to hear the reading at Sunny's.



You will be able to get the good seat at the end of the bar, because two-thirds of the literati are home watching the World Cup. Purchase a Guinness. Bask.

Yet another unseemly meditation

Darlings, you must, simply must, go read Badger's dismembering of the purple prose of Zorro. An excerpt:

"In the following months, Diego, whose blood was boiling with the pent-up desires of his seventeen years, found relief in Amalia's bosom.

[I guess they liked titty f*cking? With ... blood?]

They met at tremendous risk. By making love with a gadje she was violating a basic taboo, for which she could pay dearly. She had been a virgin when she married, the custom among the women of her people, and she had been faithful to her husband till the day he died. ...

[I guess that is an attempt to make her sound complicated... or just for it to be somehow okay that she be a huge slut with a 17 year old. After all, she was virtuous all the *rest* of the time! So it's really okay!]

Lives were lived in full view of the clan. Amalia did not have time or a place to be alone, but occasionally she was able to meet Diego in some quiet alleyway: there she would take him in her arms, always with the insufferable fear of being caught.

[So, let's get this clear - they have sex in a quiet alleyway?

Also: Insufferable fear? Sounds like she suffered it.]

I knew there was a reason Allende gave me hives.

The Equal Opportunity Orgasm

Sigh.

Pretty Lady has tried, repeatedly, to pass the buck on this issue. But it seems, judging by the response to recent postings, that a large number of you have been ignoring her frequent, broad hints about reading Dan Savage. So it seems as though the responsibility falls upon her weary shoulders once again.

Gentlemen, I must ask you this. Is your wife or lady friend frequently out of sorts? Is she grumpy, querulous, impatient, nit-picky, and seemingly absent much of the time? Does she nag? If the answer is 'yes; all too often,' bear this in mind when I ask this next question.

Do you know what a clitoris is?

More than that, do you know how to find it, and what to do with it once you get there?

Gentlemen, these are not unrelated issues. Women, you say, are Mysterious. They go so far as to be Unfathomable at times. They are not direct; they do not say what they mean. They hint, they elide, they say that nothing is wrong. The gentlemen find this frustrating; they get annoyed. In return they call the ladies 'frigid.' They complain that women are not interested in sex; they become downcast, and sometimes seek external company.

Boys, This Is Not So. Listen closely. You may not like what I have to say; you may actively resist it at first. The female orgasm is not a mysterious impossibility; it may be elusive, but it is highly attainable. It also has nothing to do with that bastard Freud.

There is a profound difference, gentlemen, between Turning a Lady On and Getting a Lady Off. The former can be achieved in any number of ways; by playing lead guitar, by catching the winning pass, by backing her against a wall and biting the base of her throat. The latter can usually only be achieved in a single way; by direct, gentle, repetitive, soft, patient flicking sensations on her clitoris.

What drives us stark raving bonkers is when you continually accomplish the former and fall down upon the latter. There is absolutely nothing worse than when a darkly handsome, growly-voiced gentleman backs you confidently over a car hood and commences fingering your panties. He slings you over his shoulder, carries you up two flights of stairs and casts you wantonly upon the futon, unbuttoning your blouse with his teeth. He tongues your nipples and glides his hands all over your shuddering frame, caressing you knowingly in any number of impertinent places. He hammers a row of insistent kisses from your chin to your panty line, stripping away the last shred of fragile silk between himself and your tender skin. He teases, he probes, he overrides your last vestiges of common sense and claims you utterly.

Then he bangs you senseless, rolls over with a sigh of satisfaction and falls asleep.

Boys, I have heard many of you complain about the female tendency to threaten castration, when miffed over personal or political issues. This sort of scenario, I believe, is at the root of this tendency.

Sexual frustration makes women insane. It makes us want to simultaneously burst into tears, dismember a feather pillow and tear the gentleman's hair out. Since we love the gentleman, since we are Relational, we do not do so. We merely become distant, placatory, and passive-aggressive. Can you blame us?

Well, of course you can. This is why Pretty Lady has taken it upon herself to override Freud, and re-educate all the lovely gentlemen of her acquaintance.

The clitoris, dear gentleman, is a small button of exquisite sensitivity, located Front and Center. It can be located by fingering a lady gently, while intently observing her demeanor. The moment she sighs, relaxes, arches her back and rolls her eyes up in her head, you have found it.

Once there, patience is key. You have all the time in the world to lazily caress, explore, strip, probe, nibble, tongue, and roam freely over her sensate skin. A woman's entire body is an erogenous zone. She will lie quiescent and blissfully compliant as long as you are rubbing her back, stroking her hair, sucking her earlobes and twiddling her nipples. But you must come back to the clitoris, and back, and back, and back. All other is in vain, else.

When the moment has arrived to bring your lady to a decided climax, you must be serious, you must be solemn. Juvenile remarks, extraneous slurping noises, negative criticism and needlessly vulgar comments are Right Out. Just because your gonads kicked in when you were thirteen years old, does NOT mean that acting like a thirteen-year-old is sexy. A large part of a woman's erotic temperament is psychological, and you can wilt a sultry female mood quicker than an iris out of water, by reminding her of awful Ronnie Clements from the eighth grade. So cut it out.

No, you must be strong, you must be confident, you must be assertive. You must arrange the lady on her back and make languid, intent circles in the place you have cleverly discovered, while gazing deeply into her eyes. Deliberately, you plant a firm kiss on her navel, and work your way southward. You locate your target and make an experimental probe with your tongue. When she gasps, moans, wriggles convulsively and closes her eyes, continue performing the action which produced this result. Do not stop.

I cannot tell you how important it is that you do not stop.

If you have any experience with playing the bassoon, this will come excessively in handy. Flick. Trill. Tremolo. Maintain a steady, light rhythm. Do not worry about being boring. This is the one occasion when you may repeat yourself ad infinitum and the lady will never even think of complaining.

Flick. Flick. Flick. Do not stop. Do not stop until the lady has gone beyond gasping; until she has gone beyond the ability to verbalize. Do not stop until she has been thrashing from side to side in a frenzy for uncountable seconds, until her body suddenly goes rigid and perfectly still, until she heaves a gargantuan sigh of release and heavenly visitation, and great harmonic tremors go surging through her core. Do not stop even then; do not stop until she cries, brokenly, "Stop! Stop! Stop!"

Then you may slow down. You may broaden your range, you may become creative, you may become gently humorous once again. You may pet your lady.

You may, then, bang her as much as you please; from the front, side, back, against a wall, over a car hood, in any of a hundred tantric positions. She will not be placating you; she will not be concealing any smouldering resentment, she will not ever hint at castration. She may even have another orgasm or two.

But if you repeatedly, selfishly neglect to perform this simple set of actions, you will have no-one to blame but yourself when, full of remorse, you call your ex-lover drunkenly at two in the morning and beg for another chance. She will then declare, with cold indifference, "Why should I bother? YOU never did."

Vindication

Recently viewed: "Find me Guilty" starring Vin Diesel, directed by Sidney Lumet.

Verdict: Vin CAN act! I knew it! I knew it after the first 15 minutes of "The Fast and the Furious!" Nobody else believed me! Little Vinny is all grown up, and I am So Proud.

Caveat: Of course, he's not sexy anymore. He had to grow some sparse, unattractive hair and a gut for this role; without the baldness and the build, the only thing that's cute about him is the shiny, doglike brown eyes and the growly voice. He even puts the brakes on the growl, and becomes jovial and chortly.

But since he was always a bit too much of a lunkhead for Pretty Lady to maintain any sustained interest in him, personally, it's not too big of a sacrifice.

How to Give a Good Christian Blowjob

In the proper circumstances, Pretty Lady is All For bl0wjobs. They assist in natural family planning, they tighten the skin over one's cheekbones, they keep one's husband in a state of rosy contentment. Any good Christian wife who cavils at performing them is taking grave risks with her familial stability. Thus, Pretty Lady has decided to provide some simple bl0wjob guidelines, in the interests purely of ensuring that Good Christian Families stay contentedly together.

Now, ladies, it is paramount to treat your husband's penis with affection, tenderness and respect. Shrinking, shuddering, and refusing to touch it manually for more than a second or two are unseemly behaviors, and are likely to produce despondency in your husband. If you are having trouble overcoming residual pre-marital taboos against stroking, petting, grabbing, massaging or kissing your husband's member, try thinking of it as a small, cuddly animal, like a gerbil or a Guinea pig. One wishes to develop a relationship of casual familiarity with this loveable creature. One ideally should get into the habit of giving it a friendly little pat at every socially appropriate opportunity, just so that it doesn't feel neglected.

When one is preparing to give one's husband the sort of bl0wjob which will reduce him to a gibbering puddle of grateful pheromones, it is best to proceed in stages. Ideally, one should arrange one's timing so that there is nothing boiling over on the stove, the children are in school, and your husband has no crucial business meetings scheduled for the next hour or two. "Quickies" can be useful and enjoyable, but within a long-term relationship one has the opportunity, and indeed the onus, to develop a more extended artistic repertoire.

Thus, begin slowly, even flirtatiously. Give your husband an affectionate hug. Nibble on the place just behind his earlobe. Snuggle your pelvis against his groin, as a sort of hint. Thoughtfully, almost absently, begin to rummage around his fly, with innocent curiosity. If you husband is the man I think he is, you will shortly find yourself reclining upon the nearest horizontal surface. Get those pesky boxer shorts out of the way. Then get down to business.

It is important to understand that the penis has many moods, many phases. In the early stages of erection, the penis is a fragile creature, a sensitive little fiddlehead. One must not play too rough. One caresses it, gently but firmly, until it begins to quiver. As it blossoms into its fuller potential, one's strokes and fondling may become correspondingly more assertive. It is at this point, when a certain stalwart attention has been achieved, that the lips and tongue come into play.

Start by giving the lovely, smooth head of your husband's penis a swirly, affectionate little kiss, including tongue friction, perhaps accompanied by some light, preparatory sucking. Run your tongue around its ridge a few times, exerting a gentle but insistent pressure, lingering in the interesting places with jazzy insouciance, as though the penis were a keyboard and your tongue were John Coltrane. Lick ripplingly up and down the shaft. Continue stroking and caressing with the tips of your fingers, then with your whole hand, paying equal attention to those cute little testicles. This is, of course, a highly intuitive process; you will find yourself almost instinctively meeting pressure for pressure, as your husband's mental focus becomes increasingly concentrated upon the territory which you are so eagerly exploring.

Now it is time to get serious. Take as much of the penis into your mouth as can be comfortably allowed, using your tongue both as a buffer and an active source of creative friction. Where the physical dimensions of your mouth fall short, pick up the slack with your hand. It is PARAMOUNT to avoid dental contact at all times, unless your husband is a masochistic freak. To ensure this, create a tense suction by pulling your lips over your teeth, curling your tongue around and forward, and moving your whole head up and down like a piston, so that the primary source of pen1le stimulation is issuing from your lips, tongue and hand, not your teeth, inner cheeks or throat. Particularly not your throat. That is a fantasy and a myth.

Find your way into a comfortable position, so that you may continue doing this for awhile. Feel free to kneel against the side of the bed or couch, or prop your husband against a wall. You may even strap him symmetrically to the bed, if he is into that sort of thing. Be generous with lubrication. If your cheeks get tired, take a brief rest, continuing manual stroking. Have fun with it. A good bl0wjob is like a sonata; it has movements. Alegro, largo, alegretto.

At a certain point, a crossroads is reached. When your husband begins panting and gasping incoherently, and his penis swells to twice its previous size, you have arrived there. Stay the course. Continue stroking and sucking in a consistent rhythm, if possible even increasing your pressure. Upon the inevitable explosion, remain calm. Take stock of the situation; continue cradling your husband's quavering penis in your mouth, while keeping your tongue flexed and ready to respond. When you feel the time is right, swallow. Then you may purr and continue gently cradling the nice little penis, as it subsides into sleep once again.

Pretty Lady is certain that these instructions are merely basic and preliminary; her worldly experience is not infinite. Please feel free to chime in with additions, suggestions and caveats.

With apologies to Cynthia Heimel.

Related Posts: The Equal Opportunity Orgasm

Ah

Pretty Lady narcissistically thinks that this is a painting of her Id, despite the fact that the artist, Sophie Jodoin, has never heard of her.

The Progressive Male

Good afternoon, dear Mr. Nelson! I do hope you are well.

Mr. Nelson asked a tongue-in-cheek question about the Progressive Male. This question was answered in typical tongue-in-cheek manner by various non-progressives around him; Pretty Lady will now endeavor to address the matter seriously. Pot-shots from the balcony are, however, welcome.

progressive adj 1 a: of, relating to, or characterized by progress b: making use of or interested in new ideas, findings or opportunities c: of, relating to, or constituting an educational theory marked by emphasis on the individual child, informality of classroom procedure, and encouragement of self-expression.

The scourge of Pretty Lady's existence has been, truthfully, Boring Men. Pretty Lady admits that the fact that most men bore her is not their fault. Cursed with an abnormally high IQ, an addictive reading habit, and a voracious yearning after wisdom, Pretty Lady has found, to her sadness and dismay, that when the average fellow bares the deeps of his soul to her, her response, more often than not, is to reflect, "Yes, I thought of that. When I was about twelve."

(She doesn't say this, of course. What she says is generally along the lines of, "Ah! M-hmmm. Interesting." It doesn't do to give the dear boys a complex.)

And truthfully, the Boringness Quotient has, in the long run, little to do with native intellect. It has much more to do with laziness. The average human male, in the absence of severe threats to his personal survival, reaches an age between twenty-five and thirty and simply stops thinking. By the time he is twenty-five, he has generally decided 1) what his political beliefs are; 2) what his ethical/religious beliefs are; 3) what his career goals are; 4) what kind of women he likes to sleep with; and 5) where he likes to go on vacation. All intellectual and social pursuits thereafter are dedicated toward reinforcing and defending these points of view.

By the time he is fifty, such a man has intellectually ossified to such an extent that his habits of thinking are irreversibly stamped upon his physiognomy. He has a pronounced, entrenched gut. He has two severe lines extending from nose to jowl, and a wattle beneath. His upper lip is perfectly straight, with perhaps a slight downturn at the corners. His shoulders are stooped and knotted, his lower back is in constant pain, and his limbs are thick and inflexible.

It is at this point that the gentleman calls upon Pretty Lady, complaining of chronic pain, and she employs her afternoon in beating him up, trying to reverse in one hour the effects of two decades of circular thinking. Pretty Lady is grossly underpaid.

So much for the non-progressive male.

The Progressive Male, on the other hand, has an attitude toward life resembling that of the Dalai Lama. Pretty Lady has never met the Dalai Lama in person, but from the books and interviews she's read by and about him, she must say that the man is a sweetheart. Whenever presented with an idea which is unfamiliar to him, or even one which is familiar, the Dalai Lama is likely to reply, "Hmmm. Let me consider that." In order to further explore this idea, the Dalai Lama will ask thoughtful, probing questions of its propounder. He will not make a blanket judgment; he takes it, and you, seriously.

If the propounder of the idea is, in fact, a jackass, said jackass is left to come to this conclusion on his own. The Dalai Lama loves him anyway.

In Pretty Lady's view, the Progressive Male is not a male who subscribes to any particular social or political beliefs. He is not necessarily a liberal, a feminist, a socialist, a Buddhist, or a queer. In fact, a man who identifies himself by any particular '-ism' for a prolonged length of time is, ipso facto, not progressive. The Progressive Male makes Progress. He explores, he questions, he challenges, he learns a new trade. In the course of these explorations, he sometimes comes to some startling conclusions; he may even discover that our forefathers were right about some things. But he never takes anything for granted.

You see, darlings, we live in a world which is chock full to the brim with Different People. Pretty Lady has empirically discovered, in her profession, that not only are people Different, but they are all Valid. Each one hangs together in his or her own personal, complex, inimitable way. They may be ossified, they may be foolish, they may be entrenched and isolated and despairing, but each of them has a point of view, and if one takes the trouble to explore this point of view, one can generally learn something.

The non-progressive male (or female; let us cease this arbitrary sexism) makes the blanket assumption that those who do not share his or her point of view are stupid and not worth considering. Such non-progressives, in their extreme form, make the assumption that those Other People out there are actually evil, and must be destroyed. Such assumptions manifest themselve in increasingly belligerent behavior, as well as pronounced guts and facial wattles. Thus, even if a non-progressive is correct in some of his assumptions, he becomes increasingly difficult to be around.

Progressives, of course, can be even more difficult to be around. They can sometimes make you downright uncomfortable, particularly when they insist on selling their stock options and their apartment and taking off around the world, or starting a subsistence farm, or quitting their jobs and putting every cent of home equity into a real-estate startup. They have been known to depart abruptly for Buddhist monasteries. Engaging one's life with a Progressive is not for the faint of heart or will. It frequently requires patience, resourcefulness, and the willingness to part ways when the Progressive goes too far.

But Pretty Lady has always preferred this to the sort of fellow who sits behind his Wall Street Journal and makes a variation of the same snarky comment, every single day. Life, as they say, is too short.

Must...leave...city

The ice cream truck has been parked outside Pretty Lady's studio window for the last two hours, playing 'The Music Box Dancer' in its inimitable, tinny way, over and over and over. How many more signs do we need? Is there any cat lover out there who is interested in a city summer sublet?

The Brat appears to have overcome his bladder problems once again. Here he is, impersonating a squashed cockroach, upon the thoroughly shampoo'd and reconstituted sofa.



This afternoon the cats lunched upon an impromptu rice pudding, consisting of rice, raw egg, and vanilla water buffalo yogurt. They didn't exactly devour the whole bowl, but they didn't vociferously complain, either.

Pretty Lady can see the writing on the wall. She is headed full-tilt toward becoming an Old Lady With Cats. The horror! She MUST take up sea-kayaking at once.

Paranoia

Pretty Lady is pleased to report that she has become, probably, the last person in New York City to trade dial-up Internet access for high-speed cable. In order to celebrate her new ability to access things like Internet video in real time, as opposed to four-hour downloads, she clicked on a link to a 9/11 conspiracy video. Upon taking a break to make a phone call, she discovered that both her land line and her cell phone are non-functional. This is distinctly odd. Distinctly.

Surely this is a coincidence. But in case you do not hear from Pretty Lady again, let it be known that she loves you. She can't really think of anything else important to communicate; that pretty much covers it.