Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Chapter 21: Male Gold Diggers Do Exist

Susan Ellen showed me a picture of her husband.

Oh dear God.

It was a male gold digger. I thought it was only an urban myth, but, no, male gold diggers exist.

She told me he was unemployed because of the writer's strike (such a wonderful excuse for being lazy at the time!) and I didn't realize until a few weeks in that he spends all of his time in the basement and never leaves. He never even answers the door or the phone. I don't think he knows how to.


"Isn't he cute?" she asked.

His front tooth was missing and he had a mullet. His hair was pulled into a ponytail. Had the picture not been in a heart-shaped frame, I would’ve thought it was mug shot of an animal rapist.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Chapter 20: A Big Political Discussion

While I was working on her couch, Susan Ellen was watching The View.

She had a list of people she needed to call. They included Mark Wahlberg, a hearing center in Beverly Hills, her mom, and Prince William.

She kept getting distracted by telling her dogs to shut-up every time her housecleaner would put another pile of white sheets into her washer.

Anyway, the ladies on The View broke into their “Hot Topics” discussion and of course, Elizabeth Hasselbeck started saying something about how Hillary Clinton is a hypocrite because she uses tampons or something like that.

Having no social decency, Susan Ellen proceeded to ask me whom I was voting for.

It was at this point of 2008 when I was learning to bite my tongue whenever I told people I was voting for Kucinich.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“I’m voting for Hillary not for Bam Bam.”

“Who? Oh, Barack Obama?”

“Yeah. I can’t say his name. Anyway, I went to this psychic in the fall and she told me that Iran is going to nuke us if Hillary isn’t president. So I’m voting for Hillary. I don’t want to get nuked so…”

She looked at my condescendingly, as if my personal vote against Clinton would be the reason for nuclear war.

The funny thing is that I went to a liberal arts school and I have heard more ridiculous reasons to vote for a candidate than this.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Chapter 19

It's still the first day. Susan Ellen asked me to organize all of her bookmarks in her Safari browser into these categories:

Diet
Skin
Hair
Colon Cleanse
Liver Cleanse and Toxins
Gallbladder Cleanse
Adopting Asian Babies
Body Wraps
Shopping
Al-Anon
12-Step
Spiritual
Hearing-AIDS
John Cusack

"Hm…." I thought. "What can I learn about Susan Ellen that involves all of these bookmarks?"

She obviously wants to adopt drunk and deaf Asian babies to go shopping with and later eat them and digest them properly. Oh, and she must really like Bullets Over Broadway.

Before I knew it, I realized that Susan Ellen was sitting near me on the couch talking to me and not to Daisy Ellen on her cellphone.

"I work a lot. Like, I'm constantly working. I have so much stuff going on. Where do you live?"

"In the Silver Lake/ Los Feliz area."

"What?"

"Silver-"

"I'm sorry. I'm deaf. I need to tell everyone this. I'm deaf in one ear. So I have a hard time hearing..."

(I think most people who are deaf have a hard time hearing.)

"Oh, ok."

"So, where do you live? I forgot. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, I lost my short-term memory. So I forget things quickly."

"I don't think you forgot; I just think you didn't hear-"

One of her puppies jumped up onto her lap.

"Who's my little baby?"

She suddenly forgot she was talking to me.