Susskins Central Dispatch

Even though you often forget it immediately

Found out something new about Fred’s pickup yesterday. Fred was having trouble with the clutch. (He likes manual transmissions.) It kept sticking on him. So he took it to the shop for a checkup.

Turns out he was low on clutch fluid.

Neither of us had any idea that clutches had gone hydraulic. No clue. When he first told me, it sounded like a joke, like when you tell a gullible teenager that he needs to check the blinker fluid every Autumn. But sure enough, there’s a little reservoir that holds brake fluid, specifically to run the clutch. So it’s now filled back up, and the clutch is working fine again.

What’s next? Door fluid?

Where the only vegetables are potatoes and pickles

Courtesy of Neil Gaiman, I’ve seen the website to end all food websites.

This is why you’re fat.

I now have heartburn.

That’s one more than ten, I think

As of today, Fred and I have been together for eleven years. I cannot understand how this happened, and have been searching inside myself for an explanation of how eleven years can pass so quickly.

I’m guessing that drugs are the reason.

I can’t even fathom what my life would be like without you, Fred. Happy anniversary, sweetheart. You make me so happy that I’m fit to burst sometimes.

Hopefully you’ll help me clean up the mess.

Oh, good. You’ve got a trashcan handy.

It’s all a trick

We just got back from Coraline.

Fucking riveting. EXACTLY the kind of movie I love. Right down to the dead Scotties and the luminous flowers.

It’s a fairly complicated story, which I love. No, that’s not right. The story isn’t complicated; the situation is. The story is fairly straightforward. But the elements of the story are full of forks and twists, and take you down paths you don’t expect. And those wandering, crooked little paths all eventually get you to your destination.

There are a couple of names in the voice cast, but they don’t matter. You won’t recognize the voices, and I consider that a blessing. I hate having recognizable voices in animated films; they take me away from the characters. (Instead of saying, “that’s the Genie,” you end up saying, “that’s Robin Williams as the Genie.” It’s a distraction to me. I prefer not to know who the actor is, or at least not recognize the voice.)

The visuals are astonishingly freakish, and beautiful in a dreadful way. If your children are troubled by the weird, this is not the movie for them. There are some very disturbing images of people who are transformed, or modified, or punished. The main villain also eventually assumes a really nightmarish form. This movie will give some children long bouts of night terrors.

One interesting development; about three quarters of the way through, the fire alarm went off. So the entire cineplex (all 16 screens) emptied out, and we all got to stand outside for fifteen minutes while the fire department checked the place out. Turned out to be a faulty sensor.

We eventually got back in to finish the movie. We only missed a couple of minutes, but unfortunately they were right at a very critical moment. Wasn’t hard to pick up what was going on, but it made for a bit of a disjointed ending. So now we have free passes to use another time.

If you have the opportunity, I recommend you go see Coraline, especially if you’re near a theater that runs digital/3D. Great movie.

let me show you it

Just watched the premiere episode of I Love Money 2. It’s one of the celebutard reality contest shows on VH-1, and without doubt has the dumbest cast of any of these shows ever.

I am not joking. There are people on it who can hardly talk, they’re so stupid. You wonder how they manage to get dressed in the morning. You wonder how they can get food into their mouths without assistance. You wonder how they remember to breathe.

Most of the women are straight-up strippers and whores, and most of the men are spikey-haired goombah douches. They make Survivor contestants look like model citizens. Outclassed by Survivor contestants, for god’s sake. That’s like being outwitted by Homer Simpson.

Tamara, who got (ahem) “bounced” from the first episode, had stated that she wanted to use the winnings to buy a houseboat and live on it. In Malibu. When asked if she had ever seen a houseboat on the ocean, she responded with, “where else would it be, in a lake?” She then later revealed that she was phobic about water. When dumped at the end, she freaked out and yelled at the crew for exploiting the contestants. She then called everyone else losers and stupid.

Not that she didn’t have a point, but she also called herself a winner despite being the first person eliminated on the show. And then managed to walk into a closet while trying to exit the place.

This is a train wreck show beyond any I’ve ever seen, and I love train wreck shows. I can hardly wait for next Monday’s episode.

Set phasers to delicious

At the request of my sweetie, a batch of brownies just came out of the oven. The house is perfumed with the moist, delicious scent of baked goods.

For the record, I don’t generally do scratch brownies. I’m fine with a mix. While I’ve made some very good brownies in the past, I’ve found that the results are not enough of an improvement for me to worry about. So I keep a box of whatever catches my eye at the grocery store. Mix it up, throw some mini chocolate chips on top, and fling it in the oven.

There is general ooh-ing and ah-ing over the results, and that’s good enough for me. And for him.

Hmmm. He just came home and shouted something about “a big batch of brownies.” I suspect that if I go upstairs in ten minutes, there’ll be a big chunk missing from the pan. Despite them being warm and sticky yet.

And now the man informs me that he stopped at McDonalds for an ice cream cone. It’s a chocolate-heavy night for Fred.

My arteries, they fail me

Remember the bacon rollup from a few weeks ago? I found something even worse.