Lynn Ruth Miller

FAT AND THIN

Thin people are beautiful
But fat people are adorable.
Jackie Gleason

There is a study out trying to figure out why lesbians tend to be overweight and it is totally misdirected.  It isn’t lesbians who tend to be plump, it is good cooks and who was the best cook ever?

Answer:  Your mother.

No one in the world made better macaroni and cheese or apple pie. When your mum made you breakfast, no restaurant could match it and certainly your dad couldn’t do much at the stove except for an outdoor barbeque or one fancy company dish like his famous crab cioppino.

The truth is that it isn’t lesbians who have to fight their weight, it is anyone, male, female, straight or gay who loves to cook. If you have a way with food you are going to taste what you create…and those itty-bitty spoonfuls of chocolate custard or Alfredo sauce go straight to the hips.

Look at our own darling Andrew Kaye. He has never cooked for me (yet) but he knows good food.  He savors the texture, recognizes the bouquet of herbs and spices and respects dramatic cuisine.  His silhouette is certainly not angular.  It is just round enough.

For my part, I refuse to go to a skinny persons house for dinner.  I am not going to waste a meal on someone who doesn’t present each dish with a bit of flair and an eye for flavor.  I made that mistake only once.  A woman who shall remain nameless in case she figures out why I am always busy at dinnertime when she calls, invited me over for a gala holiday celebration. She was the type who spent mornings at the gym, bench-pressing hundreds of pounds.  Afternoons she worked out on the trampoline and evenings she did Zumba.  The truth is I should have known what to expect.

I appeared, bottle of wine in hand with an empty, expectant tummy and what did I see?  Pizza delivered from the corner shop, pre-sliced mass-produced bread and instant coffee. I know you won’t believe me, but the only spread available was marmite.   There wasn’t even background music to hide the gagging of the guests.  I immediately feigned a headache and hustled over to the nearest Waitrose for a gourmet experience.  A dinner is a terrible thing to lose…especially if you skipped lunch.

So I am campaigning for people to stop casting negative aspersions on corpulence.  Give me someone with a decent amount of curves and a good wiggle to their walk and I will immediately lobby to share a meal with them.  If you are lean, buff and tanned I would not dream of touching your soup, much less your flambé cherries jubilee. Show me a comfy, well-padded cheerful person in a flowered apron and I am right there at her dinner table.  I promise to bring the wine.

OH, YOU BEAUTIFUL DOLL!!!!

People are obsessed with…
Hairless, fatless Barbie Dolls.
Gaby Hoffman

A U.S. study has concluded that the dolls you play with influence your career choices.  When American children play with sexy Barbie dolls, they want to grow up to do girlie things like go to Hollywood and get humped by the stars but when they play with dolls made out of potatoes, they think there is no limit to what they can do with their lives.  It all goes to show that image is everything.

You have to admit that when you see curvaceous women in movies and on television, they are always doing very feminine things like flirting with policemen or dancing provocatively in revealing undies.  You KNOW instinctively that women like that never pay for a meal or have to take a bus home.  It is the thick-ankled, ladies in print dresses with no visible cleavage, who end up locked to a stove and a Hoover in their prime.  And what fun is that?

Every med student who specializes in plastic surgery instead healing the poor knows what a money-maker that pre-conceived notion is. Ordinarily clever women will blow their grocery money on a shot of silicone to puff up their lips, just to be like the toys we played with as a child.  If we change our playthings, our self-image will change as well.  We won’t give a toss about Barbie’s or Ken’s silhouette. We will thirst for the bumps and curves of a root vegetable.

Indeed, we can restructure our children’s ambitions by giving them potatoes to play with instead of human-shaped dolls.  They can dress their little tubers in frilly dresses or put them in macho uniforms with matching caps and carry them around to cuddle and talk to when Mummy and Daddy won’t listen.  If you start a child early enough, his goals in life will become far more realistic. Young women will ache to become thick-wasted, faceless entities with little protrusions on their skin like the playthings that comforted them when they took a nap;  boys will no longer gobble up porn with its images of hairless, busty women and muscular, well-hung men.  Instead, they will go crazy with desire when they see a local farmer yanking a yam out of the earth.

I envision a new world where the elderly with their aging bodies and shapeless silhouettes will suddenly become the most sought-after centerfolds in magazines and on the screen. Estrogen-deprived women with moustaches will turn on men with potbellies and bowing legs and anyone who dares to eat chips will be accused of cannibalism.

So take heart all you people with bad measurements and loose body parts.  Your time will soon be here. If you wait long enough, your image will be ”in.”

.

DOING IT

Independence is happiness.
Susan B Anthony

The world is filled with unhappy people and I believe that is because we no longer experience the joy of doing things for ourselves.  Think of it.  We don’t use our hands the way we used to any more.  Time was when we used them to open a door, turn on a faucet or dry our hair.  Now the only thing we use them for is to roll a joint or prove a point. Flushing a toilet once demanded a hands-on effort.  Now, it is a one finger operation and often, it involves simply standing up after the job is done.

I am so old I remember when we brushed our teeth with great vigor using our muscles (no batteries).  We dried ourselves with a towel and we got down on our hands and knees to wash the floor.  We used a scythe to cut the grass and experienced the bliss of being in the glorious outdoors with the sun on our backs and our arms swinging to the rhythm of our hearts.

We no longer need to use our fingers to type a message much less actually pen a note to a loved one or the milkman.  He too is only a memory.  He has been replaced by a refrigerated case at the supermarket.  When we want to know how to get from here to there, we simply speak our request into our electronic devices and technology responds.

Now, we no longer have to drive our cars and that is a terrible loss. Google has taken away the joy of the open road, windows open, top down, accelerator slammed to the floor. Remember the sense of freedom, the power? Oh, the sheer exhilaration of flying down the highway, traffic whizzing past you and all of life awaiting at your destination?

Sure.  We won’t have as many crashes. Far fewer people will be mutilated or murdered on the road.  But is it worth the sacrifice of the joy of connecting with the immense force of your vehicle knowing you alone are its master?

And what does this loss of control do to the human psyche? We no longer feel in control of our destinies.  When doors open with a sensory device and cars take us to our destination by a route of their own choosing, we no longer can steer our unique course through our individual lives.  What has happened to the sense of self we once had when we swept the floor with a broom and decided for ourselves if that dust bunny deserved to be dismissed to the dust bin?

I laud progress and respect technology, but if I have the choice I would rather use the force of my will to guide me through my life. When I malfunction, I can change direction; but when technology fails, the car stalls, the dishwasher floods and I get a concussion speeding through a closed door.

MY FAMILY, MY DOG

There is no psychiatrist in the world
Like a puppy licking your face.
Ben Williams

When Daphne sits on my lap, my blood pressure drops 30 points.  Why bother with Lipitor?  Daphne is not dispensed to me by a pharmacist although she is definitely good medicine. She is a five-pound Chihuahua with blue eyes and an attitude.  However, when she sits on MY lap, her blood pressure elevates…and no wonder.  She is at work; she is doing her job.

Daphne’s mother dresses her in high fashion: ruffled skirts with matching knickers and booties, a warm hoodie to wear when she and her mum are on the slopes and a bright strawberry vest to welcome spring.

Daphne has a stubborn anal gland that does not process her food properly and her mother has spent hundreds, nay, thousands of pounds on Daphne’s alimentary canal, to no avail.  At last, her mother resorted to holistic remedies and feeds Daphne a nightly soupcon of pumpkin and rice to soothe her aching bottom.

Daphne is well aware of her privileged position in the family.  She dines with us at our table.  We do not consider her germs as lethal as those of her former daddy or all her cousins…some with four legs, some with only two.   We all know her preferences and we do our best to keep her as happy as her presence makes us.  She does not like the rain; she considers walking on the other end of a leash demeaning; she loves to watch movies and never so much as woofs lest she disturb the others watching with her.  We know that Daphne is absorbing the action on the screen because she often weeps at a sad ending, and she still wails when she remembers what happened to poor Jackie Robinson.

We who know and love Daphne think she is unique but it appears that she is no different than any other dog in any other home anywhere in the world.  One look at her stimulates human oxytocin, a bonding hormone that increases our trust and attachment to those close to us and makes us suspicious of strangers.  The fact is that the longer Daphne stares at me, the more I love her and want to shoot that yapping little dachshund next door. This explains why we think nothing of spending half our wages on Daphne’s attire, rushing her to a doctor at the slightest hint that she is not in perfect health even as we ignore our own coughs, tummy spasms and exploding lungs. She is far more than part of our family…she is the very adhesive that keeps us together. For, although we all  have spats with one another over toilet seats left up or down, toothpaste tubes squeezed wrong and dishes unwashed, we all unite in our love for Daphne.  It is she who keeps us human.

Percy is a Corgi without a tail.  He stares at me with the same intensity Jewish men look at me.  You know: something is missing and he doesn’t remember how he lost it.  The interesting thing is that the more Percy stares at me, the more I adore him.  I cannot say the same for Jewish men.

Dorothy is a shih’ Tzu with a raging metabolism. When she sits on your lap, you can feel the heat of her tiny little body warm you right to your toes. When her blood pumps through her veins and burns her calories you will swear the house is on fire.  Dorothy’s mother says she has saved 1000 pounds a year on heating bills and her only cost is dog food.  That, after all, is Dorothy’s fuel and it is a lot cheaper than petrol.

Dogs are miracles with paws.
Susan Kennedy

DIRT

Dirt gets no respect.
My boyfriend

More than 1 in 12 deaths are caused by the dirt we breathe.  Man made particles are clogging up the air and getting into our lungs and our bloodstreams.  Indeed, they are messing up our health and threatening our environment.

But what can we do?  We have to breathe and manufacturers need to make filthy engines to run our lives.  Sometimes we need to compromise our values in the name of progress. I believe a filthy life is worth the risk.

We need to experience a certain amount of dirt so we can recognize clean.  My gran ate a mud pie every morning until she was 10 years old.  “Sometimes I added a bit of tree bark for flavor and once in a while a cricket to give it crunch,” she said. ”My mother never knew because I snuck one in right after my morning dump, but she did ask uncomfortable questions when my teeth got a funny tinge.   We didn’t have whiteners in my day.”

My gran lived to 110 and on her death-bed she begged for a bit of dirt with her last breath.  We fed her two dust bunnies and a clump of sod from her African violet and she left us with a smile on her face.

Pregnant women in Wales craved coal to eat with the same intensity that New York mothers-to-be ached for a dill pickle.  Babies born in Wales showed no ill effects from their mothers’ blackened diets.  Indeed, Welsh choirs often attribute the purity of their tone to the anthracite in their systems.

I believe we are depriving ourselves of the very essence of life with our determination to purify everything we touch, breathe or feel.  An apple with the film of air, dust and insects nesting on their skins has twice the flavor of one tossed and whirled in a sanitizing bath of disinfectant and wiped with a sterile cloth.  A hand roughened by the soil of the day has far more warmth than one damp and sticky with hand cleaner that reeks of disinfectant.

Even natural human reproduction from conception to birth is riddled with mess, drippings and germs.  I, for one, prefer the old fashioned way to sanitary lab controlled in vitro procedures. If the cost of passion is a bit of risk and a possible germ, I am up for it.

Down and dirty is the way to go if you are to experience the lust and excitement of a rich full life.  If you are afraid of foreign objects compromising your health, you are doomed to a life filled with fear and your every moment will be preoccupied with prevention.  A clean germ free life is bland, boring and repetitive. To me, soap and disinfectants are for cowards. I’ll take my chances on the  feel of an unwashed handshake or the warmth of an unsanitary cuddle. They are so worth the risk.

BLUSHING

Blushing is the color of virtue.
Diogenes

Blushing has gone out of style and I think that is a terrible loss.  There is no better way of reading between the lines than to check the degree of rosiness on another’s face.   My mother could tell in an instant if I had eaten that chocolate bar, stolen the car keys or missed a period.  All she had to do is say “What are you doing?” and look at me when I answered  “Worrying about the state of the world.”  or “Trying to figure out what to get you for your birthday.”

I would always get a retort like “No dessert tonight,” or “I am calling your probation officer.”  My mother was one smart cookie. She always knew better.

Blushing was one of the best communicators we had in the old days.  For example, if you looked in your wallet and several bills were missing, you could look your partner in the eye and say, “Funny, I can’t seem to find the cash for that holistic medical procedure we discussed.” One look told you that he spent it all on fish and chips. (It is always a he…women use less obvious tactics).

When I taught primary school, blushing was the key to figuring out which kid stole my purse and which one was smoking something in the halls. I do not know how teachers cope today when nothing embarrasses anyone and everyone has the Internet for retaliation.   Nowadays, our children do not color up when they are naughty.  They either post their remarks on face book with a filthy picture or tweet their fury with a lot of hash tags.

People are no longer shocked.  We used to blush if our skirts blew over our heads in a strong wind.  Now, we remember to wear lacey underwear in case someone sitting on the floor looks up. That is why wax jobs have become primary grooming tools. Cleavage has become an advertising tool for the ladies, to say nothing of very tight underwear for the male population.  Women no long have to wonder what seven inches looks like.  All they have to do is look.

I am all for accepting who we are and what we do, but I think it is sad that we have lost our sense of shame.  It is actually very sweet to kiss someone unexpectedly and have him blush with surprise.  It has become a lost technique to take someone’s hand, look into his eyes and say I KNOW what you are thinking.” If that person turned red you knew he had the same thing on his mind that you did.

That kind of subtlety has gone out of style.  Now, you take a selfie of your private parts, post it on Tinder and hope for the best.

BEST DIGS EVER

If you want total security, go to prison…..
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I have always wanted to be daring and do something absolutely outrageous…but the truth is I fear the punishment.  I have read horror stories of what happens in prisons: brutality, rape, lousy plumbing…and I want none of it.  However, I am in the unenviable position of losing my house because it is under water and I am looking around for affordable housing for my declining years.  Unfortunately, the only shelter that is “affordable” for me on my pension is a used Yurt in the Andes or an abandoned cave in New Mexico.

Imagine my delight when I discovered the Maconochie Center, a prison in Canberra, Australia specifically designed to pamper lawbreakers with so much smother love that they realize the only way to have little fun is to obey the law and get out on parole.  The philosophy at Maconochie is that if you give love, you will receive it. I think that is a wonderful attitude.  It didn’t work for me with my two husbands, but it has been overwhelmingly successful with my dog.

The “guards” at the prison (called service providers) refer to the inmates as customers and do their best to give the darlings in their care whatever will make them feel wanted and secure.    If one of their customers is feeling a bit depressed, why not cheer him up with a couple gin and tonics, a shot of heroin and a little sniff of cocaine.  Whatever works as they say in the trade.

The residents at Maconochie Center live together in five bedroom cottages.  There is never a problem if a rapist cannot get along with the guy who strangled his baby.  Maconochie Center has mediators on call to help the boys (you KNOW they are boys) settle their differences.  Perhaps one of them needs a long walk in the country…where there are willing sheep?  Perhaps the other needs apple pie a la mode?  Who knows?  The staff at the center are there to help.

It sounds like a very fun place to live for me.   All I would have to do is grow a bit of cannabis in my yard before my foreclosure and sell it in a schoolyard.  If I wanted to be certain I could stay at this lovely place for the rest of my life (and after all, I am 81 years old.  How long can that be?)  I would have to toss someone around screaming “I am going to kill you!”  My mother said that to me often enough.  I know I can be convincing.  The good news is that I don’t actually have to plunge the knife into anyone’s heart…all I need to do in Australia is make the judge believe I really meant to do the deed.

The weather in Canberra is perfect for me.  You get four seasons, none too hot or too cold and at Maconochie there are endless opportunities to explore the outdoors.  I can use my computer at all hours and if I have a severe pain, I can get a prescription strong enough to use for recreation after the pain has disappeared.  But the best news of all is that there has been a rash of pregnancies at the center since it opened.  Why, I could finally have that baby I always wanted and not have to worry about dealing with the little sweetheart when it becomes a teenager.  By that time I will be long gone and the Maconochie service providers can take over.

BE GOOD TO YOUR PARENTS….OR ELSE!

Appreciating your parents is the only hope for civilization.
The Chinese Government & Lynn Ruth

China has decided it is a punishable crime for adult children to neglect their parents and I think that is a very wise decision. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for us all, if every nation followed suit?

It is about time someone took steps to stop the shameless way grown progeny are treating their parents these days. Elderly parents sit at home in their wheel chairs or on the sofa, counting the moments ‘til one of their offspring remembers that they are too weak and tired to get to Tesco’s; the hours tick by, their tummies gurgle, their heads ache and they stare at the door, praying it will open and the heir to their estate will appear bearing bubble and squeak and even a bit of pudding.

After all, parents have every right to expect their children to be there for them. Didn’t they clean up Junior when he got a bloody nose?  Didn’t they give their little princess dancing lessons so she could express her inner feelings? They let her get that disgusting tattoo of Frankenstein chewing a bunny and they never said a word when she appeared at the breakfast table, her hair dyed purple and three rings in her nose.

And that was before they became teen-agers.

They looked the other way, when their little darlings sold pot to the neighborhood grade-school kids, and the countless times they threw up on the couch from an overdose or got too affectionate with one another.  Remember that?

Didn’t they sacrifice that extra cruise, and the trip to see penguins copulate on an iceberg just so their son could go to university and their daughter could afford that abortion?  Of course they did.

And that is why the Chinese Government decided to step up to the plate and remind us that we owe Mummy and Daddy big time.  They were the ones who kept us alive through the bullying, the bike accidents, the shattered limbs and broken hearts.  Now, it is the children’s turn to keep their parents comfy and warm ‘til they breathe their last.  After all, there is always time to change the will, if they feel unloved.

Not that it will be easy if the law becomes universal. Take Mary Louise:  There she is galloping though her day, getting the kids to school, packing their lunches, rushing off to the office, picking up her darlings, and taking them to tap dancing and soccer, driving home, giving the house a quick dust, fixing dinner, greeting the father of her gang with a drink, serving food, cleaning the kitchen and collapsing in front of the telly.  At midnight, she and her hubby stagger up to bed, too exhausted to do what they used to do before they tied the knot. Suddenly, she sits bolt upright, snaps her fingers and says, “OH MY GOD!!!  I forgot to visit Daddy.  Now, we’ll never pay off this mortgage.”

And if her partner is a good sort, he says, “Don’t worry darling. I will visit you every Tuesday and bring chocolate.”

REMEMBER ME?

Look back and smile on perils past.
Walter Scott

It happens every day.  You open Facebook and find some forgotten person from long ago. My friend Barry re-discovered Gloria, his high school sweetheart there.  They both had been widowed the year before and…well, you know the rest.  They are now madly in love spending hot and heavy weekends together reminiscing about that lousy math teach who drove everyone crazy and the big mistake they made marrying someone else first.

I have not been so lucky.  The people who re-connect with me on Facebook are all part of a nightmare I prefer to erase.  They remind me that they knew me when I wore braces on my teeth and wandered through life with my head in a cloud, my feet encased in orthopedic oxfords.  I do not want to relive a time when I was ruled by parents, teachers and consensus.  Those days are past.

I can only suspect that the ones who contact me are so senile they do not remember anything more than my name. There could be no other reason.  I was not the hottest item on the block in days gone by.

Nonetheless, I fell in love with the unattainable on a regular basis and went to great lengths to let my targets know I was available.  When I look back on all of them now, I realize how desperate I was. Did I really want that short, pimply guy in my history class?  And why did my heart flutter at the sight of a boy in uniform.  Didn’t I realize that clothes cannot transform a boy into a man?

Not long ago, I got a friend request from Donny Okun who fancied me when I was nineteen and still hopeful. He was a sailor then who wore his bell-bottom trousers tight enough so I could see clearly what he had to offer. He sent me bouquets of roses every week for a month and then asked me to come with him to Canada for a night on the town.

OMG!  I was crossing the border with an honest-to-god sailor and you know what they say about sailors!!!  I threw caution to the winds and wore my most décolleté dress so he could see my equipment as clearly as I could see his.  We got in the car, I lit a cigarette and tossed the match out the window.

However, the window was closed and the flaming match ricocheted into my cleavage.  As both of us burrowed into my dress to keep me from bursting into flame, I realized all too clearly that I needed more than a pair of tight trousers to commit.

And now, this guy wants us to be friends?

I hit delete.  It was one of the wisest decisions I have ever made.

ART IS GOING TO THE APES

An ape cannot speak about his art
Anymore than a monkey can discuss a his digestion.
Jacques Cocteau and Lynn Ruth

In the late sixties, a gorilla won the Modern Art competition at the Detroit Museum of Art. The animals’ owner put several tubes of paint and a blank canvas in the ape’s cage.  The furry artist, whom I shall call Sybil, stomped on the tubes of paint and smeared the colors on the canvas with her paws.  After an hour, she tired of dancing and began eating the tubes of paint.  Her owner pulled the canvas out of her cage, hosed Sybil down and was amazed at the finished canvas.   It reminded him of a combination of a Jackson Pollack with a smattering of Kandinsky, a dash of Picasso and traces of Klee.  When Sybil’s masterpiece dried, he varnished it, framed it and entered it in the museum’s competition.

To his delight, the painting won first prize.  He bought a jeweled collar for Sybil, pinned a pink ribbon in her hair and brought her to the award ceremony. It was a little dicey getting her in the front door  but the owner insisted she was a service animal  He managed to keep her from molesting the guests by feeding her bananas and bit of cadmium red. When they called his name to accept the award, Sybil joined him on stage.  He told the astounded judges that it was not he who created the masterpiece they so admired.  It was his Sybil.

Years later, I took a class with the fabulously talented realistic painter Joseph Sheppard and he told me that Sybil was indeed a magnificent talent.  Indeed, he had joined her in her cage a few years after her triumph to raise money for the museum.  Together they painted a still life that hangs now in that same museum.

Evidently, gorillas not only paint, but they know what they are painting. Sister and brother gorillas Michael and Koko were taught sign language.  As a result, Koko (the artist in the family) was able to explain to her curator Dr. Penny Patterson, that she had painted a bird.

Just this past month, word is out that a zoo in North Dakota is selling the artwork of its 275 pound orangutan named Tal. His paintings are so colorful that they literally fly off the wall.  The animal’s favorite color is yellow and often he eats as much of the paint as he smears on his canvases. “Could be because it looks like a banana,” said the zoo’s curator.

There is no doubt that creativity is fundamental in the ape psyche. The animals  love using crayons, pencils and finger paint although they prefer oils they can eat. Everyone knows that children have the same propensity to eat the colors they use to paint. I believe we can learn a lot from the apes and their ability to transform their creative efforts into funds that support their favorite institutions.  I propose that we exhibit and sell all the paintings from local kindergarten classes to pay for amenities in their schools.  Think of it! We would no longer have to pay taxes to support education!  Our kindergartners would finance the system for us…and who knows?  There might be enough money left to reward the young artists with a few bananas.