HOW TO PROPERLY FUND RAISE FOR ANIMAL ABUSE

Like so many others, I have a hard time watching those commercials for abused, neglected or injured animals.

They break your heart, which I suppose is the point in getting you to contribute as much as you can manage, on a monthly basis.

I am completely for raising the awareness of these horrors,

but, I propose a twist on the presentation

 of what you are forced to watch.

If I am to witness such misgivings of mankind, as these abuses are man-made, I say that they reshift the focus of getting to the solution. 

I don’t think that all of the precious

kitties and puppies,

 along with their older friends

should be the highlight of the showcase.

No I don’t.

I believe these commercials should go, a little something like this:

  Pan in on a scraggly, disgusting, dirt-bag, lying in a darkened basement, just a crack of light peering through the only window in the space that is housing him:

    “Meet Billy-Bob. Billy Bob lives a life of hell, in this damp, moldy basement. His bed is made of…concrete. His living conditions are deplorable.  He is confined by a leash,

which unfortunately for him, 

doesn’t give him much room to move.

Billy Bob doesn’t have enough to eat, but he can’t chew very much, anyway…all of his teeth have been knocked out of his mouth, a few per week since he’s been here.

What horrendous occurrence has taken place, which has rendered Billy Bob a filthy, toothless shell of a man?

Folks, Billy Bob is an animal hater. He not only hates them, he has taken some real pride in the way that he’s tortured them. Yes, sir.

   Pan to a shaking, one-eyed Cat named Buster:

    Buster was Billy Bob’s loving, pet cat. When Billy Bob would get to feeling like the loser he really was, he would make Buster pay for it.

Now, it’s not necessary for us to make you sick with the graphic details of what Buster had to endure…we’ll just tell you that after he was finished with his handiwork on innocent Buster, Billy Bob threw him out of a moving car, on the freeway.

   Pan to a healthy, purring Cat named Buster:

     Yes, Buster still only has one eye. That’s a fact. But Buster has a new lease on life. He was adopted by a loving family, that lavishes love and affection on Buster, every day of his new existence. He eats the finest foods.

 And when Buster needs to ‘attend to business’, he simply goes through the kitty door which was newly installed on the basement door, that leads to Billy Bob’s new existence.

  

 Pan in on the announcer,

sitting in a chair with Buster in his lap, nuzzling him:

      “You see, friends…Your dollars are soooo important to ending animal abuse and neglect. For a monthly contribution of a mere $20, we will do two things: 

We will first rehabilitate the abused animal,

 

returning it to health and into a loving home.

With the balance of your monthly contribution,

we will hunt down the scum-heads that inflict this cruelty 

and see to it that they never have the

ability to touch another living thing.

Call the number on your screen NOW.”

~SusiTheJ~

HOW LORI ALMOST MISSED THE MOUNTAIN

In 198?, my best friend Lori and I planned a vacation get-away to paradise.

We were grossly underpaid &
horribly taken for granted in our fabulous cosmetic career, so it was time to go.

Although, this flavor of paradise didn’t contain sand…

it contained SNOW.

 

We went to Club Med at

 Copper Mountain, Colorado,

in mid-JANUARY, for a week of intense ski training and intense liver conditioning.

We envisioned 6 days of

learning how to ski

the deepest powder in the West,

coupled with 6 nights of maneuvering

the deepest lines in the bars.

NOTHING, went according to plan.

On the morning that we were to depart for the airport, my then-boyfriend picked me up and we drove to collect Miss Lori. At 5:00am, she’s nowhere to be found. We’re supposed to be on the road to LaGuardia

in 30 minutes, and she’s not surfacing.

I reluctantly had to ring the bell to her apartment,

 waking up her parents.

They announced that she went out on a date and had yet to return. Not only had she yet to return, she had yet to pack…There was ski crap all over her room, yet it was not so much as folded into her expensive luggage

 on wheels,

ready to be loaded onto our flight.

Her lovely Italian parents made me
a cup of black coffee,

as we waited for her to arrive. When she finally rolled in around 5:18am, she seemed annoyingly unfrazzled that she had not only not managed to secure a good nights’ sleep, was not ready to go & we would probably be vacationing in January,
in The Bronx.

Somehow, she pulled it together and we were on our way to the airport. I was still shaking my head in disbelief, when we boarded the plane and took our seats. We had a five hour-plus flight in front of us, and as she failed to get any sleep the night before, I bid her adieu. This girl slept from New York, until we touched down in Denver.

I watched our in-flight movie alone; I drank the drinks we were supposed to be toasting each other with alone;

I ate her meal. She never moved. When we boarded our chartered bus for the now 2-hour plus trip to Copper,

I once again knew I was losing her. Although, this time, she spoke before she passed out. Only, nothing came out of her mouth. She had full-blown laryngitis and was running a fever. She slept on my shoulder for the entire bus trip and when we arrived, we blew past the typical tropical Club Med welcome, that you see in the movie. Bummer. That was the best part!

 “Hands Up, Baby Hands Up…

http://youtu.be/9hkfGdNdaSo  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever..

outta our way!”

We run to the front desk, to get our room assignment and key, only to find out that there are no keys.

Whah???? No keys?

 Who in hell has ever heard of

a resort with unlockable doors?

Huh? Who?

Only resort burglars, that’s who.

 

I was now thanking my lucky stars

 for not amassing a
treasure trove of jewelry,

 in my relatively young life.

Nothing to have…nothing to steal.

I was cool.

We got our room number &

 headed for the elevator. 

 I think she was still hanging onto my shoulder,

as her beautiful Italian coloring

was looking more like toothpaste,

 by the second.

We got to our room, opened the door                            (quite easily, I might add) &                                              Lori did a bee-line for the bed.

Now, I love this girl,

but there was no civil, polite discussion

of who got which bed…

she just barreled towards the one

 closest to the view, peeled off her jacket &

 pulled the comforter over her head.  

She could barely breathe

 through her nose at this point,

as whatever condition she developed on her night out was rendering her wheezy. I picked up her clothes and put them away. While she was unconscious, I began to unpack. What else could I do? There were no TV’s,

no radio & NO PHONES.

Hey, how will they know about my

room service requests?

The need to restock the mini bah…

.....never mind. Didn’t exist.

The flyer on the dresser says that dinner is served Family Style

at 6:30pm in the main dining room. I tried to gently nudge her, to see if I could get her to eat something.

She looked like Cousin It,

 

except with long, black hair everywhere I looked, but I couldn’t find her face. She grunted something at me and I took that to mean no interest in food. When I said I was going to dinner, 'It’s' hair started to wiggle and she somehow communicated that she was hungry. Probably cause the last thing the poor girl had to eat was the fifteen olives

in her 6 martinis, the night before, poor thing.

I told her that I would call room service…

Wait. I forgot. Scratch that.

“Uh, Lor? Uh, there is no room service.

There is no phone to not call room service.

I’ll make you a plate and bring it back.

Is it ok if I eat first, since you’re barely breathing?”  

The nod of her hair said yes and I told her I’d be back with sustenance.

I get down to the main dining room (main is code for ONLY) and I go to my assigned table and meet my new “family.” Everyone is wondering where my roomie is and they do a group “Awww” when I tell them she’s dying upstairs.

I give a few snarky details about how she had failed to pack at a proper pace and how we dang-near missed our flight, because she wandered in, still in dancing clothes

and very high heels, just when we needed to be checking in at the airport!

I did my best to have an enjoyable first dinner, without my best bud.

When I inquired to the employees

 of the dining room about

 getting food for my buddy,

 they informed me that it is not possible.

 I beg your pardon?

What is not possible? Eating?

  The meals that she paid for?

 

“If she IS to eat, she will have to do so

 in the dining room.”

Well, you geniuses,

 she sounds like Gravel Gertie,

 so should I do her hair before I wheel her down to eat???

“Food MAY not leave the dining room, under ANY circumstances!”

 Well, there’s no phone,

 to phone for room service,

 which doesn’t apparently exist in the first place…

so should I have her starve???

 They further instruct me

 that if she’s that sick,

she needs the Sick Bay.

Oh, boy! No room service,

 but there’s an ass-kicking sick bay!

 

“Will they feed her there?”

I inquire of the Food Nazi’s. 

 

 

“No food outside of the main dining room.”

 My Bronx-bred level of patience

was leaving me about now.

 “She vil (I swore I heard it pronounced this way)

 come to ze dining room or

 she goes to the Sick Bay.

 No exceptions.“

I calmly attempted to return to my table.

 I carefully took Lori’s empty

 dinner plate and started to fill her plate

 (it was family style AND All-You-Can-Eat).

 Since I was done eating,

 I took my beautiful linen napkin and

 wiped my dinner plate, perfectly clean.

I then hijacked a set of

 salt and pepper shakers and

 laid them down next to her mashed potatoes.

 I put her unused beautiful linen

 napkin in my pocket.

 I put my clean dinner plate on top

 of her loaded plate,

stood up from my seat and

 bid my fellow diners a lovely evening.

 I started for the exit and I hear, “Stop zat girl!!!

She’s taking food out of

 ze main dining room!!!”

 I gave my neck a quick little whip around, to see the ENTIRE Gestapo dining staff

 tearing ass after me,

as I made a bee-line

for the elevator, holding that damned plate

up like the finest French waitress,

 with the other hand holding

 the top dinner plate in place.

There is mayhem and chaos

 and screaming coming after me, and

 just like in the movies,

that elevator door closed in their faces.

I’m panting and sweating,

 thinking this is just not a great way

 to start off a vacation.

When I got back to the room, Lori “came to”

 a little bit more and

 was interested in what I

 brought her for dinner.

She was investigating the plate and 

seemed perplexed as to why

 

I was so winded and sweaty

 

and why there
wasn’t any butter
for the bread?

I filled her in on the lack

of dining options and

that the only means of

her survival seemed to be

 the Sick Bay.  

She picked through the crappy meal and

 proceeded to pass out.

DAY TWO IN COLORADO:

No TV, no radio,
 no phones, no room service.

I was fu$(8^%cked.

I was not about to go off
to ski school &

leave her all alone to die. 

Although,

by now she was actually

 looking dead.

But what would that accomplish?

Returning to East Coast skiing,

 on two different ability levels?

 My Hunter Mountain ski weekends

 with her would be Hell!

I’d end up waiting and waiting.

Not worth it.

I’ll entertain myself, somehow.

 

I spent a quiet day with her,

 in the solitude of our

 Nepalese Monastic existence,

watching the beautiful

snow falling ever so gently

 on the Colorado landscape

through the picture window

 that Dead Girl got to sleep next to,

 yet never truly appreciate.

  I was certainly aware that

 we awaited certain death,

 when some enterprising thief decided to rob the empty rooms

 of the skiers on the slopes,

 since I had no ability to lock the door.

When she woke up,

 she was seriously ill,

 entering the phase of chills and

 shaking like a Chihuahua.

 

 

I had just returned from

 Day Two’s dinner and somehow managed

 to find the bar

 on the way back to the room! 

 When I saw her worsening condition,

 I told her I was heading down

to the Sick Bay,

 to see what they could offer her,

 in the way of medication.

Well, apparently this Sick Bay

 was in no way affiliated or

related to anything remotely medical.

 It was the sum total of

 the nurse’s office in grammar school,

replete with the nurse,

 and the nurse, only.

She was a big,

brute of a gal

and looked like she could

 easily kick my ass and

 laugh about it.

I decided that I should

 curtail my smart-ass demeanor and

 kiss up to this woman,

 who at the moment,

was our only form of salvation.

I politely inquired about
 getting some Tylenol,

some cough medicine...

some, some Vick’s Vapo Rub,

for Christ’s sake…

Nada. I came away,
 stone-cold, empty handed.

There wasn’t so much
 as a gift shop,

in this One-Star Dump
 in the Mountains.

Although I admit I was slightly

in the bag,

 I desperately tried to reign

in my sarcasm as I asked,

 

 

" Just What Can You Give Me?"

 

 

 

As I rode the elevator back

 to our unlocked room,

 I stood in stunned disbelief,

surveying the contents of my two hands.

 

There, laid out for me by

 Nurse Ratchet, was:

 

 A pair of latex gloves

 

 

 

and TWO SUPPOSITORIES.

I think I was crying,

rocking back and forth &

mumbling to myself,

 

“No, no, no, no…”

She had informed me that

 this was the Most

she could do and

IF THIS DIDN’T DO THE TRICK FOR ME,

 I’d have to get her to a

 real doctor on my own. 

The elevator stopped
at the floor below ours & 

the drunken members

 of my family from our dining table piled on

 

and wanted to know
if the Sick Bay had hooked me up
 with some good drugs for my friend.

I searched their eyes
 for sympathy and compassion,
 before I silently extended
my two open palms and
showed them what I came away with.

WTF????? 

was pretty much the answer rigueur.
 

These people were freaking out,

asking if I, indeed, 

had any experience with

the administering of

said contents of my hands.

As the tears pooled in my eyes,

they rolled out of the elevator,

 laughing their collective asses off

 at my predicament.

As I opened the
door to our room, 
Lori seemed excited that I was back…

Just in time to save her life &

get her ass back on the ski trails..

...more importantly,
back in the bar,

 where we belonged.

She motioned me over
 to her mop of black hair
strewn across the pillow &

 innocently asked me,

“What did they say, Sue?”

 

Wait for it. Wait for it:

She bolted upright...

her hair resembling Janis Joplin’s,

with a burst of energy

I hadn’t seen since the

Friday before we left for the trip.

When I couldn’t meet

her eyes with mine,

and kept looking at my tightly-closed fists,

 she wanted to know what they gave me.

When I reluctantly

 extended my palms,

she incredulously stared

 at the ‘medicine’, now fully understanding

 why I told her that death was imminent.

“Oh, I don’t blame you, Sue…

I’d let me die, too.”

 Now, wasn't that so sweet of her to say???

Behind me, as I entered the room,

entered the contents of the elevator,

to pay their respects

to the member that no one had even met.

They brought liquor & ice &

cups to put the liquor in, God love them.

They poured me a drink,

as I blew up both exam gloves,

tied a knot at the bottom of each

 

and squooshed the suppositories

onto the balloon gloves,

 onto the mirror of the dresser,

like they were pieces of wax.

Cousin It

called me back to her side &

 with the strength of Shrek,

 

grabbed my throat &

 told me to get these

f’ing people

 

out of our room or

 she would kill me.

 

Spoilsport.

After the Family members

 left us, she sat up in bed,

 hair everywhere,

staring at my mirror art and

cursing the Club Med Corporation

 out loud.

 She downed the contents

 of my plastic party glass and

 passed back out.

The next morning,

she was running such a high fever,

 I quickly got dressed (in my skiing clothes, just to know how it felt) and

 half-assed carried her to THE DOCTOR.

 THE MEDICAL DOCTOR.

The one with actual certificates of accomplishment on his office walls and

 the ability to dole out drugs.

I think out of pity,

he took us before anyone that had been waiting in his waiting room,

 based on the appearance of Lori.

 She was snow white.

Sorry, but that’s the way it was.

Snow white and jet black hair..no.

Think Marilyn Manson.

 Not good.

This look wouldn’t get her far

 in the bar, jus’ sayin…..

Well, Dr. Club Med

checked her out,

turns to me,

as if I’m her Mother

and announces:

“She has STREP THROAT…

Very badly.”

Well thank God...

I’m glad we didn’t schlep

through the snow from Club Med,

six miles uphill,

for you to tell me

she’s not feeling well!

Strep throat. Strep Throat.

I just kept muttering it, over and over.

“I’m giving you a prescription

 for a powerful antibiotic.

That ought to do the trick,

 IN A WEEK OR SO,”

 he explained to us,

as I stared stupidly at him. 

 He stood there, smiling proudly,

as if he had just bestowed

the greatest news on us.

I swore a Southern drawl came out

when I desperately asked him,

“WHEN CAN SHE SKI, DOCTOR????”

“And Alcohol?

When can she consume alcohol again?”

 

       

  He just smiled & gave me a look like:            ‘Damn vacationing New Yorkers.’

It took four days

 for Lori’s demise to come

 to a screeching halt.

 Apparently, the anti’b had kicked

the crap out of her strep throat and

 she was suddenly the friend that I remembered.

She was ready to ski, she was hungry &

she wanted TO GO OUT!! Yeah! Yippee!!!

We re-enrolled in Ski School.

We met up with our group,

which had four days of

 powerful ski instruction over us.

We felt like tiny little bunnies,

 in a pack of hungry wolves.

These people were animals! These people were competitive! These people would have

 skied over their Mother’s dead bodies to win!

There were people from

all over the world, who just got to meet two fabulous girls

 from the Bronx,

 who had been M.I.A. for four days

 of a seven-day vacation.

 

We had their instant respect.

 

There was this big,

lumbering man from Auckland,

 New Zealand who we would

‘Baahhhh’ at,

throughout the

remainder of the trip,

whenever he would tell a

'so-called' funny story.

He didn’t seem to catch on,

 to the implication of my response.

There was a group of guys

 from Connecticut,

 who seemed to have made

their way through the Club Med Circuit.

They had stories, galore,

 about all of the CM locations,

 throughout the world.

We heard of their last CM adventure

 in Mexico,

 when the cracker-jack electrician

fixed the hot tub and proceeded

 to fry himself to death,

when he tested it out.

 The witnesses were offered counseling and a $500 credit to their next Club Med experience,

for their trauma.

In this group was a nice looking,

if not frail looking young man

who apparently was fresh off of a nose job.

Skiing and rhinoplasty????

Wow. That’s gutsy, huh?

Every time his body hit the snow,

everyone else in the group

would stop in their tracks &

wait for him to either get up or

start screaming.

Can’t have no screaming

in a very high point,

with my feet strapped to fiberglass.

 

Not a good mix.

We figured if one of us

 came upon him,

 half-broken in the snow,

 we’d just do the right thing and

 bury him alive.

 It really would be the right thing to do.

 Who told him to go skiing

while his brand-new nose was readjusting to his same old face? 

Survival skills! This is why we were here! Yeah!

As we met our FRENCH ski instructors,

I had a hard time curtailing my

smart-assed mouth.

Ze way that zey emphasized

certain ski moves,

 just had me dying to throw some good

Pink Panther lines back at them.

But, I showed restraint.

 I only used my wit,

when the group was

 gathered to listen to what

Pepe LePew had to say.

 

 

He would give a

verbal description of each move

 that he wanted each

 of us to do next.

He’d go through his explanation and

 I would raise my ski pole, to ask a question.

“Yes, Mouth?” he sarcastically inquired.

“You want us to do what??????????”

 I asked incredulously.  

He would crack up laughing and say,

“That’s right, Mouth. 

 And just to prove

what a bastard I am

on the ski slopes,

YOU’RE GOING TO LEAD OUR GROUP!”

As I reviewed in my screaming head

the instructions he gave,

I peered down and

 it looked like the rest of the mountain,

 flowed off of my nose.  

It was a triple-black diamond run,

 

 

that looked like the surface of the moon. 

“The Fu#!c&k

I’m going down there!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

echoed off of the mountain tops.  

Our New Zealand Spring Lamb

 

almost fell off of the precipice

 that we were holding at,

from my response.

He laughed so hard,

that he fell backward &

 damned near kept going.

He also repeated my line,

in his finest Aussie’ish

 (close enough) dialect,

at every opportunity,

for the remainder of our stay:

“The F#u^c%k@ I’m eating that…

The F#u^c%k@I’m getting up this early!”

Bahahaha. Or Baaahhhh.

It all blended together.

He swore his next world excursion 

would be to The Bronx.

 

We came back on January 25^th,

 blackened like we broiled our bodies in the

 Caribbean sun,

although when we

took off our clothes &

looked in the mirror,

we looked like we had

the freakiest farmer tans,

you’d ever seen:

 

Black, black faces, necks & hands.

Everything else: Snow white.

 

~SusiTheJ~

Loyal Friend, Extraordinaire!