Susi Rajah

The Questions People Ask, Part II

1.    What made you decide to write a romantic comedy featuring the Catholic Church?
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
2.    What do you say about the people who say The Gospel According to Sydney Welles is sacrilegious?
I think that those people are probably just upset about global warming.
3.    How do you feel now that your novel is out? It is out, isn’t it?
It is out. Mostly I feel sick. Because it’s out there, where anyone can read it. Also there’s a possibility that no one will read it, which is worse.
4.    In your novel, the main character has the job of selling the Catholic Church. Are you Catholic?
Not even a little bit.
5.    What have you got against Catholicism?
Only the same thing I have against all organized religion. They just don’t seem to be very well organized. Catholicism is a great example. This is a religious organization that won’t allow women to be priests, but it routinely gives the job to pedophiles. There’s something very wrong with their hiring policy.
6.    What do you think of the Pope coming out —
The pope came out? Really?
— and saying that all other Christian churches are “wounded”, that they are not real churches?
Well, I think it’s really helpful, don’t you? It’s not doing much for the ecumenical movement but it’s very informative for the average consumer. I mean it’s so hard to decide which church is the right one. There are thousands and thousands of them. You don’t want to end up in hell just because you chose wrong. Now that the pope has told us the Catholic Church is the one true church, it makes the choice easy. The pope has to know what he’s talking about because he’s infallible. At least, I think he is, but only when he has the hat on.
7.    Is the Brad Pitt character in your novel supposed to be an allegory of the mindless, dog-like devotion we have toward celebrity culture?
Um, okay.
8.    Do you think writing fiction is a good way to make a living?
Sure, but only if you compare it with writing poetry for a living.

How to “Have a Nice Day!”

One of the things nobody tells you before you move to the US is that, once you are here, people, complete strangers, completely unprovoked, will tell you to “have a nice day”. But not one of them will tell you how. And if you ask, they look at you blankly, or else ignore you in the hope you’ll go away. In some cases, they might hand you a pamphlet about Jesus, who, let’s face it, had a pretty horrible day in the end.

Occasionally, you will get an honest — and exasperated — soul, who will tell you that it was just an expression and that they didn’t really mean it and would you please bugger off. Only Americans don’t say “bugger off” because it isn’t politically correct. I suppose that's because buggering is an activity that not everyone takes part in so some people may feel left out. So it is more likely they will be more polite and say “fuck off”.

As no one would tell me how to have a nice day, I’ve had to work it out on my own over the years and I’ve done so through the use of other commonly used expressions that I don't really understand. Here is how to make your day nicer:

Get up on the right side of bed. Everybody knows that there is a right side and a wrong side of bed. No one, however, knows which side is which. And once you think you have it figured out, at least for your bed, the sides will magically switch and keep switching until you buy a new bed, at which point the whole process starts over. So, if you think you may have woken up on the wrong side of bed, go back to bed, take a little nap for an hour or so and try getting up again. Keep trying until you feel better. At the very least you’ll be rested and well-rested people have nicer days than tired people. Tired people have nicer nights.

Don’t cry over spilt milk. In fact, don’t drink milk at all. Don’t keep any milk in your house and then you will never spill any and be tempted to cry. You don’t need the calories and growth hormones anyway. Take a calcium pill instead. If you spill those you can just pick them up off the floor and put them back in the bottle and no one will be the wiser.

Don’t rock the boat. Everyone will get seasick. There’ll be vomit everywhere and you’ll have to clean it up.

Put on a happy face. Smile. At everyone. Except for people on the subway, and that guy on the corner who sometimes pulls his pants down to show you his pee-pee, and that shouting guy, and that scary man with the sign who told you were going to hell because you aren’t Roman Catholic — okay, I may need to rethink this one.

Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. I disagree. If you know how to make a mountain out of a molehill, you should do it and sell the dirt to Dubai or Hong Kong or Singapore or some other place making reclaimed land to build resorts on, then you can retire rich enough to make every day a nice day.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It makes them easier to steal, drop, or sit on. Do as the Easter bunny does and hide them all over the house and garden.

Look on the bright side. This is just common sense. Turn the lights on. That way there’s less chance of you stumbling over something, hurting your knee and then being mean to people because your knee hurts. Being mean to people makes them mean back. Just make sure you’ve changed all your bulbs over to the energy-saving kind. Because if the polar icecaps melt and it brings on another ice age, most of us will die and for the few of us that don’t there’ll be no nice days for thousands, maybe millions, of years.

Have a nice day. I mean it.

How to "Have a Nice Day!"
Copyright © 2007 by Susi Rajah

Trojan Horse

Here’s proof that most people are immune to learning from history. And it’s a lot funnier than Troy, that film starring Brad Pitt’s butt.

Trojan Horse Silliness

The Questions People Ask

1. Why aren’t you taller?
If you saw my parents you would see that I've achieved quite a reasonable height, within the limitations of my genes. Also, it seems to me that people who drank fresh milk as small children tend to be bigger than people who didn’t. I didn’t. Not because I was deprived in any way but because there weren’t any cows around when I was little, as I lived on a tropical island. Cows are not very adept at crossing the Indian Ocean.
2. Is that your natural hair color?
Yes.
3. Are you from England?
No. I'm from Australia.
4. Why don’t you sound like Steve Irwin?
I never sounded like him, and now my accent has been dulled by ten years of living outside Australia. These days, I just sound affected. Though it must be pointed out that no one in England would ever mistake my accent for an English one. That only happens here in the US. To the English I still sound like an escapee from the criminal colony.
5. What is your favorite Australian animal?
A wombat.
6. A what?
A wombat. It's sort of a dark brown koala that lives in a hole in the ground and runs around on all fours like it's on speed. It’s pretty cute.
7. What is your favorite fruit?
I alternate between mangoes and mangosteens, both of which are poorly represented in this part of the world.
8. What is a mangosteen?
I’m not telling you because there aren’t enough of them to go around.