So, I was talking to a close female friend of mine recently...
I'll call her "Maruschka." She's not interested in any publicity, even peripherally, hence the pseudonym.
I will confess that I chose the alias from an actress I like, Dutch actress Maruschka Detmers, who I primarily know from Italian director Marco Bellochio's DEVIL IN THE FLESH (1986). She also played Antonio Banderas' wife or girlfriend in THE MAMBO KINGS.
But seriously, I don't know Ms. Detmers personally, so don't misinterpret and think this account is of me talking with the lovely screen thespian.
Anyway, bla bla bla...
So, I happened to tell Maruschka this story about something I recently wrote in a blog comment.
I thought it was amusing, but Maruschka took some issue with it. She took it more, personally, let's say, as a woman, than I intended my comment to mean.
I won't elaborate on the actual thing I wrote (man! what kind of story IS this? Aliases! Censored context! This has "lame" written all over it!), but after she responded unfavorably, my mood noticeably changed.
So, she apologized. "I'm sorry," she said, "you were all happy about sharing your comment, and then I went and peed in your soup."
I thought that was kind of a strong analogy, but I know she was being funny.
Then I said, "Or you sneezed in my milk."
To which she immediately reacted: "Eewww!!"
"What? Sneezing in someone's milk is grosser than peeing in someone's soup?"
"Well, soup already is a broth and salty, so you wouldn't notice the difference... But the other thing, you're talking about snot in milk..! Blecch!"
"No, I'm talking about SNEEZING in someone's milk, not BLOWING THEIR NOSE in someone's milk! But you're talking about actually urinating in someone's soup!"
Maruschka laughed. "Well, it's different!"
"You act like you could actually get away with peeing in one's soup!"
She laughed.
I continued: "Jeez, you and this guy I used to work with should get together. When he was younger, he worked in this restaurant and he pissed in the soup once."
"Eewww! Let's stop talking about this now!"
I always thought that was a horrible personal anecdote to know about someone, and compounded by the fact that to this day he still finds that "defiant act" (my description) of his amusing, perhaps a highlight, of his younger, wilder days. But, he tends to be bitter and cynical about people in general, so that makes sense.
Anyway, we quickly dropped the subject of which was more disgusting, but I thought that what Maruschka felt was the grosser example still mind-boggling.
NOTE: My analogy of "sneezing in someone's milk" is actually taken from something written in a foreword to a collection of comic strips that Berke Breathed did at the University of Texas at Austin before he became famous doing Bloom County. The collection was called The Academia Waltz. My friend Pete attended the university, and he loved the strip which was printed in the school newspaper, and he bought me a copy.
In the foreward, the writer (whose name I've long forgotten, unfortunately) tells (and I'm paraphrasing, as usual) about Breathed working on his strip in his dorm room. He describes Breathed sitting at his desk, head bent over the paper, and the steady "skritch, skritch, skritch" sound of the metal nib of his ink pen drawing on the paper. So, as the writer says, if you were to suddenly stick your head into Breathed's light and suddenly ask, "Whatcha doin', Berky?", Breathed would simply turn to look at you, saying nothing, but have an expression on his face like you just sneezed into his milk.
That's basically it.
