Cupcake Answers More Readers' Questions

Again, dear Readers, I cannot thank you enough for the constant influx of mail. Nothing sets Cupcake's heart quite a pitter-patting as when she clicks on her e-mailbox to discover dozens of friendly epistolary greetings. Your collective generosity is exceeded only by your collective curiosity, and therefore Cupcake has decided to answer several frequently asked questions all at once, publicly on the blog, hoping to save other inquisitive readers the effort of typing more than is absolutely necessary. She wishes carpel tunnel syndrome on no one.

So, in no particular order-- let's see...

Cupcake, you often refer to "the dogs", and yet other than the late departed Casey, you've given us no descriptions of these creatures. What's up with that?

Well, reader, you've landed on a very sticky point. The dogs I presently live with have a very sharp lawyer, who made me sign a confidentiality agreement when I adopted them. For this reason, I have to be very careful what I disclose about them until it is cleared by their canine PR department. What I can tell you is that both are small and male, one is a purebred and one is a mutt. One is very sweet and goofy, and the other is deceptively "cute", but has the heart of Baby Stewie from "Family Guy" and is undoubtedly plotting the destruction of, if not the entire human race, at least the humans living in this house.

Hang on a sec.

What? I can't say that? Crap.

Okay-- scratch that. I'm just going to say this: While Cupcake confirms that she does presently live with two dogs, she can offer no further information about them at this time. The press will be notified when a statement has been prepared. Thank you. No further questions on this topic.

Tell us about your sister's book, Cupcake.

How timely of you to inquire, Reader, as my sister's new book is being released only this week! It is called What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running The World, and is published by Plume. My sister's name is Melissa Rossi. And in case you're wondering, for various reasons that usually end in an animated family faux-argument, Cupcake does not share her sister's surname.

As for the book, it's timely, well-written (Cupcake edited several chapters herself)- and contains information which is available to everyone but which has not, to Cupcake's knowledge, hithertofore been assembled in one tome. Generally speaking, the further one reads into the book, the more one raises one's eyebrows at the bizarre happenings of the political and business machines around us. Cartels everywhere, and not a hero to turn to, to ride the bad guys out of Dodge. Let's just say that Cupcake's family encouraged Cupcake's sister to email chapters to friends as soon as they were written, as there was some concern that she might be snuffed out during the book's writing. Perhaps paranoid, but...read it and judge for yourself.


Did you contribute anything to the book?

Oh, Reader-- you had to ask, didn't you? I blushingly admit that yes, one or two sidebars were my idea and composition. (Cupcake curtsies low to rumbling applause.) Thank you, friends. Thank you.


Cupcake, would you say you are happy?

Oh dear. How to answer that one. Overall? Yes, I'd have to say yes. My days pass pleasantly enough. I have family and friends that I love, a little intrigue here and there, and a desk full of sugar-free strawberry Red Vines, which, at only 1.125 net carbs per Vine, offer a compensatory pick-me up if something tweaks Cupcake's heart and leaves her momentarily blue. So, yes, overall, Cupcake would affirm that she is happy. Though like many people, sometimes she longs for something more.

Something more than what?

That's just it, isn't it? Something more than sugar-free strawberry Red Vines, even--- some great quest of love or adventure-- something like when Cupcake was younger and traveling through Africa with a handsome Canadian rake whose boundless zest for life made him simultaneously the most fascinating of companions and the most maddening of them. It was a time like Jackson Browne's line, "When the roads were as many as the places I had dreamed of, and my friends and I were one."

Yeah.

Cupcake still dreams of those nights in Swaziland, with the fog tiptoeing up the hill, seducing everything to soft-focus, and convincing Cupcake and the Canadian to drink more whiskey and play chicken with lit cigarettes. (Cupcake won.)

Now, life on the edge has subsided to a desk drawer full of Red Vines. Only a few months ago, Cupcake used to think, chewing on the edge of a Red Vine, "I'll just pretend I'm in New Orleans, smoking a cigar and staying up way past my bedtime over a snifter of some expensive brandy, while listening to a brilliant guy explain like pure poetry the physics of a bullet's trajectory ---the way it presses forward, flying, moving up until it falls. And fall it will."

Now, even that dream of escaping to a brandy-swirled New Orleans is gone. Because, of course, New Orleans is gone. Cupcake has enough morbid curiosity to want to go to New New Orleans. But she sadly reflects that it is likely to disappoint, the way she suspects that Swaziland now has turned to a series of strip malls, built up with KFC and Taco Bell and Dollar Stores. Before, when there was just a KFC in the middle of nowhere, it was kind of funny. She suspects that, now, it would be kind of sad.

And the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting. Soon they will be gone, before Cupcake can get there. With or without the Canadian, who long ago promised that they'd ascend that peak together someday.



Cupcake's heard a lot of promises from a lot of men. That one, you know, she kind of did believe. But no matter.

The trajectory--- the bullet always falls.

Damn. Something more than what, you ask? More than Jersey City real estate. Though, now that she's dug the Red Vines out of the desk, Cupcake concedes that perhaps she's just being sentimental about the past.

Why don't you post a picture of yourself on the blog? What do you look like?

Hm...yes. I do keep meaning to do that and then I think of reasons not to. Like that I enjoy being a woman of mystery. And that I hate commitments. I'd feel like I'd actually have to look like the picture. Which is hard for me, because every three months I look different. It's always been like that.

If you want celebrity references, then I'll tell you this: I am sometimes told that I look a bit like Natalie Wood (presumably before the boating accident)-- and I am frequently told that my mannerisms and diction remind people of Jeanine Garafolo (hopefully before she became the embarassingly strident co-host of Air America's evening show, Majority Report).

What? Oh. Yes, I'll read it.

Okay, guys. I've just been handed a memo from the dogs' legal and PR advisors. Let's see what it says:

To the Readers of Cupcake Central: It has been determined by the parties of the First Part, hereafter referred to as "Boss" (a beagle) and "Momo" (a dachshund/poodle mix)that the party of the Second Part, hereafter referred to as "Cupcake" or "that bitch who said we're getting pudgey and halfed our kibble portions at dinner tonight"- ahem-- the party of the Second Part-- where was I? -- oh yes, has permission only to reveal at present the name, breed and sex of "Boss" (beagle, male, neutered) and "Momo" (dachshund/poodle mix, male, neutered)----

What? Well, it's written here-- RIGHT here: "neutered" -- See? I was just reading the memo--- Then you shouldn't have put it IN the memo, if I wasn't supposed to read it--!

Fine!!! I'll just cut the posting short then.

Bye everyone.