And for the all too many with respect to their relationship to Mademoiselle Zsu Zsue, particularly for you, Bobnoxious and Jelly, there is also the word that pretty much means the same thing in both languages:

Fiasco !

he he

And now, here is some further take on The Life of Mademoiselle Zsu Zsu For Beginners, borrowed from one who apparently had met (and perhaps loved) many Zsu Zsu's in his life, Stendhal and his book "De L'Amour."

"Poor disillusioned young woman, would you like once again to live through what engrossed you so much a few years ago, something you dared not mention to a soul, and which nearly cost you your honour? It is for you I have re-written this book and tried to make it clearer. When you have read it, never speak of it without a slight sneer, and thrust it into your lemon-wood bookcase behind the other books; I should even leave a few pages uncut, if I were you.

More than a few pages will be left uncut by the imperfect being who imagines himself a philosopher because he has always been a stranger to the mad emotion that can make a week's happiness depend on one glance. Others, as they get older, exert their vanity to the utmost in order to forget that they could once be so humble as to court a woman and to expose themselves to the humilieation of being refused -- they will hate this book. Among the many intelligent people who have comdemned this book for various reasons -- but always in anger -- the only ones who struck me as ridiculous were the men whose double vanity could claim always to have been above love's weaknesses, and yet to be gifted with such penetration that they could judge a priori the accuracy of a philosophical treatise which is simply a detailed description of these same weaknesses...."

"Crystallization goes on throught love almost without a break. The process is something like this: whenever all is not well between you and your beloved, you crystallize out an imaginary solution. Only through imagination can you be sure that your beloved is perfect in any given way. After intimacy, ever-resurgent fears are lulled by more real solutions. Thus happiness never stays the same, except in its orginis; every day brings froth a new blossom...

If she leaves you, crystallization begins again, and every act of admiration, the sight of every happiness she could give you, and whose existence you had forgotten, ends in the searing reflection: "I shall never know that joy again, and it is through my fault that I have lost it !" It is no use seeking consolation in pleasures of another sort; they turn to dust and ashes. Your imagination can paint a physical picture for you, and take you a-hunting on a swift horse thorugh Devon woods; but you are aware at the same time that you could find no pleasure in it. This is the optical illusion which leads to the fatal pistol shot."

Yet another sighting....?

........

I was talking with Herr Jelly at one of the Yuri's mixers weeks ago, about how I think I might of saw Mademoiselle Zsu Zsu in a movie, can't remember which movie, it was like a two-second shot -- may have been a review or something?

Anyways, last night I saw a movie, with I think the person who I had earlier caught a glimpse of -- eventually I came to a tentative conclusion that I don't think it was Mademoiselle Zsu Zsu, though oddly this actress seemed to be trying her best to imitate her at times, what with her digressions into french...

Anyways, here is a link to the actress....:

movies.yahoo.com/movie/con.../970441672