God Damn It, Amanda

breaking news: newt gingrich is an asshole

2009-06-10T01:34:00.002-05:00

Not a citizen of the world, huh, Newt? Could that be because no one wants you in it?

It doesn't matter what political party you belong to, Newt. If Barack Obama stood up and said he's not a citizen of the world, I'd be among the millions lining up to toss a Target flip-flop at his head. Being a citizen of the world means being aware of the global consequences of your own as well as your country's actions.

Even as a kid, I thought it was wrong for people to assert that America is the greatest country on the planet. It's not because I don't love America; because believe me, I do. It's that I've just always agreed with Voltaire that it is lamentable that in order to become a patriot, one must become an enemy of the rest of mankind. Probably the only reason I ever even thought about it as a kid (and I did) is because I wasn't born here. And no, I also do not think that Sweden is the greatest country in the world. (Although certainly their healthcare system is much better than ours.) I don't think there is a greatest country in the world. However, I can think of a way we could make America the teensiest bit better.

Newt, I suggest you go live someplace where it's totally cool to pretend that the country you're in somehow exists outside of the realm of the rest of the planet. I'm sure you and Kim Jong-Il will be very happy together.

if i hear "roadrunner" one more time, i'll drop a safe on you

2009-02-19T02:54:00.005-05:00

So, I'm not crazy -- western Pennsylvania does have a recorded, established population of the eastern coyote. (Even in the Pittsburgh area.) Now, you tell me that doesn't look like a wolf. And in fact, they are genetically part wolf.

One distinguishing factor between dogs, wolves, and coyotes is that coyotes run with their tails down instead of up and out like a rudder. The animal I saw was holding its tail down, which struck me as an odd image, but I didn't know why. I'd actually never even heard of the eastern coyote until I saw that article in the paper. I'm not sure how I feel about the coyotes being hunted in the first place, but I find it rather disgusting that people are being paid to kill wild animals. If we could control our own population a little goddamn better, then maybe we wouldn't be having these problems.

In conclusion, I'm not nuts, even if I wasn't completely right. But I have to say I was pretty fucking close.

i may need a bigger bucket: encounters with wildlife

2009-02-12T03:13:00.002-05:00

Every once in a while here in western Pennsylvania, someone reports seeing a mountain lion lurking in a backyard. Usually, these people are treated as though they've just reported seeing Elvis sharing a Fresca with an alien. They send the "funny" reporter out to this person's wood-paneled living room and he or she produces a blurry picture of something that may or may not be an animal. And that's basically the end of it. Sometimes some biologist writes a letter to the editor insisting that what these people have been seeing is actually... insert even more bizarre explanation here. It's a housecat! It's a lost kite! They're all on acid!

Consequently, I have an embarrassing irrational fear that I'll be outside with Dusty some night and we'll both be eaten by a mountain lion. Of course, the most frequent yard visitors we have are deer and rabbits. Once, a possum scared the hell out of me at 3:00 a.m., in that I saw it. Being a rational person and an animal lover, I threw a bucket at it. We don't get possums around here anymore.

One of the explanations offered to people of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, after the Mothman sightings was that it was a sandhill crane. Now, I can't say that I really know what those people saw. I didn't see it. But I've seen many a crane, heron, eagle, and just about every other kind of bird imaginable. And there is no way in salty holy fuck that anyone mistook a crane for whatever Mothman was or is. Likewise, no one has ever seen a cat in his yard and thought it was a mountain lion.

As I've pointed out previously, western Pennsylvania has a lot of things it isn't really supposed to have. Turns out wolves might be one of them.

In November, I was thinking what you're probably thinking right now. "No, that was probably a German Shepherd." No, it probably wasn't. It was the wrong size and the wrong color, and it ran like a wild thing. The reason I was thinking that in November is my co-worker/friend April told me she'd seen something -- briefly -- that she could have sworn was a wolf, running across the road in front of her on her way home from work.

Monday night as I was driving home, a silver-gray thing ran across the road in front of me towards an embankment. It was roughly the size of a small refrigerator, and its tail was about as thick as my leg. But the way it ran was what made me realize that it wasn't a dog. It galloped like it was used to the feeling of soft ground under its feet. If you've ever seen a wild animal running, even on television, you know exactly what I mean. If you haven't, then it's possible that I hate you. At least rent "Wolf" with Jack Nicholson.

So now I'm even more sure than usual that I'm going to be mauled to death in my yard. I'd probably have a better chance fending off a wolf than a mountain lion. Depending, I guess, on the size of my bucket.

but maybe that's just me: a winter tale from pittsburgh

2009-01-15T02:28:00.004-05:00

We've had a bit of snow here in the 'burgh over the past few days. Right now in my yard, we probably have somewhere around 2 to 3 inches on the ground. And still, the only thing keeping the local news anchors from collapsing in a pile of their own snow-frenzy-induced froth is the upcoming Steelers-Ravens epic battle for the AFC title. Move over, Trojan war. If the Steelers had lost last weekend, right about now every vaguely ethnic field reporter would be standing in an abandoned bread aisle, waving a loaf of Home Pride Butter Top Wheat like a beacon to the Coast Guard.

But, as usual, I digress.

The roads, including the highways, were not in good shape on my way home tonight. It was clear that one of the major highways wasn't even on the minds of the plow operators. Then again, that meth isn't going to smoke itself.

I have a front-wheel drive car with snow tires, and even I was slipping a bit on some of the roads, but not on the highway. But I make it a personal rule of life (and continuing to have it) that when I can't tell where the road is, I don't take it past fourth gear. This makes me uncool. Or so it would seem the drivers of several tractor trailers and many an SUV were thinking as they blew past me at 75 miles per hour, shaking my car in the vast white expanse of time and space that had become my nightly commute. When I wasn't wondering which lane I was in, I was thinking, "If you crash, I'm not helping you."

As I got closer to home, I of course got caught behind some dipshit in a Subaru (a Subaru! for fuck's sake!) driving with her flashers on. At 15 miles per hour. I of course could not pass said dipshit, as the left lane was occupied by a steady stream of Decepticons breaking the sound barrier.

It wasn't so much the slow and terrified way this woman was making her way down 376 that bothered me. If it weren't snowing, I'd have been calling for her head, but the snow does make me a little more understanding. It does not, however, help me tolerate being blinded while attempting to operate a vehicle. In addition to there being snow, it's also extremely cold here right now. It's 12 degrees at the moment. Not exactly unbearable, but very cold, which leads to things like runny noses and dry skin and frozen windshield wiper blades. I don't mean when they freeze to the windshield. I mean you've scraped them, picked the ice out of them, and thoroughly thawed them before heading out on the highway. It doesn't matter -- they re-freeze. If you've never experienced this, don't. Because if you're an adult when it happens to you for the first time, you will go insane, slow down to 15 miles an hour, and put on your flashers. And because everyone else behind you also has streaks of ice forming on their windshields where the rubber is no longer contacting the glass, flashing yellow light exploding into our own cars will induce migraines, seizures, and in severe cases, shooting you in the back of the fucking head. So, next time, don't.

The most surprising thing was that this woman was driving a Subaru. Honestly, you need to represent a little bit better. We are a much more resourceful people than that.

And speaking of Subarus, this is one of the funniest things I may have ever read.

i nearly shat myself

2009-01-09T03:47:00.002-05:00

hedgehog eating a carrot. i dare you not to love this.

happy holidays. now get the fuck out of my state

2008-12-21T01:38:00.002-05:00

I don't know what's more idiotic -- naming your kid Adolf Hitler, or pretending that you're not a bigot after you've done so.

If that house goes up in flames soon, I'd like to point out that Pittsburgh is way the hell on the other side of Pennsylvania. However, with gas prices so deliriously low, my alibi would be about as weak as his claim that he's not a piece of crusty scum oozing from a particularly badly infected asshair of humanity.

it's the musical version of my thoughts exactly

2008-12-04T04:10:00.002-05:00

I would have just linked to this, but the incessant chittering of retarded monkeys in the forums ruins the experience.

So, enjoy.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

just in time for halloween: something truly scary

2008-10-31T12:47:00.002-05:00

Frankly, she just doesn't compare to Jeff Goldblum. But then, who does?

I'm of course talking about Sarah Palin's remake of "The Fly," in which she disses...well, pretty much all of science while attempting to talk about earmark spending. The scientific community is a little too polite to say "Fuck you, you ignorant bitch," but then, I'm not a scientist.

My dad is, though. He's a biochemist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh. And he's got some colleagues around the world who, in addition to being pretty cool, are so smart that it kind of makes me want to cry. Like Jerry Coyne.

Because I grew up in a house with a scientist, I'm sure I have a little more insight into the way research works than the average person. Certain people (dumb ones) like to deride science (personifying it as though it's a sentient being, which makes me want to stab wildly in all directions until I hit something) for seemingly wacky experiments. But as is explained in the linked article above, (seriously, read it -- it's not long and it's well-written) these "wacky" experiments are how we gain insight into, um, pretty much everything.

A few years ago, my father went to Norway to collect a specific type of jellyfish in order to conduct research on its venom. Oh, how hilarious -- hanging off the side of a boat in Scandinavia with a net! And I know it does sound pretty funny. If it weren't being done for the purposes of research, those would be the actions of a crazy person.

But the point of this research is to develop a drug which will be a powerful pain reliever that won't have any of the side effects associated with drugs like morphine, et cetera, in that it will relieve pain while leaving the patient fully alert. If you've ever seen someone you love lying in a hospital bed doped out of her mind, you can understand how much this research is needed and how much of an impact it will have on people's lives.

The next usual thing people say is something along the lines of, "Then why do we have unnecessary things like Viagra if all research has such important intentions?" Because that's not how drug research works. No one set out to invent a boner pill. It was originally intended as a treatment for hypertension. It just happened to have a certain side effect. And those researchers were, how shall I put this -- not stupid. Although given the frequency with which I am subjected to Enzyte commercials (which are the same thing as Viagra, in case anyone's wondering) I kind of wish they were.

I'm not claiming that every single research endeavor intends to or has the possibility to change the world. And many an experiment with noble intentions has fallen flat or had horrible repercussions. Just think of all the horror the planet has endured as a result of the creation of the atomic bomb, the least of which being world leaders who can't pronounce "nuclear."

Just because something might sound strange doesn't mean that it is. So maybe if you aren't in any way associated with any branch of science, even peripherally like I am, you should probably consult with somebody who understands these things before you embarrass yourself.

In conclusion, and happy Halloween:

Seth Brundle: If secondary element is fly, what happened to fly?
Computer: Fusion.
Seth Brundle: Assimilation? Did Brundle absorb fly?
Computer: Negative. Fusion of Brundle and fly at molecular-genetic level.

you don't have to be crazy to volunteer for mccain, but -- my mistake; you actually do

2008-10-25T01:57:00.003-05:00

So the big story in Pittsburgh right now, other than Santonio Holmes getting busted for driving around smoking a blunt, (which subsequently led to the most hilarious local news item, which was old white men attempting to explain what a blunt is) is the psycho McCain volunteer who carved a backwards B on her face, gave herself two black eyes, and then filed a false police report accusing an imaginary black dude of mugging her, assaulting her, and then carving up her face. The B apparently was meant to stand for "Barack." Apparently the story was picked up nationally -- McCain and Palin both spoke to her over the phone. Obama issued a supportive statement. And I said, "Bitch, please."

So did a lot of other people, including detectives with the Pittsburgh city police. Today they announced that it was in fact a load of bullshit and that the woman is in fact crazier than Richard Simmons in that yogurt commercial. And all the surprised people gasped in unison at the Invisible People Convention, currently under way downtown, which was the reason the imaginary black dude was visiting in the first place. I hear his keynote address tomorrow night ("Life at Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: My Post-Susan Smith Non-Existence") is going to be excellent.

I'm really sorry that this woman is so profoundly out of her gourd -- especially this close to Halloween -- but seriously, why would anyone make up this story? I've hated a lot of politicians, but I'd never concoct something so ridiculous. Then again, I'd also never carve a backwards letter into my face for three reasons: because I much prefer "The Crucible" to "The Scarlet Letter," (check out the last line in the first link) because I am not a frothy-lipped lunatic, and because I spent a lot of my childhood writing backwards messages in wintertime car windows. At least go with a letter that works both ways, like, I don't know... an O. Which would have made more fucking sense for like thirteen trillion reasons. But as my mother has said to me on many occasions, you can't expect an insane person to do anything in a sane way.

In conclusion, McCain's locked up the extremely important crazy white bitch (18-25) vote, but who knows how many of them will make it to the polls, given that these imaginary criminals are still at large.

PS: For those of you who aren't from Pittsburgh, Santonio Holmes is a wide receiver for the Steelers and is not imaginary, though he will be invisible during this Sunday's game.

bigots don't read, cosmic lemons, and this one's for the grandkids

2008-10-13T02:35:00.008-05:00

I checked my email just now and saw a note from the HRC telling me it's been 10 years since Matthew Shepard was murdered. A decade. In some very important ways, the GLBT community has made critical strides toward equality. But by no means are we equal, so by no means are we done. And if this anniversary marks anything other than a specific tragedy, it's that we still have a long way to go. But we're getting there.

I was a sophomore in high school when he died. That makes me feel both young and old. Especially when this hasn't stopped. You'd only have to scroll back a few months in my blog to see a video of Ellen DeGeneres talking about another young boy who died because of someone else's ignorance.

It seems we only address the issue of hate when something horrible happens. And this isn't limited to the GLBT community. When was the last time any of us had the Jena 6 in the forefront of our mind? Because equality is equality. Maybe that's part of the problem.

At 3:30 in the morning, I don't have a solution to offer America on my blog. I don't think it'd get there anyway, and besides, I'm preaching to the choir. I don't think "God Damn It, Amanda" attracts a silent readership of bigots. Then again, bigots only read one book, a book designed to make people better people. So clearly their reading comprehension levels are a bit low.

I was talking with my mother yesterday about her mom, who just turned 82. She was born in 1926 in rural Virginia and went to college during WWII. And I realized that when my grandmother was born, women had only had the right to vote in this country for six years and going on two months. And now my grandmother is witnessing this election. (And voting for Obama, by the way.)

My great-grandmother was born in 1888. Her parents lived in the south during the Civil War. They had slaves. (Which is a whole other discussion that makes me want to scrub my genes with some sort of disinfectant.)

Then we got to talking about my father's side of the family. I don't want to give the wrong impression -- neither of my parents are racist. But my paternal grandfather was an old-school bigot of the first order. He had some nice qualities about him, and those are the parts of him I remember, because he died when I was 5. I've always joked that he would have disowned me if he'd known me as an adult, though. I said that, and Mom said, "He really would have. You two would not be on speaking terms. In fact, if he were alive today, your relationship with him would be exactly what it is now as he's been dead for two decades. And you would have hated him, too."

Not that that was a surprise to hear, but I'd always thought of it as him hating me, not the other way around. But I really would have. So I've been thinking about it. Does any hate make you a bigot? Is it hypocritical of me to acknowledge that I'd hate him? Because I'd probably hate him the way I hate Dick Cheney, because I theorized and Mom agreed that he'd have tried to use my college fund to send me to some Make-U-Straight camp.

The answer of course is no, because hating bigots is to judge a person based on his character. But also because I'd forgive him.

If there's an afterlife in which some kind of greater truth is revealed to us, which I unwaveringly assert is that everyone everywhere is equal, that no one is better than anyone else, and that no kind of love is ever wrong, I'd have to assume he'd let it sink in and then say, "Okay, you got me, that was my bad, you guys," (because apparently my dead grandfather is in "The Hills: Afterlife"). And we'd be cool. (Side note, if I die and then hear a booming voice tell me that I was wrong and the bible was meant to be taken literally and so that every-fucking-thing ever is an abomination, I'm going to scream "Seriously?!" because I really, really, really, really, really think that would just be somebody fucking with Dead Amanda. And then I will hear afterlife laughter.) If, however, he decided to be a dick about it and refuse the idea that people are people no matter what they look like (how radical -- I must be a communist) then he could go suck a cosmic lemon.

Either way, whether he'd be capable of tolerance or not, as I go down the street in a few weeks and order up some democracy on my blinking Sheetz screen, (with pickles and mayo!) I am going to once again cast my e-ballot for Obama and think, "This one's for you, Grandpa."

But to tell the truth, it's mostly gonna be for my grandchildren.

content-free content: just like fox news

2008-10-11T19:15:00.003-05:00

I'm posting so much today because I'm glued to my computer because I'm supposed to be working on my final revisions for one of my classes. (Grad school is organized strangely.)

Enjoy LoLincoln.

And another link. It makes me sad and incredulous at the same time, which is a very specific and disheartening emotional combination, and one I'm not used to experiencing when thinking about anything other than the Bush administration.

it's possible that my soulmate is a 31st-century robot

2008-10-10T20:24:00.004-05:00

Wouldn't be the first machine I've been in love with. But he would be the first that isn't battery-operated.

Evil Bender's blog.

hey there, sarah palin

2008-10-10T19:38:00.002-05:00

Enjoy. I love these guys.

the real october surprise: a vision of my future

2008-10-08T01:23:00.005-05:00

It's me in 60 years. I love this woman. She's hilarious! And understands the beauty of the sentence fragment. (Somewhere on the "Maverick my ass" post is my little comment -- basically it's what I just said. Hey, they can't all be brilliant.)

Earlier today, I was having an idle moment (I must have been peeing -- those are the only idle moments I get to have at work. Perhaps that and not the arid conditions of our office is what makes me drink nonstop throughout my entire shift) and wondered how much I'll change as time goes on. Is it true? Does your mind narrow and your waistline expand? That's a terrifying thought. I mean, my waist is already expanded. I'll be composed of shapes not found in nature if that happens. But will I lose my sense of humor? Will I suddenly become conservative?

I kind of doubt it. My mother calls people "abortion survivors." This could be the screaming child interrupting our conversation or McCain slowly dying in one of his campaign ads. My grandmother tells penis jokes. I'm pretty sure it's in our DNA.

But it gives me a strange sense of calm hope to know that we are not alone in our delightfully profane ways. Plus, it's just funny to read an 82-year-old woman calling John McCain an asswipe. You know, 60 years before I'm the one doing it.

my triumphant return begins with a cordial invitation

2008-10-06T02:35:00.004-05:00

Bobby Lee May, please lick my asshole.

This is what pissed me off. No, seriously, read that. I apologize for the PDF, but I wouldn't have believed it otherwise. George Wallace would have denounced that as racist and wrong.

It also angered many other people. (Like, um, everyone? I don't think there's any group that this lunatic didn't actively try to offend.) But read that one, too, for real. It's lovely and frankly inspires me to do bad things to the author of that article. By which I mean very good things. By which I mean I sent him an amusing email.

And here it is. Presented without links but with italics.

Ben,

I think that you (or me, or anyone, really) beating the hell out of that windbag is the best idea ever to be associated with the name Bobby Lee May. I suppose he thinks we're all not only latte-drinking softies, but easily distracted idiots as well, and that we'll somehow not notice that the McCain-Palin ticket is a sign of the apocalypse if he offends as many people as possible in one article. This is what their campaign has dwindled to; calling gay people pedophiles and perverts and suggesting that Obama will tax oxygen molecules.

Here's what it boils down to: anyone who thinks he must qualify which Ludacris to whom he refers ("Ludacris? Does he mean my cousin Luda? Oh, no, the rapper Ludacris. My mistake -- I must have been fantasizing about higher taxes") is clearly not in possession of his mental faculties.

Sincerely,

Amanda Hempel,
Democrat and Sexual Pervert (Apparently)

I'm back, bitches.

hey, is this thing on?

2008-03-15T03:29:00.008-05:00

What in the hell is Sally Kern talking about? There is not one accurate piece of information in her little tirade. I think she got her "facts" off of Fred Phelps's posters. I can't believe she stopped short of "gay people caused 9/11." Although feminists were included in that list, weren't they? Given that she is an elected official, I'd have to assume that she believes women have rights equal to that of a man. Doing a little picking and choosing in who we choose to oppress, aren't we?

You know what, it's been done, Sally. You're like a less entertaining Ann Coulter. At least she has the balls to spew her vitriol on camera. You quite clearly didn't think anyone was going to hear this. That makes you both lame and gross.

I'd like to know what kind of gay mafia you think is running Pittsburgh, Sally. (Or any of the other completely random places you mentioned.) Ever been here? Clearly, you like to travel, what with your interest in regional Passion plays, just like any true patron of the arts. This isn't a "gay town." But we do have GLBT people. So does Iran. You know why? Because anywhere there are people, there are GLBT people.

Yeah, yeah, it was out of context, or you're addicted to something, or gay aliens took over your body and made you say all that to further the GLBT agenda (our agenda, by the way, is to be treated like people). But next time, why don't you just come out of the closet, as it were, and spread your fabulous glittering hate out for all to admire? Aren't you proud to be one of the Hetero Soldiers protecting America's 2-year-olds from weekly brainwashing sessions? You know the ones. Ones that will force children into living certain kinds of lives even if they know it's not who they are? Into going against the word of god? Something that might someday cause them to commit the sin of suicide, or worse, murder?

Or do you know that hate is something that can't be tolerated in public, because on some level you know it's wrong? (If only you had some book of principles on which you had based your life that you might be able to consult on this topic. What I did was I thought about it for a minute. When I was 6. But don't feel that you need to strain yourself.)

There's a reason that KKK members wear sheets. Ask yourself what you've done in confining your real views to whispers among people you thought were your confidants. And then remind yourself that in that group you thought was behind you all the way, there was someone who very clearly wasn't.

I'm not going to expend any more energy responding to this ridiculous woman. It's already been done rather eloquently anyway. And of course Ellen had something to say. And someone even said something in rhyme. Now that's awesome.

ellen says it better than i could

2008-03-03T04:21:00.000-05:00

i can has whole new way to waste time?

2008-02-26T03:39:00.004-05:00

If I turned Dusty into a loldog...I wonder how...maybe if...oh, wait, what's THIS?!

LolDusty.

Another lolDusty.

And another.

And in case you're wondering what a loldog is, they're the evolution of lolcats. Rate lolDusty well and make her a celebridog! We'll be just like Paris Hilton and her little rat dog.

Except for our ability to survive in the cold. And respective plethora of talents. Although I have no idea what kind of skill set the rat dog has, so I could be off-base there.

who do you know who could tell this story? no one, that's who

2008-02-15T03:04:00.002-05:00

So I still have all this British money in my wallet that I apparently refuse to take out because I think I'm going to run across a currency-exchange booth on my way to work. Maybe it makes me feel...exotic? Maybe not.

Whatever the reason, I told Trina and she said, "Yeah, I found a wad of cash in one of my pockets the other day...Malaysian."

I want to write a script just so I can share this scene with the rest of the world, because it might be the funniest thing anyone has ever said.

nancy drew (times two) and the case of the forgotten hat

2008-02-15T02:51:00.002-05:00

So Trina and I went to see "No Country For Old men" on Saturday, which was a fucking outstanding movie. Go see it. But that's not what this story is about.

As we were leaving, Trina noticed a hat on the floor next to where we'd been sitting and concluded it must have belonged to the guy who was sitting next to us. He was older, with a woman who was presumably his daughter.

"He was shorter and wearing black; she was taller than him and I think she was wearing pink. He also has a bad knee, so he can't have gotten far."

Stand down, Adrian Monk. Amanda is on the case.

So we spotted them right as they were walking through the door and we yelled what is now our catchphrase -- "Sir! Your hat!"

We hope this will grow into an international series.

Monsieur! Your beret!
Signore! Your cappello!
Hipster! Your fedora!

"Hipster! Your fedora!" will undoubtedly signal the tragic end of the series.

not only did she catch the gingerbread man, but she fucked him up

2008-02-15T01:44:00.003-05:00

So here in Pittsburgh, we had a bit of a snowstorm on Monday night. The roads were bad enough that on Tuesday, I got to have a Grown Up Snow Day. Which, in case you were wondering, is the best kind. The joy of making snowmen pales in comparison to the joy of vodka while the sun is still up. Sort of my homage to the housewives of old.

Also part of an homage to housewives of old -- I spent the whole day baking. And I mean baking. I made dozens and dozens of cupcakes, brownies, and enough pink-frosted sugar cookies to send eastern Europe into a diabetic coma. Yeah, that's right. Mama owned that kitchen. My cupcakes were glorious, too. Chocolate chocolate chip, white fluffy frosting, lovingly sprinkled with little chocolate bits. Carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting and whimsical pink sprinkles. Double fudge frosted brownies with little snowflake sprinkles. And I busted out the food coloring for those damn sugar cookies AND they had sprinkles, too. The dining room looked like it had been infested with Keebler elves.

I frosted my last cookie around midnight. It was a good day. The reason for this flurry of domesticity was that my mother was conducting a staff-support meeting on Wednesday and she likes to take goodies. That I make. I told her that I expected at least one marriage proposal by the end of the night. (And that if it was from a doctor, to assemble my dowry.)

So Wednesday morning, she solved the problem of how to transport so much deliciousness in one trip. She constructed something out of twine and a cooler and magic and went out to chip the ice off her car. Half an hour later, she was backing up, and...crunch. She said that she could hardly bring herself to get out and look. But as we all know, the Ford Escape versus Sprinkly Cupcakes bout did not end with an upset.

She made up a story about falling down the steps (onto tires?) and spewed every foul word she'd ever heard in her life at her steering wheel as she went in to work. Which is when her day got bad.

When she told me about her dessert demolition, even though I'd spent the entire day crafting all my little sugary babies with love and care when I might as well have been hurling eggs, flour, and vanilla extract on the front lawn, I'd never heard anything more hilarious in my life. I laughed so hard that my dog thought I was dying and she sprang onto my back. Because I was doubled over. She was somewhat less amused; she said she wanted to just crash the fuck into a tree and get it over with.

"Why? Were there cupcakes on it? Did the Muffin Man run past one? I hope you didn't go down Lollipop Lane and crush all the Gummi Bears."

Best part: someone still told her they were the best brownies he'd ever had in his life. Boo-yah.

mike huckabee can munch on my grundle

2007-12-20T02:54:00.000-05:00

He can lick it, flick it, and motorboat it. Apparently he said "Unless Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain to tell us something different, we need to keep that understanding of marriage."

I guess "that understanding" means his understanding, because my understanding of marriage is definitely not what it is in his lovely little world. I can tell you some motherfucking stories about marriage -- good, bad, and absolutely horrifying. It's different for everyone, and maybe sometimes that includes two people who happen to be the same gender. Big fucking deal. How about we do something about domestic violence. Then you can tell me how if two women share health insurance and hospital-visitation rights, all the straight people are going to light on fire or something.

And by the way, I don't seem to recall anything in the 10 commandments about "Thou shalt not marry a dude if thou art also a dude." I also seem to recall something about the church and the state being separate entities in this country.

Not that the other pubbie candidates are any better.

Rudy "I Feel Pretty" Giuliani said, "It’s the acts, it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful." He paused, then added, "Nine eleven." I've beaten the shrimp-as-sin dead horse to the texture of hamburger already, but I just wanted to bring it up one more time in the true spirit of Giuliani. (It was either that or go make a bunch of bad decisions.) But his statement makes me wonder if he really understands what sodomy is. If you think that being gay is gonna send you into a lake of fire for all of eternity, if you've ever had a blowjob, you're gonna spend the afterlife between Andy Dick and Richard Simmons. And I do mean between.

Mitt Romney, laying it out there plain and simple, much like tying a dog to the roof of a car, said, "I don't want civil unions or gay marriage." Only he could make an incendiary statement fucking boring. You know what, Mitt? I don't want you. And yet your existence is still legal. So I just stay away from you and other likeminded, breathtakingly boring individuals. Maybe if you're so afraid of me kissing on some ladies, you should stay the hell away from me. In fact, let's just agree right now to never, ever see each other.

However, Mike Huckabee, the invitation for you to dive facefirst into my nether regions shall stand until one of us is dead.

It's not just that particular statement that makes me hate him so much. Nor is it his policies, which include supporting the FairTax. (By the way, I've heard things from retarded people that were way less retarded than the FairTax. More on that here if you're interested.) He also wants to write shit into the Constitution banning abortion, of course he wants to "protect" marriage from all us scary non-straight people, he thinks immigrants are gross, he wants to stay in Iraq until the Sun supernovas, and I'm pretty sure there's probably something in there somewhere about repealing suffrage for all non-white, non-land-owning men, and all women.

All of those things contribute to his douchebaggery. But they're not the reason I can't stand him. Not the way I hate Dick Cheney, of course. It's a little more annoyance than hatred, but it could still shift.

It's because he can't fucking write, yet he continues to do so.

I had to caption a speech he gave to a bunch of nodding white people with really bad haircuts and even worse clothes. I can only assume this took place in a church of some kind.

He kept drawing these ridiculous analogies between "the good old days" and "now, a time when gargoyles apparently fly through the air." Except none of his "now" analogies were things that were within the past 10 years.

These quotations are from memory, so they're not exact, but the then-versus-now examples are accurate, because I could not make this shit up.

"I remember when art was Norman Rockwell. Now it's Robert Mapplethorpe." I am 25 and I only had a vague recollection of who Mapplethorpe was. That's because he died in 1989. He was a photographer who, among many other things, photographed nude people. Which, in case you didn't notice, destroyed society.

"I remember a time when children grew up watching 'Leave It To Beaver.' Now we have 'Beavis and Butt-head.'" Dude, you should seriously watch "The Sopranos."

"I remember a time when Father Knew Best. Now we have fathers like Homer Simpson, who need help from their kids just to get through the day." You do understand that Homer Simpson is a fictional character, correct? That it's funny? When you hear about "Family Guy" in like 12 years, you'll probably have a stroke.

There was a lot more of this crap -- it just kept going and going. He's a good speaker, though, and if I were really fucking stupid, I'd be taken in by him. (Iowa, go kill yourself.) Which is why it's possible that I could possibly hate him as much as I hate Dick Cheney someday.

He's such a wad of snot that because Chuck Norris has endorsed his candidacy, (apparently the third fist isn't under Chuck's beard; it's inside his skull) I have officially renounced Chuck Norris. So I need to find some other celebrity to take his place. Maybe William H. Macy, because I love his name. We'll start a line, guys. Just don't get in the one behind Mike Huckabee.

christmas dusty

2007-12-16T22:01:00.000-05:00

Where's Waldo?

Some guy just came down the chimney. Don't worry; I ate him.

Looks better on me anyway.

WHAT?!

2007-12-16T21:50:00.001-05:00

dusty auditioning for "i am legend"

2007-12-16T21:46:00.000-05:00

halliburton: as evil as possible

2007-12-16T05:17:00.000-05:00

What the hell is wrong with people?

Enraged? I am, too.

Take 25 seconds and do something about it.

it's the day when my people wear candles on their heads, and i am serious about that stabbing thing

2007-12-14T04:19:00.000-05:00

So it's been brought to my attention by, um, all of you that I haven't written anything in several moons. Sorry. So as a kind of apology, here's a picture that has been making me snort all day:

Yeah, that's fucking awesome right there.

So here's what's been up. School. Work. New dog. Speeding ticket. Going to England next month (for school -- 10-day residency just like what I did in August in Jersey, except it's January in England).

School -- going well. Getting some good "real" writing done.

Work -- fortunately, the writers' strike hasn't yet affected my ability to bring home the partially dehydrogenated bacon substitute. (I think I got an email from one of you asking what in the hell it is I do -- I create closed captions for television.) And on a related note, how about the bunch of new HD channels that sprang, Greek-god-like, out of fucking nowhere, yesterday. All of a sudden I'm seeing my Law & Order SVU repeats in high definiton, which is exactly how Mariska Hargitay should be viewed. AND Discovery is now airing its regular lineup in HD in addition to the other HD channel it has. Which to me means one thing: Mike Rowe. In high definition. Mmm. Yes and yes. Today was our holiday party, one of two yearly catered events during which they try to kill me via buffet. Why does everything have to have green peppers in it? Are they a food group or something? I really have the most obnoxious food allergies. Today was also St. Lucia Day. If you don't have any idea what that is, it's okay. That just means you are not Swedish. As my friend Meadow explained to the table of Very Confused Coworkers, "it's the day where her people wear candles on their heads." Yeah, pretty much it. It also involves getting up with the sun, which is when I go to bed, so to you, St. Lucia, I say: perform a miracle where dawn happens at 3:00 PM and we'll talk.

New dog! Dusty is fucking awesome. She's like a furry toddler. Who eats people. I walk her when I get home from work (which is a little before midnight) and we go past a bar at the top of the hill and I have discovered something. Drunk old guys in parking lots leave you the fuck alone if you're holding the leash of a snarling creature. I need her with me all the time.

This is her.

I got her from a coworker. Her owner passed away, and so I saw this flyer with pictures of this sad-looking doggie...posted right behind my desk. And in the kitchen. It was like she was looking at me all day, saying "Mommy! Come get me! Take me home!" So I did. And she's absolutely a wonderful dog. She's attached to my hip and extremely protective and very sensitive to my moods. Granted, I pretty much just have the three: angry, laughing, and asleep. The other night we were playing and she got really wound up -- she started spinning like a top. So I collapsed in a kind of stage fall and she freaked the hell out. She ran over and pounced on me and started crying and licking me and whapping me in some kind of berserk doggie CPR. It would have been funny if only she weren't completely terrified. So no more Jim Carrey moves for me.

Speeding ticket -- I was NOT!

England -- very excited. But if one more person tells me that it's cold in England in the winter, I will fucking stab you in the taint. I live in Pittsburgh, where we have things called seasons. Therefore, I own sweaters. Also, I'm pretty sure there are buildings in England with which I will shield myself from rain and/or snow. And I am serious about that stabbing thing. Also stab-worthy: telling me that things in England are expensive, that I should take food with me, and telling me to go "swing by" every single corner of the country. You know, since it IS a vacation, not an assload of graduate credits. So serious about the stabbing. So serious.

i'm an abortion survivor: another exciting installment in the hit series "why i'm like this"

2007-10-23T01:24:00.000-05:00

So this will truly make sense only to those of you who are fans of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." (And if you own a tv and have the ability to laugh, you should be.) For those of you who are not, here's some quick background info that you will find helpful. Suspecting that Frank is in fact his biological father, Charlie confronts him. Frank admits to impregnating Charlie's mom but says she had an abortion, so therefore he can't be his dad. Charlie questions his mother about the abortion, and she tells him that Frank did, in fact, knock her up, and that she did, in fact, have an abortion. It just "didn't take." Cut to Charlie screaming at Frank, "I'm an abortion survivor, dad!"

I know the recap sucked. This is why you should watch the show.

My mother and I were watching random videos on On Demand. We'd just rocked out to ACDC (insert obvious joke here) and then we saw a video for a band called Dying Fetus. How can you say no to Dying Fetus? Here's what they sound like. Imagine Satan. Now imagine he's just eaten a really big extra-spicy bean burrito from Taco Bell that was somewhat past its prime. Now imagine it's El Diablo's third trip to the bathroom, and last week he had a coupon for some recycled toilet paper. Because even Satan understands the importance of recycling. He killed the last roll of Charmin long ago and now his asshole looks like one of the stalactites of fire above his head. Imagine what you'd be hearing in Satan's downstairs hallway right about then. Multiply that by "extremely lame" and you've got the vocals down. Also, Satan is angry because he can't play guitar after all. Or bass.

Proof.

So we kept making dead fetus jokes and then my mom all of a sudden busts out with "I'm an abortion survivor!" I high-fived her.

Cut to like an hour later and I'm on the phone telling JK about it, and Mom's in the next room cracking up. Literally doubled over laughing. Then she screams "You're an abortion survivor, Amanda!"

Even later, we're in the kitchen, and I'm telling her about a donation system that Planned Parenthood has where people's donations are multiplied by the number of morons outside the clinic every day. (That link is to the PP of western Pennsylvania, but most PPs have this program, from what I've seen.) Which is fucking ingenius. And we're laughing about it and I said that the next time I see one of those obnoxious "Smile! Your mother chose life!" signs, I'd tell them that no, in fact, she did not. It just didn't take. And mom goes, "Well, for me she did, but my twin..."

"Hand me the scissors! I'm gonna stab this fetus in the eyeballs!"
"Damn, that baby is UGLY! I can't be having no ugly babies."
"Hey, hand me that coin. Call it in the air! Who's getting flushed??"

And so on. I'm pretty sure they'd be sad my mom chose life. Which fills me with a warm, happy feeling. Like Christmas morning, but with 25% more abortion jokes.

dear wonderful friends and cherished network of internet-based stalkers

2007-10-19T02:19:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry I haven't written anything here in so long. But I have been doing some other writing, so at least we know I haven't sustained a serious brain injury.

Everything is okay, I've just been really busy. And I have a large collection of ridiculous observations and rants to share with you soon, I promise.

I saw a commercial for a hydroponic "garden" growing system recently. Just a preview of the profound musings you all have to look forward to!

Peace, love, and hydroponic growing systems to you all.

they forgot "less tolerant of complete fools"

2007-09-11T02:51:00.000-05:00

According to OkCupid's new personality award thingies, I am...

more aggressive
more ambitious
more artistic
more literary
more desiring of sex
more trusting
more well-mannered

and

less dorky
less indie
less desiring of love

...which to me seems like a frighteningly accurate assessment of my life and personality via funny little pictures. If by "trusting" you mean "more likely to be able to take most people out if they get out of hand" and by "well-mannered" you mean "more likely to fucking kill you if you don't acknowledge that it was me letting you into traffic and not your superior driving skills, you brain-damaged asshole."

Some douchebag wrote in to the paper whining about people swearing. Really? Swearing is the problem that gets you so bothered that you feel the need to write in to the paper to combat the problem? Not global warming, our unjustified war with Iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il both being crazier than Bobby Trendy on crystal meth, and Steely McBeam still at large? It's not AIDS or world hunger or female circumcision or terrorism or Toby Keith fans? The entire world running out of oil and yet having no feasible solution to meet our insatiable need for power and they still let Britney Spears out in public?

Swearing, huh? Yeah, I get it. I can see in a world where Osama bin Laden is still chilling out somewhere with time to Clairol his chin pubes, you'd really be upset about my frequent use of the word "cunt." Because somewhere in a concentration camp in North Korea, someone whose second cousin was rumored to have complained about the weather had his fingernails ripped out right as I stubbed my toe and said "fuck." Clearly, something needs to be done about me and what I've done to the world.

the other night, she said "twat" at the dinner table

2007-09-05T01:28:00.000-05:00

So I bought one of those Magic Eraser things to scrub the scum off our shower grout. Those things actually work, which is kind of amazing. Because that type of product almost never works. But that's not what I wanted to tell you.

No, I wanted to tell you all that my mother has finally given up trying to clean up my mouth. After about 25 years. I'm glad she didn't reach the official quartercentennial under the delusion that eventually I won't sound like a truck-driving sailor who just smashed his thumb in a door. Or, you know, her.

On the Magic Eraser package, it says not to use on your skin, because it "may cause abrasion." I'd fucking hope that my skin wouldn't be able to hold up to something I'd use to clean up mildew. Something would be extremely wrong with the makeup of my epidermis if it had the relative toughness of, say, a triceratops.

Me: May cause abrasion. Damn. I was gonna use it on my taint.
Mom: Turn it into a 'twas.

Thank you and goodnight.

you know, the germans have a word for this

2007-08-29T23:53:00.000-05:00

Schadenfreude.

I have a whole bunch of words for it, but I can't quite make sense of it all, as there is screaming in my head.

Also, I can't believe/am extremely grateful I didn't have to caption that.

almost famous...but only at biondi ford, and for all the wrong reasons

2007-08-27T01:31:00.000-05:00

Salesman: So what are you looking for in your new car?
Mom: Mike Rowe.

Salesman: (joking) And, of course, you can't go wrong with a Mustang.
Me: Oh, sure you can.
Salesman: How?
Me: By buying one.
Salesman: That V8 is fun, though.
Me: Until you get to the gas station.
Salesman: Here's what you do. You tell the idiot ogling your car that for $10, you'll take him for a spin around the block.
Me: Yeah, or if you're a girl, you can do this. (leaning over the car in low-cut shirt) "Who wants to fill my tank?" Oh, wait. Shit.
Mom: You're gonna get us kicked out.
Salesman: Not necessarily.

Salesman: (apparently...I didn't hear this...though I heard about it nonstop) I wonder how much pot you'd have to smoke to like this Kiwi Green?
Me: Hey, I really like that Kiwi Green!

Salesman: What features do you really want?
Mom: A moonroof. And Mike Rowe.
Salesman: Okay, who is that?
Mom: ...I don't think I can talk to you anymore.

basement conversations

2007-08-23T01:43:00.001-05:00

Me: What would you do if you found out you knocked up some girl?
JK: "Here's a coat hanger."
Me: What if she wanted to keep it?
JK: "Here's a coat hanger."
Me: No, seriously.
JK: If it happened right now, there's just no way. I'd convince her to have an abortion or give it up, because there's just no way.
Me: If she absolutely refused?
JK: She'd never see me again.
Me: What's funny is that if some guy did that to me --
JK: That situation would never happen. You'd be like FETUS B GONE!
Me: I don't know.
JK: [ instantly serious ] I'd fucking kill him. I'd kill him. Oh, he'd be so fucking dead.

Mom: Once I get my check, I'm going to get a hearing aid for Mo. Because I know that's the issue -- she doesn't want to spend the money. Maybe I'll just send her a check.
Me: And then she'll rip up the check, because that's what the two of you do -- think the other has no money.
"Here's a check for you!"
"I can't take that from you! RIP! But here's a check for you!"
"I can't take your money! RIP! But here's a check for YOU!"
Mom: Now, don't be a smartass.
Me: You should have thought of that before you had children.

Me: I think I'm an acceptable sort of insane.
Mom: I think you pride yourself in it.
Me: Wouldn't you?

more pittsburgh goodness

2007-08-22T02:29:00.000-05:00

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me? How did I manage not to invent this?

Which reminds me, while I was at Target this weekend, some chick hurricaned into the jewelry department and yelled "Is these real?" (which sounded like "Iseezriww?") as she ran her hand through the selection of fake pearls that were hanging on a plastic rack. Because if I had a store, on plastic racks is where I would hang my fine jewelry. Not inside the several glass cases right next to you.

Then when she finally figured out that no, in fact, they were not real, she stopped cracking her gum long enough to yell "Do yinz have real pearls?" ("Dyinzavriwwperws") at the jewelry clerk, who displayed enormous personal strength when she did not respond by stabbing that girl in the neck.

If ever you have some sort of pearl-related emergency that makes you think you might have to careen into a store and start barking at the woman at the counter and you decide that Target is where you need to go, please drive yourself over the side of the Rankin Bridge. Which might be the safest way to cross it, despite its thorough endorsement from PennDOT: "Well, it's open, ain't it?"

only in pittsburgh...

2007-08-19T20:26:00.001-05:00

...does Girls' Night In include preseason football.

...will you see a fake-homeless guy holding up a black & gold sign that says "Homeless. Please Help. Go Steelers." (Although I do have to give him credit for knowing his audience.)

...will you walk out of Phillip Pelusi positively dripping with your own fabulousness and then some 18-year-old Cricker says, "You poppin', girl" and then you sort of want to go kill yourself.

...will you use the heater and the air-conditioner in your car not just in the same day, but in the same outing.

All true stories from my weekend here in lovely Pittsburgh.

i <3 school

2007-08-18T16:41:00.000-05:00

I just bought three different kinds of Post-its. They're all color-coordinated. I also got two different sizes of paper clips and a box of push-pins. Also color-coordinated. Four three-ring binders (because I finally found some that didn't make me want to throw up when I touched them and/or had some Disney character on them).

My episode of "Intervention" will be filmed exclusively in the office-supply area of Target.

and my pigeon army shall be fearsome

2007-08-14T02:45:00.000-05:00

I passed this on the turnpike but I didn't get a chance to stop. I already feel a profound regret.

I'm sort of afraid it's a farm for pigeons that people will eventually shoot. I'd try to free the pigeons if that were the case. I'd sneak in wearing all black -- the pigeon ninja. I'd free them and in their gratitude, they would become my loyal army. Fred Phelps would disappear and then be found at the bottom of the world's largest deposit of pigeon poo. Or perhaps carried to a considerable height and then dropped. Although I wouldn't want any of my little pigeon soldiers to be harmed.

I've always liked pigeons, although most people consider them rats with wings. These people tend to hate bats, which I also love. I've always wanted to have pet bats, but I don't know how I'd be able to pull that off. What I do know is that Bert and The Count were the best characters on Sesame Street.

When I was in Venice, I was the only person in my family who'd let all the pigeons eat from her hands. They land all over you -- even on your head, despite the food being only in your hands. But it's close to the food, and that's good enough for them. I can understand a desire just to be near food. This is why I am the Pigeon Whisperer.

apple juice and a cheese sandwich

2007-08-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

I am not a role model. The children should not read this. Which is only going to make them want to read it even more.

I keep trying to be Not Drunk Anymore. So far, it's not going so well. I typed the title to this entry, which I thought up in a fit of brilliance as I was eating a cheese sandwich and drinking some apple juice on the couch. I've had to re-type nearly every word since then. I don't know how anyone can be an alcoholic and a writer. Maybe it was easier when you did it longhand.

I haven't been drunk in nearly two years. Or something like that. I couldn't really do math right now. Or ever.

Today was a good day. I woke up at 6:00 (what the fuck, dude? that's when I usually go to bed) and wrote. Good ideas. Solved some fiction problems. Let's hope it sticks.

So then I had some crazy dreams (even while drunk I won't spill these beans to the general public) and then kept thinking in some bizzare paranoid state that the person the dreams were about could freaking read my mind. Or maybe I talk in my sleep and his room is above mine. In which case I should just kill myself now if he just heard the phone conversation I had with my best friend. If it had a refrain, that refrain would be, "Give me a baby!"

Moving on. Had a workshop, hung out with a friend, formal final dinner, and then graduation and then the newbie reading, of which I was part. Awesome. Receptive crowd, and my favorite thing ever happened -- a person I'd never met before came over and said that she really liked a specific poem. That takes a lot, man. To listen to a poem is hard work, which sounds stupid, but it really is hard because there's so much in so few words. You have to really pay attention. Anyway, I got some really nice compliments afterward. And then everyone hit the bar. I hit it particularly hard, although I'm starting to sober up now. I base this on a reduced amount of backspacing and correcting.

None of this has a point. I just sort of needed to do something while I was waiting for my cheese sandwich to take effect. I have to be at a lecture at 10:30 and then drive back to Pittsburgh tomorrow. What the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know how anyone can do this all the time. To repeat my most-used phrase this week, Dude, whatever. I even said it in class today.

I clearly have problems. Although nothing that can't be solved by a cheese sandwich and some apple juice.

how i accidentally photographed my shirtless professor a half hour before class

2007-08-09T23:34:00.000-05:00

You know what kind of sucks? All my professors are hip and know how to perform interwebular activities, and so I can't gossip about them on here 'cause they'd find me. And since there are only a handful of other people studying poetry (and since, you know, I have my name and picture on here) they'd know it was me. Not that I have any good stories (or do I? this place is kind of like the world's most literary soap opera).

Okay, so I kind of have one story. I mean, I have been here almost a week. (Even though this happened on Wednesday.)

I don't think I'll use his name, even though I'm the butt of this joke. I don't know what the hell kind of reputation I think he'll get from this, anyway, (or how many people I've deluded myself into thinking actually read this) other than maybe having unfortunate timing. And everyone here has already heard this story twice.

So I have my new camera, and I recently realized I do, in fact, exist in the 21st century and the thing has a zoom. Because it's, you know, digital. I took some pictures of my cavernous room and then I took some pictures of the view from my bedroom. Then I decided to try to figure out the zoom and to see how precise it is, so I tried to photograph my own license plate in the parking lot. So I zoomed in and in and in and the lens was out as far as it could go, a good several inches.

Because I was trying to make out my license plate, I didn't notice that my professor, apparently coming from the pool, was walking by the window. And there I was, in all my backlit, bedroom-window-peering zoom-lens glory -- and he, half-dressed. Did I mention the flash went off?

I know Scott's going to ask, and no, you can't see it -- I deleted the picture as soon as I took it, because I knew that if I kept it, someone would wind up looking through my pictures on the camera and then would stop, think for a few seconds, then cock his head to the side like a Golden Retriever and say, "Amanda, can I ask why..."

He wound up not even noticing (because I had to ask him when I saw him in class shortly thereafter) and thought it was hilarious -- his only question was, "So, how'd I look?"

the lackwit epistles: part 87

2007-08-08T23:07:00.000-05:00

It's kind of delicious that I got this stranger email while I'm at school.

"Hey wuts good ma how u doing? I peeped ya page and damn u looking sexxy azz hell! Wut u b gettin in2 4fun? Ya smile is also real cute, i like that alot :) Well hit me up when u getta minute ok..."

And now for some thoughts:

Did he seriously call me "ma"?

Why are letters towards the end of the alphabet cool?

His profile picture is him holding a giant stack of money.

Even if he were holding a giant stack of burritos, I wouldn't like him.

Because he probably already ate the burritos.

But he might know where to get some more.

I make really good burritos.

I want a burrito.

angry road math, raccoon bacon, and the world's smallest abridged kama sutra: welcome to pennsylvania!

2007-08-07T20:24:00.000-05:00

So here's what I should be doing right now:

A bunch of reading.
Deciding what I'm going to read on Saturday at the Newbie Reading.
Clipping my toenails.
Figuring out where the rich people keep the Target.
Putting photos of the campus on my computer.

And here's what I am doing:

Telling you all about how I bought the world's smallest abridged Kama Sutra.

So I left Friday morning around 10:00 even though I planned to leave at 9:00 because buying tickets to the Tori Amos show downtown in October takes precedence above oxygen most of the time. These people know what a bizarre species we Tori fans are and so they planned accordingly. Except not at all. Their website wouldn't allow me to add two tickets to my cart (making a total of two tickets) because I was limited to two tickets. Two is also the number of aneurysms I can't believe I didn't have.

I finally got the fucking website to work (or someone at the pgharts.org IT department figured out a way to keep his job) and sprinted onto the turnpike. The trip was fine till I had to exit the turnpike, which is a phrase you will never hear ever again even if you live to be 150. I had to exit near Carlisle, which is just the first in a series of serendipitous intersections with Schools That Rejected Me. Anyway, as I was getting near the exit, I started to see all the digital signs flashing some warning about a backup at exit...something. I missed it. Because the idiots who program those signs make half of a vital message display for about six seconds, and then you pass it as you get the second half of whatever it was you really needed to know. But I had to pee, so I got off at the next service plaza, which was a Roy Rogers and a Sunoco competing for Dirtiest Establishment In Pennsylvania.

I stood around with a bunch of irritated vacationing dads in front of the turnpike map conveniently located directly in the flow of all the foot traffic entering the entire building. Because when you're trying to figure out a route based on a giant plastic map in a Roy Rogers bathroom vestibule, it's good to be jostled by sweaty strangers. So I mumbled at the map for a while and then, almost in synch with all the vacationing dad troupe, said, "But that's gonna take an extra 45 minutes!" because the only math I can do is Angry Road Math.

I hadn't had lunch yet, and I was already in a bad mood, so I decided to buy something from Roy Rogers. If you ever go into a Roy Rogers on the Pennsylvania turnpike and actually leave with food, you can safely assume that you are either A) already angry at the world and don't care what happens to you anymore, or B) about to be. I ordered a Number 1, which appeared to be a cheeseburger from 1979. I don't know what decade the fries were from, because before I could decide, the angry woman at the register threw my paper cup at me. "Drink!" she grunted at me. I wasn't sure if this was her way of communicating to me that I should not eat the cup, or if she perhaps had some fetish. "Yes. Drink," I said. Which might be how I wound up catching my bag of cheeseburger like a fly ball.

I slung some condiments on my burger, which I now suspect was actually from 1979, filled my drink, and got the hell out of there. Back in the car, I turned on the radio and staticked my way through the AM stations to figure out if it was, in fact, my exit that had a backup and why that might be. All I got was Jim Rome. So I listened to him and tried to figure out how the hell I could manually adjust the radio stations. And that's when I took a bite. There was something not of a cow in this burger.

I pictured that old Simpsons scene where Lisa is visualizing all the meat that goes into a hot dog -- a pigeon, raccoon, and an old boot. I think they use the same meat supplier. But then I realized that it was something extra that was giving me shivers in my soul, not the patty itself. And I peeled what I think was bacon off the bottom of the bun. Never in my life have I not wanted bacon. Although this might have been boot and/or raccoon. The fries were what I can only describe as cool and flaccid. And still, none of this prepared me for the Coke. How do you fuck up Coke? You hook up some tubes, you shut the door to the machine, and then you walk away. And it wasn't just that the ratio of syrup to carbonated water was wrong. It was like they'd tried to make the Coke syrup themselves. Using raisins and turpentine. I kept forgetting or thinking, "Was it really that bad?" and then taking another sip. I concluded that yes, in fact, it was, as I finally got the AM station I needed.

Turns out that the backup was at my exit, but I decided to brave the apparent throngs of Goat Fair-goers (or whatever the fuck the event at the Carlisle Campgrounds was) and just deal with it, because if I got lost, I'd be even angrier. I got there and there were three cars ahead of me. I'm never listening to those goddamn digital signs ever again after this trip, because every time I needed to exit, there was some alleged backup that never happened. Not that I wanted to sit in traffic (which I did do several times, just not at the times I'd been warned) but because raising my blood pressure so often for no reason isn't good.

As I got nearer to New Jersey and further into Pennsylvania towns that clearly count corn stalks in their welcome-sign populations, I really fucking had to pee. I stopped in some town that appeared to consist of a stop sign, two gas stations directly across from each other, and a white pickup truck that kept driving up and down the road. Also, corn. Its claim to fame was "E-Z On, E-Z Off!" Clearly, that was enough to sell me.

I ran (or perhaps skittered) into the Sunoco and hurdled a bunch of Sierra Mist stacked on the floor to get to the bathroom. This is what Mr. Cecil's sadistic gym-class jumping blocks were training me for. I don't know what trained me for the women's room with no door that faced into the store, but I'd have peed in the middle of the floor right next to the Sierra Mist if I had to.

For those not about to die of burst bladders, they'd placed a vending machine inside the stall advertising a hilarious assortment of condoms, lube, and reading material that I suspect was there to facilitate urination through laughter. I bought "Erotic Sexual Positions From Around The World" for 50 cents, which might be the wisest financial decision I've ever made. It's a great combination of terrifying artwork and racism. I plan to keep it in my wallet until it falls apart.

Here's an excerpt: "Backward Jockey Position: The freewheeling Scandinavians, with their lust for sexual experimentation, originated this turnaround sitting position. The ultimate 'turn on.'"

"The Rocking Position: We have the Arabians and their 'ships of the desert' to thank for this erotic import. This position allows frontal caresses between the partners while they gently rock to a prolonged orgasm aided by the swaying of camels."

Because when I look at a camel, I think, "Yeah, I'd like to fuck somebody on that thing. I like the way it vomits and bellows at the same time." Nothing can bring about a prolonged orgasm like a camel.

The back cover says "1st in a series of Erotic Best Sellers." Clearly, I need to hit "E-Z On, E-Z Off!" on my way back to Pittsburgh on Sunday.

jesus and vampires

2007-07-12T02:24:00.000-05:00

I need to get a "No Proselytizing" sign to put next to the mailbox. Some asshole keeps leaving me Jesus junk mail, which I keep crumpling into a ball and launching into the street, because I won't even bring that crap into my house to throw it away.

I also do that with the newspaper-looking roll of advertisements I keep finding in the driveway. If I ever see that person, I am gonna knock his teeth out and make a necklace and wear it as a warning to all the other junk-mail distributors.

Can you imagine if I actually went to their creepy church?

How did you first hear about our religion? Please check only one...

- all the crap we left on your porch
- poked yourself in the ear canal with a fork and then wandered down the street
- when we threw that Hefty bag over your head and shoved you into the van

I saw about five minutes of a "documentary" the other day about vampires. Or rather, some interview with a dude who was so gay it was obvious to everyone but him talking about how he just loves to suck on this other dude's neck. But it's okay -- they're not gay. The guy is just his blood donor. (And then I rolled my eyes so hard that they fell out of my head.) Then he explained that he needs this dude's blood every couple weeks (you'd think it'd be something he needed every day, but I guess as a non-vampire, I wouldn't know, would I?) because it gives him "vitamins and nutrients." I hear those now come as a part of this complete breakfast, too. And you can't get AIDS from Trix. He also explained that vampires can die, can see their reflections in mirrors, won't be repelled by garlic, don't have aversions to crosses, and can't turn into bats. You know, because those are all misconceptions about vampires, not because vampires aren't real and these people are just desperately searching for some way in which they can be different and special and loved by someone, anyone at all. Has nothing to do with that.

Then they ran out of things to ask this lunatic, so they started retelling the entire plot of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." That's when I changed the channel.

My point is this: I would sooner let some nutjob drink my blood than I would go to a church that left me a religion menu dangling from my mailbox. Because at least that would only be once every couple of weeks.

the vicious cycle of my face

2007-07-12T01:53:00.000-05:00

I won't turn 25 till Thanksgiving Day, so what I'm about to say might not make a whole lot of sense in a chronological (or logical) way. But I'm freaking old.

Not just because the last thing I posted was a quotation from "The Golden Girls," although that should qualify me for AARP membership. No, it's because I have found actual wrinkles on my face. I've got some to the left of my nose that are from smiling. Some below my eyes, also from smiling. They're pretty minor. No one would ever notice the ones under my eyes, and the ones by my nose are very light.

However.

I have a giant deep crease and several auxiliary creases running across my forehead like tiny little horizons. I didn't even notice them till Trina pointed them out to me. (She'd told me she'd noticed her own forehead horizons and then confirmed mine -- it wasn't like she just said, "Hey, check it out! I can use your face as a level!") These are definitely not from smiling. I know this because apparently what you do, as an old person discovering a new wrinkle, is stand in front of the mirror and cycle through facial expressions trying to figure out what the hell kind of face you've been making so frequently as to cause your face to form a crease. And in the back of your mind, you're wondering what this says about your psychological state and if you possibly need therapy.

I'm fine with the laugh lines. Of course I laugh a lot. Those are good wrinkles.

So I stood there -- was it an angry face? No, but that produces a little crinkle slightly to the left of exactly between my eyebrows. I'd missed that one. Confused face does the same thing. Shit. I'm confused a lot. But "When Harry Met Sally" is one of my favorite movies, so it's all good.

Was it frowning? No, because only cartoon characters actually frown. How about surprise? Oh, there we fucking go.

I was shocked to discover the frequency with which I am (apparently) extremely surprised. Maybe it wasn't really surprise, but some other more subtle emotion. I sort of make a weird quasi-angry face when I'm concentrating or thinking, which is almost always, which is why some people seem to think I'm about to hit them all the time. Yeah, that's not it. Not even close. Back to the eyebrow crinkle there.

So then I did what any sane person would do. I started talking to the mirror. Apparently I raise my eyebrows as I talk for emphasis, particularly when I get to a punchline. I thought about that for a little bit and then came to a satisfactory conclusion.

I've got other people's laugh lines on my forehead.

i love "the golden girls"

2007-07-12T00:39:00.000-05:00

Rose: [It was] right after the herring juggling act.
Blanche: You mean to tell me that somebody actually juggled herring?
Rose: No! It was the herring who did the juggling. Tiny little Ginsu knives. Really very dangerous -- I mean, one false move, they could have filleted themselves.
Sophia: I hate you.

remember the scene from "twister" when they run in the barn and it's full of huge blades and they say "who ARE these people?!" amateurs, that's who

2007-07-07T02:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, so they weren't real tornadoes. Sure, they were funnel clouds that ripped trees right out of the ground and the force of the wind was so strong it took two people to open a door on the INSIDE of our house, but whatever. Apparently those things do not a tornado make. Not enough flying cows, I guess.

But when I was in high school, we had some fake tornadoes in the Pittsburgh area. Or, more specifically, in my backyard. Took a huge tree from our property line and deposited it squarely in our yard. That tree was always our bitchy neighbor's when she was talking about cutting it down, but once nature did it for her, it was our responsibility to dispose of it. Which, to my father, meant "firewood!" and to every snake in western Pennsylvania, "yay! a new place to coil up and then spring out of at a truly surprising speed!"

Back to the story. If we were in Kansas, those alarms would have been blaring. But since this is western Pennsylvania, where we don't get tornadoes even when we get tornadoes, we don't have those. But the house was shaking and the sky appeared to be upside-down, so we thought "Ahh! All these years of being the only people in the this area (and century) with a root cellar have finally paid off!" (or so we thought) and so we went downstairs and the three of us and Madison (because our father was where he always was at dinnertime on a weeknight: work) squeezed into the root cellar, which, as the safest place in the house, had been packed chock-full of shit in the event of just such an emergency.

But not just any shit. No, no, only the most dangerous shit can be stored in your family's emergency shelter, especially if you have two children. We weren't even allowed in there lest we do something stupid and reckless, like clean it.

There was a windshield from some car we didn't even own anymore. Gas cans. Kerosene lamps. A scythe. I swear, a scythe. This wasn't even the only one we had. There were two others hanging in the regular part of the basement. This appeared to be the emergency scythe, the hoarded stash in case he had to suddenly harvest some wheat. In 1894. Who in '90s American suburbia owned not one but many scythes? I'm surprised there weren't nuclear warheads down there. For all I know, there were.

You know how people always say it sounds like a train? It totally sounds like a train. At first, I thought that there were cars coming up the driveway, but then when it got louder, I realized what it was. Probably the only one of us not convinced we were all about to die in one of a myriad of ways (and suddenly with the urge to look over our life-insurance policies) was Madison. He was much more interested in shedding every hair on his body directly onto my face while crawling so high on my lap that I think he was moments away from molecular bonding. Not that I minded.

But because I crawled into that stuffed storage locker of death/emergency storm shelter with my mother, brother, and furry companion, I did learn something very important about my family. We came across some old letters and postcards written by my grandmother, my father's mother and read them. They were all postmarked in Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. The face you just made is nothing compared to the one we all made.

You have to admit, it would be one hell of a satisfactory explanation.

yet another talent i cannot use to fight crime, and an exciting update

2007-07-06T02:40:00.000-05:00

I have never encountered another individual with the talent for self-injury that I possess. I'm the MacGyver of klutz -- I could find a way to kill accidentally kill myself with an empty tissue box and a handful of cotton balls.

Yesterday morning while I was still legally unconscious, I found a way to slide across my bathroom floor as though it were buttered ice. The only reason I didn't wind up doing a cartoon-banana-peel-style slip-n-flip was that my foot (or more precisely, one of my toes; the next-to-last one, the one that "had none") cracked into the base of my toilet. Which happens to be a very, very old toilet made of porcelain, lead, and Kryptonite. I was afraid I'd broken it at first because of the horrible noise of the collision. Fortunately, I didn't. I did lose some skin, though.

Then last night while the rest of the city was gazing adoringly and unblinkingly at the sky flowers erupting overhead, (even though in Pittsburgh, they start setting off fireworks on July 3rd, but that's not much different than any other day ending in Y) my brother and I were assembling my new desk. Somehow during said assembly, I managed to drop the desk on -- that's right -- the same foot. Different toe, though. The desk landed on the big toe, the one who "went to market." This time, he's going in pieces; my desk took out a nice slice of toe. You may be asking yourself how I found the one bony area of my body and then managed to drop the one sharp edge of my extremely heavy desk directly onto it, but I have no answer for you.

I only know that today I shut two doors on that foot and hit it against my desk at work so many times that I lost count. Usually there are ruby slippers associated with this kind of unlikely landings of falling objects.

Coming soon to a blog that is this one: pictures! I bought a digital camera on Sunday. A new era of God Damn It, Amanda is upon us. One where I share with the world photographic representation of every new set of sheets I buy at Target. Apparently the iPod will be my final technological frontier. If that's the case, I hope never to make it to Oregon, as it were.

no, in fact, fuck YOU

2007-07-06T00:14:00.000-05:00

I was just on Facebook, which is only one step below MySpace in that it's basically useless and I kind of hate it. But at least no one assaults me with a song that plays automatically as I try to view a page. (Why I bother looking at pages is beyond me.)

Anyway, I saw a Facebook group (which are, again, useless -- they're sort of like bumper stickers for your Facebook profile) called something like "Get an Education or End Up Stuck in Iraq? Fuck You, John Kerry."

Seriously? I don't know how this got twisted around in the first place, but the man was insulting Bush, not American soldiers. And how are people still talking about this? That was months ago. Shouldn't you all have maybe thought about it for a second (or read the actual statement) and come to the conclusion that a veteran isn't going to insult soldiers? Like, ever? Furthermore, where is all of your outrage at being led into the clusterfuck that is the Iraq War by President Wyatt Earp? You've got your panties in your colon over a couple of sentences when there have been over 3,500 American soldiers killed in Iraq and over 26,000 wounded? These soldiers are killing or being killed so the American rich can get richer. A minimum of 66,800 (and probably many, many more) Iraqi civilians have been killed. And don't forget the unimaginable horrors that have happened at Abu Ghraib as a result of this war. (By the way, the really, really horrifying stuff wasn't even reported until very recently, in an article in The New Yorker. But who cares about that, right? Just Iraqis -- just more brown people. If it's good enough to be Bush administration official policy, then it's good enough for the rest of us, right?)

What makes my head spin is that people read some ridiculous misinterpretation of Kerry's statement and blindly latched onto it just because it sounded like it could be right -- which is exactly the same way the warmongers drummed up support for the unjustified invasion of Iraq in the first place. There are people who still think that Iraq was in some way responsible for September 11th. That's so brain-searingly idiotic that I can't even address it. Why not believe in the Tooth Fairy while you're at it?

So maybe Kerry wasn't insulting your intelligence, but I will.

Learn to think for yourselves or you'll wind up being led everywhere, and that includes to your own death. Maybe not in Iraq, but hey -- there's always Iran!

One final point -- I do not disrespect American soldiers. I have absolutely no respect for Bush's administration (or anyone who supports it) because they clearly place absolutely no value on the lives of anyone -- Americans, Iraqis, soldiers, civilians, it doesn't matter. If they did, they'd allow media coverage of soldiers' bodies returning home. Instead of worrying that the public would become outraged, they'd maybe start worrying about their own actions that led to those soldiers coming home in body bags. And that maybe they should be just as upset.

it's like a pyramid scheme, except instead of losing your life's savings, you get a bunch of books

2007-07-03T23:46:00.000-05:00

So I got invited by a friend of mine here in the 'burgh to a book club of sorts. It involves you sending a letter to six people and a book to one person via the real, actual, physical mail. I have to choose six people to get to participate. If anyone is interested in participating, email me with your address. If you don't have my email address or if you are just extraordinarily lazy, just leave a comment. I won't publish it, obviously, if it contains your address.

Unless you'd like stalkers. If you want stalkers, I can totally publish your address. And measurements.

television writers: causing english majors to have aneurysms since 1928

2007-06-30T00:09:00.000-05:00

Why the hell do stupid people insist on using the word "ironically" to describe everything? I'm sitting here watching a show on Discovery Health and the narrator has used the word "ironic" three times in the past five minutes to describe things that were coicidental, unfortunate, counterintuitive, and other various adjectives that have nothing to fucking do with irony.

Also, who was the asshole who decided to start using "an" as an article before "historic"? And why have other people latched on to this? You only use "an" before a vowel or vowel sound. Do either one of those qualities apply to the word "historic"? Here's a hint: no. No, they do not. And if you just thought to yourself "But I pronounce it 'istoric because I think that makes me sound smart!" then you should probably go have yourself sterilized immediately. It's not "'istory," so it's not "'istoric." Also, you can look it up in the dictionary, where you will find that dropping the H is not an acceptable pronunciation.

And -- I'm looking at you, Discovery Channel -- stop referring to rape as "taking advantage of" a person. Taking advantage is when someone is maybe a little bit drunk or vulnerable and makes a bad decision. Knocking out a little girl, raping her, and then dismembering her is nowhere near the sphere of "taking advantage." And while we're on the subject, "brutal" does not need to be used to describe murder and "violent" does not need to describe rape. They're sufficiently vivid words as they are.

Also: "dead body" should be removed from the English vernacular. We call live bodies "people." So if there's a body found decomposing in the woods, I think we would all assume we're talking about a dead person. Perhaps someone who just said "take and" to me.

yet another story that i can't believe doesn't end in "and then she punched him in the face"

2007-06-29T23:53:00.000-05:00

So today, my mother ran into some people we used to vaguely know a long time ago. They're the sons of one of our former neighbors, and they're quite revolting. Apparently they're even more disgusting than either of us remembered or ever could have imagined.

Her telling me about the brief encounter reminded us both of this little gem of a vignette.

One of these guys is named Tom. Quite a long time ago, maybe about 10 years, my mother was walking Madison, our dog, down the street like she did almost every day. Tom was in someone else's yard having a conversation with someone else when he abruptly called out, "Ellie! I can't believe it! Madison is on a leash!"

Madison would occasionally (and still does) wander around the neighbors' yards because they insist on putting out bread for the birds, knowing that Madison will of course be the one to eat it. Almost all the dogs in the neighborhood wandered around, especially the dogs belonging to the family around whom this story revolves.

So that pissed off my mother in a very specific way. She said back, "You're probably as surprised as I'd be if I looked out one day and said, 'Tom! You're on a date!'"

Of course, he had nothing to say. Who would?

it is entirely possible that ann coulter is actually retarded

2007-06-28T02:07:00.000-05:00

First of all, Ann, maybe if you ate a sandwich now and then, you could stop being such a nasty cunt all the time. You look like Skeletor in a blond wig. You make Paris Hilton look not only rational and balanced, but portly.

Second, do you find it that difficult to respond to the actual words that someone is saying to you? I mean, I've worked with people who were severely mentally retarded and they could respond to questions with answers that related to said questions. What the fuck excuse do you have?

Third, if you're going to try to be a ballsy bitch, then don't shrivel away as soon as someone calls you on your cuntdom. Don't deny shit. I had more balls than that when I was in the 7th grade. You're a fucking amateur when it comes to outside ovaries and you're giving women everywhere a bad name. If you can't step up, then step off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ws_bXU6Rjk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j9UXMrTHNA

today: things that sucked, things that did not suck

2007-06-28T00:51:00.000-05:00

I'm going to break this day down into some lists.

Things That Did Not Suck

- Fried chicken
- Macaroni salad
- Walker, Texas Ranger
- Being told that my hair looked pretty.

Things That Sucked

- Screaming headache.
- Bizarre continuing bouts of nausea in the morning. (No, I'm not pregnant.)
- A royal fuckup at work that kept me there till almost 1:00 (which was basically my own fault, so I can't even be angry about it).
- Walking across the entire parking lot barefoot in a monsoon because I didn't want to ruin my nice new sandals.
- PennDOT.

Things I Cannot Categorize

- Not being struck by lightning on my barefoot walk to my car. I can't categorize this because on one hand, I don't want to die in a parking lot, but on the other hand, if I died, I probably wouldn't be pissy. I'd just be dead. And still in the parking lot till someone ran over my fried, soggy corpse around 7:00 AM. Yeah, I still can't make up my mind on that one. I'm just going to sit here and watch Chuck Norris deliver roundhouse kicks to various faces as I slowly pass out.

they say variety is the spice of life

2007-06-27T01:02:00.000-05:00

And it's certainly the spice of mine. Well, that and cumin.

There was just a guest on The Colbert Report talking about correlations between certain physical traits and homosexuality. One that he mentioned was the length of index fingers as compared to ring fingers. This isn't new news, but it's not something I think about every day.

So I looked at my left hand, and the index finger is shorter than the ring finger. This apparently suggests that I am a lesbian. But then I looked at my right hand, and the index and ring finger are exactly the same length, which is the most often the case among straight women.

If anyone finds this surprising, please check the room you are in to be sure you have proper ventilation.

The only real conclusion I can draw from this is to say that I probably have two hands for a reason.

things i've had enough of: a list

2007-06-23T03:27:00.001-05:00

Stupid Fucking Lyrics

That stupid song "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield that is on every fucking tv show and has now invaded a shampoo commercial. I haven't heard lyrics this bad since Vanessa Carlton dropped acid and picked up a pen to write "1,000 Miles." These two should go fall into the sky together because after all, no one else can feel it for you. Just because something is nonsensical doesn't mean it's deep. Sometimes, it's just nonsensical. Like the fact that both of you apparently have careers that involve writing things. Also: Paul McCartney, please stop writing lyrics. I like your song, Paul, I do. But it would have been much better as an instrumental. Or perhaps with words that meant something. At least in Neil Young's "Dance, Dance, Dance," of which "Dance Tonight" seems a pale imitation about 30 years late, there are a few lines with something like meaning.

Cloying Bullshit

Here is but one example in a broad category -- the ad for "Little People, Big World" where one of the kids says something about how he wishes people would just understand that they can do the same things as everybody else, but just in a different way. You know what? Fuck you. I don't discriminate against anyone, and I think you fucking suck for assuming that I would. What the hell do I care that you're short? I wouldn't ask you to get something down off the top shelf, but I don't think you're mentally or physically handicapped and I wouldn't assume that you can't do things that you obviously can, like drive, work, and lead a normal life -- you know, just like the rest of us. But people who do harbor some juvenile fascination with and prejudices against little people (which is an idiotic phrase, by the way) are the reason there's a show about your family. And the people who feel guilty about their own prejudices are the reason there are ads like this one where we're all condescended to like naughty schoolchildren who were just picking on the different kid. Some of us were raised right, you know.

...More to come, I'm sure.

confessions of somebody who just watched five minutes of "confessions of a matchmaker"

2007-06-23T02:11:00.000-05:00

In a rather twisted turn of events, I apparently am becoming a fan of the show "Intervention." It's reality tv that's actually reality and where people can either better their lives or die. Not surprisingly, I feel the most empathy for the people who have eating disorders and I get angry at the alcoholics. I know, I'm a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Anyway, I guess it airs on Fridays, so that's what was on when I turned on the tv before I went to go brush my teeth.

So by the time I got back to my bedroom, there was some other show on called "Confessions of a Matchmaker." Simple premise: appropriately acerbic matchmaker gives tough love to dateless wonders. I pretty much hate all of these people, and I knew that before I watched any of the show. But there was one line that made me just want to slap the crap out of this woman. Speaking to a painfully insecure 22-year-old who intentionally dates assholes (of the smack-you-in-the-face variety) the matchmaker said something like, "All these men have come into your life to teach you a lesson that you still haven't learned." Um, no. First of all, the universe is not conspiring to teach us lesson about our romantic life. If the universe isn't intervening in Darfur, it does not give a flying fuck if some tarted-up insecure little American girl gets her jaw cracked by her boyfriend.

Secondly, telling some insecure girl (who thinks so little of herself that she feels the need to do shots at the dinner table and who apparently applies her makeup with a spatula) that she will be taught a lesson by dating these assholes will make her date more assholes. And even though I kind of hate this girl, I don't want anyone getting smacked around. Except for, you know, the matchmaker.

I have no real conclusion to offer you other than the big revelation in this episode apparently is that this guy who's a 41-year-old virgin is actually gay and in denial. "41-year-old virgin" is enough to make most of us think "closeted!" But looking at this guy's man-choker and listening to him talk, it's intensely obvious that, as Margaret Cho's mother would say, he is "the gay." I've been saying "Um, yeah, you're gay," to the tv in response to everything this guy has said. He randomly mentioned ABBA. You're a homo, dude, and it's cool. Join us out here on the other side of the closet door. It's seriously a hell of a lot more fun. There are cute boys for you to make out with, and then later you and I can go shopping.

i'm either well-rounded or a threat to myself and others

2007-06-19T02:37:00.000-05:00

I have a new life goal: to drive in a demolition derby. I'd love to use my father's old Mercury Zephyr, but that's mostly because I want to destroy that car. Although I don't know what I could do to that thing that could damage it any more -- it has a family of raccoons living in it and a tree growing through it. I don't even know how that's possible, but apparently it is.

Not only do I think it would be quite suitable for me to take up a hobby that involves intentionally crashing cars, but people will probably start taking me more seriously when I threaten to run them over. And I would really like it if my obituary were carried by the AP and contained the phrases "radical feminist," "Nobel Prize," and "demolition derby." Also, I think it will make my students exactly the right mix of amused and slightly afraid of me.

I already know what I'm going to call my series of spraypainted, barely moving hunks of metal: Beowulf. All of them will have the same name. What name could possibly be more suitable for a hunk of screeching metal barely clinging to its own existence and yet charging off into battle? (Here's to no funeral pyre.)

I think I'll invite my students out to see me crash up some cars, and I'll give them extra credit if they can explain in a brief, amusing essay why exactly I chose that name.

if there were a parrot that lived in my car, one of the first phrases it would learn would be "do i LOOK scared, asshole?!"

2007-06-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

So tonight I had one of my encounters with the clinically insane on the highways of greater Pittsburgh. I think this is going to have to become one of my ongoing series, because honestly, what the hell. I must have some kind of pheromone that attracts them to me. It doesn't matter what car I'm driving, if I'm even the driver, or where I am. These people sniff the air, take a swig of Wild Turkey, and head out a-swervin'.

This week has been just pure suck from start to finish. Work has been really hectic, I haven't felt well, and PennDOT is continuing its efforts to make me finally go off my nut. Last night, I was up until about 4:00 (even though I got in bed at 2:00) with a washcloth on my forehead, willing myself to just die already rather than continue the sudden migraine I got almost as soon as I got in the door. So I don't know why I was hoping that tonight, when I knew I was going to have to take an absolutely ridiculous route home actually through downtown Pittsburgh, (which is one of the worst places I've ever had to drive) I hoped I could just listen to Patty Griffin and mellow out and forget about the week.

And here's where I need to interrupt for my story-within-the-story.

It was really foggy tonight, and fog always makes me think of a friend I had in college who grew up in New Orleans. One Halloween, he and I went to a club in Delaware (for those who don't know, I went to college on the eastern shore of Maryland, very close to Delaware) and wound up having a very, very spooky ride back to Chestertown in my Festiva. I'm not going to use his real name, as he and I are not friends anymore. So I'll call him FF for "former friend." We hit this sudden fog that for some reason just gave both of us the creeps. It was thick and hung in these layers that I'd never seen before and I've never seen since. And FF told me about what "the voodoo people" say about fog: that it's the souls of those in purgatory, chained together, fated to walk the earth forever. It's not foggy here very often, at least not at the hours when I'm usually on the road, and I always think of that conversation when I drive through fog.

So I thought maybe there could be some purgatorial element to how I will probably think of FF every time I drive through fog for the rest of my life, and how those thoughts, the ones we can't control, the ones that drift in and out of our lives so much like fog, might be a way in which souls can be linked forever. And I thought about how I felt to have my soul linked to thoughts of a person I find to be such an unkind human being.

As I was starting to think that maybe this idea could become a poem, I needed to merge from one highway onto another. It was after midnight, and there's usually just a handful of people on the road then. As I was about to merge onto the highway from the on-ramp lane, which ends, but not too abruptly, this guy in some late '80s land yacht decided that he hated me. He actually sped up so I couldn't merge. He had a completely empty lane right next to him, and anyone else who's ever driven a car would have just moved over, especially at the speed he was going, but he apparently had decided that I was not worthy of driving on the same road as him. So he boxed me in and I had to slam on my brakes and swoop behind him. That just pissed me off, especially since he'd broken my goddamn train of thought. Never do that. That's how people get their skulls cracked.

So I did what any extremely angry and possibly unbalanced person would have done with my limited resources. I blasted my horn and high-beamed him for about 10 seconds, which in my mind was an appropriate punishment. Then I got over it and passed him. He tried to high-beam me, but as I said, he was in an '80s land yacht, so his high beams were ineffective and laughable. It was like an attempted rape by the world's smallest-dicked man.

Side note: Even my low beams are blinding. Not long ago, I was following my brother home at night and the whole way, he thought I was trying to get his attention. When we got home, he got out of his car, stormed over to me in the driveway, and said "What the hell?! Why were you beaming me?!" to which I said, "Those aren't my high beams...these are." And then he screamed like a vampire in sunlight.

Back to Birdshit-For-Brains. I tried to outrun him, but his land yacht was surprisingly fast. I was doing 90 on Green Tree Hill, but then traffic picked up, so I just slowed down and boxed him in, which drove him even crazier and made me laugh. He was still trying to high-beam me, so I flipped him off. Then he rode up beside me and we got to take a nice look at one another. Unfortunately. I just gave him a huge smile as he screamed and gestured and jiggled all over the front seat. Dude had to weigh at least 400. The reason behind his choice of vehicle was instantly apparent. I mean, I don't make fun of people for being big, because I'm not one to talk, but seriously, dude. No wonder you hate life.

Then he started swerving, like he was going to intentionally hit my car. Now, I wasn't scared of him, but I was getting a bit sick of his antics. I knew that if he forced me off the road, I had nothing heavy enough to hit him with that would just take him down. So I started thinking of the areas I would punch if I had to. Never be without a battle plan. I had settled on an upward butt of the hand to the nose, a punch to the throat if I couldn't reach the nose, and possibly a knee to the groin if it were accessible. You never know what might be hidden under fat flaps, and I like to have options. I also knew that I had the power of built-up rage on my side and that no matter how big you are, you will lose a fight with a Ford sedan every time.

Then we were in the Ft. Pitt tunnel, and he started doing that riding-level shit again. I hate that. I am not scared of you, fucker. On the scale of scary shit I've experienced, you are way down on the list, right between accidentally setting off my smoke detector and oversleeping. So I grabbed my cell phone, flipped it open, and pretended to dial. I'd heard somewhere that whackos get freaked out if they know you have the ability to summon the police. I don't know if that's what did it, but that was the exact moment he chose to speed up and take some evasive maneuvers away from me. That brought me great joy. But nothing like what happened next.

PennDOT has completely shut down a heavily trafficked tunnel here called the Squirrel Hill tunnel, which was the reason for my aforementioned completely insane route home. Traffic there is notoriously awful to begin with, and there is no good detour for large volumes of trafic. You have to go through this tunnel to get just about anywhere. Of course, there are a bunch of side roads, but no other highway for people to detour onto. So people are being routed through residential areas. There was an article (front page, above the fold) in today's paper about the detour route and just how absolutely awful it was going to be. An assistant chief of police called it a "nightmare." So I thought about it ahead of time and decided to go the fuck around this mess.

Well, I might have guessed that reading and thinking ahead were not two of Birdshit's hobbies. Or general life skills. So he drove off towards his giant steaming pile of detour, and I cackled as I went off on my wildly circuitous tour of the city proper and outskirts. This was about two hours ago, and I am on my couch in pajama bottoms, sipping ice-cold Gatorade and watching TNT in an air-conditioned room while he is most likely still sitting in traffic somewhere, loathing his very existence. And that makes my toes curl with an orgasmic sense of rightness-with-the-world.

a random assortment of things i think about when i'm not outraged

2007-06-06T03:04:00.000-05:00

There should be more movies where the main characters have to pretend a dead guy is still alive. I've seen Bernie whang that buoy about 50 times, and I have fallen off the couch and wheezed till I thought my eyeballs would burst every damn time.

I think I have more mosquito bites than I have body parts. I don't know how the little fuckers pulled that off. Scratching mosquito bites while you're at work makes you look like you have either a mental illness or a serious and possibly contagious skin condition. Either way, no one will bother you. But it's possible that you will go insane.

Futurama was a really good show with a cult-like following and I cannot think of one good reason they could have had for canceling it except that Rupert Murdoch may be a demon of some sort.

Ted Kooser astounds me.

I went to dinner with my mom on Saturday and the family next to us had three children -- a little boy maybe about 5, a little girl about 2 or 3, and a tiny little baby who was maybe 3 weeks old. The little boy kept turning and waving at me, and after about the fifth time he did it, I started to talk to him. He introduced everyone at the table -- his mom, aunt, grandma, and his two sisters. When he got to the baby, he said, "And that's Ashley, and she just came out of my mama's coo-coo." Possibly the funniest thing I've ever heard aside from the phrase "Subterranean Tankosaurus," which is the name I gave some creature on a kids' show.

Going to the grocery store after going out to dinner is a good idea except if you get a little tipsy at dinner. That's how I found myself standing at the deli counter being presented with three turkey options and being genuinely confused by this vast array of choices. I was also wondering of Stephen King has ever wanted to use a deli-meat slicer thing in one of his stories.

One of my uncles has apparently been operating under two delusions for quite a few years, despite all kinds of evidence to the contrary: that I want to be a journalist and that my eyes are blue. I can't decide which delusion is weirder. Also, the mental image I get from the word "journalist" is April from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Seriously, I could watch guys running headfirst into buoys all day long.

i really should have more opinions

2007-06-06T01:30:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I had a good deal of respect for John McCain. Of course, not anymore, for obvious reasons. I wouldn't spit on him, but I might tell him that he was someone who could have inspired a sense of bipartisanship in this country, and he threw that aside for his true desires -- power without leadership. I think Americans, particularly the young ones, who will be the ones living with the consequences of the clusterfuck that is this administration's policy on any- and everything, not only deserved better from him, but now deserve one hell of an apology. Two roads diverged in a wood, and McCain took the 8-lane highway that leads to Wal-Mart.

Once upon a time, I thought of Rudolph Giuliani as a Republican I kind of liked -- one I would even consider voting for, and not in some bizarro-world scenario where up is down and right is wrong, which is of course now the only way I could see myself voting for him. Once upon a time, I agreed with him. I thought he was a good-humored guy with some good ideas and a great sense of human rights. Not anymore. He, too, has fallen into step with the power-hungry bastards who have ruled this country right into a Dark Age.

A friend of mine told me to watch this. His choice of closing was particularly apt. And yet it's somewhat frightening that Murrow's words can bridge nearly 60 years of fearmongering, "us versus them" myopia, and an absolute lack of anything even resembling morality.

Last week I saw part of a George Carlin special that was at least as old and possibly slightly older than me. Reagan was in office, and Carlin remarked that the man who campaigned on the "keep big government out of our lives" platform wanted to make sure government remained firmly planted in every American uterus. He went on to say a lot of other things that were extremely applicable now but that I won't recount, as that's not my point.

I had the same feeling I got when watching "Murphy Brown" and Murphy said something about Bush wanting to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, and I jolted up. I was in elementary school then. Now I'm a graduate student. How long do I have to wait for things to change?

Maybe that's the problem. Are we waiting for change? Are we so wrapped up in insignificant bullshit that the real problems, ideas, tragedies, and joys that should make up our lives fall by the wayside? I'm willing to bet serious money that the number of people who could recount in detail the conditions of Paris Hilton's jail sentence is exponentially greater than the number of people who know the name of the current Poet Laureate. I wonder how many could pick Karl Rove out of a lineup. Or know that American women have had the right to vote for less than 100 years. I will be 38 the year the 19th Amendment turns 100. My mother will be 68. I hope my children will be old enough to remember it when they are adults.

I will teach my children that people died for us to have the right to vote -- not just women, but all of us -- and that we should exercise that power, the fundamental principle upon which democracy is founded. I will teach them that we are all equal. I will teach them to be curious, to think things through, to never accept anything on blind faith alone. I will teach my children how to be responsible citizens of the world.

I hope there will be enough of a world for them to live in. So I guess that means that it's time for us to wake ourselves from the gossamer nightmare that has become our reality.

human: the other other other other other white meat (right after chipmunk)

2007-06-05T01:22:00.000-05:00

I clap my hands in delight whenever some killer whale in a SeaWorld-type place eats part of some asshole tourist. It just seems like justice to me. Animals are not meant to be locked up like that and made to perform tricks; if I were a killer whale with my dorsal fin all flopped over because I've had the will to live drained out of me, and I had some jackass standing on my face because gee, what a cool picture that will be to show the guys at the office, I'd bat him around the tank for about 45 minutes before I ate his left foot.

So I was not sad at all when Timothy Treadwell got eaten by the bears he so loved. And by "loved," I mean "annoyed shitless." If I were a bear, I would have eaten him, too, and I don't think I'd have been able to put up with him for 13 years. I'd last a good week and a half. And if there were plenty of salmon, I'd just have killed him for the hell of it. Which brings me to my next point.

When wild animals attack people, why are we amazed? If you're sitting in an airport and a buffalo charges you, then you have the right to be astounded. But odds are that if you're currently being ripped apart by some animal, you were not supposed to be wherever you are. Sure, there are exceptions, but they're still animals. So are we. And yet people are so horrified when a cougar eats a person, as though we're something other than walking meat. Yeah, it's a terrible death, but I'm pretty sure those mountain goats don't enjoy being eaten while they're still kicking, either. We slaughter and eat all kinds of animals (or parts of them, anyway) but then we've got to go shoot down the "maneater" from a helicopter. It's a good thing cows don't have delusions of being at the top of the food chain.

Of course I'm on this rant because of what I captioned this evening. Some douchebag has taken it upon himself to go out and try to find a way to get himself mauled. If he feels the need to get himself torn into fleshy bleeding flaps, all he needs to do is show up on my front porch and remind me who he is. Of course, none of the animals care that he's there because he hasn't gone to poke them with sticks while they're half-starved, which seems to be a common denominator among animal attacks on humans. If a bear sees you while he has a mouthful of salmon and is standing next to a field full of berries, he won't care that you're there. I can't imagine that human would taste very good, especially because we live so long. (Usually.) We've got to be stringy and gross. I think salmon and berries sounds great. I will choose that over Random Hiker every time. One very big reason Treadwell was slurped up by Mr. Chocolate or whatever the fuck bear ate him is that there was no food. And when there's no food around, your definition of food becomes a bit broader. You know how you start sniffing at yogurt that expired last week and saying "Well, it smells all right..." We are the expired yogurt of the natural world. No one wants to eat it, but every now and again, someone has to.

i should stop holding back and tell you all how i really feel

2007-05-30T03:36:00.000-05:00

So Papadon, my adopted Texas grandpa, at the behest of his wife, Lisa, sent me a link to a video by Roy Zimmerman, a man who so far appears to be my soulmate. There's a bunch of his stuff on youtube, but so far this one is my favorite.

I put him in the same category as Mark Morford: hilarious, smart, and a guy I'd totally blow out of sheer principle. (And if you watch the Dick Cheney video, well, there's just one more reason. Because that's hot.)

Which brings me to my next topic: Bush should be impeached. Which all of you know. JK (my brother) asked me tonight how in hell it was possible for Clinton to get impeached for getting a blowjob while Captain Sparky is still wandering around the White House peeing on things. I only assume this is how he fills his days, because it's clearly not spent thinking up ways to solve problems. His biggest decision every day is what to have for dinner. You never know when a pretzel might attack. (Yeah, that's right, I went (back) there.)

A few years ago or maybe yesterday, I said that if some chubby-girl head is what it takes to get a president impeached, then I will step up for America.

But really, the idea of even seeing that limp, barely used nub of a cock that's buried in the graying pubes of our coke-rotted, barely literate, alcoholic, possibly functionally retarded squatter of a president makes me want to vomit in rage, fear, rage again, and just general repulsion. And that's exactly what happened. Although he still paid me. Can we impeach the fucker now?

optimus prime, the bible, and some douchebag with a milkshake

2007-05-29T00:29:00.000-05:00

So last week I was chomping Midol like they were Skittles. I think there were tiny little peasants fleeing from every step I took. In short, it was not a good time. Of course, the foul-tempered writhing of various internal organs was nothing compared to the prospect of being turned into chowder on 376.

I was in the fast lane when the genius ahead of me slammed on his brakes because there was a ghost in the road or something. I suspect he was in fact trying to kill himself. So I screeched dramatically to a stop, which somehow did not involve getting my transmission in his back seat. The guy behind me did the same thing, but he fishtailed out into the right lane. On this particular stretch of 376, there are only two lanes, no shoulder, and a jersey barrier on both sides. It's a jumble of bridge, onramp, and overpass. So as we were all camped out (mostly) in the left lane while traffic whizzed past us on the right, I looked up and fucking Optimus Prime was barrelling along. And I had three overlapping scenes go through my mind: the last thing I said to my brother, the last thing I said to my mother, and a vision of the inevitable crash. I just knew the truck was going to clip the rear of the guy behind me and then send us all splattering into the barrier and each other. Apparently the guy behind me knew that, too, because he pulled some James Bond maneuver and whipped around me and the douchebag. I have no idea how in hell he managed that. But wherever you are, dude, thank you for saving my life. He quite literally risked his own life, but I guess he didn't have much of a choice.

So I managed to get myself to work, and the second I took the key out of the ignition, I shuddered and started shaking. It took me three tries to just log in to my computer. Oh, and did I mention the crying? That was lots of fun and not humiliating at all. But I couldn't stop. I had to go have a freakout in the bathroom for a few minutes. Almost dying is one thing. But I cannot stand to have anyone see me cry like that. So then I transitioned into furious. Somehow I got through the day, mellowed out, and in the last half hour I was in the office, I had to caption some religious nonsense. And what were these particular Unfuckables yapping about? Only the two issues most likely to make steam come out of my ears -- abortion and gay rights. At the same time. Which apparently can both be irrefutably condemned by god by reading the same few verses. One of which says murder is bad (so are lima beans. Your point?) and the other is even more rambling and pointless than what I write here.

I'm now going to do something I've never done before -- quote the bible. Specifically, the book of Romans, if you're interested.

"And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet." Yeah -- how many times did you just look back at that and go, "Huh?"

Once again, I am struck by the notion that if some omnipotent being truly did write the bible, it'd be better-written. But I digress. More than usual. Also, the phrase "use of woman" triggers screaming in my head.

Anyway, the whole thing is pretty vague. Sure, we've got the word "lust" going on there. But "working that which is unseemly" could be anything, especially since it previously mentions a whole slue of sins, including committing murder and being disobedient to one's parents and not having mercy for one's fellow man. Said list says nothing about boys kissing each other. Or girls. In case you were wondering.

But right in the next chapter it says something that is pretty unmistakable. "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. " I had to read that once in order to understand it. How about you?

That chapter goes on in that vein, essentially repeating itself and saying that god alone will judge mankind and man should be content in that knowledge. I could twist that around to oppose the death penalty really easily. But I'm not going to use it to support anything I believe. Why? Because using a 2,000-year-old book to support my own ideas is ridiculous. The bible says a lot of shit that is conveniently mostly ignored because we as a society have recognized that is is completely insane. Like in Leviticus, in the discussion of how long everyone is unclean after or during various things. Like childbirth. Apparently if you give birth to a girl, you're much more unclean than if you have a boy. Who knew?

Also, there is a giant list of who you should not have sex with or see naked. I think this is hilarious not only for the number of times I've seen just about everyone I know naked, including my father, which is right at the top of the list, but because it reminds me of the letter the FBI sent me when they ran a background check on me when I was working with the kids a few years ago. They sent me a list of every crime I'd never been convicted of. Which was all of them. (On that list was sodomy. Not forcible sodomy or anything, just sodomy. Which made me wonder several very strange things I'm sure you're already wondering so I won't bother reiterating your own thoughts.)

Perhaps if you're going to base your life around an ancient book and you're going to pick and choose your abominations (like eating sheep or shrimp) then at least acknowledge that maybe everything in the bible isn't meant to be taken literally. Because lamb chops are delicious and so is lady business. Mm-mmm!

My point is this -- I can't believe my head hasn't exploded. Especially since somebody threw a fucking milkshake on my car. I guess this was either some idiot teenager trying to look cool for his friends or someone opposed to ending the Iraq War. (Or they're opposed to Pittsburgh public radio or AIDS research, the only other stickers on my car.) Because nothing says "I blindly support our retarded chimpanzee of a president" quite like throwing a milkshake at a parked car. I suppose I should be happy it wasn't feces.

But, Amanda, you may be asking, How can you be sure that some idiot thew the milkshake? Well, dear imaginary inquisitive reader with whom I have frequent imagined dialogues, it's because I watch Court TV and have learned valuable lessons on blood-spatter patterns. I was out in the driveway in shorts and plastic sandals, holding a hose and Forensic File-ing the drips. Then I was out in the driveway in shorts and plastic sandals cursing the existence of that fuckwad. There are a lot of people in the world who I'll never meet but who I'd pay to hit in the face with a length of 2x4. And that list has a new entry as of yesterday.

As usual, I just wanted to give you all some stories to tell CNN via satellite interview after I finally snap.

on the other hand, children are learning all about the doppler effect

2007-05-19T15:32:00.000-05:00

Forest Hills is insane. I was sitting in the yard with my mother a few hours ago and we heard a voice over a bullhorn coming from the street that runs on the other side of our yard. Our yard slopes down into a wooded area that gives way to houses and a small apartment complex. Not the best acoustics. All we could make out was some garbled nonsense and then the phrase "pick them up at the fire hall." After about a half hour, the voice made its way up to a place where it could cut through the brush a little better, and we finally received the vital message, "For anybody that ordered hoagies off the fire department, don't forget to pick them up at the fire hall."

Seriously? The phone has been around how long? And everyone in the world, including my grandmother, has email. You can even email someone from your cell phone. And still, Forest Hills seems to think that the best way to communicate with people is the town crier.

We also have an insane ice-cream truck in Forest Hills. We never had one in my neighborhood when I was growing up, (a whopping three miles from here) so the only experience I have with ice-cream trucks comes from television shows and manufactured nostalgia I've inherited from other people. But I would think that when anyone thinks of an ice-cream truck (unless this person lives in Forest Hills, of course) the basic thought that comes to mind is some kind of melodious music and a slow-moving freezer on wheels. Forest Hills apparently hired the Antichrist for its ice-cream-delivery needs. My other theory is that they are trying to combat obesity in a really cruel way.

The music this thing plays is so cacophonous that you wonder if the ice cream it contains will bite you if you somehow find a way to purchase it. I say "somehow find a way" because the truck barrels down the road at about 45 mph. In case you're wondering, the speed limit is 20.

They pick a new song every once in a while. The last two summers, it was "The Entertainer" performed by, I think, The Mental Patient Ringtone Symphony. And the truck moves so fast, you only get to hear about four notes at a time, so it took me both summers to piece together just what in hell it was I was listening to.

Today was the ice-cream truck's first appearance of 2007, and I think their music selection has devolved even further, something I didn't even know was possible. Remember the episode of "Friends" where Ross is playing a collection of sound effects on his keyboard? I think that's what just blew past my house.

I'll let you know next August.

"amanda wins at life"

2007-05-18T23:39:00.000-05:00

I mean, who doesn't know that already? But in case you were wondering, or perhaps if you need a reaffirmation, here is the story of why my coworker said that today.

I had been musing on just what it would cost me to hire Chuck Norris to stand by my desk and deliver roundhouse kicks to the faces of those people who feel the need to stand behind me and speak in obnoxious stage whispers and laugh like cartoon Japanese schoolgirls. About 12 times a day.

So then we started trading Norrisisms. (Chuck Norris does not sleep; he waits. Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. Ever. Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse. Horses are hung like Chuck Norris. When it rains, Chuck Norris does not get wet. Water gets Chuck Norris.) Then I came up with a brand-new one.

Chuck Norris does not caption. He punches deaf people until they can hear.

I do, in fact, win at life. But only because Chuck Norris allows me to.

a blogevangelist extravaganza: ding! dong! the douchebag's gone

2007-05-16T02:14:00.000-05:00

Is it wrong to laugh at someone's death? Almost usually. But no more wrong than every single thing that Jerry Falwell ever said, including the time he said, "Sure!" when a waitress asked him if Coke was okay when he ordered a Pepsi. (Note: he then prayed for her heathen, Coke-selling soul.)

So apparently Ol' Jer dropped dead (or, if you'd like to use the medical terminology, he was 'smote') around noon. Right as I was getting up vaguely early so I could go vote. And oh, boy, am I glad I voted. Now I'm going to have yet another reason to want to go a-vote-castin'! Not only will I order up some democracy, Sheetz-style, but now I can hope that somewhere, every time a "Vote" button lights up, a disgusting ball of intolerance and adipose tissue will heave a sigh and then flop to the ground. Or, in the case of Fred Phelps, have a crystal-meth-induced seizure atop an underaged male prostitute.

Everyone who has a blog is today writing something about Falwell's death. Some, like me, are clapping their hands and cackling. Some are sure it's a sign of the apocalypse. (Note: if ever there is a day during which nobody says the words "it's a sign of the apocalypse!" it will actually be the apocalypse.) And some are saying that we shouldn't mock his death because he had a family, and it's mean. Or something.

Dude, what the fuck ever. I have a family, too, and he didn't seem to have any problem bashing every single thing I stand for. And if I keeled over today instead of him, he'd have surely condemned my entire life, glossing over all the good things I've done and focusing instead on the fact that I like to kiss girls. Right, so, party at my house. Let's get a fucking keg and celebrate all the oxygen that's freed up for the rest of us now that he's not yammering about homosexual cartoon characters. Naked post-barbecue absinthe-and-THC-fueled moon-worship is optional but encouraged.

Phelps is going to protest the funeral, which confirms my theory that Phelps does not actually understand the concept of a protest and just has some kind of a homemade-sign fetish. A protest is to bring attention to your cause in order to bring about some kind of change. So in protesting a funeral, what is it you want to change? The death? Isn't that somewhere along the lines of questioning god? Shouldn't you disappear in a cloud of logic right about now, Phelpie? I think being called "Phelpie" by such a "fag-enabler" and carpet-muncher such as yours truly would really drive him...well, crazier. If such a thing were possible without some kind of lobotomy. I thought maybe the protest was just a rumor, but you can't make this shit up. There should be a mental disease named after that man.

Funniest thing about it is not that I agree with one of the statements therein (that Falwell split hell wide open) and with Falwell when he called Phelpie a lunatic or somesuch a while back. It's not even that everything is so poorly written. (If you can't make your point without exclamation points, then you are an idiot and should sit down.) And it's not even that the first three digits of the zip code of Ground Zero of these nitwits are 666.

No, the funniest thing about all of this is that just a few days ago, I was channel surfing and landed on some televangelist. And he was blathering about something and using completely ridiculous attempts at logic to prove that god exists and free will is a myth. He claimed that if a man makes a table and then dies, the table still exists. So far, I'm with you. I've never seen a table get blinked out of existence. But then he just threw in that the opposite is true for god and the universe -- that the universe cannot exist without god and that if god ceased to exist, so would we. Right, because that's something you can prove. If you have a guy, some wood, and a gun, you can prove the first part pretty easily. But the two aren't really related beyond sharing a couple of verbs. That's so ridiculous that I can't even come up with an appropriate analogy.

So in watching this jackass rattle on, I got so irritated that I apostrophized god or whatever mystical force might enjoy listening to basements in Forest Hills, and I said, "Aren't you fucking sick of this by now?"

It would seem that I got an answer today. I think I might be ready to be America's next cult leader.

if you need me, i'll be in a cabin somewhere in the shenandoah valley tending a small herd of goats

2007-05-10T01:47:00.000-05:00

What the hell is wrong with people? I've been getting a lot of stranger-email lately. These people seem to be missing critical sequences of DNA. I know I'm not the most gorgeous woman ever to live, but I am, at the least, cute. Sure, I'm chubby, but Bill Clinton wouldn't kick me out of bed. (And neither would you, because chubby women kick back.)

So here's a sample of what some of these critters have written to me (in all cases, translated from Complete Moron into English).

"I don't know if you like older men, but I can keep you." No, in fact, you cannot. A) I will not be kept, fucker. B) You work in retail.

"I like thick women. Meat is for men; bones are for dogs." Really? Because we took a vote and we don't like you. And stop calling us 'thick,' for chrissakes. I am not a slice of something. And maybe the meat/bones crap worked 10 years ago, but it's time to get a new canned line.

"You look like a beautiful doll." All right, I know you're trying to compliment me, but seriously, man, think about your similes for a few seconds. When you don't, you wind up sounding like a serial killer. Dolls have glass eyes. They don't think. You collect them and then dispose of them if you feel like it. Seriously, don't call women dolls. It makes us want to call the police.

"Who wants some?" The answer to this question, when asked as a greeting to a stranger, will NEVER be "Oh, me!"

Then there's the guy who no woman, under any circumstances, should ever date. He's the guy who sends you an email, you don't respond, and then the next day and every day thereafter, he sends you another message, getting angrier every time. I've been meaning to enter into a relationship that will end with an "accidental" poisoning.

of advertising and crippling blows to the head

2007-05-09T02:55:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm missing something, but I really do not understand how spam is successful. I get the free advertising and that if one person out of a thousand buys a product or gets swindled out of their grandfather's collection of rare whatevers, that it's still a profit for those bastards. What I don't understand is how all of these apparently severely mentally handicapped people have email addresses and bank accounts.

Yesterday I got 15 of basically the same message at the same time on MySpace. (Say it with me: MySpace is the devil.) If the spammers themselves were not so astonishingly stupid, they would probably be much less annoying and much more successful. Is there anyone on earth who thinks that "hey haven't heard from u in a while but i wanted to show u this ringtone site! hit me back! lol!" is even a slight approximation of authentic human conversation? So frequently do my long-lost friends message me on MySpace to announce their brand-new brain damage by way of alerting me to a ringtone site. They've also started leaving spam blog comments (not here, of course, but on MyDevil) that say something like "hey i saw ur post and i have to say i agree cuz i was thinking the same thing and thanks for writing that but i NEED to let u know about this ringtone site!" Dude, seriously. Come the fuck on.

Speaking of inauthentic dialogue, if the person who writes the esurance commercials happens to read this blog, don't ever tell me your name. Because I will kill you. "Quick, get in the hybrid!" are five words that, when strung together in that exact order, make me want to commit several very specific felonies, also in an exact order. That is such bad writing that it actually offends me. Let's say that I own a hybrid car and my brother owns a conventional car. Even if we were deciding whose car to take, we'd never say "Let's take the hybrid." We'd say "your car" or something specific like "the Escape." Furthermore, in that commercial, there is only one vehicle present. You'd say "get in the car!" or "get in!" And everyone reading this knows I'm right.

And has anyone seen the pregnancy test commercial where the male announcer voice informs us that this pregnancy test is amazing, blah, blah, blah, and is the most advanced piece of technology we'll ever pee on? And then a jet of liquid shoots in? Yeah, let's kill whoever wrote that, too. First of all, I don't care what answer you are hoping that little stick is gonna tell you --no woman wants to hear a man talk to her about a fucking pregnancy test. And they're all the goddamn same, anyway. Some are easier to read than others and some actually have a results system that makes sense (whoever came up with the one-line/two-line system should be shot in the fucking forehead) but they're all testing for the same thing. Apparently I'm a pregnancy test connoisseur. Just one more reason they should listen to me. Also: I will not be impressed by any home pregnancy test until it comes with a half-off coupon for RU486. That'll boost your sales for sure.

please hang up and try again

2007-04-26T02:26:00.000-05:00

On Monday, I had lunch with a friend of mine named Shirley. (Mrs. Spag if anyone from my high school is reading this.) Shirley is from Texas, and she's got a pretty distinctive voice. I wouldn't go so far as to say she has a drawl, but I might use the word "twang." Because that's kind of a funny word to begin with. Anyway, as I was on my way to meet her at the restaurant, I got a call on my cell and I answered it without looking at the caller ID.

"Hey!" said a lightly Texan voice.
"Hey! I'm on my way. Are you there already?"
"What? Where are you going?"
"Wait, what?"
"...Bethany?"
"Okay, you're not Shirley, are you?"
And then the woman started laughing hysterically.

"Okay, so to recap, you have the wrong number and I'm just stupid...we're an awesome pair!"

And that's how I made friends with the wrong-number lady. Someone remind me to tell the story about how I rear-ended a guy's Jeep and then he hugged me. (Please refer to subtitle.)

So as Ron White once said, I told you that story to tell you this story.

About...I just counted on my fingers...about seven years ago, I answered the phone at home, which at that time was the house where I grew up. We had one of those old rotary phones. The kind that since the late '50s, no one has used except for my dad.

So the phone rang seven years ago.

"Hello?"
"Boy, get yo' mama for me."
"Who is this?"
"Boy, don't you know yo' grandmama?!"
"This isn't JK...wait...um, what number are you calling?"

At this point, I was wondering why my grandmother suddenly sounded like an elderly black lady. But who knows what old people do with their spare time.

"Boy, get yo' mama for me!"
"This isn't...ma'am, I think you have the wrong number."
"Boy, this yo' grandmama! Don't you know the sound of your own grandmama voice?!"
"Ma'am, I definitely do know my grandmother...and you're not her."

I hope that somewhere in Wilkinsburg, there's a black family who tells the story about how Grandmama accidentally called some white person's house. That story probably ends with how they then bought Grandmama one of those giant phones with the numbers the size of your arm that you have to dial like Tom Hanks in "Big."

In conclusion: I want to be called "Grandmama" when I'm old, regardless of whether or not I have kids.

little miss manda sat on her veranda, eating her curds and whey. a little old spider sat down beside her, so miss manda nailed it with raid

2007-04-24T01:40:00.000-05:00

If any of you in the Pittsburgh area (and also those of you in Texas, New York, and Taiwan) hear screaming, sorry about that, but there are spiders in my bed.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it the first time. In my bed, where I sleep, often unconscious when I do so, there are spiders. Last night as I was lying here trying to convince myself to go to England for one of my grad-school residencies (which I'll have to do if I want to MFA it up in a year and a half) I felt something brushing my hand. My brain instantly yelped "SPIDER!" and I had a hand seizure and the sensation stopped. I figured it was just my imagination -- I sometimes get little feathers popping out of my pillows that tickle me. Then a little while later, still trying to imagine myself getting on a plane, I got the same feeling and did the same hand flick...but this time when I let my hand rest on the mattress, I felt something I can only describe as "sickening" because if I use any further adjectives in an attempt to fully describe what I felt, I may have a stroke and vomit at the same time.

I flicked on the light and saw the now-smashed spider (just one of those "little old house spiders," as my mother calls them, as in the sentence "Amanda, come down off the top of the refrigerator; that is just a little old house spider.") I sat shaking in my bed for a good couple of minutes. Madison, my guard dog, didn't even wake up. Although he is 15, so technically, he's retired.

And just now when I came downstairs to get in bed and do a little blogging and some actual writing and possibly wind up awake till dawn again, I moved one of my pillows and found another little old house spider swiveling its 10,000 eyes at me from atop my lovely peach-colored sheets. So I whacked it with a Kleenex box till it was a disgusting little ball of -- you know what, I'm stopping there, because I don't want to start shaking again. And I also need to change the sheets.

maybe i'll have the hysterectomy anyway

2007-04-22T02:04:00.000-05:00

Just when I thought that it couldn't get any worse, I got a message from some guy literally asking me if I'd like to "have his nerdy babies." How is it that these freaks find me? And why in hell would one think I want to breed with him? Especially when in the next line he alludes to his apparent fetish for women dressed in Star Wars outfits. Oh, yeah. Because if there are two things I love in this world, it's Star Wars nerds and having their babies.

He makes me want to have my uterus scraped out as a pre-emptive strike against his DNA.

some folks call it a sling blade; i call it a kaiser blade

2007-04-19T02:58:00.000-05:00

And some folks call it Speedball; I call it Cecilball.

One of my favorite high-school stories is the saga of Mr. Cecil. He was my gym teacher for one or possibly several years of high school. One of those years, I had gym first period. Because who doesn't want to begin her day in the pre-dawn winter hours of western Pennsylvania shivering on the track field with the majority of the football team playing what else but football?

But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me introduce you all to Mr. Cecil. Mr. Cecil is what I imagine Mr. Potato Head would look like if he became a real boy. He had the sensitivity and grace of a retarded Kodiak bear. He liked to add extra syllables in the middle of his words. He also had a somewhat skewed concept of what I was willing to do in terms of a 7:00 AM gym class.

So, getting back to football with Mr. Cecil. Now, I'm what you might call a "hardy" woman. Or "mooselike." I'm built like a Steeler, except I wear my cups farther north. But there's no amount of money you could pay me to play football with the Woodland Hills football team.

So one of these mornings, Mr. Cecil suggested we do just that. There was some guy roughly the size of a Volkswagen Bus across from me. I don't remember his name, but we'll call him Tyrone. Mr. Cecil looked at me and at the array of football players before him. I think the rest of the girls in the class were off menstruating or something; I'd been abandoned like a three-legged zebra. Mr. Cecil conjured up a mental image of John Madden and said, "All right, Amanda, you're going to run a buttonhook pass."

I looked at him. We both blinked. No words were necessary.

"All right, Tyrone, you're going to run a buttonhook pass."

So now you have a pretty good idea of Mr. Cecil and of the kind of relationship we had; to say that he didn't much care for me would be to say that the universe is roomy.

Mr. Cecil had a bit of a penchant for combining things, like the aforementioned extra syllables. But he also liked to combine several sports together. And by "several," I mean all of them. Plus several things that were not sports. I base this statement on the lack of scooter events in the Olympics.

We always knew when we'd be playing Cecilball because it looked like a small bomb had been set off in the equipment closet. The floor-hockey goals, basketballs, badminton racquets, kickballs, hockey sticks, and, of course, scooters, would be strewn about. Also, those horrible green mesh shirts were always out -- because in a game like Cecilball, you need to not only keep score, but have huddles with your teammates concerning strategy:

"Okay, you go down the left and then I'll pass you the kickball --"
"I thought we were using the basketballs."
"No, just the basketball hoops."
"Then what are the hockey goals for?"
"Those are base."
"Wait, I thought whoever had the badminton racquet was on traveling base."
"No, we're going to use those to kill Mr. Cecil."

And of course, that was all supposed to be done on scooters. Who remembers scooters? Even in second grade, no one's ass fit on those things. And there was always someone whose finger had been broken, so we got the safety lecture. ("No one put your hand on the ground.") Because when you set a bunch of 18-year-olds on paper-sized pieces of plywood with swiveling wheels that didn't swivel all the way around, you need to be mindful of their well-being. And everyone's hands were always on the ground anyway because being on a scooter is just doing a crabwalk, only more annoying and less attractive. Only slightly more humiliating than being on the scooter is falling off a scooter. You only fall two inches, but somehow it's never expected and extremely painful. And you can't just get back on the scooter. You have to stand up and completely readjust yourself. And that's if you were lucky -- generally, one person falling set off a chain reaction wherein every other scootered person in the room would crash into that first person like water droplets running into each other on a pane of glass.

Sing it with me now: Glory days! Well, they'll pass you by, glory days! In the wink of a young girl's eye...

She's not winking -- someone just broke her thumb with a scooter.

seriously, never the same again. ever

2007-04-18T01:04:00.000-05:00

Bad news travels faster than good news, no matter where it's coming from or going to. That's why I got my rejection letter from Bennington yesterday and my acceptance letter from Fairleigh Dickinson today. If you're wondering what that noise is, it's the peasants rejoicing.

I'm one step closer to actually having a really strange moment when all of a sudden at the end of a class, a giant binder of blog enties gets whonked down on my desk and I get to meet one of my fan club members. I've always wanted an entourage.

On an unrelated note, my mother ran into a woman whose kids I used to babysit after school every day for a couple years. The younger kid, Matt, is a sophomore in high school. Hang on a second. I need to put my head between my knees.

las vegas: don't forget that we have whores!

2007-04-16T01:21:00.000-05:00

All right, Las Vegas, I get it: you have whores. What I don't understand is how you've based an entire advertising campaign around that fact. And why are you advertising, anyway? Is there anyone anywhere in the world who isn't aware of Las Vegas as a travel destination/place to get syphilis? No. The answer is no.

So how many crappy television ads are you going to force upon us wherein the sole point is to remind us that we can go pay for sex and have convenient ways to cover it up? Because it's legal, but who wants his friends to know that the sole reason he went to Vegas was to pay for sex? Las Vegas: Now With Plausible Alibis!

So here's an idea: let's legalize prostitution everywhere. I know, I know: "Cops" will not be nearly as hilarious. No longer will coked-out morons stumbling around town at 2:00 AM in platforms and mini-skirts get to claim they're just waiting for the bus for our collective hilarity. But we can possibly have our law-enforcement officers working on things that actually matter. And, most importantly, we'll never have to listen to another goddamn ad for Vegas whores. And isn't that what we, as a nation, truly want?

the soup is not amazing and that snowflake is not a poem

2007-04-10T01:59:00.000-05:00

I am sick of useless adjectives. Not adjectives in general, but just the handful that my generation relentlessly uses to describe everyfuckingthing. They're not bad words; they've just been hanging around the wrong crowd. (Idiots.) They're always positive words, because sorostitutes with coke-rotted brains like everything. Words like amazing, awesome, fabulous, fantastic, and so on.

Those are just a few I heard today. Someone in a show I was captioning used the phrase "amazing farmer." Really? He's amazing? What the fuck does he grow? Invisible carrots? Gasoline trees? No, I do believe those were just some winter greens. And the mushrooms, while they looked delicious, are not "awesome."

Martha Stewart is particularly guilty of this. I once heard her use the phrase "fabulous drop cloth." I've seen drop cloths. I've used drop cloths. In fact, I used one just this weekend. And I can assure you all that its ability to keep paint off my kitchen floor did not astound or otherwise impress me. It just did what it was supposed to do -- actually, it did that and more, because it was an old shower curtain. It came out of retirement to protect our laminate. And even that I did not find amazing.

While we're all at it, everyone can stop using the word "miracle." Everything is a goddamn miracle. A baby is a miracle, a sunrise is a miracle, not getting hit by an asteroid is a miracle.

No. Just, no. Things can be positive without being a miracle -- and they also don't have to be wonderful, amazing, or any other lazy adjective.

And as a sub-diversion, I'd also like to point out that not everything is a poem. Sunrises are popular here, too. Flowers are poems. Children's laughter. Snowflakes.

Again, no. The people who insist on perpetuating this kind of bullshit are the same people who insist that all talent is supernaturally doled out; that honing a craft is useless. They reduce everything to the simplest definition possible because thinking is way too hard.

This has turned into a new rant, but that's okay.

A while back, I stumbled across www.helium.com and found what I thought was going to be a forum of intelligent discussion. The way it works is this: anyone can write anything on any topic they choose, and other writers/readers rank those articles. Unfortunately, the other members (or at least those who are active in the poetry discussions) are complete and utter morons. I wrote an article a topic called "Why is poetry so hard to define?" Here is that article. It's currently ranked 45 out of 63 because apparently Jack Nicholson was right and they can't handle the truth.

Here's the number-one ranked article, which is complete bullshit. The eye of the beholder? Um, no. Art can be subjective, but a poem means what the poet intends. If there's ambiguity in a poem, it's intentional. (Well, in a good poem, anyway.) How in fuck does a number-one ranked article on poetry assume that every poem rhymes? And contain misspellings and incorrect grammar and punctuation? What the fuck? "A writer uses their skill to convey a message." "Their" is plural, asshole. I'd really like to round up every breathlessly passionate poet I have ever met and have an intervention for every one of these jackasses. We'll see how impossible they find the definition of poetry after that.

I guess we all know what kind of professor I'm going to be. I hope I don't ever hit my students, but I'm not going to promise anything.

of bungalows and other extraordinary dreams

2007-04-05T01:06:00.000-05:00

Today I went to work wearing sandals. When I left work, it was snowing. Ahh, Pittsburgh. How I will never miss it once I finally move away once and for all.

Speaking of moving, my new favorite hobby is looking at the real-estate listings on Craigslist. There are a handful of places I've always wanted to move to...Seattle, Portland, Santa Fe, anywhere in New England. Subsequently, I now have a little collection of dream homes. Because I don't feel like making a bunch of cleverly inserted links, here:

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/rfs/304010987.html
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/rfs/304012535.html
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/rfs/303987094.html

Hello, my name is Amanda, and I'm addicted to bungalows. I also have a fondness for farmhouses and refurbished schoolhouses. Those are my New England dream homes. So, on to how I'm going to become rich enough to afford anything remotely similar to these gorgeous homes.

[ wind howls at the windowpanes ]

Right. Perhaps when I finish the next book I'll send it directly to Oprah. (Speaking of which, I am working on what I suspect may be a novel. It's the story of my life if it goes horribly, horribly wrong in a way I almost wish it would. I'll put that on the dust jacket.)

harrison

2007-04-01T16:10:00.000-05:00

This is Harrison. If you happen to see him, please send him home. I miss my puppy. And feel free to pass on my number, email address, and the fact that I'll pay a reward to anyone who finds him.

is there such a thing as a secondhand punch to the neck?

2007-03-31T13:13:00.000-05:00

Recently, PNC Park (the Pittsburgh Pirates' park) decided to ban smoking. As a person who is allergic to smoke, I think this is great. I hate having to walk through clouds of smoke in restaurants, concerts, etc. I also hate having to take an allergy pill every damn day because people smoke outside my office building. But my coworkers who smoke don't bother me, really. The smoke on their clothes is what makes me sneeze all day long, but it's not as bad as being next to someone who is actually smoking. If I haven't anticipated being around a smoker, my eyes get red, itchy, and watery, so I get a nice raccoon-eye look going on. Oh, and my throat swells, my tongue feels huge, and I want to peel my face off just to scratch underneath my skin. It's a lot of fun.

"But Amanda," you may be saying, "Why not just constantly take your allergy medicine? Wouldn't that be more convenient for you?" This is an excellent point which I must counter with the suggestion you go shove a pack of cigarettes up your ass. No, I don't want to have to take my allergy medicine 7 days a week, 12 months a year. It's not more convenient for me to have to use my money to pay for medicine I wouldn't have to take if other people would just be the slightest bit considerate. It's not that hard. Just don't smoke when you're shoulder-to-shoulder with other people. The heroin addicts don't shoot up right next to me. Go hang out with them. Or, alternatively, just wait a little while.

So scads of smokers have been writing in to the Post-Gazette about how this is an injustice, how they're being unfairly persecuted, and they should be allowed to make everyone miserable and give us cancer, too. One of their favorite points is that fatty foods are harmful, too, so why not ban them as well? Another excellent point. Except, the opposite of that. If I eat a box of cupcakes, it's not going to be pretty, but the person next to me isn't going to get cellulite. Also, if you don't look at me, you're instantly removed from the situation. (This is because I don't chew like a wildebeest. Expect my upcoming rant on table manners/another group of people I want to flip off a roof.)

Getting the idea? No? Okay, then let's address their next pet point. People drink BEER at ball games, too! And a lot of them get drunk! And, hey, they have to get home somehow! So PNC Park should stop enabling people to drink and drive! Something should be done! Rumor has it that drunk driving is illegal already. Also, I have seen drunk people get in a car and have someone else drive. Through some complicated maneuver I myself have taken part in yet am also mystified by, drunk people can get home without driving. It's almost supernatural. So I guess it's understandable that some people aren't familiar with this amazing new idea.

Also, it is possible to not do everything in excess. I know that as Americans, we seem to think that we are constitutionally assured the right to do whatever we want whenever we want, but recent studies suggest that other people have rights as well. Like the right to not be exposed to other people's carcinogens. I'm pretty sure that's not an amendment, but if they can find some sort of constitutional reasoning for banning same-sex marriage, then I'm going to continue to assert that I have the right not to get cancer. Cigarette smoke has been linked to just about every type of cancer, including cervical, which I will be at increased risk for until I die or have a hysterectomy. I don't need you making any decisions for me regarding what other risk factors I'm exposed to. I also have high blood pressure and take birth-control pills. So thanks -- I've been meaning to schedule a blood clot and stroke.

And I realize there's a difference between secondhand smoke and actually smoking. If there's only one bullet in the gun, it's true that it's less likely to fire than an empty chamber. But that doesn't mean that putting the gun to my temple and pulling the trigger is good for my health.

I've had it. I've had it with the smokers who think their right to suck on tobacco fumes supersedes my rights to live and pursue happiness. (Those words sound familiar.) I've had it with their desperate attempts to justify their filling my lungs with smoke that contains the vilest things imaginable. I've had it with them acting like they're victims and that one day, all the smokers will rise up and demand voting rights, the right to integrated education, and that non-smokers-only drinking fountains will be a thing of the past. Oh, that's right.

So I now declare that I have the right to wildly swing my arms all around me. (How unfortunate for the people who are occupying the space that I was planning on using.) I encourage the rest of you to do the same.

i <3 dell

2007-03-27T02:43:00.000-05:00

I just kissed my new computer several times because all I had to do was plug in my printer, and it said, "Hey, a new device! I know exactly what to do with this! Zing! You may now use your new device!" which was thoroughly refreshing, because my printer is about 6 years old and I think the installation disks are in Narnia.

And now I feel very old. I also am a little weirded out that I carried my new computer downstairs and I'm still online. I know that's the whole point of wireless internet, but I still get weirded out when things work like they're supposed to.

I just kissed it again. The fact that I was printing out part of a grad school application has absolutely nothing to do with my elation. Nothing at all.

By the way, I think just the fact that I went through over 10 completely different drafts of my response to "Discuss your writing objectives" means that I require graduate school. The fact that I keep kissing my computer means I may need therapy.

ccb and the bookbinders: a new kind of self-publishing AND a hell of a band name

2007-03-27T01:17:00.000-05:00

It seems that my fanclub is growing. Either that or someone I know is playing a joke on me. Or I really am awesome enough to inspire a cult-like following among impressionable youths. On an unrelated note, someone remind me to sign up for a PayPal account.

Despite my apparent awesomeness, things have sucked around here for a while. I adopted a doggie whose first order of business was to run away. While dealing with the heartbreak of losing my dog (and I cannot express to you how truly horrible I feel -- I may have had a miscarriage once, and I'm infinitely more upset about this) I have also had to deal with the dog-search nazis. These people. Oh, god, these people. They don't seem to understand that I still have to go to work and I cannot be everywhere at once. (Oh, yeah, and there's the fact that this dog happens to be brilliant and has no desire to be caught.) The head crazy person asked me if I've ever had a dog before. Um, yes. But only for about 15 years. Who is still alive, by the way. And my mother, who raised two children to adulthood without any loss of limb or kidnapping incidents, obviously needs help checking a dog trap set in our own yard.

Not only does this woman like to ask me insulting questions, (such as whether or not I am setting out food for MY OWN DOG) but she also enjoys fine dining, existential discussion, and addressing adults as though they were retarded children. We all know how I enjoy it when people speak to me as though I have a vocabulary of about 12 words. It always makes me want to be pleasant and gracious and not leave fingerprints.

My mother and I have always had a certain way with animals, but I'm a little angry. (Just slightly.) Phrases like "I am Snow White, bitch," have been running through my head, but the anger detracts from the fact that the wild deer that sleep in my yard aren't afraid of me. And that more than once, I've had wild bunnies who got to know me and would let me sit right next to them. Or that all my life, when dogs in our neighborhood were lost, they'd come into our yard. Or how about the time a dog led me to its friend that had been chained up in the woods behind my house? Or how about how I got my cat -- I walked outside and a feral cat ran over to me, threw herself onto her back at my feet and started purring. I'm goddamn Cinder-fucking-ella. Mice have never made me a ball gown, but they have let me pick them up and take them outside. And I've never had bluebirds sing a duet with me, but butterflies like to land on me all the time. I've stepped on a wasp in my bare feet and didn't get stung. In fact, I've never been stung or bitten by anything. Except mosquitoes. Because I'm lovable AND delicious. I have twice stepped right next to an angry rattlesnake and didn't get bitten.

I think we all know what I'm getting at here. I should cut this bitch. Or possibly sic an army of impressionable youths, adopted grandparents, and rogue wildlife on her. CCB and the Bookbinders, I'm going to need you to get on that. You can hide out with the Texas grandparents for a while afterwards.

(For those of you confused about the CCB and the Bookbinders thing, check out the comments on some of my recent posts. I totally love this kid and the vaguely frightening level of devotion he seems to have for me.)

why i'm like this (part 934)

2007-03-04T00:47:00.000-05:00

I'd just said something I'm not going to repeat here lest I offend certain persons who probably don't read this anyway, as they are most likely much too busy reading the Bible. Anyway.

Mom: You are going to rot in hell.
Me: That's okay. You'll already be there to introduce me around.
Mom: You will need no introduction. You'll already know everyone there.
Me: "Guys! What's up?!"
Mom: "God damn it, Amanda!"
Together: And that's why it would truly be hell.

as in dollars? and cents?

2007-02-27T02:56:00.000-05:00

So I went to the post office today to overnight my application to Bennington. Because February is stupid and only hath 28 days except in leap years, which 2007 isn't, and March 1 comes sooner than it seems like it should. I'd initally gone to the post office to mail this application on Saturday in what I consider morning-time. Apparently not everyone considers 1:45 to be so early in the day, though. Apparently they consider that to be 45 minutes after closing time.

I wound up going to the post office before work today. I had a feeling the place would be packed with old people. Probably because it's always full of old people. (Because it's in Turtle Creek, also known as the Least Happy Place On Earth.) Somehow I managed to beat the 12 random old people who each wanted to buy exactly five stamps. I just had to stand behind the one guy mailing 37 things that need to be stamped individually with specific instructions. And this dude SPRINTED into the builing because he saw me coming. With my one envelope. Dick. I spent the whole time his 37 pieces of mail were being stamped thinking of a way to remove some of his hair so he could wake up to Voodoo Surprise tomorrow. When I finally got to the counter, I said, "I need to overnight this." The guy behind the counter, whose name was Bob, looked at me guiltily--almost afraid, really.

"Do you know how much it costs?"
"Not nearly as much as spending the rest of my life in this pothole we call a town," I did not say. "No. How much is it?" I said.
He sighed and then whispered, "It's...$14.40."
"As in dollars? And cents?" I also did not say. "That's fine," I said.

I filled out a form, signed my name three times, and my application will be in someone's hands in Bennington guaranteed by Wednesday. And all because I'm willing to let my children go hungry for another night. According to Bob.

What kind of financial hardship do I look like I'm under that $14 would be such a stretch? If I'm overnighting something, obviously it's important. I don't overnight birthday cards. To college admissions offices. Seriously, Bob. What the hell. I know I'm in a post office in Turtle Creek in what is apparently the middle of the day to people who get up before noon, but I can't look like I'm so pathetic that I will balk at sending my important mail if it's a whopping $14.

There's no place like anywhere but here. There's no place like anywhere but here.

do my incisors look large to you?

2007-02-21T02:04:00.000-05:00

I have a theory. It would be easier for most people to admit to being a werewolf than to having eaten McDonald's for dinner. I base this theory on extensive research in my car tonight eating dinner cloaked in a fog of shame. Also in a much less metaphoric, literal fog outside the car. But mostly the shame fog.

It was probably the fog that made me feel like I was doing something terribly wrong, combined with the fact that I was doing something bad. So I parked over in the Sad Loser section of the parking lot. (If you're wondering, it's over by the trees. Because trees don't judge. Or talk.)

Appropriate parking is Step One in eating McDonald's for dinner in your car. The next step is to straw your drink and eat some french fries. I don't know how McDonald's makes their fries so good, and I probably don't want to know, either. But I do know that they are so good, eating a handful or three before chowing down on your sandwich of choice is so good it's like foreplay.

Then you look around, sending out "don't park next to me -- I will bite you" vibes to all the cars that go by. Then you unwrap the sandwich, your pupils dilate, your eyes glaze over, and you are temporarily insane until you've finished. A lapse in memory is not uncommon. When you're done, all that's left is a wrapper, maybe some lettuce carnage, and a smear of condiment down one side of your mouth. And the sinful, intoxicating smell on your hands that no soap can remove. Only time erases a Big Mac.

As I shoved the empty cup into the bag of trash I later smuggled into my office building like a ticking bomb, I wondered if being a werewolf would be not only easier to admit, but more socially acceptable.

No one would ask questions if every night I disappeared, only to reappear a half-hour later, hair matted, clothes disheveled, fingernails caked in grime, bits of fur between my teeth. Granted, that's mostly because no one would notice, but really, how do you begin that conversation? You'd just talk around it, like weight gain and bruises.

Only when I began giving out lucky rabbit's feet for every gift occasion AND as contributions to pot luck dinners would someone consider saying something. Then they'd decide against it, figuring ritualistic bunny slaughter is some weird Scandinavian tradition. You can do anything you want as long as you say it's a tradition vaguely related to your lineage. Sweden has an entire holiday celebrated by putting lit candles on your head. (Or, more specifically, the oldest daughter, which I am in my family.) If I showed up to work on December 13th with candles on my head, it would have been a charming cross-cultural experience. If I put candles on my head on December 14th, though, it'd be "lock her the fuck up."

Similarly, if I showed up at work with Big Mac sauce on my face, it'd be much less socially acceptable than if I walked in holding the severed head of a deer. Especially because around here, those are up on 3 out of 4 walls.

cat piss + tires = no one goes to bed happy

2007-01-26T03:10:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I got snow tires for my car. A good thing, because it's been snowing here for about four days now, and we have a total accumulation of "just enough to get into your socks because you insist on wearing clogs every day, you Scandinavian freak."

So I drove around with the tires in my trunk for about a week and then decided to finally take them out before I went shopping. Because I have my priorities. So I set them on the porch, went shopping for a few hours, came home, put the tires in the basement, and then had a nice evening. Then I went downstairs to get a drink. And oh, god, the smell. It was like I'd stepped into a parallel universe where everything was a litter box.

Even though I am an animal lover and I love cats (the non-evil, non-retarded ones, that is, and yes, I have known mentally retarded cats) I immediately thought of all the things in my kitchen I could use to kill the goddamn stray cat that had sprayed all over my fucking tires.

So I had to unwrap (because the guys at the garage had considerately tied a nice little knot in each bag over each tire) every single tire and then sniff my hands in order to figure out which bag had been violated. Of course, it was the last one. Is there any way this could have ended differently, factoring in how hilarious my friends will find this? Meanwhile, I'm still angry two weeks later.

I spent the rest of the night positively livid, spraying Febreze, lighting candles, and muttering about the things I could do to that cat with a blunt object.

i think "don guitar and the texas fan club" once opened for hank williams

2006-12-07T03:07:00.000-05:00

My darling darling readers, (now I think the total might have busted right into the double-digits) I have forgotten you for so long. But I'm pretty sure you've filled that aching void with actually having a life, so I won't actually apologize.

Today I got a nice email from a guy in Texas. No, really. My friend Shirley (Mrs. Spag to my fellow Woodland Hills alumni, if you can really call us that) is from Texas, so I knew not everyone there is a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. After all, a lot of them moved to DC.

Here's his note, which I am sharing here because, well, who's going to stop me?

"So, if you ever need a grandparent, please consider this an application, you need a resume let me know, the wife and I will tend to it. I love your blog. My wife occasionally mentions a funny lady whom she loves and I've never heard of (so I don't recall the name) who talked about being a "delicate flouwah" in a very Florida/Jewish sort of accent. I never heard of the woman but you and your mom remind me of her. You're such delicate flowers. Maybe she needs parents, we'll apply for that position too. I don't read blogs (that is so lame) but ok, I read yours once in a while when I need a little boost in my morale. I don't update my own, I seem never to feel inspired and I'm busy with other things, but I did log in so I could comment on yours. You're terrific, I couldn't be more proud of you if you really were my grandaughter and I wish my daughters and grandkids could meet you. "

Several reasons why I like this guy and his entire family. First, he began with "So," which I think might be actually encoded in my DNA. (That might be the most esoteric half-joke I've ever made, as it requires a working knowledge not only of the somewhat-recent translation of "Beowulf" by Seamus Heaney, but also of my Swedish ancestry.) Moving right along.

Second, he said nice things about me and he's funny. (Being funny counts twice, by the way.) Grandparents are in short supply these days. Especially cool ones. I have but one grandma -- but trust me, she's awesome. Which brings me to my next story.

I spent the weekend in Alexandria with my mom visiting relatives. Both my parents are from Alexandria, and my mother's family is still mostly in the area. (My father's family, in case you were wondering, is either dead or unfortunately still alive.)

My grandmother cracks me up, and not just because as matriarch, she could probably have me killed. If you're wondering what she's like, just imagine me but with a slightly cleaner vocabulary and thin. I know it's a stretch on both parts. But we're both hairy, so that counts for something in the "I probably wasn't adopted" column. As we were taking our bags down to the lobby of her building on Monday morning, a man passed by and they exchanged good mornings before he walked outside. The door had barely closed when she said, "I've been trying to flirt with that man for the past two months, but so far we haven't gotten past the weather." This reminded me of several of the "I can't believe my grandmother just said that" conversations we've had. Among those are her thoughts on why most men should be kept locked underground, why Viagra is bullshit, and why you should always have a pillow around when you have sex. (Just a very small sample there, as I'm sure you've already guessed.)

And on to why I should be careful when drinking Mai Tais. (I've amended this ruling from my earlier decision that I should never drink Mai Tais, because the further away from semi-drunken incidents you get, the more apt you are to remember just how good that drink was in the first place.) So after our celebratory dinner in Old Town (one of my aunts got a big fat promotion, so a good number of family members converged on an unsuspecting Thai restaurant that will probably never be the same) we were walking down the street to our cars. (No, I wasn't driving. You know me better than that. For shame.) I was talking with my cousin Ben, who is a couple years older than me, about our aunt Liz's boyfriend. Everyone really likes him, which is good, because the two of them just bought a house and will be moving in together in January. I suspect a Christmas proposal because I have a feeling he'll do it in front of the family. I said something to the effect of just wanting to meet someone who isn't psychotic, referring of course to the last couple of complete whack jobs I've dated. Ben said he'd like to meet a woman who doesn't talk much. Then he laughed and said, "No, not really."

I said, "Of course not. Except, exactly that." Then, not thinking, I said, "God, my last girlfriend..." and then I knew I'd just crossed a line I couldn't uncross. Not that I'm hiding anything from my family, and not that I think they'd be horrified. It's just not something I really wanted to do. So I said, "Oh, shit."

Ben looked at me and said, "We just sat at a table that was talking about three-legged dogs on rooves, clocks that turn on by themselves, and half-retarded people running down the street yelling 'Batman.' Do you really think a lesbian is going to suddenly become the exciting new topic? Compared to the average day on Hickory Street*, you're boring." I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'm actually bisexual. Not that it would have lessened his point, really.

*Hickory Street: The street where my mother and her five siblings grew up in the Del Ray section of Alexandria, where everyone, and I do mean everyone, was completely insane. From CaCa, the schizophrenic Alzheimer's patient who'd "get loose" down the street to the infamous three-legged dog that wouldn't come off the roof of a house to the rooster that just showed up one day and wouldn't leave my mother's house, you cannot make this shit up. It has to be genetic.

victory, well done, extra pickles, no mustard

2006-11-10T03:24:00.000-05:00

What an awesome week for America. And an even awesomer week for Pennsylvania, who finally decided to throw their Santorum-stained sheets in the wash. On the "heavy" cycle. With bleach.

And yet I'm still amazed that anyone, even his mother, would vote for Satan-orum. A man who hates women so much that he wrote an entire book on why we shouldn't have jobs. (Seriously.)

I'm pretty sure that after the man has a beer or two, he starts talking about why we should not only overturn Roe v. Wade, but if we could revoke women's suffrage, the country -- nay, the world -- would be a better place.

Tuesday was my first experience with the electronic voting machines. I was a little worried about the elderly people around here voting with them and that they'd somehow accidentally all wind up voting a straight Whig ticket, but I can honestly say that it's more difficult to order a sandwich at Sheetz than to vote with one of those things.

But really, this is so much more delicious.

where no woman has gone before

2006-10-20T02:32:00.000-05:00

From time to time, I find myself in a men's bathroom. Not for any illicit reason. Unless peeing is illicit. I'll have to consult my social conservatism handbook on that one. But sometimes, a girl has to go pee with the boys. This doesn't bother me at all, as I grew up in what I now realize was a rather bohemian household, but at the time seemed quite normal.

So last weekend, I went to see "After Mrs. Rochester" with my father. Interesting play -- stirred up thoughts on being a writer versus being a parent and the idea of perfection of the life versus perfection of the work. But that's a much more serious discussion to have somewhere far away from the salty-meets-sweet combination of silliness and near-constant political vitriol that is this blog.

So, at the play, there was a line for the ladies room just prior to the performance. I say it was a line, but it was really more of a collection of female persons in a hallway, all facing different directions as though they were posing for the cover of their CD. In an episode of "South Park."

I asked the woman I was closest to -- who was facing southwest, I believe -- if this was the line for the bathroom. Considering the way the other people were assembled and the habit women have of standing around a bathroom waiting for their friends, I did not think this was a silly question. She looked at me as if I'd just asked her if she were waiting for a bus. "Yes," she said, "it is." She said it so coldly and slowly that I had the time to narrate "she said" in the middle of her sentence.

I should mention that this play was being performed in the Braddock Carnegie Library, a building which, though it is a building, is my father's favorite child. Consequently, I know it fairly well. Not well enough to direct a tour, but well enough that I know where the other bathrooms are. It had occurred to me that I ought to take a collection of people downstairs if this modern-art assembly was actually a bathroom line, but because of the aforementioned exchange where I narrated a not-so-nice woman, I decided they could all fuck off. It only takes one to ruin it for the rest of the class. Or line.

So I turned around and was getting ready to walk downstairs when a man said, "No one's in the men's room." I heard the tiniest snort behind me and I decided that if it was going to bother that woman, I'd go pee in the men's room. I turned around and asked if anyone would rather go before me, because, after all, it was a line. Also, I wanted to get a look at that woman's face. It occurs to me now that she probably looks like that all the time.

So I went in, I peed, and I came out. There was a different guy standing outside and he said, "Wow! Going in the men's room!" Guys are usually surprised. Once, at a truck stop at about 3:00 AM, I walked out of a men's room (the women's room had been vandalized and was nauseating to the point that even I couldn't use it) and I made a guy nearly jump out of his skin. I think he got out three "Oh, miss, I am so sorry"-ies before I convinced him that it was in fact I who was in the "wrong" room. But never have I previously experienced what happened to me last Saturday night.

The same guy said, "All right!" and clapped me on the shoulder as I walked out the door. Women tend to chat with strangers, especially in a bathroom, and my understanding is that men generally do not. In fact, they go out of their way to avoid contact with men they don't know, especially in bathrooms, and carefully calculate buffer zones between themselves and their fellow urinators. (Tearooms would be a whole different category with a decidedly different code of conduct. Which I also know a little something about. Don't ask.) My point is, men don't high-five each other for peeing, so I have to conclude that he was applauding my apparent bravery for going pee in a room that has a picture of a person wearing pants painted on the door.

I guess next time I'll just use the bucket in the janitor's closet.

i hope there's an afterlife because i want my slave-owning bastard relatives to be able to watch little scenes like this while they roast in hell

2006-10-12T01:18:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I really hate white people. And then immediately after that thought, I look down at my arm and say "God damn it!"

Over the weekend, Mom and I stopped at the grocery store after we'd done some shopping (by which I mean we made fun of things at Pier 1 -- what the hell is up with their latest stuff? Usually I love their things, but we saw silver and gold teddy bears. The fuck? We decided to leave during the brief window that comes between us both cracking up and the manager asking us to leave).

So we're at the home grocery store. Everyone in America knows what I mean -- there's the grocery store you go to that's close to your house, and then there's another one, maybe even in the same chain, that's farther away, but nicer in some respect. Maybe it's cleaner or better-lit or has a wider, fresher selection -- maybe all three.

Our home grocery store is the Giant Eagle in Braddock Hills. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I think this store is ghetto -- it's not. It doesn't have the huge variety of the Giant Eagle at the Waterfront, and sure, the bank branch in it has been robbed a couple times, but whatever. This is Pittsburgh. Every bank has been robbed a couple times. I've been going to this grocery store for over 20 years and some of the same people have been working there the entire time. Pretty much everyone who goes to this store has been going there for that long, if not much, much longer.

My point is this -- unless you're under the age of 2, this isn't gonna be your first time there.

So I'm standing at the deli counter waiting for my turn and talking to the lady in front of me and her kids. (Side note -- having one random little kid start talking to you out of the blue is awesome. Having her little sister grab your hand while you're talking is like a religious experience.)

Including the deli staff, the only other white woman around was an extremely sour-faced old bat with hairdresser hair. You know what I mean -- the short, blue-white hair done in ridiculous curls and then sprayed with some kind of sealant so it lasts until next week when she goes back to the hairdresser and "gets set."

So, Sour Face is before me. It's cool. The lady with the kids left, and I smiled at Sour Face. She gave me a weird look and then ordered the deli girl around like she thought we'd all been transported to a tobacco field in South Carolina around 1837. Part of her orders included "I don't want the slice on top." I have no idea why. Maybe she has OCD or schizophrenia and the voices in her head don't like their lunch meat exposed to too much air.

So, as the girl grabbed the entire stack of bologna and weighed it, Sour Face gave me another look. This one I understood immediately, because I've seen it on many an old white bitch in my life. It's the look that says, "Oh, these silly Negroes!" and it's usually followed by a giant spike in my blood pressure. I gave her a look of my own and I don't think it's the one she thought she'd be getting back, because she immediately started studying a stack of Ham Off The Bone.

"I didn't give you the one on top," said the deli girl as she flipped a decidedly flaccid- and anemic-looking slice of bologna back into the case, which I think showed a great deal of self-control, because the temptation to flip it into Sour Face's hair and say, "Don't worry, it's on the house," must have been absolutely overwhelming.

I exchanged a look with the deli girl, which sent Sour Face into some sort of palpitating state -- perhaps the vapors -- and that pleased me to such an extent that I nearly forgot what kind of turkey I wanted.

And just for the record, if the deli girl had whipped that bologna at that old bat, I would have told the manager that Sour Face did it to herself.

stories like these are why this blog has a sub-title

2006-09-26T03:12:00.000-05:00

So I was coming home from work yesterday, and when I scheduled myself to work till 5:00 PM, I made the mistake of forgetting there was a game. A home game.

So I was stuck in Squirrel Hill Tunnel traffic coming home around 6 PM and there was this big van full of boys...I'll be generous and say they were in college. Or perhaps some sort of institution. So they see me in the lane next to them, and one of them sends out the "check her out" signal and they all press themselves up against the glass like little monkeys. So they keep winding up just in front of me as the lanes seesaw back and forth, advancing toward the tunnel, and one of them presses this piece of paper up against the window that says "PLEASE CALL ME!!" with his phone number on it underneath and he starts gesturing at himself. I start laughing -- because honestly, what the hell -- and then my phone starts ringing. So I reach in my bag and pull out my phone, and he starts bouncing up and down and they're all going "NUH-AWW!!" at him or whatever it is little monkey boys say to each other, and meanwhile I'm talking to my brother. Just as well. It was probably an outing for America's Youngest Glaucoma Patients.

This happened last week. I was alone at home standing by the window, just enjoying the breeze. Now, our neighbor's house is close. Not so close that I could touch it just by leaning out the window, but if I were on the roof, I might be able to jump onto their house, assuming that I could get onto the roof, could get a running start, and wanted to wind up on a Vonage commercial.

Anyway, I saw this bottle of Spic N Span sitting on their window ledge. So I start yelling, "Don't do it! You have so much to live for! Formula 409 is on her way over, and I just know you two can work it out!" And I went on and on, because I'm always freaking like this, even when I'm alone. So I'm making myself crack up at my own sheer hilarity, and then I hear the neighbor's car start.

Good times.

And finally, the family across the street is moving. My brother used to fuck their daughter, and after that ended, they all decided they're afraid of us or something. They won't make eye contact with us. I pretend not to know what's going on an I have long conversations with them even as they fail to acknowledge that I am talking to them. After this latest episode, I'm going to start describing bowel movements at length. Mine, my family's, people at work, diapers I've changed, and just in general. Possibly while they're having an open house. Possibly inside it.

The bastards filed a complaint with the borough about the little patch of Queen Anne's Lace (which is a wildflower) growing next to our driveway. Now, I know what overgrown weeds look like. This was a little patch of flowers. And so the borough sends my mother a bunch of letters in the mail (actually, it was the same letter twice because apparently Forrest Gump runs the Forest Hills borough) telling her that if she didn't remove said "weeds on hillside" that were "in excess of 10 inches" then she would have charges filed against her with the possibility of a several-thousand-dollar fine, jail time, or both. Meanwhile, by the time the letter came in the mail, my mother had already pulled up everything that was growing there. The whole handful.

Now, what makes this extra-hilarious is that the fucking police had to come out and take notice of our little patch of renegade flowers before they could send us this bullshit in the mail. About three years ago, one of their fellow officers was shot by some drug dealer not a half a mile from our house. The guy hid in a patch of four trees and somehow got away even with every police officer in the greater Pittsburgh area on his ass. So until they find the guy who shot their buddy, I won't be taking them very seriously. They've gotten nowhere -- they just act really suspicious of normal people now, like when my brother got pulled over in the spring and the cop acted like he would have no possible reason to have a jack in his car. Apparently the Forest Hills police department uses the same amazing mental super-powers to change tires as they do to solve crime.

Someone had to report our terrorist wildflowers, and as mom said, "I'd bet a pint of my own blood that it was them, because who else but someone selling their house would give two shits about some fucking wildflowers in someone else's yard?" (Mom and I share the same delicate constitution.)

So far, our vengeance has been limited to having loud conversations in the front yard. Here's the one we had last night.

"HEY, AMANDA, DO YOU SEE ANYTHING OVER 10 INCHES IN THE YARD? I'D HATE TO GO TO JAIL, BECAUSE I REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WEEK ON DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES."

"I CAN'T BE SURE, MOM. LET'S GET OUT THE TAPE MEASURER. OR PERHAPS SOME GIANT ASSHOLE COULD COME OVER AND LEND US THEIRS."

"THEY BETTER HAVE A TAPE MEASURER, 'CAUSE IT'S FOR DAMN SURE THAT NOTHING ELSE IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS OVER 10 INCHES."

(See what I mean about our delicate nature?)

I'm sure that this is going to turn into the Wildflower Chronicles. I'll keep you all posted, since not all of you live close enough to read about it in the paper.

higher learning will never be the same

2006-09-16T02:25:00.000-05:00

I'm going to look like one of the students and no one is going to know who I am until I start passing out papers and writing on the chalkboard. Then again, I thought Bob Day* was a farmer auditing my Chekhov class, so maybe there's something to be said for looking like an imposter.

What you might have guessed by now is that I'm finally doing it. I am applying to grad school.

Well, okay, not really. I've got a big list of possible places (I think about 14) and I'm looking through them and choosing where I want to apply, because I can't afford to apply everywhere with application fees running as high as $75 for some schools. But this is the price I guess I literally have to pay for the schools I have on my list. Warren Wilson. Goddard. Bennington. Fairleigh Dickinson.

Dear god, I'm going to go down in flames.

That's not true. Though it might amaze some of you to know, I do write serious things. Painfully serious things. They're not very long.

I like poetry for its economy of language. I think that's because concentrating on brevity means I only have to think seriously for a short time. (Know thyself and all that.)

After I get my MFA, I'll be all ready to teach. Or so the theory goes. Knowing me, I'll get a post-MFA teaching certificate. If I can overeducate myself, I will. After I've sufficiently stuffed my head full, I'll be moving...somewhere. New England, maybe. A lot of the schools I'm interested in are in New England, but since I'm doing a low-residency program, I'll still be here in Pittsburgh full-time and traveling there twice a year for about a week at the start of each semester. Even two weeks a year in New England is exciting to me. (Don't worry -- I will never, ever root for the Patriots. They could be playing the Cowboys and I wouldn't root for them. Hell, they could play the Browns and I wouldn't root for them. How could I? I'd already be so busy trying to light the stadium on fire.)

I think it's safe to say that my future students, who are probably freshmen or sophomores in high school right now (assuming it doesn't take me years and years to find some college somewhere that will hire me) should probably start drinking now. Some of the schools require that I teach a course -- not just a single class, mind you, but an actual course -- before I graduate. I'd say that everyone in Pittsburgh should start drinking now, but football season has already begun.

*Bob Day was a professor of mine in college. My goal in life is to be just like him, but with less Jack Daniels, as I prefer vodka.

this is what i get for never streaking on may day

2006-09-10T00:43:00.000-05:00

Almost 20 years. That's how long it lasted. 19 years and just shy of 8 months. And now it's gone. That was how long I went without ever having to say, "Today, my brother saw me naked."

I was getting ready to take a shower this afternoon. I started the water, took off my pajamas, and I was standing there cleaning my ears and waiting for the water to warm up when I heard a tiny clink in the dining room. I knew that sound -- it was keys on the table. A silhouette immediately appeared. I swung the door shut. "Sorry," I called, trying not to sound like I was wishing my head would just explode, "I didn't realize you were coming home so soon." I knew he was coming home to to laundry, but I didn't expect that it would be in the afternoon. Obviously, or I wouldn't have had my kibbles and bits on display.

The whole time I was in the shower, I tried to come up with various ways in which it didn't actually happen. I'd imagined him. It was really a robber who likes to drop keys on the table before he robs a place. He was struck hysterically blind. He was engaged in a tantric blink and his eyes had been closed the whole time. But eventually, I had to get out of the shower. He was in the basement when I came out, my robe knotted in several places.

"Dude. Sorry about that."
"I don't care. I've seen Papa naked."

Of course he has. Everyone has seen our father naked. People who don't even know him have seen him naked. (That is not hyperbole.) I used to have to remind him to put pants on when my friends would visit. And by used to, I mean in 2004. Interesting note -- I haven't lived with him since 2003.

So, that was that. Almost two decades -- it was a good run, but all good things have to come to an end eventually. I don't see why, but this is what I've been told, usually after some analagous catastrophe. Whatever, I've changed his diapers. Somewhat less recently than 2004, though.

at least the pro-lifers are leaving me alone

2006-09-06T23:07:00.000-05:00

MySpace would be fabulous if it were not for:

- PeoPLe wHo tyPE lIkE ThiS. Although it does make it extra-easy to spot idiots.
- The following pieces of punctuation did not exist: ~ and *
- Everyone was required to show proof of age before joining.
- People didn't believe hoax bulletins about a MySpace tax or getting your profile deleted or that 200 virgins will meet you in heaven if you -- wait, that last one is fundamental Islam.
- Random losers didn't message me every day. What the fuck -- I finally put up an actual picture of myself (not even a GOOD one) and now I get at least one message a day from a stranger. Stranger emails don't bother me. It's that none of them are even barely coherent. If I see "holla atcha boy" one more fucking time, I'm going to stab somebody.
- Couples didn't assume I want to be their chew toy simply because I am bisexual. Okay, so this isn't limited to MySpace, but I get more messages like "Hey my gurl and me was lookin 4 a bi chick to kick it wit an we saw ur pic check out our pics an holla back" on MySpace than anywhere else. In fact, that's the only place.
- No one put songs on their profile and Fred Phelps was in little bits in somebody's compost heap. That second one is just a general statement, though.

fuck the park service!

2006-09-01T03:29:00.000-05:00

If you've seen "Grizzly Man," then you'll find this snort-worthy.

If you haven't seen "Grizzly Man," go turn on the Discovery Channel and wait for it to be on again in a 9-hour block.

today's secret word is "insomnia"

2006-08-31T02:53:00.000-05:00

I should be in bed, but I'm all fired up because I just wrote a letter to the editor about Plan B. Also, I appear to have sustained some sort of English injury. To my back. I think maybe there's a participle dangling between my shoulder blades. I hope I didn't split an infinitive back there. (Somewhere, someone's grandma just laughed at those horrible jokes.)

So I'm sitting here thinking about stuff and listening to the radio (good show, Dave, although through most of it I was in a writing haze and fantasizing about becoming a political speechwriter) and I remembered something I wanted to share with all (five) of you. Last night I watched a little bit of PeeWee's Playhouse. After about a minute and a half, the picture-phone rang and I started to wonder if I had somehow ingested peyote.

When I see part of a cartoon that kids today watch, I think, "No wonder they've all got ADHD." Having now watched PeeWee's Playhouse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the same week as an adult, I have come to the conclusion that this is the reason we are all on drugs.

A lot of people try to return to their childhood as they begin adulthood. I think that because so many of us associate floating disembodied heads, talking furniture, screaming, and psychedelic colors with our childhood, we find hallucinogens to be a blast from the past and a half.

i can't believe this doesn't end with "and then i punched her in the face"

2006-08-25T02:37:00.000-05:00

The other weekend, Mom and I went with our friend BA to a craft fair in Ohio. It's pretty nice stuff -- sure, there's the usual idiotic cutesy crap, but most of it was made by people with a remarkable amount of skill. I bought an antique end table handpainted with roses, among a few other things. Most of the jewelry I looked at would have cleaned out my checking account.

Mom and I were in one booth looking around, and I picked up a little cloth sheep and we both went "Baa-aa-aa!" Here I must explain to those of you who've never been around me or my mother. We're nuts. Also, we make sheep noises. Explanation over.

So we're baaing back and forth and from behind us comes the voice of insanity. "Oh, isn't that cute! I picked that up and it said baa!"

"Oh, that was us."
"Really? Oh, it sounded so real!"
"Nope. Just us."
"That's so funny! Are you sisters?" (Right there, we should have known the woman was insane. My mom is hot, but come on -- she still has 30 years on me.)
"Thank you, but no. She's my daughter."
"Oh, gee! Now, what do you call yourselves? Something like The Ba-aa-ad Girls?"
"Uh, no. It's just something we do...we don't really know why."
"That's great. I'm a freelance photographer and videographer..."

I shit you not. So this woman whips out a camera and starts directing her daughter to pick up one of the little sheep and for us to start baaing as soon as she touches it. Not yet realizing the depths of her lunacy, we complied.

When she was done humiliating her daughter, for whom I feel unending pity, she turned the camera on us and said "Those sound effects were brought to you by The Ba-aa-ad Girls..."

"Amanda..."
"...and Ellie."

She kept rolling. So we kept baaing. We baaed an entire conversation. That film should be subtitled as follows:

"Why is that fucking thing still on?"
"I have no idea. Do you think that if we knock her down and run, people would notice?"
"Who brings a videocamera to a craft fair?"
"I guess that's the thing to do if you've just been let out of the asylum."

By now, people were starting to mill around and watch. They probably just wanted to look at the sheep.

"So, how did you guys get started doing this stuff? Do you do any other animals or voices?"

And then my mother, in an attempt to save herself, turned on me.

"Oh, she can do any voice or impression of anything. She's so funny!"

Damn you, mother. Damn you.

"Really! What else can you do? Do something funny!" Blink, the camera goes on.

"Do that Shakespeare thing," my mother urged while at the same time trying to become semiaqueous and slip through the cracks in the wall. She was referring to the impression of a British narrator from a history film that I saw in high school and which is only funny after I've set it up and you're expecting something serious.

"I love Shakespeare," she said. Of course she does.

"Actually, it has nothing to do with Shakespeare. And it's not even funny, really, unless --"

"Do it!" Mom was still made of solid matter but had managed to slide out of the shot.

"Henry VIII..." and I launched into it with no setup. I kept going on autopilot as I backed up and a crowd gathered and pointed at me and whispered to each other, probably trying to figure out what sitcom they'd seen me on. Sorry, guys, that was Rosie O'Donnell.

Still, she was not satisfied. "What else do you do?"

"Uh...really, it's hard to think of a good example when I have this display of wooden sheep digging into my back."

We managed to get away. Temporarily. In a giant, crowded outdoor space, we managed to run into this woman about every 15 minutes. And of course, she'd see us and baa at us. After the third time, Mom said, "I can't believe this fucking place isn't big enough to lose her."

Every time we ran into her, her daughter looked like she'd lost a little more of her will to live. Also, our relationship seemed more and more significant each time. Normal people would have chuckled once and then politely ignored us. Because what else is there to say? We baaed, you taped us, we wished we were born mute. That's the extent of our relationship. Or so we thought.

I think we're on her Christmas-card list now. We had to leave before we wound up on vacation together.

It could be worse. I could be one of the people she's going to force to watch that tape.

a wise woman once wondered, "what the fuck?"

2006-08-18T02:19:00.000-05:00

What's up with all the barely-legal little boys wanting to be my friend on MySpace? Not only do I feel weird for having a profile on there now that everyone and their chihuahua has their own profile, but seriously, what do I want with an 18-year-old? (Or a 15-year-old pretending to be 18.) Some of these children are in high school. High school!

Some kid wearing an Abercrombie shirt in his profile photo sent me a friend request. Apparently he works there, too. (I think they make you wear their clothes when you work there...of course, if you worked for that kind of company, you're probably not smart enough to realize that they're an evil empire or that their clothes are ugly.) In his interests, he listed his girlfriend's name. Also, he was looking at the camera as though he wanted to give it scabies. I smell a Nobel Prize in his future, don't you?

Come to think of it, what the hell does he want with me? I've compiled a possible list of his motivations.

- he wants to discuss Paul Auster
- he would like a recipe for a Key Lime pie that's so good it'll make you slap your own mouth
- he was wondering what the difference is between "it's" and "its"
- he has to learn how to drive a stick
- he needs a tutorial on cunnilingus
- he would like to fully understand why Rick Santorum should be set aflame
- he is an idiot

Definitely has to be one of the above.

it's crazy...it's creepy...it's essentially really a useless ability

2006-08-15T02:12:00.000-05:00

I have yet another weird vaguely psychic story about me and one of my co-workers. True story.

So, I guess it was Friday night (could have been earlier in the week because I have a habit of remembering dreams way fucking after they happen) that I had a dream about a friend of mine at work named Brendan. Actually, he's sort of like my boss, but I pretend not to notice. That seems to be something I do a lot, but those are other stories for other times with other parental advisories to go before them.

I dreamt that I was in the car with Brendan and he kept telling me that we had to get to Locust Drive. Locust Drive, Locust Drive, we had to get to Locust Drive. I thought this was a weird frigging dream, even for me. Probably because no one died. People tend to meet violent ends around me in my dreams. Sort of like in real life.

Brendan walked by me and said "I'm Batman." Did I mention that a while back I had a dream he was Batman? Yeah. True story.

So, that reminded me that I'd had another dream about him. I figured we would joke about Penguin being on Locust Drive or something and we'd have a good chuckle. Instead, as I repeated "Locust Drive" to him, his face shifted into an expression usually reserved for things like seeing the dead rise up from their graves or happening to catch part of the evening news.

He started at me. I've never seen eyes that wide. I thought maybe I had a booger. Or a french fry hanging from my lip like a half-forgotten Marlboro.

"Amanda," he said. I think maybe I blinked. I tried to make a joke.

"What? Did you..." I said the first thing that popped into my head. Living on Locust Drive would be too obvious. A slightly fresher quip would be funnier, and then I could check for boogers or fries on my face. "Did you grow up on Locust Drive?"

He nodded. Slowly. Still vaguely terrified of me, I think.

"Seriously?"

"Yes. And not on Locust Street or Locust Avenue, but Locust Drive."

This is crazy. This is creepy. I got out of the car and we did the only thing you can do in these situations. We told Dave.

"Holy shit," said Dave. (He says this sometimes. Usually when I've done something crazy and/or creepy. Which I do sometimes.)

"Let me get this straight," he said. Dave is not impressed by psychic ability. "So, you said Locust Drive first, and then you said you lived there?" Brendan nodded. "Wow. That's impressive." (But sometimes he is.) "You know," he said to Brendan, "she rescued me once when I ran out of gas." Oh, Dave. I've told everyone this story. Why? Because it was crazy and creepy and you already knew about it. "You should figure out a way to use your power for evil instead of good," he said.

Although really, who's to say that I'm not already?

lust, grasshoppers, and rambling boredom (not necessarily in that order)

2006-08-10T02:16:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been so bored and unable to sleep that you looked up an ex's blog and read it? If that's not hitting bottom, then I don't want to know what is. I was on some totally non-related website and thought "I wonder what [BLEEP] is up to." (That's not his real name, but it would be funny if it were. Brackets and all.)

I of course went to Livejournal and looked him up. Who the fuck still has a Livejournal? Better question -- who intentionally reads her loser ex's Livejournal? This is like a contest for who has become the most pathetic. Even though he has a better-paying job and a girlfriend, I still think he takes the Loser Crown for various reasons. Star Wars sheets is in the top 5. I hope he doesn't read this, because I don't really hate him and I wouldn't want him to feel bad. I'm just saying, though. Burn those.

So I glance through at the scattering of uninteresting posts -- most of which were links to stuff on CollegeHumor. If you're not familiar with CollegeHumor, congratulate yourself on not being a freshman in college. Freshmen are the only people on the planet who should not be punished by death for frequenting that site. Everyone else -- flamethrower.

I guess I'll continue this train wreck of a story. So I get to one post, and it's all the lyrics to a song that I once put on a CD I made for him and it's under the title "For [BLEEP]". (Once again, not her real name. That would be confusing.)

I don't know this girl, and I have absolutely nothing against her. Nor am I seething with some weird jealousy that he used "my" song. But seriously, out of all the love songs in the world, did you HAVE to choose that one? Then again, creativity was never one of his strengths. It just struck me as obnoxious. And also, if I were her, I'd be pissed if I found out my boyfriend used a song with which his ex had once had a Pavlovian sort of association in a cheesy blog love shout-out straight out of junior-high-style courtship. Could have been worse, though. At least the song wasn't "Amanda," because that most assuredly is not her name.

That's enough of thinking about him. I've been nauseated for three days as it is and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. I wish I had a specific person to blame this on. Then I would have someone to slaughter.

I filled up my tank tonight on my way home from work. I stopped at the same BP station I always go to. And for the second time in a row, there was a grasshopper on the roof of my car. And for the second time in a row, it did not want to leave. It sat there as I tried to coax it off with my debit card. Then it jumped onto me. At least it didn't go down my shirt like the moths at the work parking lot. They gravitate like, well, moths to the lights outside the doors, and then, I suppose, attracted by the glow of my pale, pale flesh, fly straight down my cleavage as I walk to my car. If there is security video of this happening, I'd love to see it. I could probably win a million dollars. It's a three-step process:

- I go outside.
- I am walking like a normal human being.
- I am possessed by Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance.

It's like some bizarre Riverdance-inspired mating dance. Because oh dear god, it's been way too goddamn long. This is cruel to the point that Amnesty International is going to have to intervene on my behalf. If you get a mailing from them, for the love of god, sign the petition and the little "hang in there" card, and if you really care, scribble a dirty limerick or something under your name. It is a dark, dark hour. And I'm out of batteries.

things i don't like

2006-08-02T00:57:00.000-05:00

You know what pisses me off? A lot of shit. But here's a small assortment of rants.

- People who say flippant shit like "make up your mind" referring to bisexuals. Don't you fucking think we would if we could? This is especially infuriating when it comes from gay people, who ought to fucking understand that it's not a goddamn choice. Why don't you go hang out with the 700 Club assholes, you fucking hypocrites?

- Mosquitoes and my deliciousness. I have more bites than I can count. I think I have one on my ovary. I'm not sure.

- Little helpful hint -- if you're calling someone to tell her whether or not she has a potentially deadly/life-altering illness, don't fucking chit-chat with her beforehand. No one wants a segue from the weather to "you're going to need a hysterectomy." Lead with "you don't have cancer" and then feel free to tell me whatever the hell you want.

- Russian lifeguards. Actually, it's just one specific Russian lifeguard, but he's ruined it for the rest of the class.

- People who for some reason "don't believe" in global warming. The current temperature trend notwithstanding, global warming is scientific fact. Just like evolution. It's not something for you to believe in. You can hold proof of evolution in your hand. And soon, you'll be able to reach out and touch a glacier, because everything is fucking melting.

- The AZN network.

- The Family Circus comic strip. Every once in a while I accidentally read it, because it's usually about 6 words and a stupid drawing, and it's possible to read it without even realizing what you're doing. There is no one left alive in the country who finds The Family Circus charming. No one has ever found it amusing.

- Anything remotely related to Mel Gibson.

- Rick Santorum's campaign ads. Nobody fucking cares that your grandpa was a steel worker for 147 years and he came from Not America and he had fourteen cents and half a cracker when he immigrated and then raised 93 children. We're not voting for your grandpa, you idiot. My grandpa grew up in Braddock and taught himself to read. He was also a racist who thought my mother was a whore. Note the subtle contrast between the generations.

- Joyce Carol Oates.

next time, somebody tell me

2006-07-26T02:35:00.000-05:00

I am slightly obsessive about my teeth for two reasons. One, I had braces for five years. Two, I hate the dentist. So I brush and floss and rinse and spit and cross my fingers and wonder if there's a dentist somewhere around here who will put me under the next time I need a filling, because the last time, we discovered that Novacaine doesn't work on me. And by "we," I mean I screamed and tried to get away and the dentist laughed and continued drilling into my head. There is something vaguely serial-killer about that, I think.

So usually after I eat, I check my teeth just to make sure there's nothing stuck. There almost never is, but I do it anyway. Yesterday, I was about to inspect my choppers when someone walked into the bathroom. Not wanting to look like a fool with my face all up in the mirror, I washed my hands and left. I probably smiled at whoever it was, too. She was the first person who should have said something.

I went on with my day, had a meeting of sorts with a supervisor (a particularly fun time in the day when you're pulled into a darkened room and told everything that you've done wrong, which is also printed out in list form for your personal enjoyment -- it seems like there should be spankings, too, but so far, no luck) and talked to various people. I'm sure I smiled at every one of them.

I got home and watched some tv with Mom. I had a couple drinks. I went to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror, and there, framing my two front teeth like two very tiny but precisely placed bookmarks, were the biggest fucking pieces of pepper I've ever seen in my life. I suspect they stowed away in my honey mustard dipping sauce I had with my Wendy's deliciousness for dinner. (By the way, that sauce should be included in the Bill of Rights. No American should be forced to eat fries without honey mustard.) Either that or they were in the salad dressing. Maybe it was a mix-and-match kind of thing, a United Nations of fast-food condiments joining forces in my mouth with the common goal of making me look like a goober.

Really, I should be proud.