Friday, March 31, 2006

More Female Insanity

Anyone who has Hotmail knows that on the left hand side of your screen there's a bunch of links to recent fluff pieces on MSN. I tend to click on these pretty frequently because it's not work. Today I came across an article from the "Dating and Relationships" section of MSN about what to do if your man checks out other women. In it I discovered that part of the reason why women are crazy is because it is encouraged by the vast media conspiracy through the art of misinformation.

Here are a couple of lying paragraphs with my comments and corrections in parentheses (for the full article, click here):

Can you live with it?
Some feel that if you trust your mate, appreciating another’s beauty shouldn’t be a problem. (Because some people are rational.) “Trust is really important,” Lavinthal says. “If you know your man isn’t a cheater, then let him have a little fun by looking at other people. (Excuse me? "Let" him have his fun? I'm sorry, is he your boyfriend or your dog?) It comes down to the old ‘look but don't touch’ adage. As long as he keeps his hands to himself, I don’t see a problem. (Because as long as he keeps his hands to himself, there isn't one.) If this issue really bugs you, then it’s best to be honest and let your boyfriend know that his fascination with others is not appreciated or acceptable. If he continues to behave badly and it’s making you crazy, then it’s probably best to break up, (before he breaks up with your psycho ass first)” advises Lavinthal, adding with a laugh, “or if you really love him, invest in one of those cone-shaped plastic head things that dogs wear.” (Yes, because that isn't insulting at all. Apparently he is your dog. Tip: If you really love him, this joke won't seem funny to you.)


When you can’t stand his roving eye
If you’re not the kind who can make light of this situation, then heed this advice. Says Dr. Gilda, “Gawking is a put-down to the person in your presence. If a woman continues to stand for a guy doing it and hopes it will change, she’s in fantasyland. (Likewise, if a woman is annoying and whines about it all the time and hopes it will change, she's in fantasyland.)” So here’s her advice: Don’t confront him with “you” language, as in, “You are doing this,” “You are not a good boyfriend,” “You are embarrassing me...” Instead, communicate your feelings: “I feel insignificant when you flirt with other women in front of me.” This will allow for a conversation you can both learn and grow from, rather than a major screeching match. (This is not a "conversation". This is called a "guilt-trip" and it's not very nice.) Also, try to get your guy to think and talk about why he constantly needs to check out other women. (I'll just tell you. It's because other women keep walking by.) Perhaps this is a habit leftover from hanging out with his buddies or brothers during his high-school or college days. Maybe he’s insecure and is hoping to get some positive acknowledgment from the women he’s drooling over. (He's not looking for acknowledgement. He looking at her ass. That's it.) Whatever the case, if you both become more aware of his actions and their impact, you’ve got a great chance of getting past this and onto happier terrain... where he’s making total eye contact with you. (Want to know how to get him to make total eye contact with you? Next time he's checking out a girl, just say "Wow, those are some damn fine tits! I'd love to tap that ass." He'll turn around to look at you so fast he'll get whiplash. Problem solved!)

Pay attention now, because here's how it works: This is what guys do. It's a natural body function, like peeing. Would you ask your man not to pee anymore? No, because that's stupid. Also, he can't. A better thing to do is get a grip on yourself, grow some self esteem, realize that you're the only one he's fucking and get over it.

Besides which, that chick does have a great rack.

A Smashing Good Time

I believe I posted something yesterday to the effect of "Aw poop, nothing is happening to me." I would like to revise that sentiment to "Yay! Nothing is happening to me!" This is because I am very happy today due to the fact that nobody hit my car yesterday.

It was a typical Thursday evening at Tai's. I had eaten Chinese and been told I looked like a double amputee because I like to sit on my feet. MrSteve, who is annoyingly on the wagon, showed up and drank tap water because he is a traitor. He was followed by Pothead Pete. I don't remember anything Pete said to me and he probably doesn't either.* I had a delicious glass of Strongbow in front of me and all was right with my world.

From outside we heard the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal at a high rate of speed indicating that, oh shit, there's been an accident. 911 calls commenced and the bar patrons poured out into the street like the nosy people we are. We surveyed the carnage: a blue car with its passenger side in some disarray was in the middle of the street. A white car had its entire front end smashed in including a broken front axle. In front of that was a white van that had been slammed into so hard that it jumped the curb and wrapped its back end around a parking meter, but not before it slammed into the car in front of it and buried its hood in the car's trunk.

Directly behind and a foot away from this insurance nightmare sat Alistair. I hadn’t seen Alistair all week. He was on loan to the bartender because his car is totally lame. He was being returned to me that night, and just in time because I have exactly no food in my house, not even cheese, and it’s time to buy some groceries. He was the last car in line parked on the very corner. He was also the only car on that side of the street that hadn’t been touched.

The bartender returned from checking on Alistair and looked at me. “Boy,” he said, “I was going to move your car to that spot in front of the bar earlier and I never got around to it. Good thing I didn’t.” Because if he had moved it Alistair would be a very large accordion right now. But he’s not, there’s not a scratch on him. Nothing happened to him.

Yay for nothing!


*Last week, MrSteve invented a great new game called "Let's See How Long". The way you play is to start a game of pool with Pothead Pete, accidentally knock the 8 ball in at the beginning of the game, and then wait and see how long it takes Pete to notice. Sadly, we learned it's possible to play this game more than once per night. Pete is not known for his attention span.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

I Have Nothing to Say

You may have noticed I am incredibly boring lately. This is because nothing is happening to me.

Instead I offer this: Which is the more offensive word and why? Friggin or frikkin?

Discuss.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Enough About Cats, Let's Talk About Me

I have a small reputation for not always behaving according to traditional gender stereotypes. I am as likely to say "Check out the tits on her!" or "Nice shoes. Wanna fuck?" as any guy I know. My fall activity schedule revolves entirely around being home for Monday Night Football. I would rather drink beer than any pansy-ass fruit flavored girl cocktail you could mix me. I like to paint walls and hang shelves and wield power tools. I read Playboy like I'm being tested on it. Blow jobs are neat. Et cetera.

Having established said reputation, I need to point out that there are certain gender roles I consider sacred. I have no idea where I got these outmoded and quite possibly sexist views from, but there you go. Among them are the following:

  • Women should not call games. Sitting at the anchor desk and giving me highlights after the fact is fine, eye candy on the sidelines asking questions with painfully obvious answers has its place, but play by play and color will never sound right spoken by a woman.
  • Men cut the grass. This is not to say that women shouldn't learn to cut the grass as well, but before men can use their penis for anything other than taking a leak, they should have to pass lawn mowing first.
  • Likewise women should cook. Men are allowed to cook too - my father is probably the most excellent cook I know. But damn it, ladies, you need to know the difference between a saute pan and a skillet, and you need to know how to make at least one dinner that includes meat and vegetables that doesn't come in a box labeled "Lean Cuisine" and that doesn't taste like burnt gym socks.
  • Also ladies, at the very least, learn how to sew a button onto a shirt. Ok, you know what? Guys too, actually. There's no excuse for not being able to figure this out. I take this one back, it's unisex.
I take great pride in the fact that I can do my womanly duty and create meals that people actually want to eat. And I just don't understand it when other girls can't figure this out.
Such as today when Fish gave me a review of the meal created by a girl we know for the Liz residents. It was not good. Apparently she prepared fried chicken with cereal on it, and some broccoli with a cheese sauce that didn't appear to contain any cheese. There were other atrocities committed, but those were the two that stood out in my mind. The hell? Look, I don't even eat broccoli but I can cook it for you and remember to include cheese in the cheese sauce. And if you wouldn't put a drumstick in your morning bowl of Lucky Charms, what would possess you to sprinkle cereal on your dinner?
Both Fish and JoE messaged me today to thank me for knowing how to cook an edible meal:
Fish: I have yet to find someone (outside my parents) who can touch your cooking dear
PGS DenMILF: aw
***
JoE: you cook well
PGS DenMILF: why thank you
JoE: just wanted to let you know, that I appreciate you
Aren't they great? I think maybe I'll go make them a ham or some other meat with no Fruit Loops.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Amber and Heather Beat a Path to Fame and Fortune

VelociHeather: you should just move here and be our fun quirky neighbor who walks in whenever they want
PGS DenMILF: that would rule. I'll walk in and start looking through your fridge
PGS DenMILF: sometimes you'll come home and find me there, cooking on your stove
PGS DenMILF: I'll be like "Hey guys! I'm making gezpacho!"
VelociHeather: hahahaha
PGS DenMILF: Maybe sometimes you'll be sitting there eating breakfast and suddenly I'll come up from out of the basement with a basket of laundry and go "Hey," and then just keep walking back to my house
PGS DenMILF: and you and Amy will look at each other for a moment and then go back to your cereal
VelociHeather: exactly
VelociHeather: then i'll write a sitcom
VelociHeather: and make millions
VelociHeather: you're now my co-writer
PGS DenMILF: Tuesday should talk in your sitcom. Or better yet just roll her eyes at strategic points
VelociHeather: with a loud "WHA WHAAAAAA" at that point
PGS DenMILF: or if she talks kristen could talk too. that would be our gimmick. at the end of every show the cats get together to break it down and make fun of us
PGS DenMILF: they are both very pithy
VelociHeather: they are
VelociHeather: it'd be like cat MST3K
PGS DenMILF: there it is.
VelociHeather: why aren't we in hollywood making millions right now?
PGS DenMILF: i know. clearly we've missed our calling.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Kristen cat could eat no fat, Her mom could eat no lean, And so between the two of them, They licked the soup bowl clean.

This awful bastardization of a beloved children’s nursery rhyme is brought to you by Kristen Ann, hands down the cutest cat who has ever lived. It popped into my head last night as Kristen and I were enjoying our evening meal.

Remember that stupid joke from when you were a kid, “What’s grosser than gross?” It always ended in something that would never actually happen, like “sliding down a giant razor blade into a pool of alcohol,” which doesn’t seem gross so much as painful, but kids are dumb. Well, for me the thing that is grosser than gross is soggy bread. I don’t want to look at it, I refuse to touch it, and I’d rather be ass raped by a wild orangutan than have to eat it.

In general this is not really a problem because I don’t eat a whole lot of bread. The only time it comes into play is when I’m having French Onion soup. French Onion soup is my favorite soup in all the land. This may or may not* have to do with the fact that the whole thing is covered in a thick layer of melted cheese. For the uninitiated, it works like this: you poor some soup into a bowl or crock. Then you float a piece or bread on top. You cover the bread with a whole bunch of cheese and stick it under a broiler until the cheese is all melty and toasted. You then collapse in paroxysms of joy. Mmm, cheese…

The problem is once you have broiled your awesome cheese, you are left with a layer of soggy bread separating your cheese from your soup. As anyone who’s ever seen me eating French Onion soup can attest, I will spend the better part of 20 minutes carefully peeling back my cheese and fishing the bread out of my soup with my spoon. Many people have asked me, “Amberance, why don’t you just get the soup with no bread in it?” No friends, this is not an option. The bread is an integral part of the cooking process. Cheese does not float on its own, so without the bread my lovely cheese is going to sink to the bottom of my soup. If it’s under my soup instead of on top of it, it’s not going to get all toasted and bubbly when I stick it under the broiler. I have no choice but to use the bread and then carefully remove it (I’ve already tried wax paper. It doesn’t work.).

The result of this is that I end up with a pile of wet bread hanging out on my plate whilst I enjoy the bread-free fruit of my labor. Generally I turn it so the bowl is in between me and the bread so that I won’t have to look at it.

Kristen Ann is the most well behaved animal on the face of the planet – unless you’re eating something that she wants. When that happens she becomes quite the furry little behavior case. This was the situation earlier this week when I decided to make myself a delicious batch of soup. I sat down at the dining room table with my soup and a fat glass of chocolate milk and set about by pre-soup eating bread extraction. In the meantime, Miss Kris had realized I was eating something that smelled very much like beef. Curiosity led her to jump up on the dining room table. She’s not allowed on the dining room table and she knows it, but she also doesn’t care. I yelled at her and tried to swish her off the table, but she sidestepped my swipe and stayed on the table just out of my reach. I’m a pushover, so I ignored this and continued to work on the bread. Bread removed, I started in on my soup, slurping up onions and cheese with glee.

My little Kristen happens to be a goddamn kitty genius. Her grasp of science is unparalleled amongst cats. Noticing that I was engrossed in my cheese, Kristen took advantage and crept up to my plate. She sniffed at the bread, decided it was worth it and pawed a piece off of my plate on onto the table. She’s picky like her mom, and wanted nothing to do with wet bread either, but she did want to get at the beef flavor she knew it contained. Here is where her scientific genius kicked in, for she realized that applying pressure the bread would cause it to contract, releasing the beef broth it was currently holding. Armed with this knowledge, she pressed her little mitten paw down on the bread. Sure enough, the beef broth was released, wetting her little paw, which she then raised to her mouth to lick. It was so damn cute I didn’t bother trying to stop her. Instead I wrote a really stupid poem about the two of us sharing a bowl of soup.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Fear and Drinking in Las Vegas

Hi. I'm back. From Vegas.

As it turns out, what happens in Vegas actually DOESN'T stay in Vegas and the reason for this is that I have a blog. The trip was ostensibly for the Tai's Til 4 family of employees and patrons to attend the bar and restaurant show which was in town. The real reason was for us all to get very very drunk and gamble a lot. I've been trying to write this post for 3 days now, but for some reason these people keep giving me work to do. So instead of the original post I was going to write that would have taken you six days to read, I now present the abridged version:

  • The bartender, who was my roommate for the trip, and I headed over to Paris the first day to sit in the sports book. I am not a gambler myself, so I was basically there just to watch television. The bartender finds this "not gambling" thing completely foreign and set out trying to convert me by teaching me how to read stat sheets. He might have had a better chance if he hadn't started the lesson with, "Hey math geek, check this out."
  • Later that evening, we traipsed over to New York New York and met MrSteve for drinks at the Irish bar. We proceeded to get very drunk. Also, I spent a lot of time staring at our bartender, whose nametag said he was called Lee, because he was the most beautiful boy I have ever seen. In our drunk, the three of us decided the best course of action would be to all stand near the bar, pull out our phones, and start texting people we left in Chicago, where it was approximately 3 a.m. It seems we texted Brandon a few times, which he was very pleased about given that he had to get up in the morning for his first day at a new job. Also, all three of us sent a barrage of messages to Big Charlie, who was also drunk. A good time was had by all.
  • The second day, MrSteve and I decide it's time to hit the Star Trek Museum. This was by far the thing I was most looking forward to in Vegas, because I am a huge geek. Luckily, MrSteve also likes to get his geek on so I had a partner. There are two rides at the museum. The first one we went on was Klingon Encounter, where I got to stand on the bridge of the Enterprise, somewhere near the tactical station (hello, NERD!). Somehow Steve and I managed to lose each other in the gift shop after the first ride, and I ended up going on the second ride by myself. This was a mistake because I had no one to grab onto when the Borg started jumping out from behind things and dragging people away to be assimilated. I assure you, it was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.
  • Afterwards, MrSteve and I decide to hit up Quark's Bar for an alcoholic beverage. This beverage is called a Warp Core Breach. It is served with dry ice in it so that it smokes and bubbles, and it tastes like purple. While enjoying this, a very drunk woman began trying to start a very loud an incoherent conversation with us. Eventually we moved down to sit closer to her and her husband. Their names were Don and Matilda (I know there's a Waltzing Matilda joke in there somewhere, but I just can't find it) and they were at the Star Trek museum celebrating their 21st wedding anniversary. Don was very nice and normal, was a 49ers fan and talked football with me for some time, while MrSteve was dragged by Matilda into a conversation I'm not entirely sure he needed to be there for. All was well until suddenly I found Matilda behind me, playing with my hair and stroking my neck. Much as I enjoy people playing with my hair, it's kind of creepy when total strangers do it, and I was more than a little freaked out.
  • That night, a large group of us went over to The Foundation Room for some fun and vodka. We were waiting for a few late comers to show up when the body came over to the bartender and me and told us he'd taken some new pictures on his phone he wanted to show us. Apparently he'd gone out and hooked up with not one, but two different women his first night in Vegas. Which we didn't know when he came walking up to us and so we were totally unprepared for his pictures. We both stood with our mouths hanging open as the body narrated his little slide show: "This is a picture of her tits, and this is a picture of her sucking my dick, and this is a picture of me sticking it in her ass..." He looked at us for our approval of his two conquests, but we were a little bit freaked out. All the bartender could manage was "I can't believe I just saw your dick."
  • The next day I woke up with a fever and a sore throat, because that is exactly what I should have been expecting on my first real vacation in 10 years. Needless to say I was pretty upset, though not as upset as the bartender was. We had discovered the day before when Steve and I went to Star Trek that I was the bartenders lucky charm. Whenever I was standing next to him he won, and whenever I was somewhere else he lost. He had taken to dragging me around with him to all his favorite slot machines and rubbing my head for luck. Sure enough he lost that day.
  • The bartender was waiting for a phone call from his friend who was driving us to the airport on our last day. When the phone call came he had just gotten out of the shower and came running out of the bathroom stark raving naked to answer it. This made me extremely happy because I think he should be naked all the time. Later when he was dressed he asked me if I was feeling any better. I told him it should be obvious that I wasn't by the fact that I didn't attack him when he was running around all nekkid, which he agreed was a good point.
  • Ever gotten on a plane when you're sick? Don't. It sucks about seven kinds of ass. It sucks about 700 kinds of ass when you're sick and sitting next to Fatty McGee who is taking up half your seat and can't seem to sit still, and also you're in an aisle seat and are prone to motion sickness and really really need to be by a window, and also you want to try to sleep but four other people on the plane are snoring like it's their job, and also there's so much turbulence that you're sure the plane is going to fall right out if the sky.
So those are the highlights (and lowlights) of Amberance Goes to Vegas 2006. Stay tuned for Amberance Goes to Florida in May and Football Season: Vegas Strikes Back sometime in the fall.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

It's Got a Good Beat, but I Can't Dance To It

I can hear my downstairs neighbors having sex. I know they can't hear me having sex, because I'm not having any*. And while I know I have a reputation for being sort of pervy, this is actually not a good thing. Because it usually wakes me up.

Their bedroom is right below mine, and apparently their bed is on the same wall so whenever they get busy the noise shimmies up the wall into my room. Also, they seem to be "morning sex" people. Because the thumping usually begins right around 5:30 in the morning (though thankfully ends at about 5:33).

So what I have is people thumping on the wall and waking me up at 5:30 in the morning. In and of itself this is not so bad. But today while I lay there listening to them mate I realized that I would never want to sleep with either one of them. The guy is average and the girl is actually pretty hot, but it makes no difference. They are just so damn boring. I never hear her at all. She does not moan, scream or talk. At first I wasn't even sure that she was awake. But then after listening I decided she's just bored. She's bored because this guy is freaking boring. I mean really. It's almost unnatural the way he manages to keep the exact same rhythm and intensity. It never varies. He's like a fucking metronome. And clearly she has no original ideas of her own either. This was all going through my head when the thumping stopped as abruptly as it had started. I shook my head with pity and went back to sleep.

*at home**.
** with other people.

Take That, Bitch

Co-worker I actually talk to: One time my cat wanted me to wake up so she took her paw and smacked me right in the eye.

Me: Wow, really? Kristen never does that. She just head-butts by arm when she wants to wake me up.

CWIATT: That's what Ginger normally does. That was the first time she ever bitch-slapped me.