What It's Like To Live With Me

StereoNinja: What movie is the one with the Ewoks? Is that Empire?

Me: No, it's Return of the Jedi.

StereoNinja: Oh that's right. (pause, writes something on his phone) And what do you call those other little guys, at the very beginning, with the hoods?

Me: Jawas.

StereoNinja: That's it! (goes back to writing)

long pause...

Me: ASK ME MORE STAR WARS QUESTIONS.

A Household Divided

"I wish it was my birthday coming up instead of yours," I announced to StereoNinja on Sunday, "because then I could just whine until you bought me that rug." StereoNinja and I generally have similar taste in decorating. In particular we both for the most part hate rugs. Rugs do not go on carpet - that is what CARPET is for, and if you have beautiful hardwood floors anywhere in your home, why on earth would you cover them up with some kind of crappy rug?

Be that as it may, currently I do not live in a house with beautiful hardwood floors, I live in a house with crappy plastic "wood looking" floors because that is what happens when you rent. AND, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed this. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, Think Geek is currently selling a floor rug that looks exactly like Han Solo trapped in carbonite and it's only $50 and IT WOULD FIT PERFECTLY IN OUR FRONT HALLWAY. And StereoNinja won't let me get it because his hatred of rugs apparently trumps my happiness. I even tried appealing to his sense of geekery by pointing out that we NEED this rug in order to enhance our nerd credentials and he PRETENDED LIKE THAT WASN'T EVEN A THING. But it is. It is a thing and not having this rug will come to represent an epic failure of my nerdcoreness that I may never recover from. All this because I got into a serious relationship. I knew Admiral Ackbar was right.

UPDATE: A key tenet of StereoNinja's objection to the rug (other than the mere fact that it is a rug) is that we can't put a Star Wars rug in the front hallway because we have prints of Batman characters hanging in that same hallway and you can't mix genres because reasons. However, he said this whilst walking past the bookcase in our stairway on which are displayed toys from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, books with the art of H.R. Giger, and two knitted dinosaurs, which I maintain COMPLETELY invalidates his entire argument. I NEED THIS RUG YOU GUYS.

I Hope Nerdery Doesn't Get Me Kicked Off The List

Me: in other news i am not a terrorist
i have a sticker in my passport that says so

H-Town: oh, you got approved for the fast track thingee?

Me:yeah, yesterday

H-Town:congrats on not being full of terror
well, on airplanes anyway

Me:word
i'm now allowed back into my own country without anyone being all EXPLAIN YOURSELF

H-Town: Time to smuggle!

Me: I'm really good at smuggling tons of cookies
well sort of, i tend to eat a lot of them on the plane actually

H-Town: You're like the most non-threatening smuggler ever

Me: totally
greedo would have shot first

There's Not Enough Nerds At Work To Fill A Space Cruiser

By tomorrow afternoon I will have been home from my latest trip to England for an entire week. I haven't posted about it yet, and it's not because I'm lazy (though I am), nor is it because I didn't do anything worth writing about (because I did). It's mostly because I'm struggling with the format for writing it. Normally I would write it up chronologically, you see, but in this case, my activities for all of both Mondays, Tuesday afternoon, most of Wednesday, the second half of Friday, a good portion of Saturday and the following Wednesday morning are the kinds of things better covered on an entirely different sort of blog (and they will be as soon as I remember to do some blogging at a time that I'm not at work). Anyway, recaps of the best trip anyone has ever taken to England ever will be along shortly.

In the meantime, this just happened:

BrownsFan (to the new guy): You're not into Star Wars at all, are you?

New guy: I wouldn't say not at all, but no, not really. (pause) This has something to do with Amber, doesn't it?

As he said this, I was standing in the hallway of my office holding up a massive sleeping bag shaped like a tauntaun that I bought from Thinkgeek late last week and had shipped to the office because it's where I tell people to ship things. It is the single greatest stupid-ass thing I have ever bought in my life and I was determined to force everyone to observe my joy, so I dragged the entire box into BrownsFan's office where she was suitably impressed because she is fucking awesome. New guy, on the other hand, was spectacularly disappointing. He only had a vague idea what the hell we were talking about, but not only that, he has no recollection AT ALL of Princess Leia's metal bikini (which was brought up by BrownsFan who wanted to know why, if I was such a big Star Wars fan (I had just announced that no one is a bigger Star Wars fan than me which is probably bullshit but whatever) I had done a photo shoot in a Star TREK costume instead of a Star WARS costume, an argument I totally won by pointing out that the only reason I didn't have a Star Wars costume for that shoot is that the metal bikini I am having custom made for me at a cost of literally hundreds of real American dollars wasn't ready at the time of that particular shoot. OBVIOUSLY.). And then I described it to him, and the fact that she clearly had no underwear on, and then openly speculated about how they kept her cooch from popping out when she went flying through the air hanging onto Luke. And then I sat down to write this and re-read that last sentence and was as surprised as ever that I remain both gainfully employed and free of sexual harassment charges.

Amberance: Camera Whore

So waaaaay back in August I did a calendar shoot at VaVoom Pinups. I had originally scheduled it for a project that had to be cancelled (email!), but I decided to keep the appointment anyway, mainly because I am a massive narcissist of long standing. I sincerely mean that. Where almost every other woman on the planet is ducking out of candid photographs telling you how hideous she is, I have never met a camera in my entire life that I didn't immediately jump in front of. I have loved having my photo taken from birth, which is obvious to anyone who has seen any childhood photos of me as I am standing in some sort of ridiculous pose in Every. Single. One. I have never outgrown this habit.

Me at age 7 posing in lingerie and a stupid hat.

Me at age 33 posing in lingerie and a stupid hat.

I obviously enjoy being looked at. In related news, I am now immortal: my amazing friend Charlie so loved the photos from the shoot I did prior to this one, he went and had one of them tattooed on his arm two weeks ago:

IMMORTALITY. Unless Charlie dies, that is.

That's beside the point really, I just felt like mentioning that I AM A TATTOO YOU GUYS.

But back to the story: for the more recent shoot I'd done 14 outfit changes, mostly based on suggestions from those of my friends who are known to be perverts. This made for photos that were a little more risque than the results of the the first photo shoot I did. When I got the proofs I sent them out to a handful of trusted advisers, among them MrTrivia. When I saw him the next day, I asked him what he thought of the photos. He looked uncomfortable. "Ummm...you know there's, like, full frontal in some of those photos, right?"

"Yes. I was there."

"Ok. I just, you know, wanted to make sure you meant to send me that."

I pointed out that my current aspiration was to take all my clothes off on stage in front of strangers and he conceded that I had a point.

I had the whole finished package shipped to me at work because I am ridiculous and because it's now almost a game to see how much I can get away with before they fire me (a couple months ago the CEO mentioned he was tired and I offered him the pillow from under my desk so he could take a nap. I still work here). BrownsFan suggested I put Post-it notes over the bad parts before she looked at it, by which she meant specifically my belly button because she thinks they're gross. Tits and ass, no problem. Navel, GTFO. She's awesome.

This is not the going to be the end of the "take awesome shiny photos of me" thing and here's why: one of the outfits I'd planned to wear for this shoot was Leia's metal bikini from Jabba's palace. There's a guy on the internet that custom makes them for way more money than any sane person would spend on a costume, but they are excellent and so I am getting one, but I didn't have time to get the order in before the shoot so OH WELL I GUESS I WILL JUST HAVE TO GO BACK AND DO IT AGAIN. I really, really, REALLY like having my picture taken you guys.

Having A Social Life Makes It Really Hard To Blog Sometimes

I was told this morning by StereoNinja that I am being a shitty blogger in 2012 so far. Which I know, but see, there's this thing where I'm busy at my job and travelling and other excuses both legit and complete and utter bullshit. One of them is that I went on an epic trip to Austin last weekend. And I really want to tell you all about it, but chronologically it doesn't make sense if I skip over all of December and my birthday. Also, personally it doesn't make sense either. I have never skipped December or my birthday, they are my favorite things. So herein I will attempt to briefly recap the last month and a half so that in the next post I can describe the most epic reunion of my entire life. Cool? Cool.

A Brief Recap of What Amberance Has Been Up To Since Early December, Minus The Parts That Are None of Your Business and You Don't Want to Know About Anyway (Trust Me)

• On December 10th, as advertised, I walked onto a stage at Martyr's with 16 other women and took off all my clothes in front of hundreds of strangers and it. was. AWESOME. Despite it being oddly disconcerting to be walking around in a bar all night in a nightie and a robe while everyone else around me was dressed, but whatever. The show on the whole was excellent. The girls graduating were amazingly talented and creative and their acts included a girl who stripped to the Imperial March as Darth Vader and left the mask on the entire time, two girls who did a number together to Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" in which one of them was the cowboy and the other one was her horse, and a girl who according to Michelle L'Amour said that she wanted to do a number in which "I do all of the things you always tell us we should never do", and so did a completely disinterested strip tease dressed in a ratty house coat with her hair a complete mess and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, then finished with taking her bra off to reveal another flesh colored bra underneath to which she had sewn baggy tits that hung down to her knees and when she couldn't get the nipple tassels to twirl she just picked them up in her hand with a shrug and juggled them. It was the most hilarious strip tease I have ever seen.
• The bartender bought me an auto hammer for Christmas and I was filled with joy. I am a tool for tools. And puns.
• The next day I flew to Cleveland for two days because something is seriously wrong with me. I packed a backpack for the trip. My brother had also come to town, for four days, and had brought three huge suitcases and a garment bag, prompting me to ask my dad if it was weird for him that his son is his daughter and his daughter is his son (I did, after all, get an auto hammer for Christmas).
• I saw my brother again the following weekend when he came to town for the annual New Year's Eve party thrown by some friends of ours. My loving brother greeted me with a loud "Fuck you," when I walked in, due to my having worn an amazing tank top with chains and tiny handcuffs for straps that everybody but him loved, including all the women who were pregnant which was ALL OF THEM.
• The following week we had our work holiday party, to which I took the gorilla after giving me his word that he would behave himself. I shouldn't have worried, he was absolutely fine. It was me and my coworkers who were out of control, but it wasn't our fault - someone had brought a Shake Weight to the gift exchange which we were inappropriate about, and then we were under the minimum for the contract we'd signed, so the obvious thing to do was to order lots more booze which led to me teaching everyone how to twirl nipple tassels and shouting "It's PHYSICS" at everyone who tried to object.
• The following Monday I flew to Portland and didn't even try to kill my boss once!
• Which leads us to my Amber's Super Ultra Fantabulous Birthtacular Celebration Extravaganza: Now With MORE KELLY! weekend. This did not start out well. El Nino or whatever the hell the weather is doing had kept things pleasantly warm and dry in Chicago this winter, right up until the night of my birthday when it decided to drop 8 inches of snow on us overnight. This meant that only Charlie and Mrs. Sizemore showed up to my party at Tai's and got to see my Epic Cake which depicted me in not a whole lot of clothing.

  

  So hot it is literally on fire.

  This gave me the opportunity, after we had partially eaten it, to yell "WHO IS GOING TO EAT MY CROTCH?" at some innocent strangers for a totally legitimate reason. Earlier in the day, I had taken my pink princess wand to work with me in order to command people to do my bidding, such as wear hats and sing to me, and had ended up using it help my co-worker figure out what NOT to get his wife for her birthday by waving it at him after every suggestion and saying "No, that's stupid." Because of this, I decided to name it the Wand of Truth and then brought it to the bar and had a duel with the bartender and his magic wand because his Schwartz was as big as mine. The next day, Kelly and Mike showed up and we spent the weekend playing Pulse on our respective iPads and eating/drinking our faces off. Kelly ate some caterpillars. Lots more awesome things happened, but that is the thing that stands out - Kelly eating her way through a plate of caterpillars at Sticky Rice.

So that about brings us up to speed, and though I've missed some major things out (see bolded header), I feel better about blogging the Epic Austin Trip. Which I will do shortly to avoid further admonishments from StereoNinja. You don't want to piss off a ninja*.

*he is not a real ninja**.
*OR IS HE?

Day 24 And There's Nothing To Watch

The gorilla: Is it me or is there nothing on tv?

Me: It's fucking ridiculous. This is Thanksgiving. Shouldn't Star Wars be on, line, five channels right now?

The gorilla: I would even watch Phantom Menace right now. I am calling TBS. I am going to give those motherfuckers an earful.

Me: Excellent. While you're at it can you mention that their "Very Funny" lineup is not remotely funny? Thanks, you're a peach.

The gorilla: They hung up on me.

Me: I'm not surprised. You really should stop starting conversations with "Listen, you cunt"

I Might Be A Super Massive Nerd

Search terms that have recently led people to this blog:

"I can't bend my legs in my stormtrooper outfit"

"Can the ton ton make it to the first marker"

It's possible I may need to diversify my hobbies.

The Force Can Have a Strong Influence on the Weak Minded

MrSteve: Darth Vader Toaster. As the Ronco commercials say - ?The Ideal Christmas Gift!?

The engineer: *waves hand* "This is not the toaster you are looking for."

Mrs. Engineer: Now THAT was geeky.

Me: Geekily AWESOME

Death Star: Episode Three

BrownsFan was not a fan of my post critiquing her "nice Death Star" comment. She tried to support her comment by telling me that the Death Star didn't HAVE TO blow up planets, and could instead be used for, say, low income housing (suggestion, BrownsFan: giant homeless animal shelter?). I pointed out that while that sounded nice, the Death Star was designed and built for the express purpose of blowing up planets, and re-engineering it after the fact doesn't make the original idea a good thing. She is determined to justify her position, and has been searching the Internet for material to back up her "nice Death Star" idea. She is not having much luck so far. But in her quest she came across something else and sent me an e-mail the other day that contained this link. It is clearly extremely awesome, though not for justifying the Death Star as a cuddly happy space station. In fact the only way I've found to pair "nice" with "Death Star" in a way that makes sense is a conversation like this.

"Check it out, bro, I carved my pumpkin into the Death Star!"

"Nice."


This would be a reasonable and likely conversation, but not for the original argument. Here is the same conversation, but subbing out the word pumpkin:

"Check it out bro, I carved my marriage into the Death Star!"

"Wait, what?"

Several other responses would work here such as "Dude, that sucks" or "Bummer" or "To hell with that bitch, let's get a beer", but "nice"... it just doesn't fit.

Mixed Reactions

I've had a number of differing responses to my post about how I fear marriage.



BrownsFan, proponent of marriage and 20 year veteran of same is continually dismayed by my opinion. Upon reading the post, she looked at me sadly and argued, "Yeah, but it's a nice Death Star."



MrSteve was a bit more supportive and also a bit more true to Star Wars canon (because seriously, a nice Death Star?), sending along this lovely motivational poster:



The agent and I discussed the post and the reaction of BrownsFan over coffee. He said something funny which I did not write down and promptly forgot. When I called him this morning to find out what he had said, he didn't even remember having the conversation, thus proving that in fact we are pretty much already married as we clearly do not bother to listen to each other anymore.

Amberance: Good at Star Wars, Bad at Relationships

H-town: how's the agent? is he as dreamy as ever?
me: pretty good. except for that part where he thinks he wants to marry me. yeah
H-town: oooh COMMITMENT!! echo*echo*echo
me: no one can marry me! i am not marriable
H-town: oh, you are certainly long-term relationship/commonlaw marriage/regular marriage/gay marriage - able
me: i am none of those! i am the textbook committment phobe
H-town: aw, man i like the agent!
me: i know, i suck.
H-town: and there's no way you'll ever become into commitment, huh?
me: not that i'm aware of. i think i can and then when the moment comes i panic and run
me: with the words of admiral ackbar running through my head. "It's a trap!"
H-town: haha
me: marriage is a secretly fully armed and operational Death Star

Wow, I AM a Huge Geek

The agent (attempting to quote from The Empire Strikes Back): No, that one goes here and this one goes there.
Me (accompanied by pointing in the appropriate directions): No no no, THIS one goes THERE, THAT one goes THERE.
The agent (shaking his head at me); Who am I to say?

The Funniest Geek You Know

Excerpted from an IM conversation I was having with Thugglife yesterday:

Amberance: The stupid thing is that I warned him this is what would happen, and then I turned around and did it anyway. Everything is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen.

Thugglife: Dork.

Amberance: Who is the bigger dork, the dork, or the dork who gets it?

I crack myself up sometimes.

(It's a Star Wars reference for those of you who don't get it. (Mary))

Ladies and Gentlemen: He's Done It

If you have not yet been to see Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, stop reading this right now and go see it. I mean it. Drop whatever it is you are doing: tell your boss you are ill, take the kids to the sitter, turn the lawnmower off, get off the phone, take your hand off your dick...whatever it takes, and get thee to the nearest movie theater. Because George Lucas has done something wonderful.

I know, I know. Twice burned you were. Trust in George you do not. A bunch of crap lately he has made.

Listen. The Force is strong in that one. He has turned back to the good side, and just in time for Anakin to turn away. I cannot express to you properly how impressed I was with that film. The best I can do to illustrate is to tell you that I have completely forgiven him for Jarjar, indeed, for Phantom Menace in it's entirety. What I saw, at 12:01 on Thursday morning was truly, truly a Star Wars movie. Without spoilers, here is my review:

Anakin Skywalker's descent into darkness is absolutely heartbreaking. Peeps, the kid tried so hard to do the right thing, but in the end he just wasn't strong enough. He did all the wrong things for all the right reasons and it cost him absolutely everything. Watching the original trilogy will be for me like watching brand new movies, because I will now see them through the filter of what Anakin went through to become Darth Vader. He is finally a three-dimensional character, rather than the two-dementional character that I grew up with.

And speaking of Darth, the scene where he first suits up is everything I ever dreamed of. There was complete and utter stillness as the entire theater held their collective breaths and watched the mask go on, the helmet come down, a pregnant pause, and then...he take his first hollow, mechanical breath. But it doesn't end there. I don't know why this didn't register with me, because I knew it would have to happen, but when they tip him upright and Palpatine asks him, "Lord Vader, can you hear me?", hearing the answer come from the voice of James Earl Jones rocked me through to my core. It felt like I had been waiting my entire life to hear that sound.

Palpatine, by the way, steals the show. Steals it. That guy is just such an incredible actor. He is so evil I actually felt colder whenever he was on the screen.

Yoda too. Yoda rips some shit up in this one in a way that makes his battle with Dooku look like an afternoon at the ballet. I would not want to mess with that little green dude, I shit you not. The things they can do with CGI these days, I'm telling you.

Natalie Portman. It is ri-fucking-diculous how incredibly fucking hot that chick is.


The viewing itself was an interesting experience. I'd talked this thing up for weeks, and when the day finally came, my boss showed up at the office with a HUGE cake for me as a surprise. It has little action figures of Obi Wan and Jango Fett from their fight scene in Clones, complete with a backdrop. He had written "Happy Premiere Amber!" on it. By the way, did I mention that my boss is cooler than your boss? He is.

I took the cake with me over to Heather's house where I prepared for the movie dressing up as Padme, making Heather take pictures of me sitting outside in the grass like the scene I copied my outfit from, eating the cake and doing shots of DayQuil with Jim since we were both feeling shitty.

We headed for the theater early and were in our seats nearly two hours before showtime. As was almost everyone else. We sat and we sat, until finally two nerds generously offered their fancy, hundred dollar lightsabers up to any volunteers who wanted to duel. The most popular duel was the one between two girls in their pajamas. By the way, if you're a single gal who likes pimply nerdy guys who have never been laid, midnight premieres of sci-fi fantasy movies are the place to be. Dudes outnumbered chicks by my estimate at about 6 to 1. If was a festival of self-abused sausages in there.

Few people were dressed up, although I did see a 4 year old Vader (It's midnight! WHAT ARE YOUR PARENTS THINKING?), but it seemed like everyone had a lightsaber. I had left mine at Heather's and felt slightly left out, but being that all the geeks treated me like it was Padme Appreciation Day I didn't dwell on it much.


Hey! What are you people still doing here? Didn't I just tell you to get your ass off the internet and go to the damn movies? Scram, and may the Force be with you.

Star Wars Day

Hey everyone! It's Star Wars day! Look for a post tomorrow or Friday on:

-My spoiler-free review of the film.

-What it's like to be at a midnight Star Wars showing.

-Photos of me and the other geeks dressed up like complete morons.

-Photos of the cake my boss gave me this morning.

Also, if you haven't checked it out yet, it looks like today is the last entry for the Darthside Blog. I will be sad to see it go.

Eleven hours and counting! May the Force be with you.

Episode III Insanity

OK, granted, I'm going to see this on opening night, and I'm going to full-out nerd myself by dressing up as a Jedi or perhaps Padme (though Natalie Portman I am not). I know that's going overboard. But this...this is just ridiculous . It's seven weeks away for cryin' out loud.