It Is The Future

YOU GUYS. Have you seen this? You need to watch this:

Nerdgasm

Guess where I was tonight! Actually, no, you'll never guess. I went to see Simon Singh, skeptic extraordinaire and author of many excellent books giving a talk about his latest book, The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, which is about all of the advanced math(s) hidden in Simpsons episodes due to the fact that their writing team is made out of former mathematicians and computer scientists. AND THEN GUESS WHAT HAPPENED. HE SIGNED MY BOOK. I had to send StereoNinja up to get it signed because I was fangirling out, and spent the entire Q&A session grinning like an idiot, running my hands over it, and whispering to StereoNinja "Oh my god he touched it" like a fucking lunatic. Anyway, check it out if you like math(s) and comedy.

SPACE, YOU GUYS.

Maybe you've realized this from my science fiction fanaticism, or possibly because I took my burlesque name from one of the moons of Saturn, but in case you don't know this, I have a MASSIVE space obsession. Like, huge. I habitually watch anything on the television that has to do with space, despite the fact that I complain every time because the shows are aimed at people with far less space knowledge than I have and are therefore usually boring for me. One time I talked StereoNinja into taking an online course with me about Astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life through the University of Edinburgh. And I have made him very aware, in numerous discussions, that if given the opportunity to go to Mars or any other space mission in which I knew ahead of time I was never coming back the Earth, I would not hesitate*.

Yesterday, we landed a probe on a comet.

I couldn't concentrate yesterday. I had been hanging on every GO/NOGO checkpoint starting the night before, and was running the live feed from ESA mission control in the background on my machine all day. I spent the day updating my coworkers on every progress report whether they gave a shit or not. I gave real thought to what I would say when we had confirmation that the lander had touched down. In the end, I didn't say anything, because when the control room erupted in cheers I was too choked up to speak. Someone figured it out by reading my screen over my shoulder. "They landed it?" he asked me, and all I could do was weakly nod my head and they he asked me "Wait, are you crying?" and I said "SHUT UP I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING." I can't believe this was just one news item of many yesterday. I'm not sure if people even realize this, but this mission is the biggest thing to happen in space exploration since we put PEOPLE ON THE MOON, and is arguably far more important: comets are the leading theory about how we got water on the Earth in the first place, meaning that without them, there wouldn't have been anyone TO land on the moon.

Today, there seems to be a lot of complaining in the news about the mission. It didn't go precisely perfectly. The lander bounced, twice, because its screws and harpoons failed to deploy and the cold gas thruster that was meant to push it against the surface wasn't responding to commands. They're not entirely sure where exactly it is, since one of those bounces went up about a kilometer in the air and was off the ground for two hours and they're not sure where exactly it ended up, but it seems to be on the edge of a canyon or maybe not entirely upright, and it's settled in a place that doesn't get much sunlight, so the batteries may not be able to recharge. So everything didn't work out exactly as they'd hoped, and the media appears to be questioning the overall success of the mission. I think they are missing the point entirely:

WE FLEW A SPACECRAFT TO A COMET THAT TOOK 10 YEARS TO GET THERE AND THEN LANDED SOMETHING ON IT AND THE THING IS WORKING.

Space exploration doesn't always go as planned because studying space from actual space is hard. Two tragedies a week ago with a resupply and a test flight should be enough of a reminder of this, and if it's not, let's not forget that we blew up two space shuttles, killed some Apollo astronauts in a fire, and, obviously, Apollo 13. Space is hard. But we did it: Philae is on the comet, sending data and photos and doing science, and if it runs out of batteries on Sunday as is currently expected, so what? We already know more than we ever have before. The only appropriate reaction to be have having right now is sheer and total AMAZEMENT - with our brilliant scientific minds and our incredible universe.






*Yes, I know there is a planned no-return Mars mission in the works, but there are some serious issues with those plans that need to be worked out and I don't think they're going to even come close to making their target date.

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.

Answers That Aren't 42 And Also A Thing About My Birthday

MIXED NEWS, EVERYONE! I have finished and turned in both of my papers (yay!) which I am pretty sure are both complete garbage (boo). But I'm back for now and I'm going to write some blog posts, starting with answering the questions you guys left for me in the comments:

exoticchemist said...

I'm curious as to what exactly triggers you to feel homesick. Is it just randomly wishing you were back in the US? Missing family and friends? Or is it specifically the differences between the US and UK? Maybe this is a dumb question...

It's not a dumb question, but it is a hard one to articulate. For one thing, I am now having a completely different cultural experience from the rest of my countrymen. While I don't miss snow (AT ALL), and I certainly don't want to be living in temperatures that can kill you in minutes, the whole polar vortex episode was hard on me because I felt...I don't know, left out. I still like to imagine that I am from Chicago and Chicago is my home and everyone at home was having this shitty but nevertheless collective experience and I wasn't there. And what made it worse was the UK was having a different collective experience with seriously damaging flooding seemingly everywhere, which is the experience I had, but it was the wrong one. And by the way, I'm crying right now. Sure I miss my family and my friends, but I can talk to them because the internet is magic. What I can't do is go back in time to when everyone was at the terrifying weather party and show up this time and be in on the jokes and know the stories.

Maya's comment was spot fucking on, and I really just wanted to post it and write "THIS ------>" next to it, but I'll elaborate instead. Maya said this: " I think, for me anyway, it was the fact that most things in the UK are so similar to North America that the differences, even the little ones, felt like a personal affront." I would say especially the little ones; the kind of things you never notice until they are different. In America, almost invariably, when you go inside a public building you just walk into it without breaking stride because the door is going to shut behind you. But in England where many of the buildings are older than my country, you walk into the building and you have to remember to shut the door behind you or it will just swing in the wind until the person at the desk gets up and closes it while glaring at you. There are no screens in the windows because there aren't that many bugs; you go shopping several times a week because the bread and the vegetables haven't been engineered to last for 2 months; the toilet doesn't flush the same way. I cannot fucking find wax paper at the store - grease proof baking paper is the closest thing. I know these things all sound dumb and petty because they are, but they add up into this sick feeling that this is not your home, no matter how much you want it to be.

Ok, that was sad. Let's do a different one:

Anonymous said...

44 degrees celcius here in Australia today, nature is bi-polar (and yeah that whole global warming thing). my question - did you ever choose a stripper name? or did I miss the big reveal in one of your posts?

Well anonymous, I'm pretty sure all of North America hates you right now, despite the fact that if it were 44 degrees there (111 F) they would be complaining that it was too hot. I did choose a stripper name and I did write a (half-assed) post about it. For the show I went with Phoebe Moon because I am a nerd. Now that I am in the UK however, I'll be using Poppy Cox because it's better and people get that joke here.

S said...

What have you learned about Brits/Britain by living here that you didn't learn by visiting?

Many many things, actually. I've learned that the words "noodle" and "pasta" are in no way interchangeable. In related news, I've learned that I'll need to bring a shit ton of Ramen back with me when I visit the states because the equivalents here are yucky in comparison. I've learned that people will fall over laughing if you pronounce squirrel as "skwerl". I've learned that driving students aren't allowed on the motorway, which means that when people get their first driving license, they have not learned to drive on one, which seems kind of dumb. Just last week I learned that when I say "look at those cans" no one realizes I'm talking about boobs. I've learned what stollen is, and that I hate it (raisins. why must everybody ruin perfectly good bakery with raisins? Knock it off already). I've learned that Christmas tree skirts aren't a thing here. I've learned that StereoNinja can't say prosciutto correctly. One thing that I already knew, but can't seem to get used to is being greeted with the phrase "You all right?". The American equivalent would be "How are you?". "You all right?" is what you would ask if someone just fell down the stairs or slipped on some black ice and landed on their head or just was walking around looking all sad. So whenever I'm asked that I immediately am confused about why they think I might not be all right. Gets me every time.

Thank you all for your questions. I like answering questions, so send more if you like and ask about whatever you want: stuff about me or why do Americans do that weird thing or where can I buy dildos or what is it about Patrick Stewart that makes him so sexy or Chris Christie, seriously, wtf is with that guy - whatever you want.

I'm not going to do a birthday wrap up post because it was overshadowed by paper writing and homesickness, but I did want to mention that StereoNinja bought me a telescope. HE BOUGHT ME A TELESCOPE. A FUCKING TELESCOPE. This feeling that I'm feeling is I think what it would be like for a normal person if their partner bought them a surprise Ferrari or a diamond as big as their hand. I HAVE A TELESCOPE YOU GUYS, and I live somewhere that I can actually use it. If it ever stops being shitty weather, that is.

Who Dat?

Today is Doctor Who Day, or for the three readers I have who aren't gigantic nerds, today is the day that the 50th Anniversary Doctor Who special episode airs. I have prepared by putting on Dalek socks and forcing StereoNinja to sit through episodes from the 10th doctor era that he had somehow missed. (He hadn't actually seen 'Blink' until Wednesday somehow. I'm not sure he's a real nerd. Or a real ninja*.) I also got lost on Cake Wrecks for a few hours after the cake master sent me this link to some amazing Doctor Who cakes, which is what happens every time I wind up looking at Cake Wrecks. I'll come back and update this post with my reaction after it airs. Whee!










*OR IS HE?

Dial A Blogpost

I am currently enjoying the They Might Be Giants concert. They have an out of tune melodica and some sock puppets. Describing it any further would be futile, so instead please enjoy this video of The Mesopotamians.

Meep Meep

I've just realized I never blogged about my student show over the summer, which is incredibly convenient as I had no idea what I was going to write about today (I am at StereoNinja's office right now as both of us needed to get some work done. It is not very exciting, despite there being a flamingo standing in the corner and goofy little puppets everywhere. Though the arm fell off one of them and we did turn it into a penis.)

I ended up going with a temporary stage name that I came up with myself, Phoebe Moon, after Saturn's irregular and probably captured satellite, because I am a massive, massive geek.

Phoebe. Sexy as FUCK

I also got StereoNinja to edit my music and add the Merrie Melodies theme to the beginning and end of my song (Bo Diddley's Roadrunner): at the beginning to compliment the title cards for my number that StereoNinja designed for me, and at the end for maximum ridiculousness whilst twirling the tassels on my pasties (followed immediately by a cartwheel. Seriously.)

Sorry, Warner Brothers.

I'd had a bit of trouble pulling the costume together. The woman I hired on Etsy to make my bustier and frilly panties did a beautiful job, but the fabric wasn't the right color, which is exactly why you don't try to color match things over the internet. I bought another cheap, shitty bustier that the zipper immediately fell off of, and took it to the world's most incredible tailor to cover in appropriately colored fabric and sew a better zipper on, which he accomplished with less than three days turn around (finding a new zipper in the correct color and length was also an adventure and ended with me in the basement of L Z Fabrics poking around in the zipper over stock section, a portion of the store I had no idea was there until that exact moment). My biggest costuming issue was my tail and how to attach it to me. The final solution was to wig tape it to my ass, the process of which is the least attractive thing ever to happen to stripping. I also had to spray paint some heels orange since the first pair I bought was far too high to dance in comfortably, let alone do a cartwheel. Similarly, I ended up dying several pairs of fishnets before I got them to the correct orange for the roadrunner's legs.

My legs are blurry because I am running REALLY FAST. Because, you know, roadrunner.

StereoNinja and the cake master both flew into town for the show, and BrownsFan and her husband, my former boss and his partner, and the CEO all came as well, because the first time you take all your clothes off in public, you should definitely invite all of your former co-workers. I was the last solo act to go on (StereoNinja says it's because I was one of the best acts, but I think it's just because it was the most ridiculous) before the finale group act, which was 10 women dancing to the Scissor Sisters' Filthy Gorgeous doing the choreography from Michael Jackson's beat it video and opening up our legs like Christmas, among other things. I can't show you my number because my normally rule flouting boyfriend was afraid to video it after Michelle said not to (in fairness, she is a bit terrifying), but I do remember everyone laughing in all the right places and audible surprise over the cartwheel (I had decided I was doing a cartwheel long before I decided what my number was going to be).

Wile E. Coyote knew something the kiddies did not, evidently. 

After the show, the bar was having a 90's hip hop party, which some of us stayed for, and during which I recited all the words to The Humpty Dance from memory approximately 10 minutes before they played the song because I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.

I haven't performed since I moved to the U.K., in part because I'm still waiting for the shipping company to send me my things, one of which is my tail, but allegedly it will be here next week, if anyone knows of a burlesque show they think I should try to get booked for. I've also been working on a BDSM themed number with a flogger because of course I have.

(All show photos by the wonderful Ethan Coal. He recently took some other photos of me, but they are in no way appropriate for a general audience or anyone not into soft core porn. But if I know and trust you, email me and I might give you the password to the online gallery. Maybe.)

The Final Frontier

Me: [My boss] just gave me a model NCC-1701 to build.

StereoNinja: and that is????

Me: The Enterprise. You lose 5 nerd points for that question.

Damn You, Science Channel

I've spent almost the entire day today watching Fringe on Science Channel, which is really, really stupid because this is exactly the sort of show that will give me nightmares. After I collapsed from making dinner for five hours and then eating the crap out of it yesterday, I spent a good part of the evening watching Dark Matters, also on the Science Channel, which I got completely obsessed with last season even though it scares the shit out of me. So basically, the Science Channel is stealing my days and is probably about to steal my night as well. If that show about extrasolar planets is on tomorrow I might end up fused to the couch forever. DAMN IT, SCIENCE, STOP BEING INTERESTING.

My Last Trip To Wales

Long time readers of Bizzybiz may recall that I have been to Wales before, and that I swore I would never go back there again. But the BBC in their infinite wisdom has decided that Cardiff is the best place for filming Doctor Who and that therefore it is also the ideal location for the Doctor Who Experience, and so it was that I found myself paying £6 for the privilege of crossing a bridge to get into Wales.

For the record, Wales is not the ideal location for anything unless cold, wet, and misery are essential components.

Wales was just as I remembered it: howling wind blowing rain right in my face, impossibly gray and cold in a way that had me absolutely convinced the sun had floated away and would never return, and as soul crushing as a pile of dead kittens drowned in the tears of starving children. The situation was not at all helped by the fact that I guessed wrong on which direction the exhibit was from the car park and became hopelessly lost. I had to use maps on my asshole phone to find my way back (thank fuck I didn't update to iOS 6, I would still be lost in Cardiff. Or more likely frozen to death a la Jack Torrence in Cardiff). The path Asshole Phone (this is what I have actually named it) led me through a car park, some overgrown brush, across a busy street where I very nearly got flattened by a truck, across a river, and through a dodgy looking industrial park. It took just over an hour to get to a place that when navigated properly should only be a five minute walk from where I'd left the car.

The Doctor Who Experience itself is fabulous. There is an interactive bit at the beginning where Matt Smith's 11th Doctor has managed to get stranded without the TARDIS, which involves getting to help drive the TARDIS so he can get it back, surviving an encounter with the Daleks, getting safely past the weeping angels (which was actually terrifying), and some sort of 3D movie that I know nothing about because I spent the duration of it staring at the floor and trying not to vomit. Then there is a museum bit with tons of props, costumes, and set pieces dating back to the origin of the series, and exhibits of all the major monsters including two showing the evolution of the Daleks and the Cybermen over time. I felt the gift shop could be a bit better, especially a couple of days later when I saw how much better and more plentiful the Doctor Who merchandise was at Forbidden Planet.

The best part of my field trip to Wales was leaving. After spending the balance of the day in overcast damp and cold, I found myself back on the bridge looking up at the sky and laughing hysterically. I could actually see the edge of the cloud line which ended right over the water, giving way to the kind of beautiful sunny English afternoon that has been characteristic of my last few trips over. Yes, the clouds ended at the exact border of the country. I am not making this up for dramatic effect, that ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

I mean it this time you guys, I am done visiting Wales. At least until I can figure out how to invent personal sizes weather systems that will keep the sun shining around me the whole time.

My Triumphant Return

Hey guys! Allow me to offer my deepest apologies for going A.W.O.L. for two weeks. In this particular instance, AWOL refers to "amberance wasn't online" and the reason for that is not my hotel, nor my beautiful Sulu, nor my paramour seem to realize that wireless connectivity is essential for life. I used what little global roaming data I had trying to find something in Wales that turned out to be right next to where I started, checking on trains, and locating a Chipotle in Camden (which was filled with American students and as far as I could tell not one single English person). Sorry to all the people I wanted to meet who follow me on this blog and on Twitter, I simply had no way to contact any of you while I was over, and I promise to do much better next time (which will be February) because I intend to get myself a UK based phone for use when I am in the UK, because it's a lot (I am looking at three trips next year).

I owe you the last 50 Shades Darker post, which I will work on and get up in the next few days, and of course recaps of my time abroad (the short version: I drank a lot, lost my camera, cried over a scale model of Hogwarts, attended two birthday parties and a wedding, got lost in Wales, found myself in Forbidden Planet, and made excellent use of the four poster bed in my hotel room). And then I suppose it will be time to start in on the third installment of the Nonsense Chronicles. I can't tell you how nice it was to not have to look at those books AT ALL for two entire weeks.

Oh how I have missed you, internets.

___________ Is A Bad Idea

Me: I have dangerous new paper

StereoNinja: ??

Me: I was at the store and I found a pad of sticky notes for a dollar
that have "Hello My thought is:" printed on them

StereoNinja: NO

Me: YES

StereoNinja: this will end badly

Me: I know

StereoNinja: you should NOT use these at work

Me: if there's one thing that is certain in this world, it is that I should never ever EVER be given a blank to fill in

StereoNinja: This is very bad

Me: Hello My thought is: THERE AREN’T NEARLY ENOUGH DICKS IN THIS ROOM

StereoNinja: LOL

Me: Hello My thought is: life would be so much easier if I could reach my nipple with my mouth

StereoNinja: It’s the Hello at the beginning that makes it, it sounds so friendly then it all goes wrong
Hello My thought is: I will stab you in the eye if you ask me again

Me: it's like some horrible person invented them JUST FOR ME
Hello My thought is: you really shouldn't try to make the cat wear pants.

StereoNinja: HAHAHA

Me: I'm about to stick one to the dalek that says Hello My thought is: EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

StereoNinja:  stick one on your panties which says Hello My thought is: Rip these off and bang me

Me: I'm not sure who would need such explicit instructions

An Entire Day Of Nerdery

Today I am recovering from both advanced burlesque class yesterday (when Michelle said the warm ups were "a little different" from beginner class apparently what she meant was "will kill you") and the preceding 24 hours of excessive geekery for which I actually want to shove myself in a locker.

It all started with a random thought that I should google "sexy geek clothes" because of some vague idea I'd had while falling asleep of stripping dressed as a TARDIS and ending up in pasties shaped like bow ties because bow ties are cool. I did, and eventually the rabbit hole of clicking on things led me to this which I immediately tweeted to Mrs. Sizemore and then bought for myself because I read comic books now. This happened on Tuesday afternoon at work, which is I'm sure when you buy all of your nerdtastic garter belts so shut up (BrownsFan, please forget that you read this sentence. Thanks). After that I went home and watched a show I had DVRed called "The Science of Sexual Attraction" while I waited for the hockey to start, the theme of the day apparently being "I AM GOING TO CRAM SEX INTO ALL MY NERD SHIT UNTIL IT FITS WHICH KIND OF ALSO REMINDS ME OF SEX".

The next thing I knew I woke up and it was Wednesday. Last weekish, Mrs. Sizemore had tricked me into buying comic books, which I read, and then realized that if I don't buy the rest of them I will not find out how the story ends which is not ok. So naturally I asked her if I could tag along on her weekly trip to the comic book store and pick up the next three issues. It was the opening she seemed to have been waiting for, because on the train ride over she launched into a list of other comics I should be reading and why, which translated in my head as "words words words. Words. Words words Batman words words."

At the comic book store we found all the Avengers vs. X-Men issues I needed and I asked Mrs. Sizemore what other ONE book I should pick up and start reading. "Ok, well when you were reading AvX, were you thinking there needed to be more fight scenes?"

"I was thinking about which cosplay character I wanted to be," I answered her which is a) true and b) probably the nerdiest thing I've ever said. We ended up not getting me any other books because she thinks I should wait for the trades to come out (which is when they take all the comics from a series and put them all together in one book and I knew what she was talking about because I know this lingo now and who am I?). Then she went to the counter to get her pulls for the week (which is when the comic book store takes all the different books you buy every week and sets them aside for you because they know you are coming). In case you weren't already sure that she is insane, this is roughly about 30 comic books that she buys every week.

Pulls acquired, we decided to browse the toy section to see if there was anything there we "needed". She bought a mini bat signal for her desk, whilst my eyes fell on a toy that so defies logic I absolutely HAD to own it. It's a toy Dalek from Dr. Who. A plushie toy Dalek. For those of you who are not Whovians (most of you?), the Daleks are a race of basically robots of hate. The hatey robots roll around trying to kill everything that isn't a Dalek (except for when the new Daleks decided to kill the old Daleks because they were obsolete but that's not really my point) and yelling "EXTERMINATE!" in hatey robot voices. So a plushie version of this is probably the most ridiculous and incongruous toy ever manufactured. Or as Mrs. Sizemore succinctly put it "'Cuddly as a Dalek' is not an expression". There's now a squishy Dalek sitting on my desk that I periodically pick up and hug and it yells "EXTERMINATE!" at me and I am in love.

All this comic book and Dr. Who tomfoolery made our little nerd brains tired, so we and the two other ladies we were with went across the street for some lunch. As well rounded nerds we are all reading and/or watching Game of Thrones because of course we are, and at some point this turned into a lively debate about whether or not Mrs. Sizemore is a Lannister since she plots things a lot. We decided neither after I made her tell the story about extorting money out of her siblings when she was a child by forcing them to pay her a toll every time they went in the hallway, whereupon Sarah rightly declared that she is obviously a Frey and we should probably all start calling her Walder.

The conversation was hilarious and I was starting to think about how I would blog it and the rest of the afternoon, when I realized that doing so would probably mean me having to explain Dr. Who and Daleks and comic book culture terminology and cosplay and the major houses from Game of Thrones and it was then that I discovered that my nerd credentials were far more outstanding than I had realized.

Achievement unlocked.

A Weekend With Mrs. Sizemore

A couple of things about Mrs. Sizemore:
1. She is awesome.
2. She is exhausting.

Both of these things tend to come into play when you spend a weekend with her.

A couple of months back, Mrs. Sizemore, who is a massive comic book fan (and I don't mean "for a girl"; I mean she has a giant box bigger than she is in her apartment filled with other boxes that when unfolded will hold several thousand comic books) and who has been reading ENTIRELY TOO MUCH NIGHTWING recently, up and decided that she wanted to learn trapeze. Which, when she said this I was immediately all OH EM GEE ME TOO and so currently we are both taking trapeze lessons at a place called the Aloft Loft where, in addition to teaching budding superheroes and/or strippers how to hang upside down from things, they also put on a regular show called El Circo Cheapo.

El Circo Cheapo is exactly what it sounds like - a show with very cheap tickets (even cheaper if you don't spring for a fancy thing known as a "chair" and agree to sit on the floor) that features various circus/aerial acts hanging from things and generally being way more amazing than I will ever be. So on Saturday night, Mrs. Sizemore and I went to that. It was absolutely incredible, from the double trapeze act staring our teacher Sarah, to the unbelievably graceful and romantic German wheel duet, to the hilarious audience volunteer that some Canadian dude stood on top of while juggling machetes.

The problem with El Circo Cheapo is that it is in a cab dead zone and ends after the Damen bus stops running, so after the show we spent a good deal of time walking up Damen until we found a really ambitious cab driver (when Mrs. Sizemore asked "Can you take us to Irving Park?" he replied "I can take you anywhere in the world!" which I'm pretty sure is not true because, you know, oceans and whatnot). Mrs. Sizemore had it in her head that the perfect wrap up to watching upside down people was eating greasy diner food at nearly 1 in the morning, so we headed to a diner on Irving Park Road that oddly enough is named "The Diner". I should point out here that it being Cinco de Mayo on Saturday, I had used it as an excuse to drink pretty much all day long, which is the only explanation I can offer for sending an email to StereoNinja in the middle of the night which pretty much just read "Chocolate milkshake, bitches!" Meanwhile, Mrs. Sizemore was attracting a great deal of attention to herself by ordering the most excruciatingly specific meal ever ordered at 1 a.m. by someone who was not completely stoned. It was while we were enjoying our food at The Diner that Mrs. Sizemore asked what I was doing the next day.

"Nothing," I replied.

"Good. Do you want to go see Avengers again tomorrow?"

The important thing to realize here is that I hadn't actually seen Avengers yet, given that it had only been released the day before and also I suck at going to the movies. But by this point, Mrs. Sizemore had already seen it twice. I agreed to go, but admitted I was skeptical of whether or not I would like it because I have a huge thing for Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo is no Edward Norton, but she assured me that while that was true, he totally IS Bruce Banner and I should just go with it.

We met up the next day to head over to the matinee at the Davis Theater which we chose to walk to since it had mostly stopped raining. This gave her plenty of time to explain to me the various versions and back stories of every character, how they were the same or different from the comic book versions and why Thor is amazeballs. "Because he has a hammer?" I guessed.

"He has TWO hammers and they are called his biceps," she answered.

I am not about to ruin The Avengers for you by telling you all about it, but I will tell you that 1. Ok, FINE, Mark Ruffalo is an awesome Bruce Banner and 2. stop reading this right now and go see it, because it is for reals the best superhero movie to date (which of course it was going to be because, hi, Joss Whedon).

The one spoiler I will give you is that near the end of the movie, Tony Stark decides that they should go out for shawarma later even though he doesn't know what it is. Neither did I until I googled it, but that didn't stop Mrs. Sizemore from insisting that we ALSO go eat some of the same after the movie because when she picks a theme for the day, she REALLY picks a theme for the day. For some reason I agreed to this even though I know I like neither kebabs nor falafal which didn't bode well for the shawarma. I also allowed her to talk me into walking there because "It's a couple blocks from the theater".

It isn't.

What IS a couple blocks from the theater is a comic book store, specifically, a comic book store that Mrs. Sizemore had not been to the day before on Free Comic Book Day and that she was hoping would have some of the books she hadn't been able to find the day before (which they did). She used my Avengers euphoria against me to get me inside the store. She then used the hilariously stereotypical comic book store guy to help talk me into trying out this whole "reading comic books" thing, and before I knew it, I had a bag with issues 0 and 1 of Avengers vs. X-Men and had dashed off another incredulous email to StereoNinja: "I'm in a comic book store. Buying comic books. WTF is happening to me?" While I was doing that, Mrs. Sizemore was accidentally seducing comic book guy by knowing absolutely everything about every comic book ever written in history and not shutting up. In the midst of this she also bought several back issues she was missing, Thor's hammer, some little action figures, and a book called Darth Vader and Son that I had been coveting but didn't buy because we'd been there an hour already and I was starving. She also talked comic book guy into giving her a poster right off the wall and started shilling Nightwing to the store's lone other customer ("It's not shilling if it's actually good," she insisted). Throughout this, I kept pointing out to her that the one thing they didn't sell in the comic book store was FOOD and eventually I managed to drag her out of there.

We continued walking to the shawarma place, which was always "a couple blocks away" no matter how many blocks we'd already walked. We walked past a goose that was hanging out in the road by himself as if he were trying to hail a cab. "Look, a goose!" Mrs. Sizemore was excited, apparently because she doesn't know anything about geese.

"Do not go over to the goose," I warned her.

"Why?" she asked, ignoring me and walking toward the goose.

"Geese are mean. I'm serious, cut that out. They attack people."

Evidently she didn't believe me. "Hey goose!" she said walking up to it.

"HSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

"Oh my god, it hissed at me!"

"They do that. I told you so. You're lucky it didn't attack you."

Finally, some two miles from where we'd started, we found the shawarma place, where I informed her in no uncertain terms that we were NOT walking all the way back because it was far, and it was dark, and we didn't know the neighborhood, and there was an angry goose running around. We argued about the relative hotness of Thor vs Hawkeye while she simultaneously gloated on Twitter about getting me to buy comic books.

It was after 9 at this point, and I was exhausted. Mrs. Sizemore is evidently NEVER exhausted, because her suggestion was that after we ate, we should get a cab to her house, walk her dog, go buy a bottle of wine, go to her friend's place where she is supposed to be feeding the cat, feed said cat and then sit there and drink the bottle of wine while we watched Captain America. I said that suggestion sounded good, but not quite as good as mine which was that after we ate, I should go the fuck home and go to bed. I am much older than she is, what do you want from me? We decided to compromise and are now set to watch Captain America on Tuesday instead.

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.

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.

It's Shark Week Again, Y'all

via icanhascheezburger.com

Everything's Perfectly All Right Now. We're Fine. We're All Fine Here Now, Thank You. How Are You?

Everything's under control. Situation normal. Thanks for asking. In case you somehow managed to not get clobbered over the head by the media last week, Chicago and in a fact a very large swath of the entire country got hammered by a blizzard last Tuesday and Wednesday. I was not one of the poor souls who got trapped in their cars on Lake Shore Drive all night long last Tuesday, mainly because when meteorologists nationwide all say "There is going to be a big fuck off storm, stay inside" and the local meteorologists say "The big fuck off storm is going to be worst near the shoreline of Lake Michigan, don't use Lake Shore Drive", I assume that they probably know more than I do and I STAY INSIDE, far, far away from Lake Shore Drive. Morons.

I woke up Wednesday morning to find that it looked like Hoth outside and a renewed interesting in buying this. Now, I don't attend a lot of sleep overs these days and when I do they rarely involve my having to sleep on the floor because my friends are grown ups with spare bedrooms or at least a couch. But I think we can all agree this sleeping bag should be filed under "Need" rather than under "Want".

I also experienced that most elusive of all storms - thundersnow. I'm sure there's a very good scientific reason why it almost never thunders during a snowstorm and that H-town or the bartender can tell you all about it while you pretend to be paying attention during their nerdgasm (speaking of nerdgams, Chicagoans, was anyone else concerned that Tom Skilling might rip his clothes off from his overwhelming excitement over this severe weather? Because I was happy for him and everything but, seriously, no one needs to see that). All I know is, thunder during a snow storm is awesomely rare and now that I've experienced it I'm merely one tornado away from being ready to die.

The only other severe blizzard I've lived through nearly killed me (and it actually DID kill 70 other people). The Great Blizzard of 1978 barrelled into Cleveland on January 25th of that year. I was two weeks old. My parents were noobs at the whole parenting thing, what with me being their first child and all, and they were totally unprepared for the apocalypse that completely buried every door to the house. They were trapped. Then they ran out of baby formula for me. Big thanks to the Middleburg Heights police department for answering my parents' call for help by going to the store, buying me formula, and then digging a tunnel to our front door in order to deliver said formula (which they refused to let my parents pay for, bless) and keep me from starving to death. When I told that story to the CEO he said "Oh, so THAT'S what's wrong with you." It's one of the things.