This Post Will Not Be Funny

I just wanted to point out here that it was in no way my intention to write a post saying I was back from hiatus and then immediately disappear for another month. I had thought that when my job ended and I had all kinds of free time, I would fall right back into regular blogging just like old times. What I neglected to take into account is that stress and depression are fabulous at inducing writer's block whilst simultaneously making even the smallest task seem like such a gargantuan effort that you are already exhausted before you even begin.

Here's a thing they don't really tell you when you are being treated for depression on a long term basis - being properly medicated and being able to cope with life for long periods of time can cause you to develop a false sense of security about yourself. This only becomes a problem when you get into situations in your life that you aren't able to effectively cope with, and something that would have been a really bad low before you  got help and learned how to deal with things becomes even worse because you know, logically, that you are over-reacting and yet you still can't make it stop. The whole thing becomes one big downward slide into a pool of self hatred and an inner monologue is telling you that you KNOW what the problem is, so just fucking FIX it, but you can't fix it, so obviously you are a COMPLETE FAILURE AT EVERYTHING. And since you are a complete failure at everything, you start to reason that no one likes you because WHY SHOULD THEY SINCE YOU SUCK, and you fail to reach out to the people who love you and could help you back. But again, you KNOW, logically, that this is stupid and it's just the depression talking, and of course you should have reached out and asked for help, dumbass, but you're stupid and now you've let everyone down AGAIN because you are a COMPLETE FAILURE. Et cetera, et cetera, until either you crash and have a public meltdown on Twitter, or someone close to you calls you out on your poorly hidden breakdown and forces you to let them help you. Or both (I have amazing and supportive Twitter followers and the most incredible boyfriend on the planet, THANK YOU).

Anyway, enough of that. My point is, being done with work did absolutely nothing to alleviate the stress of moving to another country, or going back to school in the hope of starting over from scratch with a completely different career, or choreographing and costuming a solo burlesque dance routine for the first time, or, as I finally got around to yesterday, breaking the news to an emotionally fragile and somewhat dependent roommate that I am moving 4,000 miles away from him and he's on his own (it is not going very well). And that's why I disappeared again and why I can't promise you that it won't happen yet again right after this post either. But I'm trying. And I have plans. One of which is that I am thinking about reviewing another horrible book for NaBloPoMo this year. If you think this is a good idea, feel free to leave me some suggestions on what you think I would really hate (excluding Twilight because Mark over at Mark Reads has already done that as brilliantly as it will ever be done). I WILL get back to where I remember how to do this and be funny at it, I just can't promise you exactly when. I am really hoping it's now.

Here We Go

Right. It's May now, and I don't have a job anymore, and I promised you that I would start posting again when that happened, so I'm going to start doing that right now. I need to post about France, I need to post about the meet-up, and I need to finish reading that damn book so I can light it on fire. But as I'm just getting back into the swing of this, the first post you are going to get is one about a spider. Honestly, if you've been reading me for more than five minutes, you should have seen that one coming.

So yesterday, while I was waiting for StereoNinja to finish watching Doctor Who so we could Skype and discuss the fact that Vastra, Jenny and Strax need a their own spin-off show, I went into my room to sit on the bed and play Candy Crush Saga, again, because I can't fucking stop and should never have downloaded it to begin with, and as soon as I sat down, I sensed movement just above my window. I looked up to see a very big, very black spot that should not have been there and for one brief second I was hopeful - normal spiders that you find inside your house in Chicago are usually medium sized brownish- or greenish-yellow things, and this was big and very very black and so maybe it was just a beetle or something. But then it started moving. The one magical power I think all arachnophobes probably have is the ability to tell whether something is a spider or not based on the way it moves, because NOTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD crawls with such deliberate, malevolent evil. I can tell you whether or not something is a spider from the other side of the room without my glasses on and while crying a waterfall of terrified tears. And THIS, my friends, was a fucking spider if I ever saw one.

I immediately began a barrage of insane text messages to StereoNinja, who was ineffectively 4000 miles away from being able to solve my problem:

OMG WTF BIG FAT SPIDER IN MY ROOM HELP HELP

IT WENT BEHIND THE CURTAIN I CAN'T SEE IT

THIS IS BAD

IT'S BACK IT'S HEADED FOR THE FREEZER IF IT GOES BY THE DOOR I'LL BE TRAPPED

IT'S GOING TOWARD THE DOOR OH GOD

I'M TRAPPED

NOW IT'S COMING FOR ME WHAT DO I DO

FUCK IT'S CLIMBING DOWN

IT IS ON THE CEILING OVER MY BED THIS IS A NIGHTMARE

It was at this point that StereoNinja decided to call me. In the time that I have known StereoNinja, he has only ever seen me have a spider meltdown once. It was on the weekend we met when we were both standing outside waiting to have our photos taken at our cousin's wedding and the garden was fucking full of them. I was crouched in the middle of the patio in my bridesmaid dress hyperventilating, but doing my very best to keep it together long enough for the photos, and he had no way of knowing at the time how bad I usually am. Consequently he was unprepared, and I dare say slightly irritated to find that his normally extremely rational girlfriend who worships at the altar of science will lose every shred of logical reasoning she ever possessed when faced with an arachnid. "It's trying to get me," I said by way of greeting. "No it isn't," he responded calmly. It went downhill from there.

First he tried suggesting that I do things to it - hit it with something, a towel maybe?, knock it off the wall and then I can squish it, or failing that put a jar over top of it so it can't get out. His alternative solution was for me to simply leave the room. The relationship is still new, you guys, he just didn't know. I shot down every single one of his completely rational solutions based on my own insanity - getting close enough to hit it with anything might cause it to GET ON ME, I could not predict the trajectory it would take when it fell and I could lose it or it could GET ON ME, if I squished it it might escape and GET ON ME, ditto putting a jar on top of it, and leaving the room would be the worst of all because I might not be able to find it later but it will still be there, WAITING, and I will never be able to go in my room ever again. As I explained this nonsense, it crawled over my bed and started heading down the wall toward it, and I completely lost my shit. "See?!?!? It's trying to get me! It's trying to get on my bed! They are after me! It wants to kill me!"

He decided to try a different approach. "It's not after you. You know that, right? You know that it can't be after you because they don't have an intelligence to do that."

"I don't know anything right now. They ARE after me, why else would it be going towards the bed? Why are they only ever in my room?"

"They're not just in your room. They can be in any room."

"Yes they are. They are in my room MORE THAN CHANCE."

"No they aren't."

"I have NEVER seen one in the dining room. EVER."

He finally realized he was not dealing with a sane person, and came up with a suggestion that worked: I texted the bartender in his bedroom to tell him there was a spider in mine. He came right away to examine it, then came back with a jar and an index card. Normally I would insist that he squish it right there, then flush it down the toilet, then flush a couple more times, then wash his hands before he touched anything, but this one was big and black and not the sort of spider you normally find in the house. We didn't even realize what it was until he got the jar over top of it and it went nuts: it's one of those black jumping spiders you normally find on the outsides of buildings or sometimes on plants. Except, about four times the size as a normal one. I had a secondary freak out over the fact that it could have just jumped right ON ME at any time during the whole ordeal and WHY IN THE FUCK WAS IT SO BIG.

Crisis averted, I called StereoNinja back, who described to me his idea for the ultimate spider removal system for people like me, with a reach length of nearly an entire room and built in fail-safes for every possible escape attempt. It only had one design flaw: the fact that I would need it to be wielded by someone else for fear that the spider might GET ON ME.

Thanksgiving Eve And Responsibilities

Many apologies for the very late (ok, fine, backdated, but only by like half an hour - if I were in California right now this would totally count) and mostly substanceless NaBloPoMo post today. It's the day before Thanksgiving here in America, or as I like to call it "Practice Christmas" (I am the only person who calls it that as well as the only person who thinks it's funny), which meant that after I got home from work I needed to bake a pie, cube some bread, clean the dining room, and take Jason Bourne swimming. I should point out that Jason Bourne is what I named our turkey this year due to his being super fucking awesome but having no idea who he is.

WHAT IS TREADSTONE?!?

 Depending on how much of a cheeseball you are, you may find that name not quite as hilarious as what I named my turkey last year, Tennille. Right before he went in the oven I set the bottle of Captain Morgan I was drinking next to him so I could take a photo of The Captain and Tennille. Tennille Two wouldn't have worked for this turkey though since the only rum I have in the house right now is Sailor Jerry*. ANYWANK - Jason Bourne went swimming for a few hours in a pool of brine I lovingly made him so he can be all nice and juicy when I cook his awesome ass tomorrow, assuming he doesn't somehow reanimate in the middle of the night and kill me with his amazing headless turkey stealth. My point is I had a lot to do, as I will tomorrow, so that post will probably be some rambling bullshit just like this. THE GOOD NEWS IS that I plan to get drunk at dinner and then do some reading after the bartender goes to work, which is likely to lead to a video of the result. If we're very lucky, StereoNinja will be able to garner a few minutes that make sense and where I'm not making out with the camera lens and then you guys will get to see it. He is a genius. Though not a real ninja**.

One other Thanksgiving fact for you guys: The number of times I will have to see Planes Trains and Automobiles to be able to watch it without crying at the end is somewhere between infinity and whatever is bigger than that.

*Also that would be funnier if I spelled it Tennille Too. Shut up, I'm really tired.
**OR IS HE?

Bah Humbug

The bartender and I have spent the past few days arguing because we can't figure out what to get each other for Christmas this year.

The bartender: See? I'm easy to buy for. You can get me Dragon software, and a little bottle of cologne...

Me: That's two things.

The bartender: It's two more than you.

Me: I already said! You can get me socks with kitties on them...

The bartender: Great. Socks.

Me: ...and...another pair of kitty socks...See? That's two things right there.

The bartender: Oh my god, shut up.

50 Cries Sadder

H-Town and amberance read Fifty Shades Darker so you don't have to.

H-Town: oh my god, fuck this book in its stupid dumb fucking face

me: oh my god this book

H-Town: KILL IT WITH FIRE

me: every time I read this I notice my face is hurting after. I think I am making monster faces the entire time

H-Town: lol

Chapter 18 begins with Christian (driving Ana’s car since she can’t be trusted to drive it herself) and Ana on their way to yet another surprise. They pull up to a massive fucking house in a massive fucking yard that is right on the coast. The house is old, but opulent. She makes a point of telling us there are four crystal chandeliers – in one room. They go out to the balcony and the view of the Sound nearly knocks her over. Turns out Christian is thinking of buying this house (from the realtor who Ana is instantly jealous of because she smiled at Christian, natch). You know, for when they are married. Assuming they are getting married. She hasn’t answered him yet, and we have been reminded about it on every fucking page since four chapters ago because he keeps trying to demand an answer from her.

me: So we left off all the way back at them looking at that house

H-Town: yes I love that she describes how he puts down the window in his car as he drives up to the house stupid stupid descriptions
also, how does one smile ironically?

me: I'm not sure. I should learn so I can smile ironically at this book

H-Town: I know how to smile demonically, because that's what I do when I think of hunting down EL James

me: her description of the sky is equally bad

H-Town: yes, the field - she wants to lay down in it and look at the sky. And I want to run over her with a tractor

me: "vermilion hues bleed into the cerulean sky, with opals and aquamarines"
I wrote "you're going to lose those crayons up your cooz"

H-Town: HAHAHAHA
her blood is pooling DOWN THERE in a lovely deep bronzey red
gross
sorry
OH AND THERE ARE FOUR CRYSTAL CHANDELIERS
I took that as sort of a "Fuck you" to all readers who don't live in a house like that

me: yes, so the obvious thing to do is tear the whole thing down and start over (“I want to buy it, demolish it, and build a new house – for us,” says Christian before going on to explain that he wants a house more eco friendly and sustainable. Or you could just go BUY A SUSTAINABLE HOUSE.)

H-Town: I KNOW
"I want to rebuild it eco"
wtf Christian
that is not at all Eco
you stupid bag of body wash

me: Oh you mean I can renovate what’s there to be more eco? I had no idea
you have INFINITE MONEY

H-Town: "I'll have to ask Elliot."
YOU ARE DUMB
EL James is dumber than 100% post-consumer waste
also, come on Christian, if you're really into being green, you wouldn't have 700 giant houses and 400 gas-guzzling cars
 
me: correct. maybe just get the one Prius and be done with it

H-Town: the sexiest Prius ever
0-60 in 15 seconds
AW YEAH
anywhore
she goes, "Christian, you had me at the meadow."
you mean the meadow he just said he was going to build a horse paddock in?
because he just shit on your field
FUCK OPEN SPACE, I WANT TO BE GREEN AND BUILD ON IT
ECO HORSES!!! THEY RUN ON HAY!

me: LOLOL
which she then called horses 4-legged fiends of Satan?

H-Town: horses aren't evil
they're lovely
spiders are eight-legged fiends of Satan

me: EXACTLY
so then let's go the club and celebrate your stupid promotion that you somehow forgot about even though it just happened 6 hours ago (Christian specifies “one of” his clubs. Because, you guys, he is so rich oh my god. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that yet.)

H-Town: also, the Mile High Club
REALLY?
I jumped out the window when I read that

me: I know, I wrote NO IT IS NOT FUCKING CALLED THAT

H-Town: as if no one's going to get that joke
seriously, that's like calling a restaurant Hooters
it's not exactly subtle

me: The bartender used to work at a gay bar called Manhole

H-Town: haha, I remember him saying that
HEY GUYS, WANNA COME TO MY NEW RESTAURANT CALLED "SEXY TITS AND CUNT LAND"?
YOULL NEVER GUESS WHAT IT'S LIKE!!
tell him to change the name of Tai's to "Sexy Tits and Cunt Land"

me: I would totally drink at that establishment

H-Town: same here
anyway, now they do a stupid no-panties dinner
blah blah seduction with seafood (Christian makes her take her panties off before dinner and then refuses to touch her at all while they’re eating. We are then subjected to six – SIX – pages of detailed descriptions on how they sexily ate food at each other. It is not sexy. It is fucking ludicrously irritating.)
I'm such a square, I was all, "I hoped he washed his hands before touching his slacks."
Think of the dry cleaning!

me: my only note from that whole 6 pages was "oh my god make this stop"
"I suck the hollandaise sauce off the asparagus"

H-Town: yeah, I wrote "HA HA Why talk about issues when we can just bang?!"
because she almost said that exact thing

me: OH THAT"S RIGHT
"issues, schmissues" is what she said
awesome
you are obviously carefully considering this marriage

H-Town: let's just screw, that will solve any problems we have
and then later, "Let's not talk about my weight. I like being slim."
You are not slim, you are starving.
People in Darfur eat more than her.
*goes to hell*

me: Karen Carpenter was a face stuffing fat ass next to Ana

H-Town: Kate Moss is all, "Hey, maybe eat a cracker."

me: a talking broom was like "you should really put on some weight"

H-Town: The fake skeleton in my anatomy class was all, "Eat a goddamn sandwich, you waif."

me: A guitar string told her she should get some help for her disorder
then more elevator tension (Christian fingers her in the elevator with other people around who don’t notice, then Ana makes a joke about having never had sex in a car which obviously makes Christian angry with her. By “obviously” I mean because he gets angry for no goddamn reason every time she figures out how to string together a complete sentence, not because anger in that situation would make any fucking sense. Then they barely make it back into the apartment before desperately fucking on the table in the foyer.)

H-Town: INTERCOURSE
then she goes to work, right?

me: oh right, in a low cut skin tight red dress (I’m not sure why James points this out since no one tries to rape her later. Force of habit I guess.)

H-Town: she says something about how the day flies by
and I wrote "Oh how the day flies by when you are not at all qualified for the job you have."

me: she's George Costanza with the Penske file

H-Town: hahaha
and now we've arrived at one of the stupidest things EVER

Ana goes out for drinks after work with Jose, who is in town to deliver the photos Christian bought so no one but him can ever look at Ana. Ana keeps trying to get in touch with Christian, but he refuses to respond to her. She assumes this because drinks with Jose has made him into the Hulk once again. She would probably be right under normal circumstances, but that day is not today. Instead she gets a phone call from Christian’s brother informing her that Christian and his helicopter are missing. Chapter 19 starts with every person Christian has ever met in his life gathered in his apartment, all terrified because he is obviously dead and the authorities have called off the search. Mind you he has only been missing for eight hours, an amount of time that would not even trigger a search unless the person missing is 7 years old. It is also all over the news. Ana spends most of this chapter in a trance, staring at the fireplace, lamenting about how she can’t go on without him, and recalling everything he’s ever said to her. Included in Ana’s thoughts here is the line “And we don’t know where he is.” Thank you, Einstein, I had no idea that’s what “missing” meant.

me: oh my fuck

H-Town: he goes missing
FOR EIGHT HOURS
EIGHT GODDAMN HOURS
no one would've gone looking for him yet

me: the last note I wrote for chapter 18 was "good. maybe he's dead."
especially no one would have gone looking for him and also ALREADY CALLED OFF THE SEARCH

H-Town: apparently you should never go missing in the northwest

me: Noted

H-Town: because they just give up very easily
they're all rapists, but you can hide pretty easily, I guess they stop looking

me: well I’m not going there anyway since everyone is a rapist
"I'll be nothing without him"
Jesus, you could try being an individual

H-Town: also, you can't just step out for a few minutes, because they'll put you on TV as missing and you'll be all, "Dammit, I was just going to get some takeout."

me: yes but this was because it's CHRISTIAN GREY, H-Town

H-Town: EVERYONE KNOWS HIM
the world mourns

me: if it was a lesser man like the President they'd wait and see first

Turns out Christian is alive and well, which we find out when he walks through the door and is startled to find that his entire family is upset that he was missing because he is a bad bad man who doesn’t deserve love. His explanation: The person he was flying with had never seen Mount Saint Helens so he decided to do a quickie fly by (which I’m pretty sure you can’t do without registering a flight plan, but whatever) when all of a sudden there is a fire in the tail and both his engines and the electronics all died (or he cut them intentionally because of the fire, it varies from page to page because E.L. James has the attention span of a frightened gerbil on cocaine). He manages to land Charlie Tango and put out the fire, but now he is in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, so he and his companion walk for four hours (he claims it take four hours because she’s wearing heels. No woman alive would walk through the woods in heels for four hours, she would take them off and keep an eye out for pointy sticks) until they find a road, by which time both their cell phones have died. In the course of him telling this story, and then later in the next chapters, it is foreshadowed no less than six times that all those malfunctions happening at once might mean the helicopter was sabotaged.

H-Town: and two remarkably stupid quotes from this chapter
"oh the feel of this warm, vital, sensual man beneath my fingers."
and
"you are my talisman, Ana."
You are a fuckstick, Christian.

me: the whole series of events:
everything that can break on a helicopter breaks at the same time

H-Town: but there's intrigue!

me: somehow there is not time to radio for help before shutting off the electronics

H-Town: they let on like someone did it!

me: no cell phone reception
walking for 100 miles
then cell phone dies
...if someone I was dating gave me that story after going missing all day my first reaction would be "Yeah right. Who are you fucking?"

H-Town: speaking of silly
The baby just got home from the library and immediately removed her dress
she's now in her shoes and underwear

me: that's my girl

We had to end the conversation here because H-Town was rudely interrupted by people who want her to do work, but the only thing left in the chapter now that Christian is home and safe and Ana doesn’t have to throw herself off a bridge is that since it’s after midnight, Ana tells Christian he can open his birthday present. It’s a stupid piece of shit tourist keychain of the Seattle skyline with flashy lights. On the back of it the flashy lights are blinking the word “YES”. SIX FUCKING WEEKS SHE HAS KNOWN THIS ASSHOLE. You know what? Fine. Fucking marry him so this whole thing can end in a murder suicide and I can stop reading this.

They Are Mobilizing

Current status - Wide awake at 3 in the morning in my bed with all the lights on and writing a blog post on my iPad. My laptop would be easier, but it's in the living room and I can't get it. Why? Because the spider was or is still in there.

My newest readers probably don't know this yet, but spiders have been trying to kill me for years, and recently they seem to have stepped up their game considerably.

They started with psychological warfare. This is partly my fault for letting Mrs. Sizemore talk me into a midnight showing of The Amazing Spider-Man, but seriously, I'd already seen the Toby Maguire version and was expecting a similar origin scene - a single cartoonishly blue and red spider gets out and bites him. It's not the best thing for me to watch, but I can handle it. What I was not expecting was an origin scene where Peter Parker winds up covered in HUNDREDS of realistic spiders, and that the one that bit him would keep popping up in AT LEAST three more scenes. I did my best to look at the floor, but the damage was already done, and that, THAT is all the opening they need. What followed was a good three weeks of nearly daily nightmares about spiders, no doubt beamed there through the crack in my psyche from some secret laboratory on the other side of my bedroom wall.

Once they had me on the ropes, the invasion started. First they sent a scout, one of their allies, a centipede. It showed up in my bathroom one day, running full speed up the shower curtain I had JUST HAD MY HAND ON like a giant asshole moustache. The bartender found it later that day and put it outside instead of killing it like a sane person. THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED. He obviously reported back to them because next came the vanguard. While the bartender was away, I decided to make some cookie dough for dinner one night, but on opening the cabinet, a smallish black spider came running out and I screamed and ran away and vowed not to go back in the kitchen until the bartender came home. I decided to take a bath instead, since I was broken from stretching class. But as soon as I put the bathmat on the floor, the kitchen spider's identical buddy came crawling up the side of the tub. This was FIVE MINUTES after the kitchen thing happened. I managed to wash him down the drain (and then ran scalding hot water down it until there was no more hot water), but there was nothing I could do about kitchen spider except retreat to my room and lay in bed obsessing about all the ways it could have gotten ON ME.

This evening, after the bartender had left for work, because they know that I am UNDEFENDED, a spider came running across the living room floor I had JUST BEEN SITTING ON. Angela saw it and pounced, but unlike Kristen the angel kitty who would have eaten it immediately, Angela is Furry Satan and prefers to torture the bugs she finds to the point of madness without ever killing them. I texted the situation to the bartender at work, suddenly remembering that I'd heard the bartender kill one the prior morning when I was in bed and still half asleep. He helpfully texted back that in addition to that one, he'd killed two other spiders in the last two days, a fact I absolutely could have done without knowing THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

So that's where things stand right now - six spiders and a centipede in my house in the last two weeks, all trying to get ON ME, the latest of which was being tortured into a murderous rage by my asshole cat who SUCKS at protecting me, and my roommate not due home for at least three more hours. I'll almost certainly be dead by the time he gets here. He'll come in my room to tell me about his night only to find my half-eaten corpse laying on the bed next to a note that reads "I TOLD YOU SO" and an army of evil arachnids standing on top of me in an arrangement that spells out "VICTORY!" It has always been just a matter of time before they finally got me.

It was a pleasure writing for you all.

UPDATE: Angela threw up this morning. The bartender theorized that perhaps she had eaten the spider. But I know her and she doesn't eat things, so I wasn't having it. "No she didn't," I told him. "I bet it spit poison on her! They were trying to neutralized the threat so they could get ON ME." Knowing I was already beyond hope, he immediately gave up and went to bed.

SECOND UPDATE: Now he's trying to tell me that all the spiders and centipedes lately are probably from when our neighbors cut down three huge trees in their yard, and all the critters that lived there are looking for someplace else to go. Yeah, sure. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT ME TO THINK.

THIRD UPDATE (8/29): I came home from class about an hour ago, and had just settled in on the couch with some delicious cheese and pretzels to watch Futurama when something on the ceiling caught my eye. GUESS WHAT IT WAS. The worst part was I had to sit in the room with it for 45 minutes waiting for the bartender to wake up and rescue me. It was an epic staring contest. He was thinking: "Go on, blink. Close your eyes for a split second, it's all I need." I was talking out loud to it: "You'd better not move. Do not start moving, you dick." He evaded the bartender's first two attempts to kill him, and wound up falling on the floor, causing me to jump up and run to the other end of the room. He was finally squished just before the cat got to him and she is NOT PLEASED that we broke her toy, so now I have two murderous animals to worry about. SEVEN. SEVEN IN JUST OVER A WEEK.

Better Shit To Read Than That Twilight Fanfic Fucking Nonsense

Many people have been asking me, "Amber, if we shouldn't be reading Fifty Shades of Grey to make our naughty parts tingle, what should we be reading instead?" The thing is, I can't actually answer that for you because you know a lot better than I do what you like in your word porn. I can tell you what I like, and you can go check that out, or not, as the mood strikes you but if, say, you are really digging tentacle porn this afternoon, my suggestions aren't going to be a whole lot of help to you. You might want to just google that.

Having said that, I've given a lot of thought to what sorts of things I've read that might appeal to people for reasons similar to why this book piece of shit apparently appeals to people, and I've made you guys a list. Keep in mind that most of my suggestions aren't going to be for novel length erotica. For the most part, I tend to read collections of short stories instead. This is just a personal preference. I find that on the whole, for writing of that length, either the plot suffers or the sex does. Or I just have a really short masturbatory attention span (ok, fine, it's probably this). The longest suggestion I have is the erotica classic Story Of O. It is the quintessential BDSM novel, but as such, might be a bit much for people who aren't looking for something as hard core as that, such as Christian Grey, who listed "permanent marking of the body" as a hard limit in his (never signed) contract, so probably won't be terribly down with the scene where O gets branded. An easier read for him might be He's On Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission, a collection of short D/s stories edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. There is a companion book to that one featuring the opposite situation: She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission, which I haven't read, but I suspect is just as good (or maybe better if you love reading about pegging).

If it's not BDSM you're after, and you're just looking for erotica aimed at and/or written by women, you could do worse than the Best Women's Erotica series, an annual collection of short stories edited by Violet Blue (I couldn't find the 2012 version on Amazon for some reason, but here's 2011, and here's where you can preorder 2013). And as long as we're on the subject of Violet Blue, she has also edited a series of books featuring fantasies for couples, including Taboo, which I ran to my living room to read after the first sex scene in Fifty Shades just to make sure that I still enjoy sex. I was genuinely concerned E. L. James had permanently destroyed my sex drive.

Of course there are also tons of sex blogs out there in internetland, including my own. But since I can't really link to that here as it would defeat the entire purpose of my having separated it from Bizzybiz in the first place (you are welcome to try to find it, but good luck with that - my friend Fish has been trying to find it off and on for years without much luck, and he knows me better than most people), I can instead recommend Pussy Talk, Easily Aroused, Remittance Girl, The Erotic Writer, and the incomparable Monmouth who I know in real life and who is also very good at finding delicious beer and/or snacks. I also follow mega porn star James Deen on Twitter, but his tweets aren't really that sexy and seem to be mostly related to him dressing up as a baby panda, though he does post links to his blog and photos of who he banged on camera that day.

Hopefully you'll find something on this list to interest you (or you were sucessful at your tentacle porn googling) and that it will keep you occupied until the reviews for the next book start, which I'm hoping will be next week, since my roommate, my lover AND my partner in fun Mrs. Sizemore will all be out of town and I am otherwise going to be BORED AS FUCK. And boring as fuck, unless you want to spend the week reading stories about my cat vs. the vacuum and how I can have ice cream and cookie dough for dinner since the bartender won't be here to stop me. Right, I didn't think so.

The Last 5k I Will Ever Run*

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten you. There will be a new 50 Shades review up tomorrow. I simply didn't have time to read this weekend: - I was being chased by zombies, driving across middle America and practicing how to be a stripper.

I ran my second Run For Your Lives zombie chase/obstacle course/5k on Saturday in Indianapolis. It wasn't any better than the last one, despite the fact that I did actually train this time. In fact, I finished the highly touted Couch To 5k program and I can say with confidence that I could probably run a straightforward 5k without wanting to die (though I would still hate it. Pretty sure nothing is ever going to change the fact that I HATE running). Unfortunately, the skills required for running a 5k are worthless for this particular 5k. What little areas there were for open running without an obstacle or zombies seemed to almost always involve either running through water or running through sand, both of which blow and are a complete energy suck. The rest of the time, we were sprinting. The zombies in Indiana are way more aggressive than the zombies in Maryland - they run faster, chase further, and work together to chase down the people who still have flags left. At one point, we gathered a large group to try to overwhelm a massive field of zombies. We got to the end, crawled through some murky water under a bridge and were greeted on the other side with ANOTHER huge field of zombies.

The obstacles were harder than last time as well. We crawled army style through a field of gravel, from which my knees are now cut to shreds. I climbed up the cargo net fairly well, but my decision to try and slide down the opposite side was, in retrospect, a poor one. I had been extremely confident going in about the one obstacle we knew about, crossing monkey bars over a pool of blood and entrails, due to my trapeze classes. I shouldn't have been. There was one thing I hadn't accounted for: at trapeze class we have chalk. At a zombie race there is nothing, plus your hands are wet from climbing up there due to people who fell in before you, plus your clothing is entirely soaked from all the previous water obstacles so you can't dry your hands on those either. I got about a third of the way across before I realized it wasn't happening and let go, justifying that decision to myself that the blood pool would feel soothing on my cargo net rope burns anyway.

I when I finally crawled under the electrified fence (seriously) and crossed the finish line, I was ecstatic. Not just because it was over, but because it was over and I WAS STILL ALIVE! I had one flag left at the end of the race, thanks to the amazing H-Town who ran interference for me after she'd lost all of her flags, and also from a spin move I used to get away from a zombie who had me wrapped up.

Survivor. Yes, I do know my hair matches my shirt.

And that's it. I am never doing this again.*

After the race, I faced a five hour drive back to Chicago so I could be at rehearsal for my latest student burlesque show first thing Sunday morning. Just a quick word about driving across the state of Indiana, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure: It's fucking terrifying. If you're like me anyway. Because I do not blend in there AT ALL, and as the bartender just said to me "In Indiana, the motto is 'If it's different, shoot it.'" The first thing you see when you cross the border from Ohio into Indiana is a giant cross made out of aluminum siding. Jesus approves of weatherproofing your home. Immediately after that are two billboards, these two, in this order:

Hell = The Hotel California

Jesus = The Dude. He's had a rough night and he hates the fucking Eagles, man.

Sitting in my tiny rental car with absolutely no one looking at me, I have never felt more like I was being judged. Until I got out at a rest stop to recaffeinate, my turquoise hair shining like a neon sign flashing "MISCREANT" and "FORNICATOR", and had to have a very uncomfortable staring contest with the man behind the counter before being allowed to purchase a Coke Zero. I felt safer surrounded by zombies.

On Sunday I went to rehearsal for the Studio L'Amour Student Showcase, which is July 1st at Joe's on Weed if anyone is interested in attending. I do not have photos of this part of the weekend, though I do have this one of me in (part of) the outfit I'll be temporarily wearing:

Not pictured: waist cincher, hand fan, sense of propriety.

My hope is that by the next student show in December, I'll be dancing solo instead of in a group with 15 other girls, but I will be in the front row this time so I've got that going for me.

So that's what I was doing instead of reading more dubious "literature" all weekend, though there was a bit of H-Town reading it aloud that I wish I had video of. I do expect to finish it this week, and then I may be willing to entertain reading the next one for you, but only if you give me some time off to read something decent, do the actual work that I get paid for, and keep saying really nice things about how amusing you find my rage.

*Until H-Town asks me to do another one. I am weak.

For Some Reason He Still Lives With Me

We had a whole mess of strawberries. Which is delicious but makes me more annoying than usual.

The bartender: What should we have for dinner?

Me: We could have some strawberry shortcake.

The bartender: Strawberry shortcake isn't dinner.

Me: ....Are you sure?*

-------------------------

The bartender: You know what? You could put some strawberries and whip cream on your pancakes.

Me: WHAT? No, I will put maple syrup and butter on them AS GOD INTENDED.

The bartender: You don't believe in that.

Me: The god of pancakes. HIS NAME IS FLAPJACK.



*Follow up: I told this story to StereoNinja and got this e-mail in reply:

I checked on Google and I am afraid [the bartender] is right - Strawberry shortcake is NOT dinner.
Other things that are NOT dinner include:
1. Candy
2. Cookies
3. Doritos
4. Bowl of dicks

The both a yous can go snack on a bowl of dicks.

iNo.

I finally broke down and got an iPhone yesterday. This is the part where you all gasp incredulously and then yell "YOU ARE ONLY JUST NOW GETTING A SMART PHONE? THE HELL?" I know. I know.

The truth is I didn't really want a smart phone for a number of reasons. For one thing, I am already addicted to my iPad. ADDICTED YOU GUYS. And I have tremendous fear of becoming that person who never ever socializes at all even when out in public because OHMYGODTHEINTERNETSAREEVERYWHERE. Or the person that ruins every fucking bar room debate by immediately looking up the answer and ending the entire conversation. Those guys are assholes and I don't want to be one of those assholes. An even bigger reason is that iPhones tend to get stolen right out of people's hands. It happened to Mrs. Sizemore. A woman here in Chicago was even killed when an iPhone thief pushed her down the stairs at the Belmont Brown line station whilst escaping with someone else's iProperty. I didn't worry about using my phone on the train until today. No one was going to try to steal my flip phone. Now? Now I worry. There is also the much more stupid but nonetheless real reason where I am my father's daughter and oddly resistant to change at times. A phone doesn't need to be filled with apps and do 900 magical things, it needs to make and receive phone calls. That is what "phone" means. I may even have told a number of different people that I would get a smart phone when they pried the perfectly fine regular ass phone out my cold dead hand.

Still, the smart phone thing is long past reaching critical mass and when the bartender got one a couple of months ago I figured it was probably time for me to join the ranks of the Eternally Connected (for reference, two nights ago I patiently explained to him how to attach a photo in an email. For him to have a new thing before I have it is downright ludicrous). I was still reluctant. For help in overcoming this, I turned of course to the great and wise Fish, an early adopter of every technology ever and pretty much the only person whose advice I actually heed (sometimes), and asked him to convince me. "Do you like your iPad? Wish it were more portable? You have the ability to upgrade and you aren't? Why are you fucking this up?" was his typically withering response, so here I am one week later with an iPhone 4s.

I turned it on for the first time and was immediately not a fan. My mild OCD tendencies went into overdrive because the entire first screen was filled with icons. Like 20 icons, which is way too much for me to look at and I was overwhelmed and turned it right back off to catch my breath and regroup. And yes I know I can move and/or group them and have started doing so, but it requires a lot of work to figure out which applications I'm going to use in descending order of frequency and then group them accordingly and when I had a regular phone that only did phone things I didn't have to deal with this. But fine, that problem will be resolved eventually. Then last night while I was laying in bed awake at 3:30 am because my cat is an asshole, it dawned on me that I hadn't checked out Siri yet. (Oh by the way, that commercial with the idiot kid in the shitty band that wants Siri to call him rock god is fucking awful and makes me feel all damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn. Please, please let them stop airing that soon.) I decided to see what she was up to so I asked her "Siri, are you there?" and she replied with, "Wherever you go, that is where I will be." Which is a seriously creepy thing to say and now I am afraid of my iPhone because Siri is FUCKING STALKING ME, YO. I hope this gets better soon before it tarnishes Fish's thus far sterling record of advice giving.

Happy Overpriced Candy and Dead Plant Day

Allegedly, today is Valentine's Day. I know this because the bartender came in my room this morning and farted on me while yelling "Happy Valentine's Day!" I preferred the valentine I got from StereoNinja, mainly because he didn't get me one. "I was gonna send you an e-card," he told me, "but I fucking hate them so I didn't." Well played, my friend.

Anywhore, happy whatever, you guys. Call me in a month.

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 26 And I've Learned My Lesson

Look, I admit it. It's entirely my fault. I shouldn't have gotten cocky - Han Solo knows best, after all.

You may recall sometime last week that the bartender and I were complaining about a lack of creativity in sitcom writing as far as Thanksgiving episodes, and my specific complaint that holiday cooking disasters are simply not that frequent (exclusive of those who wind up burning the house down via deep frying the turkey and by the way, America, this is why you're fat). I've long felt this way, but it was only last week that I was compelled to write it down and thereby ensure a near disaster in my own kitchen this Thanksgiving.

Of course, I can't really take all the blame here. Roasting a turkey requires a roasting pan. We don't own a real roasting pan, owing to the bartender arguing that they are a bitch to wash afterward (which is a ridiculous point given that he's not the one who winds up having to wash it, but whatever) (and in fairness, we don't actually have room for one in our kitchen right now anyway). Instead, he goes out and buys me a crappy disposable one every year, and even though it's crappy, I'm not going to pretend I don't like having one less dish I need to wash. Point being, I roast turkeys in a flimsy piece of aluminum. This has never been a problem in the past, but as stated before, this is because I've never bragged about how it's never been a problem in the past either. Turns out, this would be the year.

All was going along according to my meticulously well laid out plans, as always. An hour before the turkey should have been done, I opened up the oven to put the stuffing in. I'd put the roasting pan in sideways earlier because that was easiest, but now the stuffing wasn't going to fit next to it, so I picked it up slightly and spun it sideways to make room, put the stuffing and the parsnips in next to it, closed the oven and walked away. Ten minutes later the bartender came into the living room and asked me "Why is there smoke pouring out of the oven?"

I went to check. He was not fucking kidding, smoke was absolutely billowing out of the fucker, and when I opened it I instantly saw why: when I spun the shitty roasting pan sideways it had ripped slightly. The drippings had leaked out of the pan into the bottom of the oven and ignited. "MOTHERFUCK." That was me. Less because my oven was on fire than because it was obvious my hubris was the cause of my downfall.

The thing is, you can actually look at this another way. I immediately went into crisis mode: I shut the gas off, pulled the turkey out of the oven, siphoned off as much of the juice as I could of what was left, reinforced the bottom of the pan with aluminum foil and put the whole thing on top of a cookie sheet, turned the oven back on after the fire was out and put the turkey back in. The ruination of Thanksgiving dinner was almost entirely averted. The turkey and the stuffing were unharmed and I'd even saved just enough of the drippings for the bartender to make some spec-fucking-tacular gravy. The only thing we lost were the parsnips, and as much as I love parsnips, I'm unlikely to complain about not getting to eat a vegetable (and anyway, there was corn). So my original point still stands, and may even be reinforced: it's NOT that hard to cook Thanksgiving dinner even if your oven catches fire and fills your entire apartment with smoke.

Day 19 And Surprise! The Television Is Upsetting Me

The bartender pointed something out the other night while we were watching New Girl, and as much as I am loathe to criticize anything Zooey Deschanel is involved with because I want to kiss her whole face, I have to admit he has a point. Every single sitcom, every year, has an episode that revolves around making a disaster out of trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner. They are never funny, ever, and the reason why is this: It's not actually that hard to cook Thanksgiving dinner. It just isn't.

I know this because I've done it a number of times. And I really can't figure out how people think that putting a roast in the oven and leaving it there for hours is at all difficult. There is almost nothing you need to do with a turkey as far as roasting it, other than to remember to defrost the thing in time, but even if you forget that, there are completely thawed turkeys at the store and you can run out and get one if the one you bought isn't ready by the day before.

The most difficult part of making Thanksgiving dinner is getting the timing right, but even that isn't really that hard if you make a schedule. It's simple really, you work backwards: figure out what time you want to have dinner, figure out how long each individual dish takes to cook, subtract that from what time you want to serve dinner and write it all down in chronological order. You don't even need to factor in the prep work most of the time. You can bake the pumpkin pie a day or two ahead of time, cube bread for the stuffing and chop onion/celery/apples/whatever you put in your stuffing the night before, peel the potatoes and the parsnips when you wake up in the morning. Even making homemade gravy shouldn't really throw you that much if you want to try it, because you need to let the turkey sit for half an hour anyway so the juices have time to redistribute (FYI, if you are carving up your turkey immediately after pulling it out of the oven and it comes out dry, this is the reason), which is more than enough time for gravy making.

Sitcom writers: this cliche is getting really, really old. If it's that hard to come up with an idea for a Thanksgiving episode, don't worry about it. You can skip it and I promise you no one will miss it.

There's Never A Dull Moment At Riot Fest

Riot Fest was this weekend and the bartender and I attended, as we do every year, because apart from getting to see a whole lot of excellent bands at the one music festival that is indoors, it is also some of the best people watching of the year. This is the same festival where I nearly incited an actual riot by wearing a shirt which read "I should be in the kitchen" last year, and the one where we saw a guy come out of the pit with his eye socket crushed the year before that.

This year we showed up for the last four bands at the Congress on Saturday night. Almost immediately we saw an 18 year old kid walking around in a TSOL shirt and the bartender had his first chance to get his damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn on. "Please, that band broke up before that kid was even born," he lamented (sort of, in that no original members were left after 1990). We headed down to our usual spot (down near the front to the far right of the stage, near the beer and away from the pit, with the rest of the old people) just in time for Strike Anywhere.

Just a note for my friends who don't frequent punk rock shows: the pit is a space generally right in front of the stage where people basically slam into one another on purpose, which is allegedly fun. A circle pit is a space either there or just behind there where these same people frantically run around in a circle while slamming into each other on purpose, and bears a strong resemblance to a stampede of jacked up apes. This is also apparently fun. Anyone can go slam/run around in these spaces BUT it is important to be prepared for the fact that as you are slamming into people, other individuals will also be slamming into you, and you'd better damn well be prepared for it. There are no safe zones in the pit. Those are the rules. This is why I found it hilarious when the weirdo guy with the Santa Claus beard who was standing still in the middle of the circle pit waving his arms like he was directing traffic got noticed by one of the stampeders, who promptly ran directly at him at full speed and knocked him flat on his ass. (Side note to the other people in the circle pit: the reason your circle fell apart is because you started it at the beginning of a four minute long song. No one wants to keep running for four whole minutes. You know the songs. Pick a shorter one next time you assclowns.)

As Leftover Crack took the stage, our safe zone away from the pit was invaded by a lone lunatic, who created a one man pit for himself by pacing back and forth like a lion stalking its prey and intermittently hugging random people while screaming into their face. He was hilarious, but his flailing around reminded me that the bartender hasn't fully recovered from his surgery. Even on the sidelines things can happen, so I took the opportunity to position myself on his left side at a slight angle, so I could be his bodyguard against stray dancers. This came in handy when some girl in a big fucking hurry to get down front decided that she didn't have time to politely slide between people like a normal person and instead came running through the crowd throwing elbows like Kevin fucking Garnett. She got me square in the ribs and I was sore most of the next day.

Suicide Machines were on next (Riot Fest has a history of bands reuniting to play it, which is how I got to see Screeching Weasel a couple years ago) and, while they did rock, they didn't leave us feeling any younger. "Yes, I'm talking to you young lady," the singer said to a girl down front. "ARE YOU READY TO POGO?" Most of the crowd responded by screaming and doing just that. I tested out my readiness for pogoing by bouncing on my toes a little bit. Flakes of rust started falling off my knees and I informed the bartender I was too old to pogo. "Me too," he said, without even bothering to check the status of his knees. He knew.

The headliners of the night were the Descendents, who were absolutely fucking phenomenal. Additionally, I finally felt less decrepit when Milo Aukerman decreed that "Thou shalt not commit adulthood". Given that he bears a remarkable resemblence to my dad I decided to take that to heart.

The Descendents alone would have been worth the cost of admission, but the glory of Facebook came through to make this the best Riot Fest ever by informing me of a secret promotion at Taboo Tabou entitling me to 50% off any vibrator in the store with my Riot Fest ticket stub and/or wristband. You better believe I was all over that. I took advantage of the brilliant weather Sunday afternoon and walked down to procure my very first Lelo for the bargain basement price of $80. Worth it? The only reason I'm typing this post is because I'm recharging it already.

I've Got Your Dime Right Here

This is not a post about my cat. Having said that, my evil cat is a tortoiseshell, which if you know anything about torties goes a long way toward explaining why she is so evil. When she sits back on her haunches, her particular brindle pattern makes it look like she's wearing a pair of light brown trousers. This is what I was looking at during dinner this evening that triggered me to start singing to her "I love furry pants, so come on and sit back and lick your paws" to the tune of "I Love Rock and Roll". And that in turn caused me to realize why that song has always bothered me.

I turned to the bartender, who is somewhat older than I am, and asked "Hey, was there a time you can remember when songs played on the jukebox cost a dime? Because I only ever remember them being a quarter. So, like, did she say 'dime' in that song because they used to cost a dime or because 'quarter' had too many syllables?"

The bartender is pretty used to my bizarre conversational tangents by now and has learned it's better to just play along. "They've always been a quarter in my lifetime," he replied kindly while thinking in his head Oh Jesus, not again.


"That's what I thought. We need someone older that can be like 'Hey, back in the 50's a song on the jukebox cost a nickel!' or whatever, but I mean, if it's a right-number-of-syllables issue then 'nickel' doesn't work either. But that still wouldn't make sense because that song is from the 80's and you just said in the 80's songs were a quarter. She wouldn't remember songs costing a dime. So what the hell? That's false advertising! It costs TWO AND A HALF TIMES as much to love rock and roll as what she's telling people!"

The bartender chewed his steak thoughtfully for a moment to give me time to stew and then sagely changed the subject back to the cat in an effort to stop my brain from derailing entirely. It worked for about 10 minutes and then we had this exchange: "She was doing that thing today where she just keeps coming in the room to wake me up and then when she knows I'm awake she walks out of the room again."

"She's so shitty when she's mad."

"And then she went and got one of her bottle caps to bring it in my room and bat it around so I couldn't go back to sleep."

"See, the way it should work is, songs should cost different amounts based on their quality. Like, if you want to play a disco song on the jukebox that should cost a dollar and REAL songs should be a quarter. Or a dime! There should be a premium applied for subjecting the people around you to shitty music is my point."

There was a long pause while I waited for him to agree with my obviously brilliant plan, but all he said was "Wow, you're still on that. Oh well, I tried."

Blogging Is Not A Matter Of Life And Death...Unlike Pneumonia

Relax, I'll tell you where I've been, just calm down. I've just returned from spending 11 days on a 10 day trip to England the U.K., which followed directly on the heels of spending the bulk of two weeks visiting Hell Illinois Masonic Hospital, where they were holding my beloved roommate the bartender in a thankfully successful attempt at making him not die, which nearly killed him in and of itself.

I'll explain that shortly, but let's back up a minute.

What now seems like many Thursdays ago, I was in my usual watering hole doing my usual have dinner with my roommate and then drink a beer while antisocially playing games on my iPad thing, when a pretty looking boy began admiring my very pink hair and asking my advice on how he could do something similar to his very brown hair. I have had this conversation many times, and now that I have an iPad, I can augment it with Facebook photos of my coiffure's previous incarnations. He was impressed, deemed me artistic and started showing me some of his design portfolio, including some work he'd done for a motorcycle club. In turn I showed him the results of the Super Secret Project. It was the most stunning transformation I've ever seen: he was having a normal, relaxed, easy conversation with me and then as if I'd flipped a switch he suddenly became so nervous that he literally could not complete a sentence. He eventually took several deep breaths and managed to choke out enough words for me to understand he was asking me out. It's not like I could say no - he was adorable and there was a strong chance his head might implode from a rejection, so I gave him my e-mail and made vague plans to "eat something and watch the hockey game" on Saturday. In retrospect, it seems hilarious to me that I thought there was any chance I might wind up in some sort of normal situation.

The bartender had not been feeling well, so when he came home from working Friday night at 4:30 a.m. sweating and out of breath I was concerned. He asked me if we had an accurate thermometer (we didn't) and then said the bone chilling words that would kick off a terrifying saga: "I think you need to get dressed. I need you to take me to the hospital." The bartender doesn't really "do" hospitals. Despite that fact, he'd just been to the ER two weeks prior to that due to excruciating back and chest pain that was diagnosed as walking pneumonia. He was given antibiotics and sent on his way. He felt better after a few days, went back for a follow up a week later, was pronounced healthy and sent on his way. Two days later he had a fever of 102.2, couldn't breathe and wanted me to take him back to the hospital. Not good.

We got there and did the whole ER routine: triage, get in a room, vitals, talk to a nurse, talk to another nurse, wait for a doctor, explain everything again, wait some more, repeat everything again for a medical student, then a third nurse, get some blood drawn and then finally they took him away for a chest x-ray, which is when I checked my voicemail and realized I'd missed a call from the comic the night before explaining that he'd been randomly punched in the face. None of my boys were doing well, it seemed. I texted the only one who was (the boy from Thursday night) to inform him that I would not be making our date that afternoon and rescheduling it for Sunday. A doctor came in with the bad news: the bartender's pneumonia had not gone away at all, but rather seemed to have gotten worse. They decided to admit him for a couple days. I texted the newbie and rescheduled our date for early the following week, then went home and fed the cat.

When I got back to the hospital the situation had gone from bad to worse. A CT scan revealed that in addition to the pneumonia worsening, his lung was also being collapsed from the outside due to empyema. He would need surgery, but they didn't want to perform it until they got the infection that caused the pneumonia in the first place under control. They started throwing every antibiotic they had in their arsenal at him hoping something would work. None of them seemed to help, and after two days of this with his condition continuing to worsen it was becoming clear he had some sort of antibiotic resistant super bug and that they couldn't wait any longer to do the surgery. He went under the knife that Tuesday, while I paced the family lounge, tweeting what little information I had and postponing my date until the bartender made it home.

I was wholly unprepared for the scene that greeted me when they allowed me to see him in the ICU after surgery. IVs in both arms, a breathing tube down his throat, oxygen, catheter, epidural, three chest tubes snaking out of his back and his arms strapped down as a precaution because people coming out of anesthesia have a penchant for trying to rip their breathing tube out when they come to. He looked terrible. "You look good," I told him, which he obviously didn't reply to because you can't talk with a breathing tube stuffed down your throat. The anethesiologist came in to check up on things. His name was Dr. Dieter, but he looked less like Dieter from Sprockets and more like The Dude from Big Lebowski. He was also hilarious. "I was only in there for the important part," he said. "Basically, we cut you open, drianed the pus out and then took a garden hose to your chest for about 20 minutes."

Having cultured the fluid to get a better idea of just what the hell had made him so sick in the first place, they put him on an appropriate antibiotic that we hoped would clear up the infection once and for all. In the meantime, breathing tube removed, the bartender was free to insult his oh-so-witty surgeon when he came in each day to pull out the chest tubes one at a time. "I promise you, I won't feel a thing," the surgeon said as he de-Borged my roommate, which earned him "Dick" in response. On the day the final chest tube came out, the plan was that he would get out of ICU, go upstairs for observation for a day and then finally go home. Obviously this scenario was not in the stars because when everything else has gone horribly wrong, why not just pile it on?

As it turned out, after a day and a half on the "right" antibiotic to treat the infection, it was discovered it was the wrong antibiotic for the bartenders kidneys, as they had begun to shut down. So began several stress filled days of constant monitoring in an effort to keep the treatment that was saving his life from killing him.

Finally, FINALLY, he was well enough to leave the hospital and I took him home on Tuesday afternoon, 11 days after I'd driven him there in the middle of the night. I spent the next three days hovering over him and carrying things around because he wasn't allowed to lift anything at all (and couldn't have even if he'd tried). Then on Saturday, at the bartender's insistance, I finally left for my long planned trip to England which I had resigned myself already that I was going to miss, sending a text message to newbie postponing our date until June in the cab on the way to O'Hare.

So yeah. Sorry about the long break from blogging. I WAS BUSY.

And Get The Hell Out Of My Bed Too.

H-town: lol karen carpenter
*goes to hell*

me: credit to [the bartender] for that one

H-town: i hate feeling that sick
when i got strep this winter it was the worst i've been sick in a decade, too
i thought i was dying, too

me: yeah, strep is a pretty bad one

H-town: i feel ya - moving 2 feet felt like i was climbing mt. everest
thankfully i wasn't hurling
i had a nasty 24 bug last fall though
i can't imagine hurling for more than 24 hrs

me: i was only hurling for about one day, but i had no appetite at all for four
I don't think I ate as much as 500 calories a day for four days straight

H-town: isn't weird when even eating takes too much energy?
bodyFAIL

me: i know right?

H-town: your brain's all, yeah - eating would give me energy and help me, but fuck that noise
then it goes into hibernate mode

me: then some mooching bitch comes in and eats all your porridge

H-town: hahaha

me: LEARN HOW TO COOK WHORE

H-town: HAHAHAHA

Chain Restaurants Simplified

After seeing a commercial for the Tilted Kilt that used the Dropkick Murphy's "Shipping Up To Boston" yesterday

The bartender (walking past me and grumbling): More stupid suburban bullshit.

Me: I went to the Tilted Kilt with Fish once. It's just a plaid Hooters.

Breaking News: Amberance Went Somewhere

There have been no updates to the blog lately, mainly because there is nothing at all of substance going on in my life. I go to work, I come home, I watch Tosh.0 and imagine having rough sex with the host (I don't know, the guy just looks dirty to me), I go to bed. Sometimes I work out or try to cross-stitch (which is made difficult by a cat who thinks any and all thread in the home must be attacked and destroyed), but for the most part there simply hasn't been anything to write about. Over the weekend I attempted to rectify six week's worth of lameness by cramming my entire social life into three days.

On Friday, the great Jon from Total Talk Nonsense, the greatest podcast anywhere, was playing a gig out in the suburbs with his new band, The Toxic Crayons. I had originally planned on attending as a participant - the lead singer had been asking me to sing with their various bands for years, and we'd finally nailed down some actual songs to work on rather than just the vague idea that "you should sing with us". Side note: I find the request for me to sing with the band completely hilarious, given that none of them, including Jon, have ever actually heard me sing. They're basing this decision solely on the fact that I told them I could sing, which they've taken at face value and assumed that I'm brilliant. Which I am, but they have no way of actually knowing that. For all they know I could just be saying I can sing when I really sound like Roseanne Barr. Anywhore, the plans fell through when I never went to band practice because various members may or may not have learned the songs. For my own part, I would have been nervous anyway - I know I am capable of singing "Heartbreaker", I just don't think I'm nearly cool enough to pull off getting on stage and looking like I have any business singing Pat Benatar. Besides, boy who doesn't call was supposed to be there and despite the fact that I want to lick him, singing in front of him gives me pause. It didn't matter, because he wasn't there and I didn't sing anyway. I knew I was in the suburbs when I walked into the bar and was immediately surrounded by children. Not college kids on a binge, actual children. Because in the suburbs, you can take your kids to the pub for dinner and not worry that they might see someone getting fingerbanged in full view of the public. The show went pretty well for the most part, despite half the band being sick and one song that completely disintegrated. They made up for it by playing some Stray Cats. In the meantime, I got a round of applause from the band wives and other fans sitting near me for getting carded, which I attributed to my green hair but Mrs. Jon insisted had more to do with my "young face".

I left there and drove Alistair back to the city to leave at the bar for the bartender to run errands after work ("I want you to promise me you'll be very careful," said the Crayon's bass player while bear hugging me goodbye, "because it is snowing and everyone else on the road is drunk, and you're adorable."). Then I went into the bar to let the bartender know where the car was. Mistake. There were too many friends there to just walk in and walk back out again, and I wound up hanging around for an hour and a half, listening to 90's hip hop (yes, I still know all the words to "The Humpy Dance" AND "Poison" by Bel Biv DeVoe, thanks for asking) and chatting with Hellbilly about various concerts and, unfortunately, UFC fighting. By chatting I mean nodding, Hellbilly needs no partner to carry on a conversation because he never ever ever shuts up.

I eventually got home from Tai's some time after 3 a.m. and spend another 45 minutes stalking people on Facebook and eating pretzels before I went to bed. My plans for Saturday had involved a lot of errand running and some weight lifting, all of which fell apart when I didn't get out of bed until 5 in the afternoon (this was not all my fault - I woke up at 3, but was immediately trapped under a cuddly cat who growled and hissed every time I tried to ease her off of me). Instead I spent the evening watching Chicago and deciding that Velma Kelly is the roll for me and that Queen Latifa is actually pretty fucking sexy.

On Sunday, the bartender and I headed over to the Congress to see Against Me! and the Dropkick Murphys. The Congress is one of my favorite venues to see music in Chicago. Unfortunately it is run by idiots. We had bought tickets online, or thought we had. After standing in line to get in for five minutes, we were told that anyone with paper tickets had to go stand in line at Will Call and trade them in for real tickets, which if I have to stand in line for them, it largely defeats the point of buying them online. While standing in the cold and rain waiting in line and shivering, we saw a group of girls who were not exactly dressed for the weather much at all which happily has inspired the name of my new all girl band - Daddy Issues. Our first single will be called "Get In Line" and is about running a train (Google it if you don't know, just don't watch the videos. Or watch them, I don't know your preferences). The line moved more slowly than it needed to - Will Call has but one door for both ingress and egress because clearly these people are geniuses. Once we got to the front of the line, they took our pieces of paper and issued us our tickets: basically little red tickets you would use for a raffle that I could have bought a roll of 1000 of for $5 at the party store. Then we got back in the first line, where they didn't even bother to take my little raffle ticket anyway, so I'm mystified why they made me stand in line to get one. Once inside we met up with the loquacious Hellbilly and a friend of his and settled in to the side of the main crowd because we are old people and also it's closer to the beer.

The Dropkick Murphys draw an interesting crowd. It's a mix of punks and people who think they're Irish, and everyone is drunk before they even get there. One girl was clearly on Ecstasy and had no idea she was not at a rave. The Dropkick Murphys were brilliant as always, one of their roadies proposed to his girlfriend on stage (she said "HOLY SHIT" which the crowd took as a yes) and they brought Chris Pisani on stage during "I'm Shipping Up To Boston", who Blackhawks fans will know as "That guy who dances to the Dropkick Murphys song at every Blackhawks game". All the while, Hellbilly was trying to kill us with Jameson, which I eventually had to start discreetly setting on the floor and knocking over to avoid a trip to the ER. The show had started very late due to Against Me! getting stuck in traffic driving up from Houston and the Dropkick Murphys having attended the Blackhawks game which went to shootouts. Consequently, there were many disappointed 12 year olds who didn't get flashed during "Kiss me I'm Shitfaced" (which my friend Tanyas participated in at the Saturday night show and then stole a set list) because they left before the encore, and I didn't get home until after 1 a.m. on a school night and paid for dearly the next day.

I am a party animal.