I'm Un-Googleable!

Well, sort of.

Luckily, my dad doesn't talk to his cousins very much. At least, most of them (he has what, 96?). Because of this, 20-some odd years ago there was a little mixup and the family ended up with two Amys, with the same last name, born within a year of eachother, who lived in the same general area, both had a penchant for creativity, and both went to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for penicilin in 1992, which is how we found out about eachother. We also go to the same school and the same gym, and I think we have the same bank, too.

What I love about this is that the other Amy has grown up to be a bit of a crack-hoe a famous actress. I say this out of respect! Respect for the person who has made me basically invisible (and therefore INVINCIBLE) to the internet. No matter what information about me gets onto the internet, the other Amy's info will be way worse...or better...exciting, I should say, thrilling even...any rate, will make us both unemployable as Sunday School teachers. I googled myself today and found that 'I' have an IMDB listing (damn her and her fame!), that 'I' posed for some scantily-clad model shots from that time I was Hot Chick of the Week somewhere, that I am too lazy to fill out my Grow Creatively account, and that my facebook profile is readily available, complete with a picture of me licking a girl's face as the profile shot. At times I worry that the next job I apply for will call me for an interview on the grounds of how good I look in a bikini and will be shocked when I show up and am not the red-haired, brown-eyed actress they Googled last night. But mostly, I let Amy's monopolization of my Google space lull me into a false sense of security. If people are finding my cousin on Google, that means they're not finding me*.

Which leads me to the final chapter of this rant: while researching my latest news article (I write for the school paper now, btw. Very glamorous, I know), I came across a blog of 'ramblings' that had not only said blogger's 'ramblings' on it, but also her full name, where she goes to school, what her major is, her mailing address, email address, phone number, BBM account, twitter, facebook, and linkedin account on it*. Yikes. I was tempted, so sorely tempted, to start mailing her letters made out of cut-up newsprint with messages such as
"Get your mailing address off the internet, for Christ's sake!" on them. Poor girl. If only she had a second cousin to protect her good name.


*right right, not quite true. Eventually you'll find an article or two I've written for .

Oh look! Another disturbing post about male genitalia!

This weekend marked my first brush with penis cupcakes. I've made boob cupcakes plenty of times, and I've made little cupcake butts (with the cake died the bright pink of raw meat so that party-goers could pretend they were biting into raw flesh when they ate them); if you make a round, tasty object, someone will eventually call in and ask you to turn it into a pair of breasts. It's inevitable. But people don't usually think 'penis' when they think 'cupcake'.

First of all, don't ever do a google image search for penis clip art, unless you want to see disturbing pictures of what happens to penises after they die. Usually, my cupcake art involves a fair amount of tracing but after I saw the penis zombies I realized I was going to have to free-hand this, because no way was I continuing my image search.


I was actually quite proud of my penis cupcakes; it was my first free-hand drawing event, and, having spent the last week studying the art of the Underground Comix Movement (which is entirely built off of depictions of human genitalia), I felt that I could count this batch of cupcakes as an homage to R. Crumb. I pictured the bridesmaid who ordered them coming to pick them up and being wowed by my artistic nuances. She would be a purveyor of comix. She would say "this is reminiscent of the artwork in Binky Brown meets the Virgin Mary!" (she didn't). We would have a bonding moment (we didn't).

The customer wasn't nearly as excited by my drawing skills as I was, but that was okay, because I had the foresight to take a picture of my handywork. I spent the next 3 hours at a birthday party, showing my 12 penises to anyone who would sit still for long enough.

The next morning, on my way to church, I discovered that my phone wallpaper is now set to a picture of 12 chocolate penis cupcakes. Try as I might, I can't seem to change this. 

hm...I can't seem to find the title of this post...maybe I forgot it somewhere.

I blame the sunflowers. Actually, no. I blame autumn in general. Fall is the time for extremely complicated orders of wedding cupcakes. In summer, most people are content with pink icing and some glitter. Throw on a small gumpaste daisy that you punched out with a cookie cutter in 20 minutes the day before, and their minds are blown. But in fall, a simple request such as "can you make the icing colour to match my tablecloths" is replaced by something more along the lines of "can each cupcake have a detailed hand-sculpted depiction of a bountiful harvest on it...that matches my tablecloths?" while these sorts of orders are more exciting, they tend to sap my mental capacity more than a little.

I got up at 4 o'clock this morning to help make every bountiful-harvest bride's wishes come true. The first thing I noticed when I got up was that my one pair of jeans not only has a hole in the crotch (which I already knew about) but also a hole in the bum as well. I was going to be at work for the next 9 hours, during which time I was sure no one would notice my unfortunate choice of pants. But after that, I would be going to class, and I had already spent an afternoon earlier that week traipsing around the university in a see-through skirt and wedge shoes filled with my own blood, and I wanted to maintain my dignity somewhat. I decided to bring along a nice long shirt to change into, one that would cover up my shame.

I spent the next 9 hours at work, making burnt-orange creamcheese icing to go with "fall red" velvet cake with plum coloured accents, all the time waiting for my coworker to relinquish his grasp on his masterpiece of marbled cupcakes, at which point I had to affix oreo cookies to the top of each one with green icing and dab on sunshine-yellow icing petals, to produce 150 sunflower wedding cupcakes. I hope at least one guest took theirs home to frame it instead of dismantling it and eating it in 2 bites, like I would have.

Those gorgeous sunflowers must have sapped more of my strength for logical thought than I had expected. My troubles began when I zipped merrily from work to school, rifled through my backpack to find my hole-hiding tunic top, to discover that I had managed to lose my change of clothes somewhere between home and work. I ended up sitting through a 3-hour lecture in a sweat-soaked t-shirt, sugar-covered jeans, running shoes stained with lime-green icing, and several sizeable holes in my pants. I sat next to a girl who was convinced that she smelled strongly of salmon. I was convinced that I smelled like vanilla icing mixed with the musky scent of my own armpits, so I felt I was in good company.

After class, I made a quick stop at a news stand to get several copies of the school paper, since my first article is in there and I knew two of my interviewees needed copies. Then I went to the bookstore to squander my money on textbooks. At the bookstore, I realized I had lost my purse. I put down my backpack to dig through it, just in case my purse was somehow shoved inside it. No good.

I ran back up to the university classroom. No purse there. Maybe my prof took it back to her office to hold onto it for me. I went to her office. No purse. On the way back I realized I had lost track of my newspapers. I grabbed one more--surely they could share. I went from the news stand to the lost and found to the second floor where I heard someone calling my name and found that a helpful classmate had found my purse and was carrying it for me. At this point I had disoriented myself so much that I had lost the powers of social interaction, grabbed the purse, probably said thankyou, and then headed back to the bookstore.

On the way to the bookstore I re-thought my mizerly ways and grabbed 2 more copies of the newspaper. Then I got to the bookstore and realized I had left my other copies of the newspaper on the bookstore desk. Now I had 6 copies of the Uniter and my purse. I spent 3 minutes on the ground digging through my purse for my wallet. Now I had a purse, 6 copies of the Uniter, and no wallet. I emptied the entire contents of my purse and my backpack onto the bookstore floor, and there, at the bottom of my backpack was the wallet. So I bought my books, managing to leave several forms of ID and my credit card on the bookstore counter, as I did so, and was unchaining my bike when I realized that now I had my wallet, purse, and six copies of the uniter, but no ID or money. Back to the bookstore for me.

When I got home, I found that I had managed to open up my phone in my backpack, and was composing the following message to my boyfriend:

"WUppp ?l,okmijuy"

That just about says it.

What to Blog About When There's Nothing To Blog About

I am writing this post at the demand request of C, who is apparently willing to read a blog about absolutely nothing (provided that it's written by me, of course. Such devotion.). I hope you all are, too, because here it is.

At times, a blogger might discover that she has nothing to blog about. This is a very bad sign, because, in general, those who blog really have nothing better to do, which means that they are already blogging about nothing. If even a blogger doesn't find her life interesting enough to blog about (and this coming from someone who's written posts about how many mugs she has on her desk), reader beware: you're in for some truly awful writing.

In case you are the unfortunate blogger who does, for one reason or another, find herself with nothing to write about, fear not*: I have compiled the following emergency blogging list just for you.


Amy's List of What to Blog About When There's Nothing To Blog About

1) Blisters.
If your life is boring, this probably means that you are working too hard at some pathetic and mindless occupation. Whether you're treking around the office in your Payless high-heels, running around the University in your brother's 3-year-old sandals, or crawling around on your hands and knees in your house because you left a mountain of half-eaten tins of tuna in your closet last spring and now it's time to exorcise them, chances are your reason for lack of blog-worthy stories is taking its toll on your skin. Why not pen a post about your favourite blisters? I bet everyone wants to hear about the fluid-filled bubble on your left toe that whistles when you squeeze it in the right way.
2) Cats
One might argue that if you have cats, you will never have nothing to write about. As I revealed in my Apology to Capu last year, no matter how ugly, scabbed up, whiny, and snotty an animal is, if it has whiskers, 2 ears and a tail, someone will want to read about it.
3) Your pile of dirty dishes
Yes, it's been done before (and better than you'll ever manage it, since it was done by me), but hey! There's nothing new under the sun! Just because I rocked the world with my post on my coffee mugs and what was inside them (don't worry, I won't link you to it, as it is now out of print; I'm sure you've printed it out and hung it on your wall somewhere anyway) doesn't mean that you can't make a sub-par commentary on your stack of soup plates, or wine glasses, or the pile of greasy newspapers you eat your daily dose of scrambled eggs and pizza off of.
4) Your brother's pile of dirty dishes
I have found that anything I can do, my brother can do in a more extreme and entertaining way. I have 5 empty vanilla bottles on my shelf? He has 96 empty energy drink cans on his shelf. I go to a party to knit sweaters and make puzzles? He goes to a party on an airplane runway and makes a video of himself dancing in time to the flashes of the landing lights...and then makes a perogi-based salad. I'm sure that if I have a desk full of half-full cups of coffee, B has a helicopter landing pad poured on our roof that is entirely dedicated to his collection of half-empty cereal bowls. And if B's like that, I'm sure your brother is...at least slightly more interesting than you. So go ahead, put on a gas mask, and start searching your roofs for piles of dirty plates. Sometimes you have to work to get a good blog post.

There you go. If you need more than 4 marvelous suggestions from a prolific master-blogger such as myself, it's time to shut down the blog and start a feline daycare service instead (which will, in turn, lead to an amazing blog, so there you go, suggestion number 5. You're welcome).



*Please note that I say writers fear not; as I mentioned before, this is a bad time for readers. My thoughts are with you.