My Ongoing Feud with Groupon

Looking for a cheap pedicure? Maybe a rub-on tan? Have you ever wished you could have a trained professional use a tiny laser to zap the life out of every single one of your hair follicles, for 10% the going rate? How about paying someone half their usual fee to inject a permanent ink design into your skin? Then Groupon is the place for you.

No, sorry, it's not a hilarious blog-post. It's just another rant about my perfect body.

I know, I know. There are some links I just shouldn't click on, and some articles I shouldn't read. But then I wouldn't have anything to complain about. So, moving on...

I am completely and entirely fed up with articles that tell me how to dress for my body type. The end result being I should just stop reading them, but the reality being that I will continue to read and complain about them for the rest of my life. I have no problem with suggestions about what to wear to make myself look good. I just don't like the general assumptions about what makes me look less good*. It would be fine if the article were titled something like "Tell us what part of you is the ugliest and we'll show you how to hide it," instead of titling it something like "A Little Black Dress for every body". Then I would know what to expect.

Rant: because electronics stores dealers are the best sources on petty crime

I've been on the hunt for a simpler way of recording cell phone conversations for a while now--not because I am a hardened criminal looking for new ways of trapping people into blackmail deals by recording their most incriminating intimate phone conversations, but in fact because I am a reporter, and conduct an average of 4 phone interviews a week, and I take the whole idea of accuracy pretty seriously, and damned if my speaker phone doesn't cut out on me half the time so I spend most of my time typing fiendishly to try to get all my interviewee's quotes down into a word document. And now I'll be doing twice as many articles, which means twice as many phone calls, and my poor fingers have had enough.

Kick-Ass Wedding Ideas*

Being in the wedding business, I feel that I am fully qualified to start planning out a few weddings of my own. I read in some wedding magazine in the staff bathroom that your wedding is supposed to be a true reflection of you and your intended's personalities. So, here are a few wedding ideas for the more creative spouses-to-be:

39 Hours in Halifax. Thank God for Quick-Dry Trousers.

Last weekend, I found myself in Halifax, doing the Orange Dance* to 90's dance hits in my stockinged feet. How did I get there? It was a wedding, of course.

I love weddings! Once you get over the hurdle of the Awkwardly Long Speeches**, weddings are all cake, dancing, eating, and comparing blisters with the bridesmaids: all fun activities. And so while I may not fly thousands of miles cross country for Christmas or Spring Break or to watch the jellyfish come out in spring time, I will definitely rearrange my entire life so I can spend less than 2 days total in this small, water-logged city, provided there is a wedding involved.

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.