im moving to tumblr

http://cookiesareforfatgirls.tumblr.com/ nothing personal blogspot, it just seems like the right time. ive transferred most of my work from here to there, and ill be leaving this up for all of you to link over easily.

dear online advertising teams,

      If you decide to advertise online, good for you! but please bear in mind a few things. for starters if your ad begins with audio or video without my clicking directly on it, not only will i silence it before i know what it is, but i will assume if i were to click on it that some kind of terrifying virus will be overtaking my computer and personal information and my accounts will be drained without my knowledge... most folks i know feel the same way, even if they don't share in my virus paranoia they still find it annoying and will not click on your ad. a gif is one thing, a video is another. (also a note to the pages who allow this sort of ad on your site: i immediately navigate away when these things show up and do not return.) 

       If your ad shows up before i can view my video on youtube or on some site that allows me to watch full episodes of my favorite shows for free, thats cool, i turn off the volume but it doesn't bug me. If however your ad continues to interrupt my video at the places where a commercial break would have happened had i watched on tv, be smart, don't show me the same damn thing three times in the course of one viewing. some people remember my posts on the ads for doritos and wheat thins, neither would have brought on such distain from me had they not played three or four times over. i never buy wheat thins anymore. i like wheat thins. the advertising has actually gotten under my skin and rubbed me so raw that i cannot bear to buy them anymore.

 I am not angry, but i just think you should fire whomever it is that came up with these tactics. you should hire someone outside of advertising, not to come up with ideas, but to simply say 'no' to ideas. NO. That is annoying, don't do it. I could be your girl for this. i have ideas, but thats not what you pay me for, just let me say 'No. That is a bad idea and here is why...' 

I have the time if you have the cash. I can say 'No' to anything from ad placement to style to content. I am ready to say 'No.' 

You know where to find me if you would like me to save your company.

                                                                                                          yours,

                                                                                                                Amanda McCall

my apartment

My apartment looks as if a crazy hobo lives here. A crazy hobo with good taste in antiques and an apartment...

That said, i have been making an effort to clean my act up, and with my act, my apartment. Nothing motivates me to clean like buying new things to put up or with which to clean it. So i got myself a new vacuum. My old vac was more of a 'make-the-house-smell-funny-scare-the-cats-machine' so it seemed like this might be the time for an upgrade to something that might actually contribute to the cleanliness of my floors. i decided to get one with a clear canister where i might see the evidence of the filth I'm removing and boy oh boy did i make the right call on that.
I have since spent my time ignoring my dishes and pushing my clutter into a pile just to enjoy the shocking satisfaction of how much dirt i can collect from so little a space. In truth i should be ashamed of myself for letting it get to the point where a fist sized collection of pet hair, my hair, dust, and general debris can be pulled up from such a small patch of carpet, but I'm not. I find myself oddly proud...

that is...

until i was invited into my neighbors apartment. i share a wall with the woman in c-1, and when tonight she invited me in for a beer and apologised for the mess, i realized that for two days of diligent work on my place, i would still never EVER feel i could invite her into my place without what would probably amount to a week of work on this and even then i would still be apologising for the mess...

being an adult is hard...

maybe i wont do it after all..

please jesus, i take back what i said in 5th grade, i dont want my period anymore... but id like to keep the breasts...

I was born in august of 1986. my parents, Pat, and Nancy, were all set to name me Stella, until, soon before my birth, my Aunt Glo called up my mother and asked "How's Amanda doing?" I have always suspected that had my mother named me Stella my personality would have developed differently, I imagine i would be vastly more aggressive (if you can imagine that) and perhaps a better singer... don't ask me why, its just the feeling i get.. As it was my parents called me Amanda, which, as it happened, was the third most popular name in the United States that year, thus making me one of four 'Amanda's in my elementary school classes. The Amanda's and I spent each year from grade 2 til grade 5 together.

Children of this age group rarely base their friendships on much beyond who lives near them or who has blond hair or who likes Michael Jackson. as for us, I and the other Amanda's based our friendship on our shared name.

One day in the 5th grade the adults decided it was time for a school administered version of "the talk" and the boys were taken to one room and the girls another, and we were all shown films and shown diagrams that warned us that soon our bodies would be changing and our hormones would kick in and ruin everything that was once simple. i can't say what the boys were told, but based on some of the clueless comments and confused sexual metaphors i heard in later years i cant imagine it was very much beyond instruction to wear deodorant. It is clear even now that even that little bit did not stick for far too many of them...

For the girls, we were given deodorant, and ... *maxi pads* ... we were told that soon we would get our periods and that around the same time we would gain weight on our hips and most importantly we would be getting *breasts* . We couldn't wait for those breasts! The giddy joy of the possibilities of womanhood was almost too much to bear...
That day at recess the Amanda's and I all met under the tree at the edge of the playground to discuss what we had been told. To my delight we were all on the same page and it wasn't long before we agreed we should hold hands and pray to Jesus to give us our periods so we could have our breasts. We believed of course, that the period was the key to the breasts...

years later, i can report, that we all got our periods, but I am the only one who got breasts, and I am the only one who has lost Jesus. who needs him now that i have my fantastic breasts? although i could really do without this stupid period....

writers block

i know i promised a sheep story but im havin a bit of trouble putting it together...

things however are looking up now, and i think it wont be long til i have something worthy of a post to show you..

imaginary friend...

heartbreak lends itself well to the spending of long hours listening to songs about heartbreak as one drifts through the painful time it takes to remember yourself, by yourself, and happy. there are many albums perfectly suited for this particular kind of self torture as when one feels this way it is as if every song was written just for you. but i, when i have decided to wade through misery (or joy for that matter) listen to audio books... and lately David sedaris is my author (and reader) of choice. his work tends to consist mostly of stories about his own life told from a first person perspective... so when spending long hours wondering through ones own pain, listening to the funny yet slightly melancholy stories of the same man, it can sometimes lead one to feel as if the stories really are being told directly to you. like a conversation with a friend who is consistently more interesting than i am, so i listen, content to enjoy his company keeping the mundane details of my day to day to myself. this feeling is comforting for the most part, but has recently left me with the urge, when i need to vent... to call... David..Sedaris.. whom of course i don't know, and whom i do know isn't really speaking to me. i know this... but he has become what is essentially a grown up version of an imaginary friend. the only difference is he is not imaginary, except in so far as i feel as if he is my friend...

bloody mary (drinks and ghosts)

those who know me are already well aware that the bloody Mary is my favorite drink by far, (though technically i like bloody caesars, the difference being i use clamato instead of tomato juice); on occasion when i have run out of vodka i have tried variations like the bloody geisha, with sake (not recommended) or the ruddy Mary, with gin (lovely).
tonight, feeling a bit glum and preparing for a lovely bubble bath, i got ready to prepare myself my favorite cheer-me-up beverage. however after realizing i had only one drinks worth of vodka left in my freezer i decided i would wikipedia some other variations to avoid having to take a long pathetic walk through the rain in my pajamas to the liquor store (thus proving to myself that have become a p.j.s in public desperate total degenerate. yeah i could put on pants, but, fuck you public... who are you to judge me "flatbush liquors"? nobody.) anyway already having in my cabinet Jameson and in my fridge beer i tried the bloody molly, with whiskey, which was gross but may have been better if i weren't using clamato... and then i tried the red eye, which is half beer and half clamato.. neither really did it for me but at least the red eye was sorta good even though it didn't compare to the michelada which is a corona or other Mexican beer with hot sauce, a bit of tomato, pepper, and a lime and salt (one of the best hangover cures i can think of and delicious too boot)....

anyway, i gave up on that and decided to go with a hot chocolate with coffee liquor and cayenne pepper. while i was on wikipedia, i checked out the disambiguation page for bloody Mary and suddenly was rocketed back in time to the sleepovers of my adolescence. bloody Mary the creepy little story girls tell each other at sleep overs has always gotten under my skin. having not thought about it in years, suddenly i was recalling my fear, and then... reliving it. bloody Mary is said to have gone crazy and murdered her children, chopping them up into pieces, and the way i heard it she hated her eldest daughter for her pretty face and so slashed it up before she killed her... now, if one goes alone into a dark room with a mirror and repeats her name three times, bloody Mary will appear in the mirror and scratch your face off and kill you... a girl named Stephanie told me that, and ill be honest, I've never done it. i recall in middle school lying at a sleepover, after being sent in to a bathroom alone to test the ritual and lying, claiming i wasn't afraid, and that when i did it, i wasn't surprised when she didn't show.. so Stephanie, here's the truth: i was scared, i didn't do it, I've never done it, i get nervous having even typed her name so many times, even reading it... and I'm still not gonna do it, and no one can make me.