Yesterday, I was looking at my website referrers, as you do when you have no life to speak of, and I discovered that someone had found this here blawg after Googling the phrase, “Amber McNaught has red hair”. Seriously. So, who was it? Was it you? How about you? Because honestly, I think that’s one of the strangest “full name” searches I’ve had yet. I mean, if it had been a question, then it would’ve made a bit more sense. “Has Amber McNaught got red hair” I could’ve understood. Sort of. After all, I get LOADS of searches every month for the phrase “Has Amber only got one leg?” and it would be just a variation on that, wouldn’t it? (Just FYI, by the way, I have the full compliment of legs. Really.) But the bland statement “Amber McNaught has red hair” seems to suggest that the person doing the Googling was already familiar with the colour of my hair, and was using it as a means to, I don’t know, track me down and kill me, maybe? Which is… weird.
Anyway, this got me thinking. ”There must be an easier way for these poor stalkers to find me than typing random search terms into Google”, I thought. Because I am all heart. And then, as I was wasting time on Facebook this morning when I should’ve been working, I discovered that, lo! There is a way! There is a Blog Nertwork page, which the people who read your blog can all join, and then I will know who you all are and we can be like a big, happy internet family. Doesn’t that sound nice?
So, yes, you should all go and do that now. You can do it here. Now. There will be cookies for those who do.* Oh, and if you read The Fashion Police, you can also join its group here.
* Totally lying about the cookies, by the way.
Tagged facebook, weird google searches
So, yesterday I went to the hairdresser and had a big ol’ chunk cut off my hair.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those entries, where I end up screaming and crying that OMG, it’s SO UNFAIR, and I HATE MY LIFE. No, this is actually a good hairdressing story – or as good as a hairdressing story can get for me considering I’m still growing out a MULLET, obviously.
Anyway, as you know, after my last brush with hairdressing hell, I had sworn to never let a pair of scissors near my head again, and to just let it grow until it got so long I had to employ a team of small children to walk behind me at all times, carrying it. I believe the name “Rapunzel” was mentioned. And the thing is, I totally intended to stick to this plan, but a few weeks ago I suddenly realised the plan was fatally flawed, because while it is true that the front part of my hair has, indeed, been growing, SO HAS THE BACK. At the same speed. So if I just let it grow I would basically never be free of the Mullet. I’d just have a super-long mullet instead. Yeah.
Gradually, then, the unwelcome truth became evident: if I ever wanted to hold my head up in public again, I would have to just bite the bullet and submit to having large chunks cut off the back of my hair every few weeks, so that eventually the front and back would meet in the middle, so to speak, and I would have “normal” hair again. Maybe.
Well, for the last few weeks, each day I have faced an almighty battle not to just pick up a pair of scissors and hack it all off myself. It is THAT BAD. And yesterday morning I woke up, looked in the mirror and realised that I could not tolerate it ONE DAY LONGER, and that if I couldn’t get it cut right that very day, I would be doing it myself. Given that I am the clumsiest woman alive, the second option didn’t sound good even to me, and so it was that I found myself in the car and driving towards the only salon I knew might be able to squeeze me in on a Saturday afternoon, repeating the mantra, “I will not ask for a fringe, I will NOT ask for a fringe” over and over again. In fact, I repeated that mantra so many times I’m actually amazed I didn’t just walk into the salon and shout “NO FRINGE!” at them.
I didn’t, though. And they told me, yes, they could fit me in, so, with fast-beating heart, I sat myself down with the stylist and told her the tale of The Mullet, after which she moved in for a closer look at the offending hair.
“OH MY GOD!” shouted the stylist, jumping back as if stung. “This is… this is a MESS!”
Now, I have to admit, I felt ever so slightly smug about this reaction. The thing is, no one has ever really believed me about how bad this haircut was. For the past two months, I’ve mostly tied it back, cunningly trying to disguise the fact that I now looked a lot like Billy Ray Cyrus, when viewed in a certain light. And, you know, there is the fact that I’m a known drama queen, and I just know most people have listened to my tale of woe and thought, “yeah right, whatever. Bet it looks exactly the same.” But it was NOT the same. And this New Stylist had instantly seen it for what it was.
“There’s a really big difference between the length at the front and the length at the back,” she said, staring at the hair as if it might bite her. “It’s almost like…”
“Like a mullet,” I said. “Yes, I know: you can say it.”
“Yeah,” said the hairdresser, warming to her theme, “But the thing is, I bet even YOU don’t realise how bad this is. I mean, you can’t see the back of your head. Seriously, YOU SHOULD SEE THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD!”
I just nodded at this, as if I hadn’t spent hours in the bathroom over the past few weeks, holding up my little Sephora mirror to try and view the back of my head. And then weeping. And drinking.
“I mean, I’d have hated to have seen this when it was first done,” continued the stylist, who was actually starting to enjoy herself just a little bit too much at this point, really. ”That must’ve looked TERRIBLE.”
Then she tried to persuade me to let her cut it to shoulder length. “It won’t fix it,” she said, “But it’ll make it look less like a … well, you know.”
Readers, I held firm. I know she was right, but I was nervous enough about being back in The Chair (“You must be terrified!” said the hairdresser cheerfully as she started snipping. “I would be!”) without adding the pressure of a Dramatic Change into the mix. So we compromised, and she cut it to just a couple of inches under my shoulders. This actually still feels like a Dramatic Change to me (when I brush it I get that horrible sinking feeling when the brush suddenly encounters air and I’m all, “OMG WHERE IS MY HAIR?!”), but I realised a long time ago that when you have long hair, no one ever notices the fact that you suddenly have four inches less of it than you used to. This theory was proven last night when we went to visit my parents and neither of them noticed, even when I swished my head around ostentatiously. They just thought I was having a fit or something.
Anyway, it’s still going to take months to grow out the mullet completely, but the point is, I have at last had a haircut that didn’t make me cry afterwards, and I think this could be a turning point in the career of my hair. I feel like maybe the ancient curse has been broken, and there is new hope that the mullet may one day be defeated. And I was going to blow-dry it and style it all nice, then get Terry to take a picture of it, but then I thought, “Why do that when I can just sit around on my ass letting it dry naturally and get all frizzy first?” So I did. Then I remembered that when Terry takes photos of me, they generally end up looking something like this:
 windy! He took this while we were out walking the dog today. “Take a picture of my hair,” I said. “Try not to make me look like a lunatic,” I said. Gah. So it looks like this is about as good as it’s going to get in terms of photos of The Hair:
There were others, but I swear to God, I had my eyes closed and was frowning in every. single. one. So, um, yeah.
Maybe I’ll ask for a fringe next time?*
(*joking!)
Tagged hair, haircut, red hair, redhead
Last night, as I waited for Terry to finish doing the grocery shopping online (they only charged us £5 for last week’s shop after the whole non-delivery debacle, by the way – result!) and make me dinner, it occurred to me that:
a) I am WAY spoiled
b) The whole “being a wife” thing? I totally suck at it sometimes. Really.
You see, although I like to obsess endlessly over the state of the floors, empty Terry’s wastepaper basket as soon as it has ONE PIECE OF PAPER in it (or as soon as Rubin pees in it, whichever comes first), and generally am a bit of an asshole about neatness, I am totally domestically challenged. As in, there are some things I just CANNOT DO, no matter how hard I try. For instance:
1. Cooking
Can’t. Won’t. Whatever. Actually, I’m sure I could probably cook if I really wanted to, but it’s just that I… don’t want to. It bores me. Rigid. My mum has a saying about this. The saying is: ”why slave over a hot stove when there are books to read?” This more or less sums it up for me. If it takes more time to prepare it and clean up after it than it does to actually eat it, I just don’t want to know. Also: toast is just fine as a main meal! Really! And so it is that I have managed to reach… the age I am… without ever having cooked more than a handful of “proper” meals in my life. And most of them ended up in the dog, to be honest. Moving on…
2. Cleaning glass
As far as I’m concerned, the art of cleaning glass is one of the great mysteries of the universe. And trust, me, I’ve tried. I’ve Googled it. I’ve done the whole “newspaper and vinegar” thing. I’ve tried every product on the market. My mother has given me glass-cleaning lessons. Terry has given me glass-cleaning lessons. Hell, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Rubin was able to give me glass-cleaning lessons, because let’s face it: no one could do this worse than me. Any piece of glass I try to clean ends up looking much, much worse than it did when I started. I have this knack of just spreading the dust around and making a big o’ smeary mess. No, I have no idea how I do it. But I do know that living in a house with lots of mirrors, a glass shower-screen, mirrored wardrobe doors (although when Terry broke three of them I was secretly pleased. And I made him replace them with non-glass doors.), a glass table, glass panelled doors and, er, windows, really takes its toll…
3. Putting the duvet into the duvet bag
HOW?! How is this to be done? And again, I have Googled it! I have had lessons from people who actually know how to do it! And yet, every time I try, I end up inside the duvet bag, howling with rage. When I was in university, in halls, they used to make us change our duvet covers every couple of days, and my friend Stephanie used to have to come and do mine for me. Now Terry has to do it. Because I suck, clearly.
4. Cleaning up vomit
Now, clearly this is something a lot of people dislike, but a couple of weeks ago Rubin ate something he found out on his walk (some of the local Banditos throw stuff out for the birds, like bacon sandwiches and mouldy pizzas and stuff. Which is stupid, because seriously, how often do you see birds calling out for a pizza delivery?) and threw up a few times. And every single time, even although I was worried about him, I had to get up and run from the room instantly, gagging all the way, and leaving Terry to clean up the mess. I know this isn’t really a “domestic” thing as such, but it is one of the many reasons I know not having children is the right decision for me…
In my defence, though, I am really good at ironing.
How about you? Domestically challenged or domestic goddess?
Tagged cleaning, house, Terry
So, for the past couple of years, Terry and I have been doing our grocery shopping online, and having it delivered. Because we are lazy, basically. And actually, I say, “Terry and I”, but really, Terry does ALL of it by himself. That’s how lazy I am, and why, to this day, my parents thank their lucky stars each night that they somehow managed to pay him enough to take me of their hands.
Anyway, we get the shopping delivered, and this not only helps us in our quest to never leave the house, ever, it also helps us avoid The Others, who are always at their absolute worst at the supermarket, indulging in their usual behaviour of stopping randomly in the middle of aisles without warning, wielding screaming children like weapons, ramming shopping carts into the back of your legs, that sort of thing. Basically, the supermarket is like the seventh circle of hell to us, and that’s why we get the shopping delivered. That and the fact that I have that rare, incurable condition that forces me to buy a new pair of shoes or item of clothing every time I go near an actual shop. But I digress.
For most of the time we’ve been having the shopping delivered, we’ve been having it delivered by Asda. (Asda being Wal*Mart, for the benefit of those of you in the States) We’ve had a few brief flirtations with Tesco, but it’s just never really worked out with them for various reasons that are too boring to go into here. Yes, even more boring than an entire blog entry about grocery shopping. Look, I don’t get out much, OK?
For the most part, Asda have been OK at delivering our shopping. Sure, they’ve messed up. There was that time they brought us someone else’s shopping, and gave someone else most of our shopping, for instance. There was that other time they… did exactly the same thing. There have been times when they’ve forgotten things, brought things we didn’t order (if anyone needs a pack of baby wipes and some allergy tablets, by the way, we got them in stock. We’re keeping the 12 pack of quilted loo roll though. Swanky!), and just basically sucked, to be honest, but we have kept with them because, well, it’s better the devil you know, sometimes, and also because they do a really nice turkey and stuffing sandwich filler that I really like.
This month, though, Asda randomly decided to start sucking big time. They mostly did this by just not bothering to turn up when they said they would, leaving us starving to death and gnawing the furniture in hunger until they finally rolled up. Then on Friday? They just didn’t turn up at all. AT ALL, people. Of course, Terry called them. They apologised and said they’d bring us our shopping on Saturday afternoon instead. Then they just didn’t bother with that, either. So Terry called them again. “Sunday!” said Asda. “We will bring your shopping on Sunday! Until then, we will stick it in the freezer and hope it doesn’t reach its sell-by date in the meantime!” Actually, they didn’t say that last bit, but that IS what they did – we could tell by the way all the food was FREEZING COLD, and about to go out of date.
Not that we got the food when they said we would, mind you. Oh, they did turn up that time, which was very nice of them. But they only brought half our shopping with them. The rest, they said, would be right along – in fact, was leaving the store on a van RIGHT THAT SECOND! The store is a 20 minute drive from our house. (Told you we were lazy). It took them two and a half hours, and OK, they did send us a huge box of Quality Street by way of apology, but it was too late because by then I’d eaten the dog. Sorry, Rubin.
Yes, you’re right, we should totally just have jumped in the car and gone and picked up the shopping ourselves, only we couldn’t because a) lazy! b) we’d already paid for it, and it was on a van in some unspecified location and c) still lazy! So, basically, our ENTIRE WEEKEND was spent sitting around the house waiting for our time-saving online grocery delivery. Top tip: NEVER DO THAT. Try Tesco. Because even if they don’t have the turkey stuffing sandwich filler, they can’t possibly suck that hard, can they?
Tagged Rants, Things I Bought
The phone rings. I happen to be standing next to it at the time and Terry is downstairs, so I have no option but to answer the stupid ringy thing (See Phones, Amber’s Irrational Hatred Of for more info on this). I glare at it it for a couple of seconds, hoping it will somehow sense my hatred and stop ringing, but of course this doesn’t happen, so I heave a heavy sigh and pick it up.
Only to be greeted by a freaking ROBOT.
GOD. I hate this. Why are recorded messages allowed to call me in my home? Why is this not illegal? (Actually, come to think of it: is this illegal? And if so, what happens to the robot-voices when they’re caught? Is there some kind of Robot Jail they all go to? What if there was a mass breakout from the Robot Jail? WHAT IF, people? See, now I really wish I hadn’t set my imagination off down this track. Anyway…)
Now, the robot that calls us most frequently is a Stepford-sounding American woman who calls us up regularly and says, “CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve just won a… ” And actually, I have no idea what it is we’re supposed to have won because these days she only ever gets as far as “CONGRA….” before it’s a case of handset: meet cradle!
(Yes, we are signed up for the TPS. No, it does not stop The Robots. Nothing stops The Robots.)
Anyway, this time it wasn’t the Congratulating Woman. This time it was a rather gravelly-voiced Robot Voice who informed me that she was the BT Text Messaging Service, and that someone had sent a text message to my land line. A text message that I would get to hear simply by pressing “1″.
Now, we all know that you never, ever obey the commands of a Robot Voice, especially when you’re 99.8% sure it’s some kind of scam, don’t we? So I’m sure you can all guess what I did, can’t you?
I pressed “1″. No, I have no idea why. I mean, I don’t even like text messages. They confuse and panic me, making me feel like a pensioner as I am forced to take 30 minutes at a time away from my Important Work in order to battle with the predictive texting on my phone to produce a message that invariably says something like, “Ai! Aku dujk, aber!” But I digress.
I pressed “1″. And for my trouble, I got yet another robotic voice who informed me that the call had cost 12p (!), and that this amount could easily feed a small child in Afghanistan for a week. (Which kinda begged the question, why did they not just send the 12p to a small child in Afghanistan instead of using it to phone-spam me? Or did it cost me 12p? So many questions… Well, two.) And that I should now press another button to forward the robotic message on to seven of my friends (Why seven, I wonder? Lucky number, perhaps?) or else the small child in Afghanistan? Would DIE.
Eeek!
The upshot of all of this? I have inadvertently caused the death of a small child in Afghanistan. So sorry. SO going to hell. SO not answering the phone EVER again, lest I kill someone else without meaning to.
Let this be a lesson to you all, folks. Telephones = danger. Especially if you’re a small child in Afghanistan…
 Rubin is a dog with a blog. This post was written by him…
I had been stalking the water bottle for some time. Watching. Waiting. Every time she put it down, I’d be there. I learned its routines, studied its weaknesses. I knew it would take time, but I had time. And so I waited. I, the hunter; it, the totally hunted. I knew the time would come when I would pounce on that water bottle and take it back to my lair, where I would proceed to tear it apart in the most brutal way possible.
Today was that day. I saw my opportunity, and I took it:
Then I runned away and hid:
Don’t think Amber was very pleased, somehow. But still, you know what they say: you can please some of the people some of the time, and the rest are idiots, who shoulda kept a closer watch on their water bottles already.
Smell yas,
RUBIN
This morning I was wandering around the house, obsessively cleaning the floors, as you do, when my gaze drifted over to Rubin’s lair, which is where he drags the many things he has killed throughout the day, and I noticed THIS:
Now, quite apart from the fact that the Pink Hippo is quite clearly DRUNK AS A SKUNK (and in the morning, too! We don’t generally start drinking until at least lunchtime in this house, let me tell you…) THAT IS MY WATER BOTTLE. For the gym. Or at least, it was my water bottle, because I’m sure as hell not going to be drinking from it now:
 The Damage I loved that water bottle. It was the best damn water bottle a girl ever had. Not only was it my BFF at the gym, but it was also brilliant for keeping next to my bed at night, on account of the little spout thingy, which meant that if I was thirsty during the night, I didn’t even have to raise my head off the pillow to take a drink. It was such a wonderful aid to laziness, and I will miss it. Well, until tomorrow, obviously, when I will buy a new one and forget all about it.
The thing is, though: I can’t be 100% certain, but I’m pretty sure the last time I saw the water bottle, it was on the kitchen counter. HOW DID HE DO IT?
However he did it, he’s grounded for the rest of the day. Don’t worry: he knows he done wrong. That’s why he went and hid under my chair as soon as he saw me notice the remains of the bottle:
P.S. His version of events here…
P.P.S – Just to add, he didn’t actually get in trouble because he wasn’t caught in the act, and it was my own fault for leaving it where he could get it – he was just hiding because he knew he shouldn’t have done it!
Remember Skribit? It’s that little widget that lives in the top right sidebar and allows you to ask me questions to answer here on the blog. And here’s the first of them! You asked:
What are the best and worst things about blogging for a living?
I’m going to give you the bad news first. When I think about the downside of blogging for a living, the first thing that springs to mind is the sheerrelentlessness of it. I work much harder and longer hours as a pro-blogger than I ever did in a “regular” job – as an example, I’m writing this at 9:30pm, and sometimes I feel like I never stop. As soon as one day’s posts are written, I’m busy thinking up posts for the next day, queuing up articles to cover holidays, answering emails, trying to keep up with RSS feeds, analysing stats, you name it. Holidays are almost impossible, because I’m still currently a one-woman band. Weekends are a thing of the past. Every day I have to force myself to be creative, even if creative is the last thing I feel like, and I also have to be all things to all people: writer, editor, marketer, advertising executive, saleswoman, search engine optimisation expert, cleaner… The list goes on.
Then there are the blog trolls.
I’ve written about this before, but abuse on the internet is one of the hardest things about blogging for a living, and it’s the thing I struggle most to deal with. I am not naturally a thick-skinned person. I am not good at just ignoring the abuse, or laughing it off, and I have to admit that sometimes I’ve been deeply hurt, angered or offended by the things people have said to me online.
I’ve been told I deserved to be shot because I said I liked a certain handbag. Electric shock therapy was suggested because of a pair of shoes I’d admired. The things I don’t like cause even more abuse to come flying my way: just last week, in fact, I was called a “f*****g idiot” because I admitted I’d never wear a see-through dress in public. Oh, the controversy!
When you blog for a living, you open yourself up to criticism, of course, and when the criticism comes (and it WILL come, no matter how carefully you try to avoid it), it is swift and vicious. If you make a typo in a blog post, for instance, you will know about it within minutes – and you’ll know about it because someone will react as if you just admitted to drinking the blood of kittens.
All of this comes with the territory, but it’s hard to deal with, especially at first, when you’re not used to it. As time has gone by, I’ve gotten a little better at dealing with abuse. I have a pretty low opinion of the people who get their kicks out of abusing random strangers on the internet, and that helps me take their opinions with the large pinch of salt they deserve, but I still spend a lot of my time deleting comments, reading abuse and questioning whether the people leaving the abuse actually have a point. A big downside for me, but not enough of one to make me want to stop blogging obviously. which brings me on to the good points about blogging for a living…
I’ve talked about these to some extent before, but for me the biggest positive is the sheer freedom blogging for a living gives me. Even after a couple of years of pro-blogging, and a few more of working for myself as a freelance writer, sometimes the freedom still makes me feel giddy. At the moment, I have my days planned out exactly the way I want them. As I mentioned above, I work much harder and longer than I did before, but I do it on my terms. For instance, I’m not a morning person, so my workload is organised so that I effectively have the mornings off (not that I’m relaxing, mind you – I use them to go to the gym and run errands, mostly), and then work the rest of the day.
I work with my husband and dog beside me.
I spend my days looking at clothes and shoes on the internet and then writing about them.
I spend other parts of my days trying out new beauty products and then writing about them.
In other words, I spend my days doing the things I would be doing anyway – and I get paid for it. I don’t think it gets much better than that…
Got a question about freelance writing or blogging? Add it to the Skribit box in the top right hand corner of the site!
There’s a full moon tonight. Can you tell? I can. I can always tell, though, and I don’t even need the little “moon” symbol in my diary. No, I can tell when there’s a full moon because of the absolute 100% batshit craziness that goes down on my blogs at around this time every month. (Note: not this one, though! The people who comment on this blog are all lovely and totally non-crazy! Please don’t shout at me!)
Seriously, this happens without fail every month, and mostly involves the comments section over at The Fashion Police (Which was two years old today, by the way. I almost didn’t post about that over there because after the comments I’ve been getting lately, I was pretty sure some bright spark would use it as an excuse to comment saying, “Oh, the blog’s two today? That’s two whole years of SUCK, bitch!” or something. Because really, nothing would surprise me now. Not when the moon is full, anyway.) although the other blogs attract their fair share of Crazies too.
Now, fair enough, The Fashion Police is a blog which gives and solicits opinions on clothes, so it’s always going to be a little bit controversial. In so far as clothes can actually be controversial, that is. I mean, seriously: I enjoy fashion enough to write about it for a living, but jeez, they’re just clothes, folks. That you wear. Does it really matter so much if someone doesn’t share your exact opinion on them? Well, apparently it does. On Friday? I was called a “douchebag” in my comments section, just because I said I liked a certain hat. A HAT, people. That’s so messed up it’s almost beyond comprehension to me. I mean, what must it be like to get so angry over the fact that some random stranger on the Internet likes a freakin’ HAT that you find yourself verbally amusing them? Honestly, there are people out there killing puppies and torturing kittens, and yet I’m a douchebag because I like a HAT? For real? What must these people be like when they read something really upsetting? And how has their stupidity not killed them yet?
(Weirdly, it’s always the things I like that get the most abuse. I don’t really know why. I can say I hate a certain item and that’ll be fine, but as soon as I say I like something I get people telling me I should be shot in the head and calling me a “f&*^%&g bitch”. And those are example of real comments, by the way…)
This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. All weekend I’ve been dealing with this kind of crap. And sure, the site is getting around 10,000 visitors per day, so there’s always a good chance that at least some of them are going to be assholes, but it’s the Full Moon Effect that makes it so hard to deal with, because, for the most part, everything is fine. People are nice. They’re polite. Even when they disagree with me, they do it in a reasonable, measured kind of way. All month, things coast along just fine, and then suddenly, WHAM! Full Moon Fever! Suddenly every second comment is abuse. Suddenly everyone’s an idiot. Suddenly I’m spending so much time deleting comments and wondering if I actually DO deserve to die because I said I liked a certain dress that I don’t have time to actually write. And even although I know the wave of awfulness will pass, and tomorrow things will (hopefully) be back to normal… it’s hard. It hurts. It really puts a downer on things, and makes me want to crawl back into bed until sanity is restored once more. Oh, the humanity!
I don’t think there can be many jobs in the world which involve opening yourself up to such hatred and abuse every day. Other than call centres, obviously. (I speak as the voice of experience here, by the way: I used to work in a call centre, and we could always tell when there was a full moon there, too, because that’s what people would start threatening to kill us, rather than just threatening to break our legs. Again, not making this up…) Sadly, there is no intelligence test people must pass to be able to use the Internet, which means that growing a thick skin is one of the main requirements of blogging for a living. And I’m not quite there, yet. Oh, my skin is a helluva lot thicker than it used to be – today I was able to just laugh off the email from the person who said he “wouldn’t be able to live with himself” without ranting in all lowercase for a few hundred words, and to roll my eyes at the fellow blogger who commented on Dollface (a beauty blog, let me remind you) to tell me that I shouldn’t be writing about hairstyles and should be focusing on “actual news” instead, namely dresses and celebrity anorexia rumours. (Er, yeah, because that’s totally “actual news”. And it’s not AT ALL unfair to criticize a beauty blog for not being a fashion/celebrity gossip blog, is it now? )
So my skin is getting thicker, but it’s not quite thick enough, and sometimes, when there’s a full moon, it feels very thin indeed. Which is why, just this once, I felt the need to stamp my little feet and have a bit of a rant. Sorry. I’ll stop now.
I still get to have the last laugh, though because the sites are growing all the time, and yesterday was our best day ever, which means that I get to keep on working from my spare room, and earning a living from looking at pictures of shoes on the Internet. Not bad for a complete freaking douchebag, no?
Tagged OMG internet drama!
This morning I kicked off the day the way I meant to go on – by crawling all the way inside our blue recycling bin, to retrieve the letter I had intended to post in the usual fashion (in a post box) but had, instead, just tossed merrily in the trash, along with the handful of other rubbish I happened to be carrying at the time:
 A load of old rubbish (I had to crawl allthe way in. It may be a bin for paper and stuff, but it still sucked, let me tell you. Also: those are my spechul dog-walking shoes, by the way. Please don’t judge me too harshly)
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re all, “FAKE! FAKRZ! It’s totally fake, because why would she just happen to have someone with a camera with her when she crawled inside the trash? YOU SUCK. ” You are wrong, though. Well, sort of: I mean, I do suck, but not in the “taking fake photos way” you’re thinking. The photo, you see, was taken by Terry, and we had a camera with us as we headed out to walk the dog this morning so I could take a picture of this:
 Bandit Country Yup, this is where we’re livin’ folks: BANDIT COUNTRY. And you thought all of those “In the Ghetto” posts were just a joke, didn’t you? This bridge marks the entrance to our part of town – a.k.a. “BANDIT COUNTRY” – which I guess makes Terry and I… BANDITS. Yes, bandits.*
(The “cool” thing to do in Bandit Country, by the way, is to hang out underneath that bridge, listening to tinny music from one of those crappy MP3 payers that have speakers (And that are BANNED under my rule.) while rocking back and forth in the foetal position. There ain’t no party like a bandit party, that’s for sure!)
Other things spotted this morning here in Bandit Country:
Exhibit A: A huge heap o’rubbish:
 rubbish: heap o Interestingly, this rubbish wasn’t located particularly close to any houses, but was in the “forest”, which means that someone must have gone to quite a bit of trouble to dump it there. WHY? Why do people do stuff like this? Do they not realise that the council will come and collect this stuff from your door if you just place it inside your rubbish bin? Why has no one shot them yet?
Exhibit B: Empty can of ‘White Star’
 White Star, can of I have no idea what type of alcohol “White Star” actually is, but I’m guessing either cider or cheap lager. We spotted five of these cans in the space of about two minutes, though. Looks like someone was thirsty!
Exhibit C: Half naked man
Now, I didn’t get a photo of this unfortunately – or “fortunately”, depending on your point of view – and I actually saw the half-naked man on Monday, anyway. You see, on Monday, it stopped raining for a couple of hours. You probably heard about it on the news or something. During this brief dry spell, the sun came out, and it was briefly what you could call “fairly warm-ish”. It was still Scotland, though, and it was still September, so when I say “warm” I mean “well, it wasn’t freezing“.
Try telling that to the half-naked man, though, who was hanging out with his (fully clothed) friends outside the Ghetto Superstore (another Bandit Country pastime), wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and his shoes. His chest and legs were bare (when I first noticed him, he was standing behind some shrubs and was only visible from the waist up, so I thought he was actually COMPLETELY naked. Seriously, nothing would surprise me any more.) and he didn’t appear to be carrying a sweater or jacket of any kind, so I can only assume he had actually left the house (un)dressed like that. Yeah.
Actually, that’s not even particularly unusual around here. I think the thing about Scottish people is that we’re just so unused to sunshine and warmth (because we don’t get much of either) that we have come to believe the two to be inseparable. And so it is that even if there’s frost on the ground in December, if the sun is shining you will see Scottish people out baring their pale blue skin to the elements and trying to walk nonchalantly along in nothing but jeans and a thin t-shirt, accessorised with armfuls of goosebumps and a frozen expression. Coats are, like, seriously uncool around here. If you want to fit in round Bandit Country way, you freeze your ass off and like it. Honestly, coats are for the pansies over in Oultlaw Land, on the other side of the bridge.
We are SO moving, first chance we get.
*Rubin, on the other hand, has pretty much always been a bandit. And proud to be one…
|
|
|
