Well, folks, last night, as I’m sure you know, was the night of The Oscars, which means I’ve been up all night drinking coffee and playing celebrity blogging monkey over at The Fashion Police, so I’m now feeling ever so-slightly hysterical. I’m going to go and sleep for the rest of the week (I really don’t deal well with all-nighters. It throws my schedule out for DAYS. At university, I was never one of those students who would sit up all night before exams, studying. I’d just go to bed early and accept I would probably fail. That’s why I’m not a brain surgeon by now. Well, that and the fact that my degree was in English Literature.) but I didn’t want to leave you totally without posts to read this week, because then you would all unsubscribe immediately and never darken my blog again, and I’d have to get a real job, possibly down a mine, or sweeping chimneys, or something like that. So here is a photo of a bottle of sauce:
 Sauce, bottle of Weren’t expecting THAT, were you? And now you’re all, “WHUT? She thinks a blurry iPhone photo depicting a bottle of sauce is going to stop us unsubscribing? Well she is wrong, because I am unsubscribing rightthisverysecond. Sauce, indeed!”) And some of you, who don’t live in the UK, are probably all, “BROWN SAUCE? Is this some quaint little thing we can look down upon the Brits for, like Marmite and Hugh Grant?” And, well, you can if you want to, but it’s more or less the same as steak sauce. Only we have steak sauce too, so now I’m confused as well. Did I mention I’ve had quite a lot of coffee?
Anyway, the reason I’m showing you this bottle of sauce is because of the serving suggestion, which Terry pointed out to me last week:
 Don't use the sauce Do you notice anything that’s missing from this photo, readers? Yes, the BROWN SAUCE is missing. So, basically, their “serving suggestion” is “Don’t use this product! Just place three pieces of bacon on a slice of bread! It’ll be ace! But don’t add the sauce, whatever you do!” I think that’s even more inspired than the usual “put it on a plate” suggestions you tend to see on packaging, don’t you?
After writing this, I find myself quite fancying a bacon sandwich. Don’t worry, I won’t be adding any brown sauce to it…
Tagged serving suggestion
Remember the time someone impersonated me on a forum?
Or the time someone impersonated me on a social network?
(Let’s not even mention all those times I’ve popped up modelling shoes and makeup on other people’s eBay accounts. Whoops, just did!)
Can you even BELIEVE that would happen again, readers? Because I didn’t. I figured I’d already been impersonated more than most people are in a lifetime, so my run of bad luck was surely over. But no. Because this morning, one of my readers (thanks, Anna!) emailed me to tell me about this blog:
“What are we supposed to be looking at here?” you’re wondering. I mean, it’s the blog of someone called Libby, not Amber. So what’s the big deal? Well, just scroll down the sidebar, and…
Oh, damn, my secret’s out. All this time I’ve been letting you all call me “Amber” and claiming to be a “writer” of sorts. But the gig’s up, folks: actually my name is Libby – sorry, “libby” – and I’m just a regular girl who doesn’t know how to use capital letters or apostrophes!
See that “slideshow”? If you click it, it changes to another photo:
Aaaand, it’s also me! And obviously I am JUST THRILLED to be associated with the complete inability to spell even basic words like “friends”, because that’ll be REALLY good for my professional reputation! Just wait until you see “my” first post!
Now, I know many of you will think it’s mean of me to be making fun of this blog, but to be honest, when you steal my photos and try to pass them off as your own, all bets are off. Because when you place photos of me next to this inane text speak, (The words, “my name is libby” directly underneath two photos of me obviously creates the impression that I’m the one writing the blog) you’re making me look like an illiterate. And I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself, thanks.
So I left “myself” a comment:
Somehow I very much doubt it’ll be approved…
P.S. Just to address the advice I always get when I post about these issues: yes, I watermark my images – or at least, I have done so ever since the first time this happened. Unfortunately it doesn’t stop people doing this because, as you can see, one of “Libby’s” photos is a close-crop of my face and the other was a banner on this site: I’d have to place the watermark over my face to stop people being able to crop it out. And no, right-click disable doesn’t make the slightest difference either: it can be worked around in two seconds with “print screen” or the “scissors” tool in Windows 7.
Tagged impostor amber
No matter how many times people steal my photos and try to pass them off as their own, it never fails to surpsize me.
Yes, folks, those are my legs. And that’s not my eBay auction. Gah.
One of my readers left a comment on Shoeperwoman (where this photo was originally published) yesterday, to let me know that my legs were on eBay. Sure enough, there I am, helping someone sell a pair of size 7 used shoes. Of course, nowhere on her auction does this seller indicate that the shoes pictured (she’s included no less than three of my photos, so my bed gets to make a cameo on eBay, too – hi, bed!) aren’t actually the ones that she’s selling. Mine are size 4, and were brand, spanking new when these photos were taken – I hadn’t even been outside in them yet: personally I think it’s just a little misleading to use a picture of a pair of brand new, fresh-from-the-store size 4 shoes in order to sell your used size 7s, but the frequency with which this happens suggests I’m pretty much alone in that.
Again, this is no big deal, really (or not for me, anyway: it may be a big deal for the person who thinks the shoes they’re buying are the exact ones shown in the photo), but it does lower my faith in eBay even more. I mean, who knows what you’re getting when you buy something there? How do you know you’re bidding on the item in the photo, or whether the seller just stole that image from some random shoe blogger?
Oh, and the seller’s response to my, “Hey, those are my legs!” email? She “thought the photos were from the Miss Selfridge website” (Because they always photograph their products on top of someone’s duvet, obviously) and she “will take them down at the weekend,” presumably after a bunch of other people have viewed them and assumed they were bidding on the shoes in the photo. Was very tempted to reply with, “OK, well, my daily rate for modelling shoes is £100 per photo: just let me know how many days you want to use them for!”
(P.S. I changed the banner on this site today, as you may have noticed if you’re not reading this via a reader: I fully expect to find the photo of me advertising something on eBay any day now!)
Tagged ebay, people who steal my photos
During my break from personal blogging, it saddens me to report that people haven’t gotten any better at telling the difference between me and Joan Rivers. The E! channel’s Fashion Police show is currently back on the air, which means that every morning I wake up to a barrage of emails and tweets about a show I haven’t even watched, much less presented/produced. Witness:
—–Original Message—–
From: Someone who doesn’t know the difference between Amber and Joan Rivers
Sent: 01 September 2010 02:20
To: Magic Amber
Subject: The fashion bullishit show
I am whatching the Fashion Police “show” I think you don’t have people have a knoledge, mrs plastic Surgery, Miss I was fat forever, and I don’t know Who’s the gay guy… What they talk and the criticism is sooo poor and low,I am sorry but can you get better people on you show?
Thank you ,
Person Who Thinks Amber is Joan Rivers
I did have to laugh at “the criticism is sooo poor and low”, though, especially with THIS person’s piece of criticism being of such a high standard, and not at all “bullishit” (which is totally going to be my Word of the Week)! Oh, kettle, you’re sooo “poor and low”! Looks like kettle doesn’t have a “knoledge” of who is Magic Amber and who is Mrs Plastic Surgery and Miss I-Was-Fat-Forever. (Is it just me, or do these sound like characters you’d find at the top of a more adult version of The Faraway Tree?*)
(At least she said thank you, though. That was polite.)
Here is a handy clue for my correspondent, and all the other people who have been contacting me this week to complain about the plastic surgery etc:
 NOT ME Seriously, people.
(*There totally should be a version of The Faraway Tree for adults. Maybe I will write it, once I’m done with presenting US cable TV shows. Whoops…)
P.S. Speaking of weird email, Darika Aherns of Grapevine Consulting is currently running an excellent series on blogger outreach on her site: I answered a few questions about how PRs interact with bloggers here.
(Edited to add: We’re having an issue with the links at the top of the page at the moment, but Terry is looking into this and it will be fixed as soon as possible.)
Tagged email fun, I am not Joan Rivers
Foot fetishists. They’re everywhere, aren’t they? And by “everywhere” I mean “they’re on eBay”. In large numbers, apparently.
Last week I decided to sell some shoes, you see. (I know! Me getting RID of shoes rather than acquiring them: who’da thunk it?) And as with every other time I’ve ever tried to sell shoes on eBay, this brought the foot fetishists out in droves.
It always happens the same way. A question floods in. The question is from a man. First of all, the man comments on how “sexy” the shoes I’m selling are (Note: always “sexy”. Never “cute” or “beautiful”or “stylish”, or any other of the dozens of words you could use to describe a pair of shoes. Just “sexy”.) Sometimes he’ll say that he wants to buy them for his “girlfriend”, but other times he’ll just miss out this part and leave me to conjecture what someone named “Jim” or “Pete” or “Brian”, or whatever, wants with a pair of size 4 ladies shoes. Then comes the kicker:
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Brian will say (for he is a polite young man at heart), “could you take some photos of your feet inside the shoes? It’s, um, so I can see how high the heel is, because there’s no other way to know that than by looking at a strange woman’s feet.”
Now, you could argue that this is a perfectly reasonable question for Brian to be asking. But in response, I would argue that Brian is a foot fetishist. He is only interested in seeing photos of my feet in high heels. It’s just a feeling I get. A sixth sense, if you will. There’s always just something a little bit off about these messages. Something that triggers my “this is a foot fetishist” alarm. Also: women never ask these questions. I mean, I’ve been using eBay for years. In that time, I’ve sold a lot of shoes. NEVER have I received a question from a woman who’s asked me to take some photos of my feet in the sexy, sexy shoes. And in all the time I’ve been buying shoes (which is… a while) I’ve never emailed a complete stranger and said, “Oh, hai, could you send me some photos of your feet, please?” It’s just not done, is it? OK, sure: sometimes a shoe looks different on the foot than it does in the image. Sometimes you really do need to see it being worn to know what you think of it. But, I dunno, something about asking a stranger to photograph their feet for you just strikes me as odd. Maybe it’s just me?
The final clue that all is not what it purports to be on Planet Brian/Steve/Tony is the final line of the message which always, without exception, says something like, “By the way, could you please not publish this question on the auction listing? Just send the photos to my private email instead.”
Uh-huh. FOOT. FETISH.
I should add here that I have nothing against people with foot fetishes. I really don’t. I honestly couldn’t care less what people do in the privacy of their own homes, or what turns them on. Each to their own, after all. It’s only when they try to involve ME in their little fantasies by, say, trying to trick me into sending them photos of my body parts, that it starts to bother me. I know it’s not actually harming anyone (although it IS wasting my time, given that these people have no intention whatsoever of bidding on the shoes), but even so, it’s still devious and underhand, and, you know, some women charge good money for those kinds of “services”.
(That was a joke.)
With that in mind, I’m afraid to say the latest “can you send me photos of your feet” message was the one that tipped me over the edge. In fact, I was so annoyed to be receiving this request AGAIN that a red mist of anger descended over my eyes, and in my haste to send my “Actually, no, I won’t be emailing photos of my feet to strange men on the Internet,” response, I may have accidentally checked the box that says “publish this question and my response on the listing”. Whoops. My bad.
Still, I guess there’s no harm done. If it WAS a genuine, reasonable request, people will see it as that and think no ill of my high heel lovin’ correspondent. And if it turns out that Brian IS actually the kind of man who tries to get women to send him photos of their feet for his own, er, use, well, so be it. After all, if you don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking people to send you photos of their feet, then there’s no reason to be embarrassed, is there?
Tagged ebay, email fun, shoes
1. Pre-school age children should not be handed the car keys and invited to treat the vehicle as a giant toy. Cars are not toys.
2. Car horns should not be leant on for five minutes at a time.
3. Nor should they be blasted repeatedly for a similar amount of time.
4. Cars should not, under any circumstances, be treated as mobile discos. They are not mobile discos.
5. Houses are not nightclubs. They should not be treated as such.
6. Garage roofs are not for dancing on.
7. Nor are the roofs of garden sheds.
8. The Others should not throw raw burgers into other people’s gardens.
9. Or even cooked ones, for that matter.
10. Or empty beer bottles. (I mean, at least throw full ones, for God’s sake.)
Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to how many of these Things That Should Not Happen have, indeed, happened recently in this part of the world (and not all involving the same household, either)? Go on, it’s easy really…
Tagged the others
So, I’m out walking Rubin. I’m NOT wearing a dress, you’ll be pleased to know, and neither is he. He is, however, wearing his leash, and because it’s one of those extendable ones, and Rubin likes to be as far away from me as he possibly can on his walks (perhaps he’s embarrassed by what I’m wearing, who knows?), this leash is stretched taught between my hand and his body, and remains like this for the duration of time he pulls me around the footpaths of The Ghetto. (Actually, I don’t know why I even call the outings Rubin and I take together “a walk”. It would be better described as “a pull”.)
Now, note the word FOOTpath, here, folks. This is a path for FEET. Not for WHEELS, say, but people on wheels do love to use it: mostly cyclists, but we also get the occasional MOTOR CYCLIST roaring along it, and all I can say about that is that I hope there’s a particularly hot space in hell for those people, I really do. The regular cyclists, on the other hand, don’t really bother me. Most of them are really good about ringing their bell when they get close to a pedestrian, and this gives me ample opportunity to reel Rubin in and prevent him from trying to throw himself under their wheels, which is totally what he would do, and why he is kept on his leash on this particular footpath.
Yesterday, though, this did not happen. Instead of ringing his bell to let me know of his approach (INCOMING! INCOMING!) one particular cyclist decided to sneak up on me in complete silence: a Stealth Cyclist, if you will. It was only when I felt one of those rare pricklings of danger at the back of my neck that I turned around and saw him… just as he prepared to cycle at speed into Rubin’s leash – an act that would surely have sent his bike spinning out of control, with Rubin and I spinning right after it.
I am not ashamed to admit that I shrieked like a girl at this point. OK, I am a bit ashamed to admit it, to be honest, because it was a particularly dramatic shriek. He was SO close to us, though, and he cycled right up to Rubin’s rear (note: there was plenty of space around Rubin and I, so there was no need for him to do this. I did wonder if he just hadn’t noticed the leash, but even giving him the benefit of the doubt there, it would still have meant he was planning to pass really close to me, and he was cycling fast) before swerving at the last possible second, giving me plenty of time to imagine him flying over his handlebars, and me and Rubin ending up in court on charges of Interfering With a Cyclist or somesuch. (And I just KNOW Rubin would sing like a bird to get the law off his back, and would blame it all on me…)
The cyclist, meanwhile, didn’t even give us a second glance. He just sped away nonchalantly, and I got the distinct impression, although I’m possibly just making this up, that he felt the shrieky scare he’d given me served me right for daring to be in his path. It was this, rather than the scare I’d just had, that prompted me to shout feebly after him, “You’re not supposed to cycle on footpaths, you know!” Which would’ve TOTALLY told him, except at this point I noticed that he had headphones on and wouldn’t have heard me anyway.
And THIS is why Terry normally doesn’t let me walk the dog on my own…
—–Original Message—–
From: Peter’s #1 Fan
Sent: 09 March 2010 04:48
To: Magic Amber
Subject: peter
Where is PETER??? we want peter backl Peter had knowledge and opinions that mattered.
Joan is funny, the others are boring and bland. bring back peter,kate
Peter? PETER? Are you out there, Peter? Because I think Kate wants to speak to you in all lower case, Peter, and she seems to have decided to use me as her intermediary. If you’re reading this, Peter, I’d really appreciate you stepping up to the plate and answering your own Email From Crazy People, and letting me get on with answering mine. You have knowledge and opinions that MATTER, Peter! Use them!
Also, Others? Y’all are boring and bland, BRING BACKL (sic) PETER! Whoever he is.
Tagged email fun, magic amber
A comment I received on Saturday morning from a reader known as “Dillon”:
“I personally hate gingers. the red hair is not pretty, dye your hair please! i live with a ginger and she is the worst person ive ever met. she is mean about everything and never stops complaining. not to mention she smells like tuna. don’t even get me started on the freckle situation. all im saying is that gingers really have no souls, they are heartless little gingers.”
Thanks for stopping by, Dillon! I, too, hate people who are mean! Please don’t ever breed!
Tagged email fun, Gingerism, red hair, trolls
Dear People who keep sending me hate mail relating to the E! Network’s “Fashion Police” show,
I AM NOT the E! Network. Or, indeed, Joan Rivers. And I don’t have Kim Kardashian’s number either, so no, I can’t pass on your message to her. Oh, and I have no idea who ‘Guiliana’ is (see: NOT THE E! NETWORK, above), so I really can’t comment on whether or not her head looks like “a giant pea trapped in a worn out floor mop” although I’ll certainly be Googling that as soon as I finish writing this.
To get back to the topic, though: please stop sending me angry messages about people’s pea heads. If you absolutely MUST waste your life sending complete strangers abuse via the internet, at least make sure you get the RIGHT stranger. I have my own hate mail from lunatics, I don’t need to get Joan Rivers’ hate mail too, OK? Don’t they teach you kids ANYTHING in school these days? GOD. When I was a kid, we knew how to properly address hate mail. This was all fields, then…
I would have sent this to you personally, of course, but the first email just made me shake my head and say, “Terry, we got us another idiot, here, open up the Idiot File!” and the next person had managed to make their reply email bounce back. (Which was stupid, by the way. How can I reply to your concerns about the whole pea-head thing if you won’t tell me who you are? I mean, YOU know who I am, so … oh no, wait: you don’t, do you? You think I’m Joan Rivers. There’s no point in me even writing this, is there?)
Yours,
Magic “Not the E! Network” Amber
Tagged email fun, I am not a shop, magic amber
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