There’s a full moon tonight. If recent circumstances hadn’t made this fact painfully obvious to me already, I’d have realised as soon as I received this email, earlier today:
—–Original Message—–
From: An Idiot
Sent: 11 March 2009 14:01
To: Amber, Verbal Punching Bag of the Internet
Subject: helpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp.
dear amber:
i’ve reviewed books for the new york times, discussed the art of writing on npr’s fresh air with terry gross, and many other high points in my career as a freelance writer, and so i came to your site seeking enlightenment if not some freelance gigs, and what did i see, first thing?
do you have an interesting object?
tell us it’s story
ayieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
you need me. you need an editor. you really do.
I’ve removed two words which may or may not have been the author’s name from this literary feast (it was hard to tell due to the basic lack of writing skills) to protect the guilty but the rest is exactly as I received it, including font and funky yellow highlighter.
I think it becomes even more amusing when you realise it was written in response to this post at WritingWorld. Just in case you can’t be bothered reading it, it’s a post about its/it’s confusion, and I used an advert by a major publishing house as an example of how even the biggest companies sometimes get it wrong. It was the advert text that my correspondent is quoting here, and obviously, I’m not the best person to judge my own writing, but I thought it was pretty obvious that the incorrect “it’s” was an example, and wasn’t written by me (although I’m happy to admit that I get it wrong too, sometimes, even although I’m perfectly well aware of the correct use of the apostrophe). Apparently not, though.
That aside, I find it both shocking and amusing in equal measures that someone would send an email like THIS to ask me to employ them. Because, oh yeah, I’m going to totally want to take on a member of staff who wrote to me to slag off my website and try to make out that I’m an idiot who can’t spell! Doesn’t everyone want employees like that?
More importantly, though, if I WAS looking for a freelance editor (which I’m not, by the way), I’m thinking I’d probably go for one who wasn’t such a stranger to capital letters and punctuation, you know? One who, perhaps, knew that “ayieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” is not a word, and that “help” only has the one “p”.
Sadly, these kind of emails have become the norm for me recently, and to be totally honest, it’s kinda killing the Internet for me. If it’s not people writing to hurl abuse at me, or treat me as their own personal Google, it’s people commenting here to tell me they don’t like my face and that I should change it, or leaving nasty comments at The Fashion Police because a post from two years ago is now – surprise,surprise! – out of date, and the dress in question is no longer available. (Quite how this is my fault is beyond me, but apparently it is. I’m slowly starting to realise that almost EVERYTHING is my fault. Everything.) And if THAT isn’t enough, people are still confusing me with Rihanna, and writing to me AS IF I AM HER.
(Note: I am not Rihanna. NOT. RIHANNA.)
Tagged email fun, freelance writing, I See Stupid People, OMG internet drama!
On Friday, a very disturbing email flooded in:
—–Original Message—–
From: Tights With Flip-Flops Woman
Sent: 27 February 2009 16:45
To: Amber, Finder of Everything
Subject: tights for flip flops
I have a friend who has “problem feet” and wonder if you could supply tights for her to wear flip flops.
Then there was a phone number for me to call with news of the tights-for-flip-flops.
Now, straight away, I can see two problems with this:
1. I AM NOT A SHOP. No, seriously, I’m going to say this again, because the message is clearly not getting through: NOT. A. SHOP. Over the past few weeks there’s been a dramatic increase, not only in the “where can I buy the Topshop dress you featured three years ago?” emails, but in the “I want to buy your [insert product here], when can I get it?” stuff. Honestly. I mean, I’m no brainiac myself, but surely it’s not THAT hard to figure out that TheFashionPolice.net is… wait for it… NOT A SHOP? Apparently not.
2 . If I WAS a shop, I would not be selling these:
(Picture via this post which, you may notice, contains a link to the website selling them. Which is not run by me, needless to say.)
Now, I know about Tabi, and I know this unfortunate woman whose friend emailed me has “problem feet” which apparently make tights-with-flip-flops the only option (WHAT IS THIS CONDITION?), so I will say no more about this other than that the thought of actually wearing those individual nylon “toes” bothers me for reasons I can’t quite articulate. But moving on…
I replied to the tights-seeker, and I told her that no, I can’t supply tights for flip-flops, because I do not have a shop. And she replied:
“can I order on line?
Do you have any tights with a part for a flip flop”
And then I took out the gun I keep under my desk and I shot myself in the head. Because almost every day now there is some variation of this exchange. Almost every day. I spend so much of my time having to spell out to people that no, I do not sell anything, I just write about stuff, that I’m actually thinking I may as well start selling stuff. I mean, I seem to have a ready-made customer base waiting for me, if only I could find out where to bulk-buy tights-for-flip-flops and dresses from three years ago.
(Note: not an invitation to contact me offering job lots of Toe Tights).
Gah.
Tagged email fun, I am not a shop, Outfits
Terry pointed out this morning that my last post here was not only several days ago, but was also a post in which I insinuated that if there were no further posts, er, I was probably dead. Whoops.
Well, I’m not dead, although thanks for the massive outpouring of anxiety, folks! I’m just lazy busy. Also, The Voice hasn’t spoken again since, and if I can’t give you tales of mysterious voices which speak in my bedroom, then what can I give you? Absolutely nothing has happened recently. It’s just been all work and no play, and you know what that makes Amber, right? Yes, it makes her a CHUNKY MONKEY. I know this because someone very kindly left a comment on The Fashion Police to that effect this morning. The full text of the comment read:
“That dress looks like all ur faces! Don’t hate the player hate the game! Ur chunky monkeys! “
Geniuses walk amongst us, folks, they really do. And just imagine, there’s a dress in the world that looks like ALL my faces! Wow! Not just one of my faces, ALL of them! And I are a chunky monkey – sorry, monkeys, plural, whee!
Another excellent comment from today, this time concerning one of my “Ugly Prom Dress” posts:
“naw aint no way in hell she must was on drugs or something need to kill herself asap”””thats sad a hot mess omg omg omg omg omgll”’
Omg omg omg omg omg, indeed! Because a bad dress is totally good reason to kill yourself, “naw”? ASAP!
After some consultation with my Twitter followers, I have decided to give this bizarre type of English used by tween blog commenters a name. I am going to call it “Blinglish” – the type of English used in blog comments. And, having named it, I am now adding it to my list of Things I Would Ban If I Ruled the World. A further example of “Blinglish” can be found here, incidentally).
I’m quite liking being a Chunky Monkey, though.
Tagged email fun, the fashion police
Just in case anyone out there was worried that 2009 might not contain quite as many idiots as 2008 did, I present the evidence to the contrary, courtesy of a comment someone tried to post on the The Fashion Police yesterday:
“ALL THOSE DRESSES SUCK AZZ WITH DOO DOO IN THE MIDDLE!!WHO IN THE HELL DESIGNED THESE DRESSES WERE YOU ON CRACK!!!
WTF IZZ UP WITH THESE DRESSES THERE SO UGLY I WOULD NEVER WERE THEM MAB TO LIK HALLOWEEN BT PROBLY NOT EVEN DAT EWW WTF IZZ UP IN YOUR MIND WHEN U DEZZINEN DEZZZ STUPED FUCK YOU BITCH!! GO [this bit removed because I hate to think of the kind of Google traffic it would bring me] THEN THINK ABOUT CUTE DRESSES DUMB AZZ HOE!!”
So! Yet more evidence to present when I submit my “people should have to pass an intelligence test before they’re allowed to use the internet” case to the powers that be. Whoever they are.
Luckily the spam filter did its job and stopped this work of genius from being published, but it took the brainiac who wrote it a further six attempts to post it before they realised it wasn’t going to happen. Still, I guess that’s more or less what you expect from someone who gives their name as “YOU SUCK BALLS”, although I must admit, I’m curious to know just what grammar and spelling did to this person to make him/her want to abuse them so thoroughly.
Of course, this comment has set the bar pretty high for 2009. How on earth will the other idiots out there manage to outdo this one, I wonder?
Tagged blog comments
I’m feeling a little better today. Only a little, but hey, at least I wasn’t up all night waiting for the sweet release of death, so that’s something.
In a break from our regularly scheduled “Woe is me!” programme, then, I present an email I received this morning from one “Cathelina Waldron”, who I can only assume has stumbled across one of my posts on the subject of 80′s fashion over at The Fashion Police.
Cathelina writes:
“First off i want to say that CLEARLY you dont know nothing about fashion if you state that 80s fashion is a crime of fashion, and also you stated that there was very little about 80s fashion to love. I just want to say that you are wrong, you just have to love everything about the 80s fashion. In case you havent already noticed the 80s fashion has laid out the foundation for the fashions that we have today. In fact 80s fashion is still in fashion. You must feel really dumb for posting that. Considering it makes you look like you dont know anything about what you are talking about. if you need examples i will gladly give them to you to present to you how wrong you are about 80s fashion, and how it is infact, still in fashion today! “
(Spelling and grammar as in the original. Imagine the text of this email in bright pink to get the full effect.)
So. Obviously I had no idea I was supposed to run all of my opinions past this woman, who clearly has the authority to tell me that I “have” to love certain things. This has seriously concerned me: I wonder if there are other things out there that I “have” to love, but don’t, because Cathelina hasn’t written to me yet to tell me what my opinion should be on them? Maybe I should ask her to give me a list of all the things I “have” to love? Hmm.
All sarcasm aside, though, can you even IMAGINE getting THAT annoyed about someone’s opinions on shell-suits and puffball skirts that you feel the need to email them an ugly rant? Seriously, I have no idea what Cathelina’s problem is, but I really hope she’s getting help for her obvious issues…
I also hope the wind blows really hard and messes up her hair.
Tagged email fun, OMG internet drama!, the fashion police
Remember how earlier this week I was getting in a little bit of advance worrying about tonight’s full moon, and the generous helping of Crazy it would no doubt bring to my life?
I was right to worry.
This morning I woke up to an email from Companies House, who, for the benefit of those of you who don’t like in the UK, or, indeed, run your own business, govern all activity by limited companies in this country. If you run a business you have to be registered with them, and there are all kinds of rules you have to abide by if you don’t want Very Bad Things to happen.
Anyway, as I was saying, this morning I woke up to an email from Companies House, in which they informed me that my business is now under investigation for a possible breach of “Section 82 of the Companies Act 2006″.
So, obviously I immediately died.
When I revived myself, I read on, and discovered that I was being investigated for breaching this Act because a concerned member of the public had reported me for it.
So I died again.
A couple of coffees later (and, OK, brandy), I read on. Helpfully, Companies House had not just started a new email to tell me I was – insert Drum Roll of Doom here – Under Investigashun. No, they had just forwarded on the entire email conversation they’d been having with the person who had reported me. A person who, I was to learn, was accusing me of:
a) owing her money
and
b) being a taxi driver
It was at this point that alarm bells started to ring. I feverishly read the email again, and – YES! – there it was! The woman had not reported me AT ALL! In fact, she had reported a COMPLETLY DIFFERENT COMPANY to Companies House, and OK, it’s a company that has a similar name to mine, but the woman had supplied them with the Company Number AND the website address (which, just to be clear here, was NOT MY WEBSITE ADDRESS), both of which made it perfectly clear that they done got the wrong person. The right person being someone who is NOT ME. And who has nothing to do with me. Whew!
What is totally bizarre about this, is that, having been supplied with the URL of the company the woman was complaining about, Companies House didn’t just visit that URL (I did, and it works) and contact the company in question. No, they apparently hit up Google, searched for a completely different company with a similar-sounding name, and then contacted that person instead. (That person being ME.) Freaking GENIUS, no?
Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, they also forwarded me a private email conversation between them and the woman who originally contacted them. I now know her name, her email address, and all about how much money she is owed by a third party. Whose details, including their company number, I now ALSO have, thanks to Companies House. I bet that company is thrilled to know that I, Magic Amber, am now party to their dispute!
A good morning’s work by Companies House, then, who have, thankfully, replied to the “WTF?” email I sent them earlier this morning with a “Whoops! No, it’s not YOU that’s under investigation!”. So that’s something.
Incidentally, the woman who wanted to know where her Heidi Klum skin care order was? Never did get back in touch. Magic Amber is pleased to have been of service…
Tagged email fun, I See Stupid People
Lately I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number of people mistaking me for God. By that I don’t mean they’re getting down on their knees and worshipping the wonder that is Me, or even that they praise me like they should, just that they think I know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING.
I know, I know: it’s an easy mistake to make. Am authoritative figure, obviously! So every day I get a whole bunch of emails via The Fashion Police , saying stuff like, “Dear Magic Amber, OMG, I really want a pair of boots that you wrote about in 2006, I have seriously looked at every website on the internet for them, and I can’t find them anywhere, but I know you will be able to find them for me!”
And I’ll be all, “Umm, no, I won’t. Because I am not made of magic, and if you’ve already looked EVERYWHERE with no luck, it’s unlikely I’ll have much luck either, on account of the fact that previously hidden boots do not suddenly become visible to the All Seeing Eye of Amber the Omniscient”. And also because the boots are always from somewhere like Topshop, or Dorothy Perkins, or some other high street store, and trust me, if THEY don’t still stock their own boots three years later, no one else will, either.
Because I am all about helping people, though, (Am benevolent Divine Being), I will generally try and suggest alternatives if I can think of any, before giving in and saying, “Dude: eBay.” (The ones who email me saying, “OK, I’m looking for thigh high boots that are purple with orange spots on, and come in a UK size 12 with a square toe, a heel that is exactly 4.2″ high, but which don’t look trashy, and are also really comfortable. Oh, and I’m a man, so they need to have extra-wide thighs. Where can I get them?”, on the other hand, I tend just to send directly to eBay. They should pay me commission).
So, the “where can I find X” emails, I don’t mind. After all, I know only too well what it’s like to find yourself desperately in need of a certain coat/shoe/dress/purse-shaped-like-a-bichon-frise, only to discover that you can’t find it anywhere. And when that happens, you will try anything, even emailing bloggers, if you think it will help light your path to The Prechus.
No, it’s the “I can’t tell the difference between someone selling an item and someone just writing about it” emails that bother me. The Fashion Police gets its fair share of these, but most of them come to Hey, Dollface, which, for the benefit of those of you not obsessively following my every move, is my beauty blog, which I use to review beauty products, write about beauty products I WANT to review, and generally worship at the altar of Sephora.
Now, back in March of this year, Heidi Klum released her own skincare line, and I totally bet she was up for weeks on end, mixing potions, gathering ingredients by the light of the full moon and chanting incantations over a cauldron, in order to produce a face cream that claims to make you look exactly like her. OK, not really, but that would’ve been a helluva lot more interesting than what I actually wrote about this event, which can be read here, but which basically says, “Heidi Klum has released a skincare line. There are face creams in it.”
(Incidentally, the only comment on that post is also good for a laugh if you’re bored.)
This morning, I received this email:
—–Original Message—–
From: XXXXXXX
Sent: 11 November 2008 01:16
To: Magic Amber
Subject: info commercial order
I ordered Heidi’s skin care line form an info commercial on Sunday October 25th 2008. The advertisement stated it was a rush delivery for no fee upgrade and would be delivered in 7-10 business day. It is now over two weeks since I ordered the product and I am still waiting for it. Please advise me on where my order is.
[Name removed to protect the guilty]
So, either this woman thinks I am Heidi Klum, in which case my life’s work is complete, or she thinks I can look inside the minds of the un-named company who sold her this product, and find out where her order is. And that I can do this without any other information whatsoever on this, not even an order number or anything. (I somehow doubt the company in question, whoever they are, only sold one product on Sunday, October 28th, and are able to track that product knowing only the name of the person who bought it). Because I am magic.
Of course, I replied to the email, letting the woman know that I have no freaking idea where her order is, or, indeed, why she’s even asking me about it, but I somehow doubt I’ve heard the last of this. After all, Thursday is a full moon, and you know what THAT normally means…
Seriously, though, I get this kind of thing ALL the time, along with slight variations on the theme, such as the company who are currently hell bent on trying to get me to bulk-buy “police gloves” from them, because they apparently believe The Fashion Police is a real police force, that is in need of gloves. Either I fail really badly at making it clear to readers that I am not a retailer/actual “police” officer, or a lot of people are… not all that bright.
I’ll let you decide which it is. In the meantime, I’m off to make myself a tinfoil helmet in preparation for Thursday’s full moon…
Tagged email fun, I am not a shop, magic amber
A quick note to the people in our town who are still setting off fireworks every single night, even although Guy Fawkes Night was four days ago: please, just get over it. My dog is losing his tiny mind here. I am losing my tiny mind here. Enough, already. Please.
And, you know, I get that people like fireworks. I do, really. Hell, I even like fireworks myself. The thing about fireworks, though, is that unless you’re at EPCOT, or at the Magic Kingdom (Seriously, when the single “star” goes shooting over the top of the Cinderella castle? I could weep.), fireworks tend to get old pretty quickly for me. Especially when they’re not even particularly interesting fireworks, but are just those monotonous old bangers that make a lot of noise without actually doing very much else. You could watch that happen maybe once or twice, and it might be kinda cool, but when it’s been happening every. single. night. for two weeks, you get to wondering whether all those loud noises done blew these people’s brains out, ya know?
Actually, to be fair, this year has been a little better than previous years, in that it’s only been going on for a couple of weeks, as opposed to the entire months of October, November and December. The problem is, though, that people around here find bangers so very exciting and compelling that they’ll be out every night until the end of the year now, grunting and going, “BIG NOISE! WE MAKES IT! BANG!”, Rubin will be all, “Hysterical! Hysterical! Any excuse to bark my fool head off!” and I’ll be all, “whiney, whine-whine, moan, moan, moan.” Until January.
And the irony is, after the first couple of big bangs, Rubin gets used to it and shuts the hell up. I never do, though…
Dear Idiot Teenagers who thought it would be a good idea to post a whole bunch of stupid comments on The Fashion Police this week, calling me an “idiot” and generally advertising your lack of brain cells:
It was not a good idea.
It was an even worse idea to use your actual email addresses to do it, though.
You actual email addresses that were issued by your actual high school. Your high school whose Internet connection you happened to be using at the time you posted the comments in question. Your high school Internet connection with an IP address that traced right back to… you guessed it!… your high school!
Also not a good idea? Repeatedly posting your mobile phone number, asking me to call you on it. And yeah, sure, it could’ve been a fake number, but given that you weren’t bright enough to use a fake email address, I’m going to guess it was real. Hey, guess what? The site had almost 15,000 visitors that day! That’s a lot of phone calls from potentially dangerous random Internet strangers you could be receiving, huh? So you’ll understand why I had to notify your school and ask them to notify your parents, no? It was my duty as a responsible adult. And as an ever-so-slightly vindictive one, to be completely honest.
Also? You’re SO grounded, chilluns. And on detention for the rest of the month, hopefully. Enjoy!
Love,
Amber
Seriously, I don’t know what they’re teaching kids today. In my day we knew how to troll a website, and we knew how to do it right. None of this “using real email addresses and posting from easily-traced IPs” nonsense. Honestly. What is the world coming to when the youth of today don’t even know how to remain anonymous on the Internet? This was all fields then, you know…
Tagged blog comments, OMG internet drama!, the fashion police, trolls
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!
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