Monday, April 30, 2012

Kony...

I realize this is part 2... but I wasn't really doing videos when I first heard about this movement.  I feel I should share with you.  As human beings we should all give a shit about our futures; about the world's future.  We are going to pass our world to our children... how do you want to give it to them?



Friday, April 20, 2012

Snarky Out Takes

Finally got the out takes video done!  Learned a lot about Movie Maker with this one!  Let me know what you think of my goofiness... Working on a blog entry... almost done with it... but I do not think I will get that up tonight.  Please enjoy these it makes me laugh at myself, and that feels good!

always,

a

Monday, April 16, 2012

stand where I stood...


The roller coaster of my life... and its soundtrack continue.  Could any of us really stand where someone else "stood"?  Would we understand each other better if we could see things through another's eyes?  Or would we still think the situation is still the same?  Thoughts?


Saturday, April 14, 2012

Number on the Tag

This one has a good point... but I am not really sure about it.  Sweet Tea and baby Jesus just not sure... Let me know... if am I scaring people off... And that screen cap it AMAZING; I look as though I should be drooling!



Yeaha.... Inspirational Stuff...

Inspirational video to help you feel good about yourself as you wait for my late night ramble.  Plus she shoots fireworks out her boobs... so... winning... Love y'all!  always ~a

Friday, April 13, 2012

Tragus 1... Me... 0 and Shopping with Pocket People

Second Vlog... Trying not to take myself too seriously; only three takes this time and not around 73... I sort of ramble in this one but it is late and I had no real topic to go with here.... so sue me.  LOL Enjoy let me know what you think!  Still trying to figure this all out!  Thoughts and opinions are always appreciated.  Subscribe on Youtube at Snarky Amanda

always
~a


Thursday, April 12, 2012

inside my heart

Nursing a bit of broken heart among other hurts lately... Lissie and Ellie are so under rated and always know what to say to bring my feelings to life. Check them out if you haven't already.

always,
~a


Wednesday, April 11, 2012

And Pizza on Fridays

And Pizza on Fridays

Something happens when the real world arrives at your doorstep in the form of a cap and gown. capngownThe pretty cords, the tassel, the school colors, and all the excitement of 13 years of what for most of us is the same people, the same friends and either growing up under a sibling’s shadow or setting one for yours.

College is for the first couple years pretty much more of the same. I will admit that English in high school was not the same level they expected out of me in college; but it was still more comma faults and papers, reading and analysis. berry-break-33-3Math was never my friend so that was just more of me being bored and desperately trying not to fall asleep. I saw a lot of the same people from my high school at the local college I first attended, here in North Carolina. So in that respect, it had not changed; but it was different. Life had changed.

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I had a job; one that expected me to be there whether I had a big assignment due or not. I realized the first day of my “summer” as shithitsthefanI walked out the door to drive to work that though I was not yet 18 the real shit had hit the fan. Most of my friends still in high school were in bed and likely would be until noon. I was out the door on a muggy Monday morning at seven; when it hit me that the “fun” was over at least as I had known it.

Change has not stopped since the moment I turned my tassel. The American Pie movie, American Reunion

I really want to see this!
and its trailer where the guy says something like no matter what, we will always be friends, and we will always be there for each other. It has me thinking. Honestly, as much as that makes me tear up with utter nostalgia and I know my moving for my senior year and not returning right away or forming any real significant bonds here, like I had in Seattle, has affected my experiences. I think for everyone though the experience is not much different whether you move across the country or just out of your parents’ house into that craptasitc first apartment. You know the one; you ate more Ramen noodles than you ever dreamed was humanly Top_Ramen_chicken_flavorpossible, or ice cream for dinner just because you could… oh who the hell am I kidding… you got drunk and for good measure jumped up and down on your bed and ran around flickering the lights. Why? Because you effing could. Typically the roommate was a friend emphasis on was, unless you were dorm bound, and then who knows? I was a commuter student but have heard some real horror stories…

Like a girl who constantly had phone sex with her boyfriend back home whether anyone else was there or not. I probably would have had to kill that bitch. Picture it, you have your friends over for a quick run-over of some outline for a repeat of your senior AP lit class, now called Lit 101… and across the four-foot phonesex1969.jpgcell of yours is Zsa Zsa sexy pants talking to her boyfriend about what she is definitely not wearing. It is not like she could tell him she was in sweats and her college t-shirt, now could she? So there she is whispering all the dirty nasty things she could do IF only they were together. I would get so sick of it I think I would rip the phone out of the wall; yes I just aged myself I was in college when cell phones were not that common… problem? Then I would likely attempt to garrote her with the cord. Either way, it is best that I did not dorm.

I had my own problems with my trust fund baby roommate in my craptastic apartment. She smoked and we had agreed no smoking in the apartment, which went from her smoking on the patio to, on cold nights begging to open the window and stay inside… First-lesson kiddies never, never give in… she sat next to the open window and a few weeks later it was open freaking season she smoked in her room all the time. Then complained about the apartment smelling funny, “Uh sugar, bless your heart… that is your smoke mixed with my Lysol”…XREC4376 not a pleasant smell… the final straw between us was when she attempted to seduce my best friend who we all called Backstreet. (He did look as though he should be in a boy band.) Then she moved in with a friend, who used up all the hot water no matter when I took a shower, she had already used the hot water…. And brought with her a kitten, strictly a violation of our lease, and the kitten was the portent of Satan it was not even cute. I think it got mangled in utero or something and its claws belonged to an eagle. So yeah seduce the best friend that any deaf, dumb, and blind person knew I was head over heels for… then move in Satanic, mangled, eagle talon wielding, attack kitten 1752283_ca94_625x1000and some cow who had some obsession with hot water and you have yourself one pissed off southern chick. We won’t even cover the hugely fat guy that got disgustingly drunk and passed out in the doorway of my bedroom’s bathroom (I won the toss for the master!). So I was forced to sleep my first night out of my parent’s home with the blob in my room on the floor; he farted and snored all night… loudly. I did not know it at the time, but that was my first lesson in living with a man.

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All I remember now is plotting ways to kill the roommate while she slept. That’s illegal and I really am a gentle person so of course I did not kill her. She went on to move out without giving me notice. POOF! Gone. I see her sometimes, and she is still the same. Nothing seems to have changed for her at all since she turned her tassel;061511-amity-grad2BW_fitbox_400x1000 I guess maybe it is different if you have millions coming to you in full at 25. Obviously, I will never know that for sure.

Then it started the avalanche of wedding invitations, then baby showers, and now birthday parties. I am the last of my friends from high school to really have avoided a serious long-term relationship. Most of the guys I attract are seriously defective and I end up losing their number or in one case moving out in the middle of the night. (That was actually a long-term, living together situation… but the only one) Momma calls them “strays” If there is one in a 20-mile radius he will find his way to my door. The last guy I went on a date with was a serious prick. Not a gentleman’s bone in his body, not just a GotJuice1Yankee but a New Yorker (City) with that HEAVY accent, I honestly do not know for sure that either of us understood a single word the other said, but one of my friends swore he was a great guy. He was hilarious (I think) and a lot of fun to hang out with… until I walked in on him and a buddy shooting steroids into each other. Ladies do not speak awful views like that but I will tell say if I worked for Playgirl it would likely have given me inspiration for a photo shoot concept.

So here I am “the single one”. Odd man out; by Southern standards, I am an old maid. Not being married in a huge white wedding by the end of your twenties is unfathomable here. 99999999999At first, I got the invites to all the things… all the showers, first birthdays, and christenings… then I just got announcements about some event happening. The invites were going to others who had kids to bring with presents and distraction, or if no kid a husband in hopes that all four you become fast friends! Sigh. Now it is an occasional picture Christmas card or Facebook game invite.

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Do not misunderstand me, I have friends. It just changes. I did not make all the changes at the same pace as my other friends so now when I get invited to something it is usually a “setup”. Some poor sap awkward-family-pet-photos-4that someone works with who has no social skills and speaks fluent Elvish is told epics about my beauty and personality, all blown way out of proportion and lured like a moth to a flame he arrives to meet… just me, who is served up like a golden calf. If I even catch a whiff of a hint of a set up I suddenly become violently ill, and therefore unable to attend. It always just ends badly. Please if you are going to set your single friend up with someone try to find someone who shares an interest or more than one interest with the girl you are foisting this guy on.

The friends I have are great and I am thankful for them. I have just found that it is not anything like American Reunion. You lose touch, besides Facebook, priorities change, outlooks, plans, and life all change. My truest friends are spread the world over and some I haven’t seen in years. I have no real “best friend” anymore; not like in high school where you called and talked for hours about nothing, or saw each other every day and had Pizza on Fridays pizzatogether. I miss my best friend, my circle of friends that I would have done anything for. I do not know how you make “best friends” in adult single life, or if that even exists. Once you marry the priority is your husband or wife, right?

Life is a journey and I am walking it differently than anyone else I know. Perhaps that is for the best, for me. I just never wanted to believe that my mother could be right about any damn thing ever… and she was.

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“Life is changing, baby” she would tell me for every move, every new school, every hurt, and every wedding I watched another friend slip away.

journey

always,

~a

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Introducing myself to my readers... in person...

Wow I just love that screen capture there... here it is the much anticipated "vlog" let me know... eek.  nervous.


Sunday, April 1, 2012

Zombie Foreskin

Things I won’t eat and the Zombie Foreskin

“Yeah, I know I'm ugly... I said to a bartender, 'Make me a zombie.' He said 'God beat me to it.” ~Rodney Dangerfield

I had done a few posts on how I got into cooking andmagic then got distracted now redirected; I should mention I used to write a food blog and probably still would except I got kind of tired of talking food all the time. You really do run into some limitations and eventually when you never write any recipes down, like me I just sort of wing it, it gets to be a problem. Either way Blue Jean Foodie Queenbadge is worth a look if you want some fun recipes now and then. I know that cooking and baking are such a part of my life that I may eventually give you my recipe to my Pecan Pie… but for now we are talking more about the reasons I learned to be a better cook. Besides my beloved Grandmother who taught me most of what I know and used to tell me “Sugar, there is nothing a kitchen cannot fix!” meaning of course that all your problems could be solved by a good southern meal, and I believe that.

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Turkey Nipples never working properly aside, I love to cook. Like making people laugh, there is something about warming a person’s belly with good food that makes you feel like you have given them a gift, this intangible gift. free-hugs-signYou have given them love in a warm and physical way the way a mother’s touch spreads through you like warm sunshine; laughter is the same way. If you can feed someone or make them laugh, both if you are very lucky, then you have given them something you cannot take back, nor can they give it back well perhaps they could give you the food back but most people do not. I would not have blamed my family at all if they gave back, however unwillingly, their lunches after seeing poor old Gobble’s nipple, neck penis, and gut bag all splattered with purplish barbeque sauce.

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There is rarely a food I won’t at least try. There are a handful of foods I have tried and now do not eat because I tried it. There are some foods I won’t try simply on principle and still a few more I won’t go near because I fear what if could do to your body. (like those freaky people on the Raw Diet)

Never-eat1

First, I will not try oysters. My father has always, satan1always, as long as I can remember tried like Satan tempting Christ to get me to eat them. He enjoys them raw, on the half shell, with some lemon or hot sauce sometimes… though usually just straight. He swears to me it tastes just like what fresh cut grass smells like. Which I read somewhere recently is actually the grass screamingscreaming-grass in pain via pheromones… so yeah if you want to eat things that taste of grass essentially farting messages of pain to their friends be my guest… I will not be joining. Besides if I wanted to taste grass I would eat it… further still who (in their right mind) in the whole damn world pried open a shellfish and decided to eat the giant snot OpenedOysterbooger lying inside it…? How freaking hungry were they? I can only assume they saw some other animal eating oysters and knew it would be okay; that is assuming they were perfectly sane and not just completely off their nut. I have nibbled at a fried oyster before; but even cooked oysters are unappealing.

My mother used to make IMG_1536this Oyster Stew, glorious looking creamy stuff; she made it for me once when daddy was out of town. I was around 10 or 11. She was so proud of it (which shames me a bit to tell you this part)…and I admit the creamy bit was okay and I love soup with crackers and she said this had to be eaten with crackers. Suddenly, out of nowhere, like a Nazi U Boat u-boat_001lurking in the bottom of a waterway, surfaced this shriveled gray wrinkly bit of squishiness. I asked her just what the hell she had put in my soup. Rt 30 Seafood Apps 11 Our Famous Oyster StewReally at this point we were at the cursing stage of our relationship, at least in private, ever since the sweat hog incident… so I literally did say…

“What the hell did you put in my soup?”

She said it was an oyster… as in oyster stew. I told her it looked like a zombie foreskin.

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Three things happened then, that have rarely happened in my life.

1. I grossed out my nurse of a mother, and put her off her beloved oyster stew for quite a while

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2. She sent me to my room without the rest of the foreskin soup or even another handful of oyster crackers

and

3. We both made some silent vow between us, never to question or ask me how at the tender age of whatever it was… I knew about foreskin.

To this day she never has asked and I have never told. It images (2)is one of those things maintaining the delicate balance of our relationship.

This aversion to certain shellfish applies to the great migration of my family to the Pacific Northwest and the first time I saw a Geoduck; for you southern people (pronounced Gooey Duck)… just picture an erect horse penis with a clam shell chomping on it, like a one of those clamp bracelets. I am sure I will find a lovely image to display for you.geoduck Needless to say after foreskin soup… I was sure as hell not going to eat horse penis even if it had jewelry on it. My father who is a true Southeastern Texan “iron belly” will eat anything. And I am sure tried Geoduck more than once. You name it he has probably eaten it.

His iron stomach has eaten things I will not even think about. His philosophy is that you have to try everything at once before you can say you do not like it. I grew up with that bull malarkey. I do appreciate him making me try crawfish, I love them… http://www.public-domain-image.com (public domain image)I just don’t want to do the work on the little cockroaches so I usually order crawfish bisque when available. Imagine my surprise when after trying mushrooms I explained to my parents that I did not like them… asked to try them a second time I still did not like them, they taste of dirt to me and I hate the consistency… for thoseButtonMushroom- counting I tried the damn things TWICE and was still forced to eat them until I was old enough to actually have some say in what I ate and what I did not.

Seafood is sometimes an issue with me. I think it is because here in the south most everything we catch in a lake or river or ocean… we fry. Usually heavily battered, my Crohn’s stomach can no longer handle that. After the family’s great migration back to the south in the early summer of 1997, *ahem* when I was sev-ish, there is a local “seafood” restaurant that is much loved by the115106424_5795179cac locals here in my little hamlet. After spending time in the Northwest where most things are not fried at least like we do it… and eating luscious salmon broiled or grilled with just a bit of lemon or dill… or just smoked! This heavily battered shrimp, trout, catfish, and other fishes were gross to me. I cannot go into this establishment any longer because it makes me feel like I am literally covered in grease when I leave. I will grantsweet-tea-recipe them though, that they have the best sweet tea in town. I love my family’s recipe for fried catfish but we do not batter like others it is just a roll in some cornmeal… and we have some good “comeback sauce” to go with it. RedSalmon_LgMy Seattle area friends will die laughing to know that until I moved to the Northwest I had no idea that salmon could be bought outside of a can… it was like tuna to me. I had only ever eaten Salmon (for me until then pronounced SAL-MAN) in a salmon patty…. Uh… think crab cake.

Lastly, something I will never try based on principle, my haggisScot ancestors are about to heave over in their graves… wait for it. I am never in my life going to try Haggis. Mostly because I see it in my mind, much as I saw old Gobble’s gut sack…. Eating a sheep’s stomach stuffed with it’s other organs… is not food to me. haggisrecipeIt is like Gobble’s gut sack, meant to be removed and tossed away. I can see though how my hardy Scottish ancestry had to work with what they had, waste not want not, right? Well I am not in want yet; when I am I will get back to you as my perspectives on what is edible. It could change vastly if there is a Zombie Apocalypse.

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xoxo ~ a