Being Amber Rhea

Beer and sex

From Augusta’s free weekly, the Metro Spirit:

What does your beer say about your sex life? Take the following as guidelines and not a scientific assessment. I’ve not actually slept with all these men but this is what I guess they’d be like in bed!

Bud Men – Whether you drink light or regular, you’re a man’s man. You like to think you enjoy being in control and taking charge, but we all know you love it when your lady climbs on top!

PBR/MGD – You’re kind of cheap and you’ll take what you can get. You love the sex and rarely leave a bar by your lonesome, but you may not always head out with your first choice.

Blue Moon/Stella – Belgian beers are all the rage across Augusta.* You’re trendy and want to make sure everyone knows you’re hip. Given your need to be considered cool – you’ll try extra hard in bed and no matter what your skills – you’ll get an A for effort.

Other imports – You’re refined enough to know what you like and you seek out what you want. You’ve also been around the block a time or two and know what’s what and where it’s at when the clothes come off.

Sweetwater 420/Terrapin – You are a Georgia boy through and through, a traditional gentleman when you meet a lady and a man in the bedroom.** I like to think drinking these beers also means you’ll be phenomenal in bed and of course, you’ll heart the Dawgs!

Ha! Oh, Augusta, how you amuse me. Tony Simon, would you like to add anything or correct any of the assertions made?

* Ed. note: Are they?

** Ed. note #2: Somehow I think they must’ve overlooked the lack of punctuation in this clause, but it’s so much better this way. And hey, couldn’t we all stand to be reminded of threesome etiquette every now and then?

ABC meme

Because I’m such a follower.

Accent: Some people who aren’t from the South have said I have a Southern accent, and others have said I don’t. So I don’t really know.

Booze: With the crew from The Old Job + the GDBF, at Houli’s or Ryan’s house. And as for the drinks themselves, as Jenny would say, I like fluffy girly drinks.

Chore I Hate: Cleaning the bathroom.

Dog or Cat: Allergic to both, but I like cats.

Essential Electronics: Cell phone, computer w/ internet access.

Favorite Cologne: I don’t wear any and I don’t like to smell other people’s.

Gold or Silver: Silver.

Hometown: Augusta, GA.

Insomnia: Not very often these days. In fact, if anything it’s usually the opposite.

Job Title: Web developer.

Kids: One day in the still-far-off future.

Living Arrangements: Loft apartment in a converted ice and coal factory – and right down the hall from the GDBF!

Most Admirable Traits: Honest, straightforward, no bullshit.

Number of Sexual Partners: 14.

Overnight Hospital Stays: Just one… in the psych ward of Athens Regional, woohoo!

Phobias: Cockroaches, fire, something horrible happening to anyone I love.

Quote: I’ll pick one at random from the header quotes table in my blog database. Hence:

“I hate how lunch with us always ends with action items” – Ryan

[sigh]… memories…

Religion: I’m really interested in religion from an academic/nerdy point of view, but I’m not religious myself. I have a hard time believing any of it.

Siblings: It’s just me.

Time I Wake Up: Between 6:30-7:00 on a work day, as late as possible on the weekends.

Unusual Talent or Skill: The GDBF says I suck a mean cock.

Vegetable I Love: I like most vegetables, actually. But not black-eyed peas or okra. Yuck.

Worst Habit: Not being able to think of original or creative answers to memes. Oh, and sometimes I bite my nails.

X-Rays: Teeth, in fact my whole jaw area, and my ass when I thought I had broken it.

Yummy Foods I Make: Baked ziti, deviled eggs, stuffing, potato salad.

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio.

Via Nikki, Shakes Sis, and eponymous.

Speaking of the IRS…

How is this not illegal?

The IRS is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns. If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers will be able to sell information from individual returns – or even entire returns – to marketers and data brokers.

The change is raising alarm among consumer and privacy-rights advocates. It was included in a set of proposed rules that the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them “not a significant regulatory action.”

What the..???

Fun with etymology

I’m waiting to find out exactly how thoroughly I am going to get fucked by the IRS, but since I can’t do anything about it no matter what the outcome, I’m trying not to think about it. Slowly emerging from my pity party, but I’ll keep having it for as long as I goddamn feel like, until all the booze is gone and the guests are good and plastered. Wait, what? That analogy doesn’t work…

Anyway, that being said, here’s an email from one of my Correspondents in the Field (who really needs her own blog, because she writes so many blogworthy emails!), which cheered me up because it’s really fucking funny.

So…one of my co-workers wondered aloud what “stan” meant. Stan as in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc. One quick google search later and we learned that “stan” is a Farsi word meaning “land.” Makes good sense (England, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, etc.).

Apparently Afghanistan means “Land of the Afghans,” Uzbekistan means “Land of the Uzbeks” and Pakistan means “Land of the Pure.” Yep. Land of the Pure.

Less reliable sources also define “taj” as “person wearing a crown” and “ik” as head, ergo Tajikistan means “Land of the Person Wearing a Crown on Their Head.”

Maybe someday we’ll rename our country Jesustan. It has a nice ring to it. And feels autocratically appropriate.

But seriously, Land of the Pure?

LOL!

Answering questions?

As a result of popular demand (okay, demand a suggestion from one person), I’m putting out the call for questions related to sex, relaionships, and what-have-you, to be read, answered, and possibly mocked on a future episode of Mostly ITP. So if you have a question, email it to me at amber (at) gapodcastnetwork (dot) com, or post it in the comments.

Cross-posted on my Georgia Podcast Network blog.

And now the IRS is trying to fuck me

Fuck. I got a notice in the mail from the IRS saying I owe $884 on my 2004 tax return. What the fuck?? I have no idea what that is about, but I do know that I don’t have $884 to throw at the goddamn IRS. Oh and what was really cherry about the notice was that it said, in bold, all-caps letters, YOU MUST RESPOND BY APRIL 19TH or I will face additional fees. Well I just got it today, jackasses… thanks a lot.

I called the number on the form and it took me about 20 minutes to get through all the menu options, listening to bullshit… I couldn’t even push 0 to get out of it. And then I was on hold. And I would probably still be on hold now if I hadn’t hung up because I couldn’t deal with it right now. I know what they’re doing with that shit. They’re trying to make it as difficult as possible for people, so that people will just send them a check and be done with it. So much for a government working for the people.

And that’s another thing… I’m feeling all Big Brother Is Watching Me now. Why me, and why now? As far as taxpayers go, I’m nobody. I’ve managed to work myself into the lower echelon of “the middle class,” with a mountain of debt behind me – just like thousands of other people, whom the government doesn’t give a shit about. When you think audits, you think of them going after the people who, you know, actually make enough money to have it make a difference. So why me?

I’m pissed, but really at this point I just feel beat and overwhelmed. I’m having a little pity party, but I’m going to have it for as long as I want, so fucking deal with it, because it’s my blog goddammit. Why has so much bad shit been happening lately? (Jenny and Niki will relate to that.) Just as an example, first there was all the shit w/ my dad and my family – which, btw, I’ll be in Augusta again this weekend – and now this.

I don’t know what to do. I have so much debt, I really think at this point that I’ll never get out of it. I work so hard – have been for years, ever since I was 18 really – and yet I still have piles of bills, I owe so much money to so many entities, my credit rating is fucked by now I’m sure, and now the fucking IRS is trying to tear me a new one too. What do I have to do? I’ve always played by the rules, I’ve never been a frivolous spender, I’ve always been so sensible and practical – some would say to a fault, but I say they’re irresponsible. Frustrated is an understatement for how I feel right now. I’m trying to remind myself that at least there’s some good – thank god I have Rusty; oh, and I do have internets in my apartment, so that’s good – but jesus, I just feel so beat. I want to punch something.

Really, I don’t know what I want to do. Maybe sleep for a long time. Or practice denial. I’d hire a lawyer but I don’t know what they could do, plus I can’t afford one anyway.

I’ll stop my verbal diarrhea now because it’s almost time for trivia. And I should probably clean myself up, it wouldn’t do to show up and have everyone see I’ve been fucking crying.

I killed my internets

Well, let me back up. I might have killed my internets. I don’t yet have conclusive proof.

So last night I’m chilling in my apartment, sitting in bed with my iBook. I spent about an hour or so watching episodes of a video podcast (a.k.a. “vidcast;” or, for the even hipper, “v-cast”) of teh pr0n, which I cannot link to now because I’m at work – but you should check out Comstock Films. At around midnight, the GDBF finishes his fervent and awesome editing of episode 1 of the North Fulton Drama Club podcast and makes his way down the hall to my place. He climbs into bed with me and the iBook, and I’m all, “Let me show you this cool shit I’ve been watching” – and as we’re getting situated so that we can both see the screen, there’s a quick flash and a loud pop, and the lamp on the bedside table goes out. We’re both stunned for a second, and then we’re like, “WTF was that?”

My first (rather alarming, but also rather stupid) thought was that the water heater had exploded or something, because it sounded like it had come from the utility closet. Rusty thought it might’ve been a power surge, but none of the other lights were out. So I thought the lightbulb had just burned out and had made a big production of it. (Going out with a bang, as they say.) While I went to get a new lightbulb, Rusty realized we were no longer connected to the internet. Now things were getting seriously worrisome.

My wireless network wasn’t appearing at all in the list of Airport networks. I investigated and saw that all my electronic doodads – cable modem, wireless router, Tivo – were, in fact, off. (No glowing green LEDs!) I flipped the circuit breaker and everything came back on.

Still no internets though. So I went through all the standard troubleshooting BS… reboot the computer; unplug the modem and router and plug them back in; turn off Airport and turn it back on; et cetera. All to no avail. By this point it was very late and we were tired, so we decided to just go to bed, even though I was stressing about my potential lack of connectivity. I guess I’ll know for sure when I go home tonight. Any of you network admin fools know anything else I should try? It would suck if I fried something.

Oh, I guess that means I should tell you what caused the flash and the pop. We finally figured it out; get a load of this shit. Since I live in a converted ice and coal factory, the whole place has that ultra-hip neo-industrial feel – e.g., the electrical outlets stick out from the cinderblock walls. Turns out my metal bedframe was making contact with an empty socket. Uh, oops. Guess I need to get one of those plastic thingies that prevent babies from sticking their fingers in sockets. (“Socket” is a funny word.)

And only I could ramble on for several paragraphs about the spark that jumped from my electrical outlet to my bed frame.

Wingnuts controlling your life

Scientists are leaving the States because of this BS. (Yes, that’s a feature from Glamour. I know, I was surprised, too!) I wish I could find a link to the article I read in Time a few weeks ago, about the plummeting numbers of scientists in the U.S., many of whom are discouraged by the increasing infiltration of politics into their research. Europe and China will have our heads.

Not sure which part to focus on; there’s so much. Doctors being compelled by law to provide medically inaccurate information? Kids being taught falsehoods that pose as sex ed, while at the same time being deprived of facts that could save their lives? “Christians” stalling the development of a vaccine that could prevent cancer? Wingnuts poking their sticky little fingers into all areas of American politics, spooking legislators in a manner reminiscent of Sunni Muslims?

Ah, how about the incessant crusade to control women’s sex lives through forced childbirth… (emphasis mine)

If it had been left up to the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee, American women would be able to walk into any drugstore and buy the emergency contraceptive Plan B over the counter (OTC). When the committee was convened in 2003 to review Plan B, a “morning-after” method of birth control that can reduce the odds of pregnancy by 95 percent if taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex, all 28 members agreed that the drug was safe and effective. The vast majority of them also voted to make it available OTC at any pharmacy.

In 2000 alone, the drug prevented approximately 51,000 abortions, according to a Guttmacher Institute estimate.

You guessed it – religious nutjobs put a stop to all that.

I simply do not comprehend this need to micro-manage the lives of strangers.

Let’s daydream for a minute and pretend EC is available OTC. Tell me how that affects your life. And don’t give me some hippy-dippy bullshit about how the moral decay it represents affects all our lives. I can smell a red herring a mile away, and I want a real answer. So consider the simple scenario. EC is available at your local Walgreen’s. You do not believe in taking EC to prevent pregnancy. Now… this affects your life, how?

Don’t buy it. Don’t take it. No one’s putting a goddamn gun to your head. They still sell Summer’s Eve by the gallon even though research has shown time and time again that douching disrupts the natural pH balance of the vagina and can make you more susceptible to infections. So, when I go to the pharmacy, I walk on by.

When are people going to start demanding that this shit be put to a stop, and accept nothing less than scientifically sound healthcare and education? Not to end on a downer, but I am honestly afraid that it might come to what the article mentions…

[M]any women can’t imagine how these lies could possibly have an impact on them, Trussell says. “The first time one of them walks into a pharmacy and can’t get her birth control pill prescription filled, that will have a wake-up effect. Most won’t feel the effects until these rights are gone — they can’t believe there would be a time when these things would be outlawed. I hope their belief is true, but I’m very worried.”

Ya know, it’d be a lot cooler if we were to make sure things don’t come to that.

h/t Bitch Ph.D.

Kickass

Stay tuned, because Kevin of Slant Truth will take out all you haters. Hell yes. Ain’t no backin’ down.

Real IM conversations

Yes, the title is playing on Jmac’s “Real Work Conversations” theme. Anyway…

Me: oh fer fuck’s sake. it just keeps getting worse in this piece of crap.

Me: i would be drunk if i did a shot for every talking point

GDBF: you should do that and we should make a podcast out of it

Me: actually, i’d die of alcohol poisoning

GDBF: well, a light shot

GDBF: that could be a whole segment

GDBF: sentence-by-sentence, do a shot for eachy talking point in wooten’s column

Me: heh. you do wooten, i’ll do woman to woman, we’ll see who ends up shittier

GDBF: I think that should be our next podcast