This is What Happens When You are SICK

Yes, it is true, the rumors, I mean (lookit all those commas). I am now a ranked Puzzle Pirates Player (alliteration!). Also, I got a pretty darned awesome hat, and am now the most fashionable pirate in the whole entire game (yargh!)


Yeah, that's not my dog. But that is my hat. I forget what it is called, possibly a buccaneer hat- they look similar, right?




Also, I have two trophies for becoming illustrious, which means, becoming RANKED. Which, in turn, means I've been playing way way way way (four, count 'em) too much. But anyway, here are images from the YPPEDIA (Yohoho Puzzle Pirates Encyclopedia) of the trophies I have for Exploring and being a Magnate.





They are, top to bottom, the Monogrammed Ingot and the Gilded Atlas. Be *amazed*. Or not... I really need to get a real life, don't I? Cough. That's not an order. That's a me coughing from the awkwardness of my situation.

EDIT: It is actually a COCKADE HAT- it is limited edition, so it's a lot harder to find on the YPPEDIA (Yohoho Puzzle Pirates Encyclopedia):

More Tweets....

Anywho, I made tomato soup from scratch tonight because... well... I'd have rather hung out with someone or other but ya'll are busy or out of the country (*cough* Courts, mom *cough*) so instead, I made soup. Along the process, I updated my Twitter status. I apologize for the profanity. This is what being crazy does to your tongue.


Order goes newest to oldest, so start at the BOTTOM.


# mandycandyland

I made this recipe! http://www.foodnetwork.com/... less than 5 seconds ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

Holy f*cks. It is delicious. Am culinary genius. Have burn size of Texas, but it is totally worth it. You may feel free to congratulate me. 7 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

wish me luck, I'mma taste it a bit now. Maybe a few more sips of champagne first.... 8 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

WTF, apparently I do have a hand held immersion blender O.o where did you come from, little guy? 13 minutes ago from web

# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

While looking for a blender, I found a food chopper. Will bite my thumb at it repeatedly. It is too late for you, luxury equipment! 14 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

Solution! Thank you 101 Cooking! "Alternately, use a conventional blender or food processor and work in batches." 17 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

orange juice is overrated. Cheers! 18 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

unless breaking out the champagne before concluding is bad luck.... I don't think so... hrm.. 20 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

Hrm, will come up with clever alternative. In the mean time, will have mimosa. 23 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

Dude, I don't got this shit. http://www.cooking.com/prod... 31 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

"Puree with a hand held immersion blender until smooth." What the hell is a hand held immersion blender?! 34 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

burnt my hand on hot oil- must be careful not to splash! 43 minutes ago from web


# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

dude, what is the difference between "diced" and "chopped"? Will assume they are close enough to the same O.o about 1 hour ago from web

# Amanda Martin mandycandyland

attempting to make tomato soap from scratch. Will tweet throughout. Eeeek! about 1 hour ago from web

Short, Short, Short, but I was Amused!

So, Neil Patrick Harris is on Twitter now (@ActuallyNPH), and he's hilarious as all heck.

I'm documenting his Tweets thus far, because I want to look back and laugh again:

It goes newest to oldest, top to bottom.

1.

Alright, alright. I'm done with the '140 character' running gag. Sorry, it makes me laugh. But as my wise father Ron always says, "Know w about 4 hours ago from web
* Reply
2.

Ok. So. Now that I've figured out this 140 character stuff, get this - Tim Gunn bursts out of his room, walks right up to me and says, "Ne about 7 hours ago from Twitterrific
* Reply
3.

On set. Best guest star EVER! The entire cast/crew was super stoked. No one more than me: http://yfrog.com/0w5ostj about 9 hours ago from Twitterrific
* Reply
4.

Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u about 15 hours ago from web
* Reply
5.

@alwaysmix : Ah, perfect. Thanks. I totally get it now. about 16 hours ago from web in reply to alwaysmix
* Reply
6.

'Morning. Reading backlog of responses and sipping coffee. How many times should one tweet per day? BTW this character limit hokum is pis about 16 hours ago from web
* Reply
7.

Holy Pete, so many responses! Thanks, gang! I'm still trying to figure out which button does what..! And this 140 character limit is craz 8:11 PM Nov 16th from Twitterrific
* Reply
8.

Felicia Day is popular. She mentions me and Twitter and Kablammo! http://yfrog.com/15aklrj 5:05 PM Nov 16th from Twitterrific
* Reply
9.

My first tweet, peeps. I apologize in advance for my slow learning curve. Nice to (sort of) meet you. It's amazing how quickly 140 charac 2:02 PM Nov 16th from web

Sappy Love Poem

As much as it is possible for one human being to own another wholly
I belong to you, Annabelle
If you wanted to, you could bottle up my soul like a green glowing fairy
You could use me as a nightlight, a candle, a reading lamp
I would always glow for you, bright as I could or dim as you like
And, if you asked me, I would snuff myself out to let you sleep

I belong to you, Annabelle

You, you were always so devoutly Catholic, you prayed for me
You gave yourself to something big
You asked for my salvation
I went through the motions. That is love
I bathed naked in a basin of holy water with a priest watching and muttering
I learned the words. I would have memorized encyclopedias for you,
But really, it’s all silly to me, giving myself to God, because I know wholeheartedly that

I belong to you, Annabelle

If you asked me to, I would jump from the top of a skyscraper, the Tower of Babel even,
If you asked me to, I would
I wouldn’t even be afraid, I feel as though I wouldn’t fall but only fly
I know that I could
How can a person fall in love? No, we do not fall
We jump and we expect to fall and be crushed
Sometimes we lose our gifts and end up broken on the pavement
But, forever now, I can float within the wind like an autumn leaf

I belong to you, Annabelle

I find myself stripped of all my being, my many labels, everything I thought I was
And there you are
Beneath, I have found you
Of course, I’m just an ugly thing, an ugly mold of blood and flesh and bone
But, because I know that you are there underneath it all, you are all I am,
And I am beautiful
And you, my beloved, you tell me that I am beautiful, but I’m distracted by your lips
I’m distracted by you always. This is my bliss

I belong to you, Annabelle

Burn out my eyes, cut out my heart, chop away my useless limbs, pour acid on my face
That is not pain, no
Pull me out in front of a million people and call me a coward, a whore, an abomination
Tell them all my greatest shames, remind them of my failures
Whip my back and stab my chest. Kill me!
They can do whatever they like, inside I will laugh!
Underneath, in that place that is you
They cannot touch you with their violence, you are safe within me always.
That’s all that matters.
You
You are all that matters

I belong to you, Annabelle

And you will dwell within this pining, silly, maudlin heart
Even if my soul should be extinguished
Or any number of gods forsakes me, and strikes me down to size
If I am taken into a million different pieces and scattered to the wind
Even if I lose hold of my mind, believe I’m someone else, someone who never knew you
If I am lost to age, accident, another’s anger, apocalypse, Alzheimer’s
If one day I forget you

I will, beyond any doubt, remain
Your happy,
Your most dutiful servant
Your protector
Your winter coat
And, I hope, your love

If you’ll have me
(and even if you won’t)

Annabelle
I belong to you, Annabelle
And you, only, only you.



Copyright Amanda Martin 2009

Nanowrimo 2009

It came out in a drizzle at first then poured out all at once in a massive eruption not unlike that of Mt. St. Helens. I'm sure my creativity could have wiped out villages and encased Yakima in two inches of thick, white ash. In fact, I have it on good authority that it might very well have done just that. Maybe.

Anyway, I have hit 37,000 words this weekend, which means that I am well past the halfway mark (25,000) for Nanowrimo, though I (woe to me!) remain bit short of the halfway point in my actual novel. Now, what am I to do? Should I attempt simply to meet the 50,000 word Nanowrimo goal ("simply," really? Who do I think I'm fooling?) OR actually complete the silly, overly bulky novel? After all, it isn't "National [50,000 Words of a] Novel Writing Month."

Unless, of course, they simply cut out those extra words for the sake of catchiness. Clever marketers that they are...

In any event, I get the terrible, dreadful, awful feeling that my book this year will have to be at least 70,000 words, which means, despite my efforts to get ahead of my word count, I am only just where I need to be in terms of finishing the #%*& book. Alas, alack, I feel that such cruelty of myself toward myself can only be expressed through the random vomiting of four letter words.

So, what thinks thee, gentle reader? Ought I make my goal the 50,000 words or the novel's actual completion? How lofty ought I make my dreams? In short, how much should I spend on liquor this month?

Love to you all, and merry Monday.

Sad poem- not for the eyes of my mom!

So if you are reading this, mi mama magnifica, stop! It is too sad, and I don't want you to become sad! See what a good daughter I am?

Last Poem

It’s been a few months now
Since we last spoke
My tan begins to fade, the trees shed their leaves
The kitten we found has grown big
He no longer reminds me of you
He purrs and makes me smile
And sheds all over my black pants

I don’t cry for you much anymore

My hair is longer now and I have bangs
All of the holiday decorations are up in the stores
And soon the sales will begin
I had to replace my computer again
The bees in the hive outside my window are all dead

I find myself writing about you less and less often
Soon I won’t write of you at all

The wind is loud and pulls at scarves
It sounds like a ghost at the window
The grass in all the yards grows long
I began a new job, I’m at a new school
And all of my hobbies have changed
You used to sing for me as I played the piano
Now I play the piano to fill the house

I make no music for you these days

You’ve never met my niece
Soon she will be old enough to walk
You would have been her aunt
Doesn’t that make you sad?
The places that used to be ours aren’t ours anymore
Your heart doesn’t touch me much anymore
It isn’t my place to console your sadness

Soon, I won’t give a damn about you

I know you’re alone
And you’ve told me you miss me
You said it again when last we spoke
But it’s me who was left alone
I’m not lonely anymore
Soon, I won’t miss you at all
And I’ll stop taking your calls
Rare as they are

And then, I’ll stop writing you poems
I won’t write anything for you at all


Amanda Martin 2009

/th3 inv1te Teaser One

The first teaser for the webseries I've been working on with some friends.



You can also check out our character blogs for more info:
Wesson P. Smith (my character)
Fa'lynn
Triple

We should have the first ep up in the next few weeks (or, at the very least, a few more teasers). I will keep you "in the know."

"Like a hell-broth boil and bubble"

Sometimes, the way that people speak about interracial children makes me feel as though the blood within my veins is actually some sinister potion. It reminds me of the mixture that the three witches brew in Macbeth, a "hell-broth" (IV.i.19) composed of repulsive ingredients that bubbles grotesquely. I am reminded of the bui doi (bụi đời), the children of Vietnamese women and American soldiers in Vietnam conceived during the long "military intervention." The term bui doi literally translates to "living dust," an idea that acts as an allegory for the experiences of many interracial children. We float in the air, but we are not a part of the sky, and we look like earth, but we do not belong to the earth. We continuously struggle to find a place to belong.

This sense of internal diaspora was intensified for me last week when I read about a Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to issue a marriage license for an interracial couple. The story was addressed in a blog co-edited by a professor in my cultural studies program, Kari Lerum, entitled "Sexuality & Society." The judge refused to marry the interracial couple on the grounds that any children they produced would suffer because he or she would assuredly be shunned by both of the racial communities to which the parents belong. "I'm not a racist," the justice said, "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else" (Foster).

While Lerum focuses on the broader implications of the occurrence for the same-sex marriage movement, and Dworkin, the other editor of "Sexuality & Society," examines the history of anti-miscegenation laws in a later post, the question that I am most concerned with is how people the public statements made by people in positions of authority, such as this justice of the peace, affect how interracial children are treated. Having grown up as a fair-skinned Latina of half-Irish, half-Chilean ancestry, I remember continuously being asked "what I was," as if having physical characteristics that are not easily tied to a single race, such as green eyes, somehow made me less than human. The question was never "who" but "what." Many people, not just children, are confused by their interracial associates, yet interracial people should not have to shoulder the responsibility of giving a summary of Cultural Pluralism 101 seven times a day. This treatment can be a cause of intense anger, such as that expressed by Sandra Cisneros' narrator in Caramelo:

...the guys at my new school act like a it's me that's the freak. The talk to each other like this:

-Man, you're fatter than shit!

-The good life.

-Damn right.

And this is how they talk to me:

-Hey, hippie girl, you Mexican? On both sides?

-Front and back, I say.

-You sure don't look Mexican.

A part of me wants to kick their ass. A part of me feels sorry for their stupid ignorant selves. But if you've never been father south than Nuevo Laredo, how the hell would you know what Mexicans are supposed to look like, right?

There are the green-eyed Mexicans. The rich blond Mexicans. The Mexicans with the faces of Arab sheiks. The Jewish Mexicans. The big-footed-as-a-German Mexicans. The leftover-French Mexicans. The chaparrito compact Mexicans. The Tarahumara tall-as-desert-saguaro Mexicans. The Mediterranean Mexicans. The Mexicans with Tunisian eyebrows. The negrito Mexicans of the double coasts. The Chinese Mexicans. The curly-haired, freckled-faced, red-headed Mexicans. The jaguar-lipped Mexicans. The wide-as-a-Tula-tree Zapotec Mexicans. The Lebanese Mexicans. Look, I don't know what you're talking about when you say I don't look Mexican. I am Mexican. (352-353)



When you aren't 100% identifiable to people, you are constantly asked the same kinds of questions as you grow up: "Where you from?" "You Greek?" "You Irish?" "¡No eres latino!"

When you become an adult, your colleagues continue the questions, albeit in a slightly more politically correct manner: "What's your heritage?" "You have such beautiful olive skin, are you from the Mediterranean?" "Where's your accent from?" It all amounts to the same question: "What are you?" I was recently asked about a colleague with a Latino name. "His name is Julio [name changed], but he doesn't look Hispanic. Can that be a black name?" It never occurred to this woman that the gentleman in question might be part-Latino, part-black, or any other mixture of races, much less that Latinos can have darker skin than the cafe con leche stereotype.

I think that it is important to recognize this issue in U.S. society because we cannot successfully argue with the aforementioned justice without acknowledging the truths he bends to make his ignorant statement. "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a[n interracial] marriage," the judge explains, "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it." There is truth in this statement; children from interracial marriages can suffer and be ostracized by their parent's cultures. What is not true, however, is his proposed solution to the problem: no more interracial marriages.

The implication behind the judge's solution is that interracial people would rather have never been born than have to bear prejudices on account of their races. Taking this line of thinking further would suggest that anyone who might be teased in K-12 or have trouble fitting in to society would probably be better off never existing: queers, non-Christians, people of color, people with disabilities, etc. In short, this justice proposes that rather than suffering something so awful as the Holocaust, we'd be much better off having no Jews (queers, communists, gypsies, people with disabilities, the elderly) at all.

For further reading, see Ivy Farguheson's "A Latina by Any Other Name Sounds Just as Dulce".

Note: I apologize for not having the lengthy quote indented. Blogger apparently has its own rules for the use of HTML. Hm...

Works Cited

Cisneros, Sandra. Caramelo. New York: Vintage, 2002.

Dworkin, Shari. “Race, Sexuality, and the ‘One Drop Rule’: More Thoughts about Interracial Couples and Marriage.” Sexuality & Society. 18 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/18/race-sexuality-and-the-one-drop-rule-more-thoughts-about-interracial-couples-and-marriage/

Foster, Mary. “Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.” Associated Press. 15 Oct. 2009. Yahoo! News. 2 Nov. 2009. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff

Lerum, Kari. “Love is a (political) battlefield: Interracial couple denied marriage license.” Sexuality & Society. 17 Oct. 2009. Eds. Kari Lerum and Shari Dworkin. 2 Nov. 2009. http://contexts.org/sexuality/2009/10/17/love-is-a-political-battlefield-interracial-couple-denied-marriage-license/

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. No Fear Shakespeare. 2009. SparkNotes. 2 Nov. 2009. http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/