So you may ask, what did it reveal to the Amanda of Today about the Amanda of Yesterday….see for yourself.   First, I was very fashionable and well accessorized.  I guess I know now that my love of bright colors has always been present.    What girl of the 80s/90s didn’t tie their T-shirt in a knot, whack on a slap bracelet, slip on some gimp and head out for a night at a friend’s house belting out boy band lyrics?  Not one I knew!  P.S. If anyone would like to purchase anything from this 90’s Fashion Starter Kit, please let me know.

Secondly, I have always been an over achiever, some may call me a nerd. And with a father that was a science teacher is anyone really surprised that I have multiple science ribbons? For the record all of the “hidden” ribbons were from being in the Junior Olympics.  Apparently I was very good at the 50 yard dash and the softball throw, which as an adult the only dash I am familiar with is “-” and I now fulfill the stereotype of “throwing like a girl.” My, how things change.

Thirdly, this girl has always loved a good gadget.  Depressingly, kids born after 2000, probably have NO IDEA what the items below even are.  Let me describe.  The item peeking out from behind on the left is what we call a cassette (KA-SET) tape.  You would record songs from the radio then present the tape to your friend as a gift from the heart.  You were also able to see the cassette in nature when    The second item is from my Gameboy (may it RIP).  Yoshi was one of the O.G.s of the video game era (think the dinosaur precursor of Angry Birds).  He busted out of Mario’s shadow to become his own man, er, reptile. And that black behemoth on the right, that would be a portable CD player with headphones.  That’s right kids, when we were growing up we were limited to 12 songs at a time and could only listen to them while wearing a glorified set of earmuffs.  One thing I should mention that was unless you had a CD player with skip prevention, there was no way you were using this while actually moving. The struggle was real.

Unlike the Amanda of today, I was down with the latest fads.  (I refuse to use lit and/or on fleek.)  I’m pretty sure the Transformer was “acquired” from my brother’s collection, but it was a pretty purple, so I made it mine. That scary lil nudist is a troll doll.  Some versions had colored stones in their belly button that the owner would rub to garner luck.  I would never think to make scary little naked creatures, attach a shock of neon bright hair and call them good luck charms, but hey, they are a millionaire and I am writing a blog that I’m pretty sure only 3 people read. That would thing is a Jacob’s ladder, for usage instructions see here. And if you don’t know what the circular thing is, then apparently not EVERYone knows a slinky.

Apparently I was also a celebrity hound.  I was a big fan of Mish Michaels back in the day.  She was the meteorologist on Channel 7 and came to our school.  While I have absolutely no memory of the visit, it must have been amazing for me to keep this in such pristine condition.  That picture is of Steven Tyler at the airport.  Again, something I have no memory of, but PROOF that I was in the presence of coolness at least once in my life.  [Can we talk about the amazing fashion in this picture though….iconic on oh, so many levels].  That pink slip is an autograph I can’t read, from someone I probably don’t remember, but Amanda of Yore thought it was cool enough to laminate.  Obviously, my definition of cool differs from other’s definition of cool.  

Also found was a Holiday Barbie that looks like she had a tough night, a Barnum and Bailey circus program, a Penny Hardaway poster, some melodramatic poetry, random Disney figurines, and my favorite, a baggie containing the fur of my childhood pet, Brandy, with a label saying Always in our hearts.

So that’s me in a nutshell, or rather a dusty lugger from my parent’s attic.  This now concludes our bizarre trip down memory lane.  Please tip your drivers.

And, yes, I totally spent a good 5 minutes putting on and taking off the slap bracelets…don’t judge.

So what am I rambling on about, you ask?  Recently I was cleaning and found my TI-83 (which is not a name of a rapper).  The TI-83 is a graphing calculator by Texas Instruments that is literally the size of your forearm.  [Nerdy prisoners have been known to beat their enemies to death with one while in the exercise yard].  If you were in any type of AP math class (Advanced Placement for you low IQers/jocks), the TI was your sidekick.  But it was also a GIANT NEON arrow saying…HEY, THIS KID IS A NERD!  There was no subtle way to use it either because you had to slide off the front cover which, in a quiet classroom, sounded like dragging a chair across the floor.  Of course, in the safe space of the AP classroom you would all slide off your covers simultaneously like a dozen Clark Kent’s removing ripping open shirts to reveal their nerdy alter egos.

There was no “closet computing” (I totally just made that up) where you could calculate on the sly on your iWatch and say you were texting your imaginary friends.  When you were in study hall actually doing work while all the “cool kids” were goofing off and you needed to calculate a cos, sin, tan or ln out came the seemingly 3 pound computer and your nerd flag would begin to fly.

Sure, you could be a badass and play Snake or save as many cheat notes as you could stand to write, but it didn’t matter.  Once that cover came off, any essence of cool you may have had was immediately stripped away and replaced by a geeky stench of plastic and Retin-A.

For your viewing pleasure, here is an actual photo of my “vintage” math machine and if it takes up your entire computer screen then it’s to scale.  And even worse, that is some nerdy humor down the bottom.  You’re welcome.

And let’s take this one nasty step further.  Cruise ships are petri dishes.  Over the past few  years there have been innumerable occurrences of giant Norovirus outbreaks.  Literally, entire ships full of people abusing the on board sewage system thanks to germs that spread like wildfire.  Now to be straight here, I am not blaming that on the presence of kids.  I have adult coworkers that still cough/sneeze into their hands and then touch any and every surface.  But I’m going to take this one step further.  With no screaming/crying/whining kids around, what will there be to act as a public contraceptive?  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the first sailing will result in some sort of STD superbug and a population boom 9 months later.  Seriously, someone start tracking that shit.

There will be things you just can’t get away from though, since it is a cruise. There will be the same amount of spilled drinks and pee in the pool because adults on their own with open-ended bar tabs have about as much restraint and forethought as a three year old.  Instead of hearing a high pitched “Mom, look. Mom, look, Mama, look” there will be top-of-the-lungs “woohoo”ing and in the place of Disney characters photo bombing your pictures, there will be a hairy dude in a banana hammock.

So here are my ideas to make it THAT much better [Attention Virgin Marketing Department].

Instead of a mint on the pillow, there should be ear plugs and Tylenol.  There should be NO blacklights allowed….anywhere.  The doors should all be soft closing so as not to blow up the game of the Walk of Shamers or the obnoxious 5AM runners.  There should be professional Instagram interns that you can hire to just follow you around and take multiple pictures of you doing the same thing as everyone else (seriously, your significant other deserves a vacation too).  Each and every lounge chair should have a charging station within 3 feet because your battery can only handle so much Snap-ing and Gram-ing.  And last but not least, a voucher for a free blood test (paternity or other wise) 1 week post vacation, just in case.

You might be wondering: who was George? For the whole story about George you can go here. but to put it bluntly he was one of a kind. And you may be asking yourself: why is she writing about a dead snail from Hawaii? Because this single girl from Massachusetts was oddly touched by Lonely George’s story for many reasons. Let’s review:

When I first saw the article on L.G., I was overcome with a sadness.  I didn’t resolve into a blubbering pile, but more like a morose mound.  Chalk it up to PMS or the extra shot of coffee liqueur I had in my hot cocoa that night, but a life lost, especially one as rare and slime filled as L.G., is something to be mourned.

This poor little thing, spent the majority of his life alone in a terrarium as an ambassador of his species and there was absolutely nothing our advanced species could do to save him (besides throw him some fresh, leafy greens every so often).  Truth be told, we brought his species’ extinction on by bringing in a quick fix in the 50’s. But, somewhere deep inside, I felt for the guy….am I too, destined to be such a unique being to which there is no equal? Is my Wakefield apartment just another Hawaiian terrarium?  Will someone some day want a sample of my DNA in order to bring me back and propagate life?  Where are my leafy greens?! 

I’m talking about the bathroom selfie.  I don’t understand why we choose to go in to the most private room in a building to take a picture to share with the world. 

If a selfie is a self-portrait that we want to show the world, why oh why, do we choose to take it in the bathroom?  It’s not like there is good lighting or even a picturesque backdrop (unless you are in one of those outdoor bathrooms in Bali at sunset and then selfie away). There is bad lighting, usually florescent, your fabulous outfit is cut off at mid-thigh, if not higher, and whatever is behind you is most likely not share worthy. For example, see here  

I’m sure there must be some deep rooted psychological reason to why we do it.  I mean there has to be, right? Maybe we only feel like our true selves in the privacy of a water closet. We all have to go Number 1 and 2 somewhere, so maybe the toilette is the great selfie equalizer.

Maybe it is more basic than that.  The bathroom might be the only door inside the house so that you can keep out the riff raff while snapping duckface after duckface to get just the right….duckface.

When you first saw the above image, what did you see?

a) The curvy posterior or a minion sitting on a grate?

b) The heel of your favorite hiking boot?     

c) The cross section of a rather absurdly overinflated car tire with an exclamation point in the middle?

If you saw 1 first: You need to go outside and make friends

If you saw 2 first: You need to go outside and take a walk

If you saw 3 first: You are outside, but you are in your car looking at your manual to decipher it’s meaning.

I’ll be the first to admit, on the first freezing cold day I got in my car and saw this symbol, I had no idea what it was.  There was slight panic involved, after all the light was only orangey-yellow.  I mean, if it’s red we stare at it in a panic.  A tone of marigold yellow only draws a sweeping glance. What genius thought that a cross-section of 80% of a tire (because where is the top of the tire) with punctuation smack dab in the middle would INSTANTLY be identified as an alert to put air in your tires?  Why not use common sense and use something like:

Easy to identify. You automatically notice something is going wrong with it. This, my friends would have been much more direct and to the point.

But nooooooo.  Mr. Tire Pressure Monitoring System Man, let’s call him Sven, must have been in cahoots with the car manual writers (who KNOW no one reads the manual until something bad happens) who had him design a hieroglyphic just cryptic enough to get you to actually lean over, open your napkin/parking ticket/utensil filled glove box, root past all the stale mints and possibly used dental floss to reach for and read your manual. 

Perhaps I am making this more of a conspiracy theory than what it truly is. Maybe, just maybe, Sven was just a graphic design flunky who aspired to, but failed to attain, a dream job illustrating IKEA instruction sheets and instead gave a few doodles to his car engineering uncle who, with pity in his heart, then paid his car design buddies to use it on the dashboard of their new model so his sister (Sven’s mother) would finally be proud.  Yeah, that must be it….a guy designed it.

You want to know who REALLY won the elections?  I’ll let you in on a little secret it wasn’t the Democrats. Nor the Republicans.  Not even close.  The REAL winner was….drumroll please…the sticker.  You know, the one that you slapped on to take the immediate post-voting selfie and then ripped off and threw on your car’s floor mats, yeah, that one.  That little piece of sticky paper made you feel like you accomplished something worthy enough to show off to the world (because apparently choosing the fate of patients, LGBTQ and the entire country wasn’t enough).  You didn’t take a picture in front of your polling place or even going in to the booth.  You didn’t even ask the nice elderly volunteer to take a patriotic snap with you to prove what you did.  That sticker with the simple phrase “I voted” was THE go-to proof that you exercised your Democratic right to vote (that, and taking a picture of the ballot is technically illegal).

Now, you may think I’m out crazy, and you wouldn’t be the first, but when was the last time a simple sticker was the center of the social media world? Starting in mid October with the onset of early voting “I voted” stickers were the bad rash of social media (starts out slow, shows up everywhere, can’t ignore it no matter what you do). CNN even found the sticker newsworthy enough to collect a “sticker selfie” from each of the 50 states.  They came in ovals, circles, and squares. In multicolor, patriotic hues and black and white.  They were stuck on balloons, dogs, and babies.  90% of the selfies had people POINTING TO THE STICKER just to make sure you didn’t miss the point of their post.

Donning the sticker was a social movement similar to the Ice Bucket Challenge.  Only instead of dousing yourself in the entire contents of a cooler and calling out a friend,  you slapped a sticker on your chest and then shamed everyone else on the fence to vote so they too would get a sticker go to the polls.  Sadly, there were a few tragic cases of people who voted and did not get a sticker, so they had to resort to posting a text status instead of a self aggrandizing selfie. Can you even imagine the shame?!

One more thought, imagine if the major cities saved all of the backing paper from the millions of “I voted” stickers and repurposed them, they wouldn’t need to buy any confetti for New Year’s Eve. Win-Win.

First, there were the little kids.  These munchkins could range from babies to low double digits and they were followed around by the Politeness Police aka Mom/Dad whose conversational set was comprised of: “What do you say?” and “Say thank you.”  This was began just after the sun set (pressing start on the microwave) and lasts about an hour or so).

Then came Wave 2.  This onslaught usually came just as the munchkin wave was thinning out (when you have a 2 second delay between kernels popping).   This one consisted of the teenagers dressed up as murderers, babies, and cheerleaders (if they even decided to dress up) showing up at the door with ratty pillow cases.  You could hear them coming down the street, because of the sugar high totally negating any type of vocal volume moderation.  It would be a 50/50 chance on if they even bothered to say Trick or Treat or if they just reached for the candy the second the door was opened and hustled off to the next house.

Now the third wave, these were the mavericks.  They came around once all the porch lights were turned off and all the munchkins’ parents had bribed their kids so that they wouldn’t take their candy haul to bed (in popcorn terms….you smell something burning?).  These were the eggers, the silly stringers, the pumpkin smashers and the shaving creamers.  If they were good, you would never lay eyes on them, but when the sun rose on November 1st, there was plenty of evidence they had been around. Discarded egg crates, jack-o-lanterns in the street, and the errant Barbasol can were their calling cards.  Living in the house with two teachers, there was more than one November 1st where we woke up to yolk streaming down our front door or decorating our cars.  It was a thing.

But what disturbs me about THIS Halloween is that the third wave didn’t seem to crest this year.  Visiting my old stomping grounds today I noticed a disturbing lack of smashed gourds and colorful snake nests of silly string.  On one hand, it was nice to think that maybe times have changed and that kids are more behaved, but then I came to my senses.  I realized that these mavericks, the rebels of my time, were now probably at home behind a keyboard destroying someone’s reputation or playing Fortnite.  There will be no more traveling in like minded packs, the way lit by the moon and streetlights, minorly (is that a word?) vandalizing other people’s property because of one reason… kid’s don’t go outside anymore.  Instead they will sit in their own homes “bonding” through wifi, in the glow of a computer screen, killing zombies.  Which, when you think about it IS very Halloweeny.  Man how the times, they are a-changing.

Exhibit A.

When it comes down to it, I’m the one doing all the work, I should get reimbursed.  I’m the one that has to search through your annoying site for a 2 seats next to each other, not in nose bleeds but also not at a price that would make my eyes bleed.  I’m the one that has to enter my password, then a ReCaptcha, then my credit card, then my security code to my credit card, then another ReCaptcha and then click purchase, all while I watch the sweat-inducing timer that tells me you are going to release my tickets if I don’t complete the order in time. Literally, when I watch that timer I have a panic attack because I know if I type ONE number wrong in my credit card, the order just goes to shit. And does that timer reset, nope, just keeps mocking my stumbling fingers as I try again, this time as I say the numbers out loud as I am typing as if urging my fingers to hit the right keys.

Way back when, in the days of paper tickets, I could understand charging a fee because once in a while you actually talked to a person and then there was the printing and postage.  Now they tout Instant Tickets (and even shows a $0.00 cost) as though you are doing us a favor for having a computer send me an image.  Even worse, I don’t have that wrinkly old ticket stub to save and put in that scrapbook I have planned on doing for the last 10 years.

So forgive me if when I go to buy a ticket that already costs $151, you charge a $27.50 “service fee” that apparently does not include the fee to “process” my tickets AND the “facility charge.”   Thanks to the interwebs, it probably takes a second (most likely less) for the computer to “process” my ticket, which means you are making $255 a MINUTE  (at LEAST) when a show goes on sale.  And let’s do more math (said no one ever) for a 30,000 seat arena, you make $127,500 for pretty much NO effort on your part (besides electricity).  Now that’s a job I can get behind.  And do me a favor, if you do know the answer and you feel the need to share it with me, don’t.  Because no matter what, we are at the mercy of Ticketmaster, and they charge exorbitant fees because they can and they always will because we pay it. Well let it be known that when I am covered in timer-induced stress sweat as I click the “Complete My Purchase” button, I am doing so with a bitter (albeit beautiful) scowl on my face.

[What a loss for you!  My apologies, but feel free to use GOL. No seriously, let’s make it a thing. No? OK]

See, the real reason I haven’t been doing this is there has been more than one occasion when I have a great idea for an entry but then I get distracted by the proverbial shiny object (i.e. stupid human videos, a random sound in my apartment, or a literal shiny object).

Then I think, I need to document how funny I am because my future children won’t be able to appreciate it in the moment.  Which is funny in itself, because the only children in my future are of the furbaby ilk, but I digress. They will need proof that when I am a demented old lady rolling around the nursing home on my motor scooter doing drive-by ass pinching that I was an even more entertaining being before the purple hair and bedazzled running suit.

I would do videos (not THAT type of video, pervert) except I despise the sound of my voice (it reminds me of a cat suffering with a sinus infection screaming for it’s supper) and let’s be honest, to have a vlog nowadays calls for high production values and I just don’t have time for that.  Although, come to think of it, it would give me an excuse to abuse my Amazon Prime even more… See, right there, I almost left to go surf Amazon (aka a money sucking shiny object).

So, I’m going to do my best to ignore a world of distractions and bring you random thoughts/ideas/observations as only I can…with a dry, sarcastic flair. And maybe, just maybe, you will be GOLing in no time.

DISCLAIMER: I can not be held responsible for any of the content published previously on this blog (mostly because I can’t remember what I wrote and am too lazy to go back and read it), but should you choose to revisit 2013 do so at your own discretion.