Web Crush Sunday: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On. Because, Obviously.

It's amusing how quickly looking for good things turns into a chore. "Ugh. I have

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to look for magic again. Didn't I just do this? It's been five whole days. I'M EXHAUSTED." Yup, I'm that kind of asshole. But then my ornery mood evaporates and I'm left with a dog sprawled across my bed and rain on the windows and it's all quite nice.

Weekend magic: Dog butts carefully perched on my bed, naming my new iPhone "The Oracle," eating spicy peasant food while talking about other food, pressing send on a batch of copy, turning on my red glowing heater and pretending it's a fireplace, nice conversations with friends, lying in bed and listening to the wind in the trees, making my first Twitter list ever for #magicmarkers.

Actual Magic. None of That 'I Ate Tasty Food and Pretended' Bullshit. (Even Though That Totally Counts.)

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On was my favorite internet thing last year. It might be my favorite internet thing ever. Last week, Marcel the Shell Part Two came out. There were many expostulations of unholy glee that day.

My love for Marcel is a deep, true thing.

P.S. The second Marcel video is how I ended up calling myself The General when my new phone told me to sign up for games. Why, yes. I am calling myself The General while doing anything my phone tells me to.

If you have any daily magic or love letters to Marcel, you should totally leave them in the comments.

Here's My Favorite Thing About Life

My favorite novel hasn't been written yet. My favorite TV show hasn't been made yet.

My favorite movie hasn't been thought of yet.

My favorite song hasn't been recorded yet.

My kids haven't been born yet.

I haven't eaten the best meal of my life yet.

I haven't been to Barcelona yet.

(Good things will happen in Barcelona.)

I haven't reached my full potential yet.

Neither have you.

Because we're both still alive.

So there are a lot of things to look forward to.

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30 Days of Magic update: Gingerbread for breakfast. Disneyland with its time traveling telephones and short roller coaster lines. My newly minted ability to turn coffee invisible so I can sneak it past the guardians of the hallowed gates. Realizing the nearby tree was blocking every last firework and watching dozens of people laugh uproariously instead of imperiously demand its immediate removal. Lemon ricotta french toast eaten under a chandelier. Time with my family. #magicmarkers

Day One: Monsters, Magic Scarves, and the Profound Indignity of My Name

Here are the bits of awesome I found in my first day of Project: Make, Find, Be Magic. I won't do this every day, because we'd all be exhausted and annoyed by day four, but I thought the inaugural day deserved recognition and praise. Tuesdays are sometimes misunderstood, you know. Sometimes they just want to be acknowledged like a Friday or that smug bitch Saturday. Thanks, Tuesday. You were so worth it.

My magic was found in conversations, in a red package on my doorstep, and in saying, "Dude, I want to do some sweet creative projects" and having sweet creative projects fall on top of me.

(No Ambers were harmed in the making of this Tuesday.)

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What's In a Name

Me: "My name means petrified sap. I don't like the implications."

My aunt: "Don't forget semiprecious."

My mother: "You catch a lot of really great bugs!"

In my parents' defense, I do catch a lot of really great bugs.

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If you don't count my shoes, I didn't pay for a single thing I wore to dinner with my my family last night. Clothes tend to arrive unexpectedly on my doorstep these days and the big scarf/shawl thing I'm wearing - softest, warmest, brightest, yay - was found in a red box just that morning. This magically-appearing outfit sponsored by Gap.

I suspect that shawl will spend a large percentage of its life being turned into a pillow so I can nap in public.

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Having the self-proclaimed brilliant idea of tagging this experiment Magic Markers. I'm still not sure if it's real genius or if I just need more sleep, but I'm going with it. So I'll be tagging things on the Twitters with #magicmarkers.

If you feel inclined to join, it would make my day. Maybe my month. You'll definitely be labelled magic. (HI, MIKAEL!)

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On Monday, my first piece of fiction to ever see the light of day went up. I call it Monster Regret. Then one of my favorite artists offered to illustrate my monster for me. Now it's turning into a whole project and I can't wait to show you guys what it becomes.

For my last piece of Day One Magic, my monster landed in my inbox. This totally counts, even if my computer firmly refused to open the file.

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Anything magical going on in your lives? Real magic or stuffed into the category by sheer dint of will? Are we sick of the word magic yet?

30 Days of Magic

You can do a lot of things in 30 days. You can eat 30 bowls of Rice Krispies. You can - apparently - write an entire novel. You can rip a page off your calendar and dramatically intone, "Well, another month closer to DEATH." You can also tell yourself you're going to do a Project. A project that sounds a little overly earnest and Oprah-tinged or like you've read Harry Potter one too many times, which let's face it, you totally have. But that's okay. There is a place for earnestness in this world, and apparently that place is my blog.

Sadly for a few dearly cherished ambitions, a month spent devoted to magic won't actually turn me into a wizard. But if I look for magic every single day from now until December 15th, I'm certain to find some.

I did a similar (un-blogged) project a few years back and it was startling how much more attention my life and my surroundings got when I had an assignment. FIND MAGIC. MANUFACTURE MAGIC. INVENT MAGIC. IT'S HERE SOMEWHERE. FUCK. FINE, FINISHING THE DISHES AND PRETENDING THEY WERE WASHED BY JAUNTY HOUSE GNOMES COUNTS AS MAGIC.

Imagination is where all magic starts, after all.

Today I begin my month of poking under rocks and barreling around corners in search of the amazing. It starts at Disneyland (magic commodified! appropriate!) and ends...who knows where. Well, it ends on December 15th. But you know what I mean. Hey, look. I'm already lapsing toward the prosaic. Real life: 1. Magic: 0.

If you want to try it with me, please do. Just decide to spend a month finding or creating magic every single day. Yes, watching a dog in a purple sweater spinning on his hind legs for treats counts as magic. Yes, finding that mythical parking spot right by the front door of Trader Joe's counts as magic. Yes, clearing your inbox counts as magic. Yes, hallucinatory unicorns count as magic. So if you need to spend a lot of time on gmail or toss back a few shots of absinthe to meet your quota, have at it.

Spend 30 days focused on finding magic in your life wherever it hides and something will shift, guaranteed. I can't wait to see what happens.