Neil Gaiman mentions They Might Be Giants. My world comes full circle (he's good friends with Ms. Tori Amos). From his online journal:
The McClouds also brought with them "No!", the new They Might Be Giants CD for kids. I thought it was the most interesting TMBG stuff I'd heard in years -- it had that diamond core of utter oddness that seemed to soften after Flood. I loaded Scott and Ivy up with CDs I know they'll like - The Apples in Stereo, and Richard Goldman's Cows and Girls, and so on.

Blogs and the concept thereof seem to be in the news/prominent places lately.

• An article from Information Week
  
• Salon is offering blogs for its readers for $40 a year

I don't understand the big uproar. Maybe I just don't read enough "informational" blogs. All the ones I read seem to be of people I know in one form or another. Anyhow, interesting.

I had this bad weird dream last night. Somehow, I was associated with some sort of terrorist gang that planned on holding up an airport and mutilating someone's face right there in front of everyone. I wasn't associated by choice, I was forced into it. I managed to get loose, and my family and I were going to take a vacation. When we get to the airport, I realize that they're going to do their attack soon, and I didn't want to be around. We end up right in front of them, and somehow in a scuffle I end up with a gun, and I have to shoot the guy responsible. I keep trying to shoot, but there aren't bullets. That's pretty much how it ended. It wasn't one of those dreams where I can say, "This is a dream, I'll be ok when I wake up", it was just a flat-out nightmare. Ick.

Once upon a time there was a girl in college who lead a fairly normal, if not geeky, existence. When she started at the University of Kentucky, she always listed her favorite bands as "Green Day, Nirvana, and the Gin Blossoms", despite only having listened to one album from each of them. Music was background noise, mostly (unless she was playing it herself. Band geeks, what can you do?) However, she had a best friend that sent her lyrics from all sorts of artists she'd never heard of (or heard of only vaguely): The Violent Femmes, Tori Amos, Barenaked Ladies, and a myriad of others. That summer, when they were both home again in West Virginia, the best friend played mix tapes of these artists. Slowly, everything sunk in. Lyrics with intelligence and wittiness! Decent musicianship! Almost-out-of-teen-ANGST! Everything was addressed. And another fan was born.

Somedays, I think I'm just a fan. Not of anything in particular. They Might Be Giants, Tori Amos, Moxy Fruvous, Kevin Smith, Neil Gaimain, Terry Pratchett, Counting Crows, Ani Difranco, Ben Folds... the list keeps growing. In the beginning, it was really only They Might Be Giants and Tori Amos. I went to a few shows of both of them. Then, I discovered the joys of the internet. I could learn everything I ever wanted to know! John Linnell is a Gemini! Tori Amos' real first name is Myra! WOW!

So began the development of one fangirl, Colleen Anne McClanahan.

As much as I love the artists that I frequently obsess over, I have to say that if it weren't for the people involved, I wouldn't be as much of a fan. If I hadn't met Ilya in line at the Washington DC Tori Amos concert, I probably would have gone to a few concerts, and let it be. If I hadn't got involved in the tmbg.org and consquently the TMBG Offtopic mailing lists, I would have a radically different life today. That sounds a bit melodramatic, but it's true. I wouldn't have met Jay if it wasn't for the Offtopic mailing list, when Karen Riley encouraged us to talk to one another online because of our close proximity, geographically. A few months later I met Beth, Nathan, and Jamal in NYC. Then, as circumstances would have it, Nicole (who I originally met at the same time as Ilya) re-found me, and it all comes full circle. I've had such fun driving hours and hours to go to concerts and staying with people like Erika and Shavonne, or meeting Tara, or just seeing people you kinda know in line. It's a neat concept; it makes the world seem much smaller, and everyone seem so much more connected. And I've noticed something else: having a partner in crime makes it way easier to really become a fan. If Aimee wasn't as into Ani Difranco, I don't know who I'd go to concerts with (as Liz is currently undergoing her concert embargo in the interest of money-saving.) It feels good to have something in common with somebody that understands the depth of passion you feel, without making you feel like a complete dork. And if you're not a fan, that's scary. Hardcore Fruvous fans scare me as much as I scare them as a Tori Amos fan, I'm sure.

My original intent in this post was to track my evolution as a fangirl from two bands to way more than two, but I seem to have digressed. I guess for TMBG and Tori Amos, it's become as much about the people as it has about the music. Would I still be as interested in either group/artist if I didn't have so many friends through them? Probably not.

But I'm glad I do.

When I was talking to Beth last night, she was listening to Moxy Fruvous' album Wood. I am now listening to it. I want them off of hiatus RIGHT NOW.

Thank you.

I hate spam. I want to rid the world of it. Not just the gelatinous Hormel meat, but the unsolicited email. I was curious exactly how much I received, so I saved it for a week, and I've done a tally. Here it is:

07-15-02		Monday		20
07-16-02		Tuesday		28
07-17-02		Wednesday		31
07-18-02		Thursday		31
07-19-02		Friday		24
07-20-02		Saturday		26
07-21-02		Sunday		26

One week: 186 pieces of spam. That's averages out to about 27 pieces of spam a day. I have a lot of these filtered out from filters I've built over time, but a lot still get through. It's just ridiculous. This is all the email that goes to my colleenanne email account, not my work one (it had significantly less, since I've never used that email address to post to newsgroups or link to email on websites.

I went to the doctor, and they don't know what's wrong. Supposing it was an allergic reaction, I got a (painful) cortisone shot, and now I have a headache, a sore arm, and I still itch. BLECH. :(

I'm going through some weird reaction right now where I itch all over. I don't have a rash, or any other symptoms, I just itch. (Well, I have a few old mosquito bites on my right leg, but that's it.) The same thing happened to me sometime in 1999. Blah. I'll go to the doctor tomorrow, but I can't go see my normal one, because although he's back from his family leave, he's only in the office for two hours tomorrow. So I get to go to their other office which is a few miles away (rather than directly across the little pond here behind MaxWeb. Like, in a building. Not among the reeds on the edge of the pond or something. My health insurance is better than that.)

On a completely random note, let me express my undying love for the show Scrubs. I think it was without a doubt the best new sitcom of 2001. Zach Braff is wonderful, Sarah Chalke makes a way better Elliot than she did a replacement Becky, and I've liked Donald Faison since he declares he's "Keepin' it real" in Clueless as a Beverly Hills black kid that shaves his head.

Oh, and Zach Braff is from the same place Jamal is. hehe. I find that cool.

Today's public service announcement: a story.

A few days ago, I was driving home or something, and I happened to think, "I wonder how my brother's friend Claude is doing?" It was an odd thing to wonder, really. Although my brother's been friends with him for about 12 years or so, I've only met him in person a few times. But I know he's not been in the best health for about the last 5 or so years, so it crossed my mind. At a young age, Claude had high blood pressure that he didn't keep under control. A few years ago, at about age 28, he found out that his kidneys had shut down because of this. He started home dialysis, and still really didn't take very good care of himself. He has a family, a wife and two kids. Anyhow, for some reason I thought to ask my mom about him, and she says, "Oh, you haven't heard about his jaw?" He'd had a bad tooth that had to be extracted. When they took it out, the dentist unknowingly broke his jaw (kidney disease has a tendency to leach calcium from your bones, making them weaker.) Claude didn't realize his jaw was broken, and continued on with his life. The broken jaw didn't heal, and in fact pretty much rotted away. When they realized the problem, they operated on him and replaced the jaw bone with a steel implant. He got through the surgery, and went home. He hadn't been eating much because of the pain, and had become very malnourished. He went home, threw up, and lost the jaw. (Yes, I realize how gross this is.) He goes back to the hospital, and they realize how malnourished he is (and honestly, are amazed he's alive.) They take him back into surgery, put another jaw in, and this time inadvertently slice off his tongue. Jesus Christ. They sewed it back on, but jesus. I can't imagine a worse set of ailments. I know you could argue for limb amputation, paralysis, or worse, but this takes the cake for me. To be missing part of your face, and to have all that happen to one person (and his family.) So I have a few requests to make of you, gentle reader.

1) If you believe in any sort of benevolent God/gods/goddesses, please say a prayer for this man and his family. It can't hurt. Even I, the agnostic, did so.

2) If it's been more than 6 months to a year, go to the dentist. I don't care if you can't afford it, if you're afraid, if you don't think you have anything wrong. Claude called my brother and told him to get all of his teeth taken care of (they're in pretty bad shape.) As little as 75 years ago, it wasn't uncommon for an infection of a tooth to kill you. I'm sure it happens in recent times, to the stubborn and/or poor. Most dentists will take you regardless of your ability to pay. It's worth going into debt for. Having bad teeth can literally be the death of you.

3) If you have a nagging medical problem of any sort, take care of yourself. If you have high blood pressure, keep it under control. If you have a cold that won't go away, go to the doctor. Don't let things get out of hand. It can come back bite you in the butt. Right now, I'm at the receptionist's desk while her father gets medical tests done, and it doesn't look like it's a positive situation. The stubborn "I can take care of it, I don't need a doctor" attitude can lead to later diagnosis and treatment of a serious medical problem.

I think most of the people that read my blog don't fall into the above categories. You go more or less regularly to the dentist, and if you're in too much pain/annoyance you go to the doctor. The middle class has much easier access to this stuff than my brother and his friends do. Be thankful you're among the privileged, if you are. But stop to think about those that are less fortunate, and don't have some of the things we take for granted. Having gone to the University of Kentucky School of Dentistry for awhile, I realize I'm very fortunate. For all the dental pain I've had in the past few years, it pales in comparison to those who didn't go until the last minute, and to whom losing teeth is a fact of life. It's very sad to see my brother and sister's teeth rot out one by one. They put off going to the dentist, because they couldn't afford it or didn't have the time. It catches up with you.

I really let work get to me too much sometimes. I take everything so seriously. Usually, I think this is a good thing. I'm one of those people that insists that everyone have the same standards as I do (i.e. excellence). However, not everyone feels the same. When others half-ass things that affect my work, which cause me to have to do twice the amount of work I should, it pisses me off. When those same people play games and spend 80% of their time downloading shit, it adds to my aggravation. I'm an adult now; I have to pay my own rent (and eventually mortgage), car, car insurance, bills, student loan payments, etc. This isn't a job I have to get me through college; this is my bread and water. And I know the precarious situation it is to be an internet company (well, former internet company, we've diversified) in the post .com age. The web people don't support the company anymore. Therefore, anything we do has to be beyond reproach. If we aren't carrying our own weight, there's no real reason to keep us. I don't have time to wait for someone to finish their latest board of Warcraft or whatthehellever before they get to the project I asked them to do a week ago. I've been here longer than anyone else at the company, save the owners. I was doing the work that brought in 50-75% of our income, effectively keeping the company alive while we were in a downturn. If it wasn't for me, a lot of these people wouldn't be here, and I think that deserves a little bit of respect. Sometimes, it sucks to be one of the two girls in this company. I don't play their reindeer games. I could care less about computer games or basketball or golf or anime on the Cartoon Network. I know I get visibly annoyed when there's work to be done and someone's screwing around. If someone doesn't like me because of that, that doesn't mean I should change, it means they should get off their butts and do something. As much as I bitch, this really only applies to one person in the company, but in the buddy-buddy atmosphere of my department, it really makes me feel like the odd (wo)man out. I used to love my job. I have a big beautiful corner office with six windows, I make way more money that most people with my degree do, I had freedom to make decisions and be a bit creative when the time came. I still have most of that, but I also have a big heavy cloud of what I feel to be disapproval from a few people, that hasn't been earned on my part. When you show your ire for one person not doing their job, their friends tend to side with them.

That'll be all.

The new Counting Crows album, Hard Candy, came out yesterday. I finally found it after going to Best Buy ($9.99, sold out), Circuit City (who knew the one in Lexington is one of the five in the country that doesn't carry cds?), and finally found it at Wal-Mart. It's pretty good. I've been listening to it in the car, and I copied it into mp3 format at work so I could listen to it there (for some reason, if I play an album in the background at work, I become accustomed to it quicker.) There's a Joni Mitchell song as a hidden track ("Big Yellow Taxi.") It's not a bad cover. I don't know that I like it as much as the last album, but it might yet grow on me. ("Oh no!!!! I seem to have a Counting Crows cd growing from my head!")

Sometimes, I get in these angry moods, and they just escalate with every little thing. Today I'm in such a mood. My roommate's schedule has changed, and now her shower time overlaps my wake-up time, which interferes with my get-ready-for-work schedule. I asked her if she could move her shower time up about five minutes, and that evidently wasn't acceptable. It just pisses me off. We've lived in this apartment for three years, and she's had the (significantly bigger) room with a half bath the whole time. I have to share my bathroom, and it's her schedule that's changed, not mine. Her unwillingness to compromise annoys me and makes me seethe at the fact she's already getting the better end of the deal with the apartment. Then I get to work, and get a call about some search engine stuff I've done that hasn't been registered by Google yet, so he assumed it's not working, and refuses to accept otherwise. No, you see, it takes TIME for search engines to re-index this stuff, and I can't make every search engine word make their site pop-up as #1. Most of their site is a member's-only thing anyhow. So it just adds to my furor, which builds until I seriously think I could use a sedative at times. I don't handle anger well. I can't process it and make it go away, it becomes a cumulative effect. I'll start thinking about completely unrelated things that make me angry, and it all just aggravates the problem. Breathe in, breathe out. I guess it helps me understand my sister's problems better, though. I think she feels like this most of the time. Maybe I need to find out what the meds are that calm her down. hehe.

Last night I had a dream:

Beth lived in Lexington with her family, and had all along, but I'd never bothered to ask her where she lived, so I didn't know it. Once I found out, I went and visited her, and they lived in a really huge apartment in Hamburg Pavilion (a Lexington shopping center.) I got to meet her new puppy, but their bathroom was also a gas station's bathroom, and Beth and I were supposed to fly to WV early in the morning, but we were going to be late. I don't really remember much else, except for that her family had almost nothing in their apartment; very little furniture, decoration, etc. It was a weird dream. But it was nice that Beth lived in Lexington. ;)

So now I'm on this huge Ben Folds kick. It's like my brain's commanding me to listen to him all the time.

"I got this pain in my heart, that's all. There's gotta be something else.... everything's happy underground."

"Well I hate that it's come to this
But baby I was doing fine. How do you think
That I survived the other 25 before you?"?"

I could go on, but I'll spare you all. I'll just sit here, singing quietly to myself.

My weekend

Friday: Had dinner with Jay and his mom at a new(er) pizza buffet place in town. Cheap and filling. It didn't taste bad. And they had cinnamon rolls. After dinner, I bid Jay and his mom farewell, and go off searching for a suitable two piece bathing suit. I was looking for something in the tankini range. A tank top and short-like bottoms sounded nice. However, that didn't work out so well. I went by Blockbuster and decided to rent a parody of the sleepaway camp movies of the 80's, called Wet Hot American Summer. Janeane Garofolo, David Hyde Pierce, Amy Poehler (from Upright Citizen's Brigade).. I thought, "This should be good." Wow. That was one of the crappiest movies I've ever watched all the way through, although I did stop for awhile to watch King of the Hill, to relieve some of the misery. Anyhow.

Saturday: Aimee and I leave at about 1:45 to go to Louisville. We had lunch with Sam (who, if memory serves me correctly, I hadn't seen since January of 2000. Kinda weird when you think about the fact we used to see each other every day) at the California Pizza Kitchen, which was pretty good. I had a Jamaican Jerk Chicken pizza. Yum. Afterwards, Aimee and I checked into our hotel (a Courtyard Marriott), and left for Jillian's to see Ben Folds!!!! I heart Ben Folds. Wow, so I. We got there at about 6, hoping to be among the first in line. It didn't happen quite like that. We got there, and there were about 30 people in front of us. So we sit down, waiting for the doors to open in an hour, planning our strategy of where we were going to go in the venue. Doors were supposed to open at 7 pm.. we were in a large arcade, and things were bleeping and dinging and singing all around us. However, 7 pm comes, and a tour person tells us they haven't done a soundcheck yet, and we'll probably not get in for 45 minutes. An hour after that, we finally get in. Aimee and I are waiting in line when someone says, "if you've already had your IDs checked, you can come this way." We both had the Over 21 bracelets on, so we headed on through, and as a result got a way better place in front of the stage than we would have otherwise. (My view would have been perfect if it weren't for some girl with a big head with red hair, and the guy in front of her.) We were about 15 feet away from the piano. The setlist was as follows, just in case anyone's wondering:
One Angry Dwarf
Zak and Sara
Annie Waits
South's Gonna Do It Again
Mess
Eddie Walker
The Secret Life of Morgan Davis
One Down
Girl
Where's Summer B.?
Gone
"Bud Light Song"
Philosophy -> Chopsticks
Kate
Fred Jones 2
Narcolepsy
Twin Falls
Golden Slumbers
The Last Polka
Silver Street
Army
The "Charge!" Anthem
Emaline
Rockin' the Suburbs
Not the Same
(encore)
Tiny Dancer (complete with Elton John glasses and facial expressions!)
Song for the Dumped (minor)

It rocked so hard. Just him and a piano is so much more personal than the whole band (although I do like the sound of him with a band better.) I was close enough to see facial expressions clearly, and to see his hands. He really kicks the piano's ass. There's no loving caress, a la Tori, it's just "I'm going to abuse this thing in any way necessary to get the sound I want." And he'd look face on into the audience with his pretty blue eyes and winning smile and my, don't I have the schoolgirl celebrity crush. One of my theories has always been that Ben Folds Five dissolved because Darren Jesse and Robert Sledge got tired of singing the "Ba ba La la" backup parts (ok, I don't know how serious I am with that theory, but there might be some tiny bit of validity there), but Ben had the audience do the backup, and it worked really well. People were singing along the whole time, and it didn't even bother me! Wow! I really loved the show, despite the crowd of people (mostly non-annoying, a surprise considering my last Jillian's/Ben Folds experience). Jillian's does have an incredibly shitty sound system, however. There was next to no projection from the center of the stage, it was all on the sides. It was impressive that so many people knew his stuff, inside and out, including the stuff from "Rockin' the Suburbs". Ahh. So great. And I heard "Girl" live, which I think would have made Ilya wet himself. Afterwards we went through a Wendy's drive-through, went back to the room, and went to bed so we could go to Kentucky Kingdom the next day.

Sunday:
After eating a hearty McDonald's breakfast (and seeing a cockroach in the bathroom), we find our way to the park. It's HOT, in the 90's. We ride some water rides early on, and then walk around in wet shoes and clothes all day. I bet the dry people that rode coasters and stuff after us loved us. We went over the Hurricane Bay, which is the water park within Kentucky Kingdom, and hung out in the wave pool and lazy river for awhile. It was nice. I hadn't been in a pool for awhile, and I love water and swimming. Problem: Although I was very careful about wearing/reapplying sunscreen, I forgot my back, which rarely sees the sun. As a result, it's now bright red and painful. My shoulders got burnt, too, because of poor reapplication of sunscreen. My face is nice and red, but it's a light burn, thankfully. Great for wrinkles! SPF 75, next time. hehe. (I know. It's all the same after SPF 45 or so.) At least I'm not so ghostly pale anymore. I'm not so burnt that I'm very uncomfortable. I just don't want to sleep on my back tonight again. hehe. I got very warm when I did that last night.

A note on the most evil ride ever devised: Don't ride it. Aimee and I were riding the really tall ferris wheel, and saw this little roller coaster. It was just one care at a time, and it just went around curves and stuff. How bad can it be, we think? We actually thought it was a kid's ride, there are almost no hills. So we ride it, right before we're ready to leave. We get in, and it's kind of cramped, but eh, no big deal. We go up the hill. And.. AROUND A CORNER THINKING WE'RE ABOUT TO PITCH TO OUR DEATHS! It just had a bunch of S-Shaped turns, over and over, and every time you got to a curve I swear it honestly felt it was about to go over the edge. I've never ridden a more non-fun ride. And just to note: I love roller coasters, and will ride them all with no fear. But when you call something "Road Runner's Express" and have ACME all over it, you think it's gonna be low-pressure. This was some masochistic horrible horrible ride designed by bad people should be forced to eat nothing but rancid butter for the rest of eternity.

Your Monday morning quote:
"Being in love was not the most important thing to me; being respected was."

Tori Amos
Rolling Stone, Issue 685. June 30th, 1994