That’s right. It’s time for my quarterly pilgrimage to see my favorite band of all time. Sadly, it appears Kevin and I can’t be at the same performance without some kind of horrific fan overload occurring. The chain reaction might cause brownouts in four states. Shannon, on the other hand, is a soothing influence upon the bouncy masses. This was her fourth TMBG concert in six months. She can be present with me or Kevin, but not even her influence can counter us both.
My crowd-fu remains strong. Before, I’ve been 3 - 5 people back, but this time I elbowed my way all the way up to the stage. Often, Flansburg or Dan-the-incredible-guitarist were only three feet away. I could’ve reached out and touched one of them, but since I don’t like being thrown out of bars in strange cities, I narrowly restrained myself. That didn’t stop me from nearly tackling Shannon to the ground in order to snag one of the foam stadium fingers tossed to the audience. Chaz got one too. Then, in a moment of sympathy for the teeming masses standing packed like cattle behind us, we politely put them on the stage instead of waving them in the air. This had absolutely nothing to do with our desire to dance.
For once, I really wish I’d brought a camera. They were three feet away! No obstructions, great lighting, and THREE FEET AWAY. There were several times when I tried mentally writing an image directly into my brain because darnit, that would’ve been a great photo. I know if I bring a camera to a concert, I’ll probably spend the entire time staring at a tiny 2 inch screen instead of the live people singing for my entertainment, but just this once, I wish I’d made an exception. It was a great show.
Mind you, I’ve never been to a bad TMBG concert. I have over 340 of their songs on my iPod. That doesn’t include all of their children’s albums or bonus material. Every single concert is a different experience. I’ve never heard them repeat a set list. You really can’t say that for most bands. While I loved being there, I can guarantee the Police concert I saw last summer was the exact same concert I would’ve seen anywhere from Atlanta to Sydney.
I’m not greedy. Thrice in half a year is enough. They can go back to Brooklyn now and work on a new album. I’ll be ready for the next tour.
I’ve read Blood Music. I know when some part of my body starts to unexpectedly transform, bad things are about to happen. What do you know, I’m now the proud host of a thriving Staph infection. They’re partying on the back of my thigh, in the meaty part you actually sit on when using such common household furnishings as a chair. It will get much, much worse before it gets better.
At first I thought it was a spider bite. Four days later, I thought it might be a necrotic spider bite. When it grew larger than a baseball, it was time to see a doctor. Now, I’m on two kinds of antibiotics and have been informed that if those and the home remedy treatments don’t clear it up in a week, I get to go to the hospital. “But,” I asked the doctor, “Don’t hospitals breed antibiotic resistant strains of Staph?”
“Ironic, isn’t it? Do it anyway. It’s probably fine, but if it’s not, it could kill you.”
Thanks, doc. That’s just the reassurance I needed. If my leg does not erupt in a massive and painful burst of pus in a week, I may need intraveinous antibiotics. What part of that sentence isn’t supposed to freak me out?
I wish it was a necrotic spider bite. At least then I could fantasize my body was slowly developing superpowers.
My email today included a sad, desperate message from Friendster begging me to take them back. You’ve had your flings with LiveJournal, MySpace, and Facebook, but we’re the ones who really love you baby. They promised your first social network will always have a special place in your heart.
Alas, my black heart is fickle. LiveJournal is so limited, MySpace burns my eyes, and Facebook’s use of people’s personal information feels skeevy. You can’t have me back, Friendster, but I am ready and willing to give my love to a new social network.
Posted by: Chris Rachael in LSFRG
Tonight’s LSFRG went really well. We had three new members - all of them women. One of the new ladies even wondered where we hid all the single men. After all, this is a SF club.
I’m pleased. I like big racus parties, but it’s also nice to have quiet, laid back time with people. I don’t get enough of that these days. The discussion of the book itself went pretty quickly (everyone liked it. Discussions only get heated when people hate the books.) Everyone lingered on the way out, which is always a nice sign of people enjoying themselves and getting along.
Cheezy as it may sound, I want to pick up a thank-you card for our anniversary of meeting at Barnes and Noble. It’s hard to find any location willing to host a club. Hawley Cooke turned me down quite harshly. The Summit Barnes and Noble and the Borders on Hurstbourne were polite, but still quite firm that the only clubs allowed to meet on their space were ones they sponsored themselves, led by their own employees. Our Barnes and Noble doesn’t just tolerate us. They actively promote us and tell random callers that yes, we’re a big group and look like we always have fun.
It’s all because we have women. I’m telling you, it’s my secret to success. Women like women. Men like women. The more women you have, the more people come to your clubs. Tonight, we had 7 women to only 4 men. It was one of our best meetings in awhile.
I’m feeling the love.
Chris Rachael and Chaz’s Domestic Tranquility spent four years on Blogger. When we started, it had a dirt simple five minute setup and some of the most user friendly features on the web. When it was bought by google, we expected even better things.
We love google. We both have gmail accounts, use google calendars daily, and swap information via google docs. In this case, though, they messed up. Over the last six months, blogger has become increasingly unusable. The last few posts were crazy struggles. I can’t tell you what a relief it is for blogging to be easy again. I expect you’ll hear a lot more from us in the near future.
We’re gradually migrating the rest of our blogs over to WordPress. Stay tuned for more linky goodness.
To my shock and amazement, I’m actually jealous of high school students. This doesn’t happen often. Most of the time you couldn’t pay me to take on a gangly body where none of the parts work right yet, much less being broke all the time and feeling both totally clueless and utterly superior. However, every year 32 lucky students at Seneca high school get to take a year long class in Forensics.
I’ve paid for the four week version. Let me tell you, it’s awesome. Since she didn’t happen to have any bodies buried out on the track field, our teacher brought in owl pellets for us to dissect. I’d never heard of an owl pellet before. Apparently, owls like to eat their little woodland friends whole. They can’t digest the mousy fur or shrewy bones, though, so they wait until enough of that gets impacted in their stomachs and puke it all up. Some woodsmen actually make a living collecting these balls of furry, bony owl vomit.
Excavating that thing was neat. I found parts from three of Bambi’s doomed little friends. My lab partners stood two paces back, only willing to touch with tweezers after I teased the bones loose from the fur with my fingers. It was a neat reminder that most bones don’t come in the neat assemblies you see in museums. The bones are all jumbled together in any old random order with bits from other creatures shoved in their for good measure. It’s up to you to figure out how to reassemble the body.
As you can see, I gave it a try, but I could only take my Frankenrat so far before class was over.
Yes, Insight is up to their tricks again. I got another call this afternoon from an Insight contractor. He said if I didn’t pay over the phone right now, he’d shut off my service. Hello, my service is already off! It has been for most of the last month.
This time, I was threatened with Even More Fees if I didn’t pay the bribe over the phone right now.
No, he could not explain what the charges are for nor would he tell me how much the new “fees” would be. He wanted $380 right now, over the phone, or else. When asked for a paper bill itemizing the charges, he said he couldn’t do that. They’re not even pretending they can justify this crap in print.
Once more, we have been instructed to give them random amounts of money or they will fuck up my credit report. This is extortion.
Chaz is taking time off work to talk to Insight at the main office tomorrow. Clearly, nothing I do has been successful, so he wants to give it a try. This is costing us a ridiculous amont of time, money, and stress.
Before I pay them off, I really want a printed itemized list of exactly what they’re charging us for so we can enclose it along with the letter to the Better Business Bureau and State Attorney General’s office. I don’t expect to get it, but a girl can dream. No, this won’t save my credit report, but it will make me feel better. Maybe the next time Comcast tries to make a break into this market, my letter will add to the mass of complaints and help tip the balance in favor of switching this corrupt monopoly for one that might be a hair less abusive.
If I want to keep them from making good on their threats to my credit report, it lookis like I really am going to have to pay their entirely made up $170 charge, pay for two months of “service” wherein they mostly kept my system shut down, and pay for the rest of the random fees they’re piling on as punishment for not having given in to thier extortion in the first place. This really pisses me off.
I wish I could believe that paying them off would actually work. Once someone starts making threats and demanding random amounts of money, the trust is gone. Maybe they’ll go away if I pay them off and shut off my service. Maybe they’ll keep sending me “bills” once my cable box is gone and my service shut off. Time will tell.
Tomorrow night at 10:00 EST, 7:00 PST, venture out into the cold and enjoy a total lunar eclipse. Seriously. Do it. If you’ve never seen a Lunar Eclipse before, they’re darn spiffy. It looks like the moon is bleeding, perhaps about to be split in twain as in the intro to Thundarr the Barbarian.
Insight Cable continues to make me feel like I’m living in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Now they want a $170 bribe. They freely admit this is not for a bill. The $170 isn’t for a service or product. Nope. There’s an accouting error on their part that messed up something in their computer system. No, they can’t fix it. Sucks to be me. I can either cough up the $170 bribe or have my credit report wrecked by their bill collectors and remain without broadband.
I can’t begin to express how much I hate this company. They won’t let me pay my actual bill unless I pay the bribe, too, so late fees are being added. It’s crazy. Insight employees have told me to my face that it’s all totally bogus, but, in their words, “the only thing you can do is pay it.” When I have some free time again, there are letters to the BBB and Attorney General’s office in my future. Bribery is bullshit.
I can’t beleive how many hours of my life this company has sucked up in the last few months. It’s appalling.
I’m trying to focus on the positive, though. I had a very encouraging phone interview this week. When the recruiter says, “You’d be awesome for this job,” I think odds are good. I’m not holding my breath on anything. I’ve been on a gazillion interviews in the last few months. Hopefully, they’ll call back to set up an in-person interview next week.
I’m also enjoying the heck out of my forensics class. I can’t believe a local high school offers an entire semester of forensics as a senior level science class. That’s so cool. Four weeks is nifty. A whole year of it would be amazing. It’s a great way to get kids (and the senior citizens who mostly populate my class) deeply interested in multiple branches of science.
I am lucky to be alive!
Ten minutes ago, a battered old blue sedan nearly ran me over in the post office parking lot. Feeling a bumper graze my knees was heart stopping enough, but the hood was scrawled with giant white shoepolish reading, “I AM COME UNTO YOU AND REBORN IN YOU.”
What?
Get back, you parasite! I expect dinner and drinks before you come within five feet of me - and don’t use that, “premature sporation” excuse! No comming. No rebirth. NO! I am not volunteering to have your alien spawn eat its way through my living abdomen before overtaking the earth.
Oh, wait. I forgot. It’s okay to nearly kill people as long as you quote the Bible at them first. That’s patriotic!
