I must not tell lies.

It is Wednesday, July 15. This means two important things. Firstly, it is Kat's birthday. Secondly, it is the release date of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Price, the sixth installment in the movie franchise based on the best-selling books by J.K. Rowling. Maybe you've heard of them.

Waiting in line outside the theater last night:


I'm a huge fan of the books as are the majority of my friends. I think they are brilliant and fantastic and that J.K. Rowling is doubly those things. I think you're crazy if you haven't read them. (And I get my rage when your reason is to the tune of "I don't see what the big deal is. Such a fad." You are not the exception to the rule here. Read the books THEN form your opinion.)

One of the greatest parts about being a fan is the fanDOM. I can't explain what it's like to celebrate something fantastic and brilliant with others. It's about community, I suppose. Love and friendship, things the books preach out into a vortex of evil. The costumes, the gear, the vernacular are all by-products of this awesome. I learned how to knit so I could have a Gryffindor scarf.

Snacks by my friend Katherine for our Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book release party in July 2007:


At Barnes and Noble waiting for the release of the final book in this epic series in 2007:


My friends and I gearing up for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie. We are spectacular dorks. And not ashamed at all:


I hadn't read the books in two years and so I set to work four weeks ago. I read all seven, finishing the epilogue during dinner last night. I wanted to start from the beginning, to make charts and graphs and outline these characters. These books are powerful, powerful things and I feel privileged to be alive and around to attend release parties and movies.

I go to the midnight showing because of the fans. I've never had a better movie-viewing experience than with this group of people. These Potter-lovers grouped around blankets and chairs, casting hexes and reading aloud. And then, when we're in the theater, when the lights drop, there are cheers followed by silent reverence. Applause when our beloved characters take the screen.

The crowd last night waiting for the film to begin:


And the first few seconds of the movie last night, complete with the cheers of the 1,000 biggest fans in Southern California:


The fans are fantastic and brilliant just like the stories. And I repeat my plea time and time again, to give the books a chance. You don't have to knit your own scarf, but you might want to. You might not look or feel like my type of fan, but you'll still be a fan. I know it.

Mischief Managed

(Note: How sleep deprived am I? I posted this to THE WRONG BLOG this morning. And it took me four hours to notice.)

This is a very important week, friends, because not only is tomorrow Kat!'s birthday, but Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince finally hits theaters tonight at midnight! Is it a coincidence that the day of Kat's birth is also the day of Magic? Answer: no. In fact, the last three Harry Potter books were released so near her birthday that it's hard to believe she's a Muggle. (She's not.)

So, we're supposed to be writing about Harry Potter this week, and you know what? If you took all the bits and pieces I've written about Potter all over the Internet, you could make a book as long as Order of the Phoenix. So today I will not gush. Today I am going to share one of my favorite things in the Potter fandom with you: The Potter Puppet Pals.

If it's your first introduction, you're welcome.

If you've seen these videos a hundred times before, you're also welcome.

Mysterious Ticking Noise:



Wizard Angst:



Potions Class:



Raise your hand if you're going to see Potter!

You, me, bars, beers, buzzed. Wings. Shots. Drunk. Waitresses, hot. Football - Cornell/Hofstra. Slaughter. Then a quick nap at my place.

Your friendly neighborhood Collective is on vacation this week. We'll be back next Monday with harrowing tales of adventure, or, you know, pictures of celebrities we'd like to bonk. Or something even awesomer. You just never know.

Bonsoir Canards!

Whether things are good or bad or you're simply...eating tacos in the park, there is always the crushing guilt.

Before I say anything else, I think you guys should know something really important: you all scare the hell out of me. Do you know that EVERY THURSDAY, you hold my self-esteem in your hands? Here, I've made a chart* with which to better illustrate:



See? The more you comment, the higher my self-esteem. And the higher my self-esteem, the happier I am. And the happier I am, the less I whine about crap. So my IRL people thank you.

Here's something else: I feel guilty about everything, all of the time. I feel guilty when people are mad at me (even if I've done nothing wrong), I feel guilty for procrastinating, I feel guilty for killing bugs, I feel guilty for buying crap at Target I don't need. AND I feel guilty when I see that someone has done something nice for someone else, because I didn't think to do it first THEREFORE I must be a horrible person. WHAT THE HELL? I'm not even Catholic.

So here's what -- ever since I saw the topic for this week, I've been feeling guilty. See, I post last every week and I'm so scared that I will forget to appreciate someone and they'll feel left out and then they'll cry and then I'll cry and we'll all use too many tissues and that's bad for the environment. And then I'll feel guilty about hurting the environment and cry some more and it's this horrible, ugly cycle that I don't want any of us to be a part of, OK? OK.

I've been thinking a lot about this whole blogging thing. I've been blogging for going on six years now and the reason I keep doing it is because you people are all so awesome. I love the little community that has sprung up here at The Collective. I love that I've had the pleasure of meeting some of you IN REAL LIFE and that you still seem to like me even though I was loud and obnoxious (alcohol was involved) and I made Abigail pay the DJ to play all Oasis songs and then I got in a fight with Jenny about how OASIS IS AWESOME, DAMMIT and then when the DJ finally played Oasis, I'd had so much tequila that I'd forgotten the words to Don't Look Back in Anger but I tried to sing along anyway and ended up sounding kind of like Jodie Foster in Nell, only louder and drunker. True story.

I guess what I'm trying to say is thank you all for being so awesome. Only I used way more words than that and not many of them made sense. STANDARD. Also, I heart you guys, never change, LYLAS**.


*I didn't say it was a good chart
**(OMG, remember LYLAS?)

You wrote the song I want to play.

My original plan was to sing praise to all of you lovely commenters who have ever left lovely comments about me, but not to literally sing of course, as I am afraid that would be more torture than reward, and reward I think several of you deserve for letting me know just how funny and pretty and smart and awesome and all around THE BEST HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET you think I am.

And oh yes, I am.

But then I realized how busy I've been over the last couple of months, and how much time it would take to go through all of your comments to find the real gems, comments like "You're funny!" and "You're pretty!" and "You're smart!" and "You're awesome!" and "You're all around THE BEST HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET!", and really, they are so bountiful that it would take about 52.7 billion years to catalogue them all (I'm also good at math) and like I said, I've been busy. I've been SO BUSY in fact, that I think I've left exactly 0.6346 comments on the internet in 721 days.

Some would say that this does not make me awesome, and to that I would say "You are wrong, mister!" Because you would be. Because in my estimation there are 4.6 trillion readers who read this supremely awesome web log and never comment either, and what makes those 4.6 trillion readers any less appreciated that the (relatively) small percentage that do? Especially since I am one of them!

So, lurkers of the world unite! Be appreciated, gosh darn it!