From my other journal, dated September 1, 2002

Finally, the two of us are starting to feel better. Zoe's nose is still a bit runny, but not as much as it was, and I think I may mostly over this thing myself. It starts out like a cold but then other symptoms start showing up along with the cold symptoms. It isn't very pleasant. I still feel all phlegmy, tired and weak but the fever broke and I do feel better. The pain in my mouth is going away by small degrees and I'm more able to eat now.
We decided to go ahead and have the cake since my grandmother and cousins weree visiting. I had to go get it yesterday and about halfway through my shopping trip I started to feel dizzy and weak from my fever (Larry had offered to go for me but stubborn, silly bitch that I am I insisted), so there was no way I was going to be able to shop for gifts too. That made me feel even worse, because my baby girl's first birthday had already come and gone, we were going to use the cake, and here I was with no gift for her. It didn't matter how sick I was, I still felt as if I was a really bad mom for not having a gift for my baby's birthday. I didn't have one for my mom either.
I ordered my mom some really neat stuff from Amazon today, which should be here by this weekend. The book Anam Cara, gaelic for "soul friend" (or soul mate). My mom is celtic by default because she married my dad and fell in love with all things irish, so I indulge that whenever I can. She loves celtic music more than anyone I've ever seen. This book is the kind of thing that really speaks to her. I'm sure she'll like it. I also ordered a Crabtree & Evelyn gift basket for her from the kids, so hopefully now she'll do the home spa thing and allow herself two hours to relax.
I hope it gets there before next weekend. We're all going to try to get together again next weekend (minus my Va. relatives, but plus my brother, SIL and niece), so it would be nice if it got here before then. Since Larry wants to be involved in the gift buying for Zoe we'll go out together for hers. That will be nice. We don't get much time together. I know that would harm a lot of relationships but it seems to make us want to try harder to have some time to ourselves, or at least really make the time we do get count.
I guess it makes us appreciate one another more.

Larry and I have decided that there are two types of young female musicians these days; generation one & generation two.

The differences are monumental.

Here's a list of generation ones:
Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Willa Ford, Shakira, Mariah Carey, 3LW, Dream, Play, No Secrets.

The list is actually much longer, but this gives a general idea. Generation ones are people who have decent voices, but are more well known for their style of dress, dance or ability to market themselves. They have saturated an already overly saturated market, which isn't a good thing, as it becomes more and more obvious by the day that they aren't that talented. They can't play their own instruments and have no discernable talent other than the ability to shatter glass in a "who can hit the highest note" competition.
** I almost added J-LO to that list, except for the fact that she has real acting talent. Just the same, she is guilty of severe over-marketing and I'm just completely fucking sick of seeing her.

Generation twos:
Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne (still has a twerpy image, but talented nonetheless and her CD is surprisingly wonderful), Fiona Apple (an early Gen2), Nelly Furtado and most recently - Vanessa Carlton. Generation twos play an instrument (Nelly Furtado plays several), write their own music and have something meaningful to contribute. While they may have the occasional "dancy" sounding song, their music tends to be more ballads and lush instrumentals rather than inane dance music and ridiculous trendy posturing. These are the Sarah McLachlans and Karen Carpenters, women whose music actually says something.

I have lost all patience with Gen1 types. Sure Britney Spears' first CD was pretty good, but everything she has done since has sounded exactly the same. Not just similar because it was all done by the same person, but exactly the same. Christina Aguilera's bitchy bullshit just gets on my nerves. It was more than a little hypocritical on her part to call Britney Spears "teeny bop trash". Not to defend Britney here, but Christina's music is the exact same type and sounds exactly the same as Britney's. They even dress the same, though Christina's had nasty things to say about Britney on that issue too. Perhaps mirrors don't work where the Aguileras live.
And don't even get me started on Dream, whose CD I bought because of the first two singles. I don't usually like popular music that much but those two songs were really good. Or at least I thought they were until I got home and realized that the radio didn't play the first two minutes of the songs, which were basically some seriously stupid scenarios supposedly set up as lead-ins. Every song on the CD has one!! One was over a minute long, an answering machine message from each of the girls to the guy that's been going out with all of them. It was stupid, annoying and pissed me off.
Frigging Generation ones!!
Anyway, that's my rant for today. The Ones were really pissing me off. It must be all of this ridiculous coverage about Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake breaking up. Who gives a rat's ass? Why is this news - I mean, don't we have a war going on?

Grumble grumble.

I see a Vanessa Carlton CD in my future. She plays piano and sings beautifully. I hope more Vanessa Carltons and Michelle Branches start surfacing. We need something to take our attention away from all of these artistically bankrupt diva-clones.