Rating: 8 out of 10.

Complaints: No songs from Clouds Taste Metallic (or Zaireeka! for that matter). Wayne went on a bit long at times… Was Raleigh, NC in fact the best sing-along ever? In all your twenty years as a band? Really?

Awesomeness: when everyone beamed their laser-pointers at Wayne, who then held up a mirror and deflected them back into the audience.

Complaints part two: Lasers in my eye.

Senators, please, listen! You’ve voiced your doubts before, but I am here, before you now, with hard facts! We’re beginning to see the first signs that Dr. Ableson’s theories are true! What senator Goldtwhat called “crack-pot science” is here at out doorstep!

Ladies and gentlemen of the senate, I have undeniable proof that global warming is shifting our planet so drastically that summer blockbusters are coming earlier and earlier. Without a call to immediate action by congress we could be seeing the next “Indiana Jones” at Christmas.

Look at the evidence. Slide one, please, Kathy.

Historically awesome, action-packed adventures and crowd-pleasing comedies were released mid-June to August.

Slide two. We had our first real indicator that something was seriously out of alignment when “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” came in late may of 2004. Late May, people! The Harry Potter films are classically winter movies released to coincide with the holidays. It was then that Dr. Ableson first proposed a detailed investigation, but it was shot down in congress thanks to you, senator Goldthwait! You needlessly destroyed my mentor’s career with your band of nay-saying yes-men.

Slide three, please. “Blades of Glory”. A feel-good, Will Ferrell romp costarring the wholesome Napoleon Dynamite lead… came out this early April of this year.

Slide four. A non-stop adrenaline rush titled “300″ was spotted in theaters… this March.

These are not projections. These are not estimates. What I bring before you are the facts, plain and simple. As reasonable men and women you must see that this presents a serious threat to the livelihood of our country… of our world! Without immediate action this shift could upset the delicate cycle of soda, popcorn and Milk Dud sales that have been the backbone of our economy since Sumerian times!

There’s hope. Things are not entirely lost. So long as we can delay the release of “Spiderman 3″ until… What’s that senator? No… are you insane? “Spiderman 3″ is coming in early May? You arrogant simpleton! You’ll kill us all!

For those of you not in the know: times are a migraine. Friday was unexpectedly given to me and it was gorgeous. Like the Kids in the Hall movie, “it’s like it’s 76 degrees in your brain.” When given some time outside I normally opt to run, not walk. This is part as a battle since times unknown against love handles, but also because I somehow feel this packs more into it. My brain tells me that a five mile run is five times better than a one mile walk. It’s not, though. You can’t really clear your head when you run. And when I say “you” I mean “I”. I can’t clear my head. It fills with loops. Loops which can drive me a little mad. So, yeah, perhaps TMI, but this is leading up to my walk I took. I stopped at a spanning tree, limbs like elephant legs, and hung out with it; like it was part of my own personal karass. “How’s it going, old timer,” I asked, touching its bark. (It was nice to sit next to something that had lived so very long in that you feel the depth of the concentric rings and begin to understand that seemingly cataclysmic events become tiny skuffs in some inner band.) I took off my shoes and rubbed my feet on its trunk for a little boku-maru

I wrote this quickly, but it is, conversely, one of the longer songs I’ve made. Maybe (just maybe) a bit derivative.

Listen: Foundation.

I made the music for Thrift Store Drifter and, um, sang on The Seat Dance. I know. I like this comment:

HAHAHA!!! Cool..The Seat Dance leans further into cool territory than does the “Lean Back,” rides on the waves of awesomeness more than “Ghost Ridin’ The Whip,” and slides further into dopeness than does the “Cha Cha Slide”…Oh yeah, how did y’all get the time travel machine to go back in time and get Talking Heads to record this for y’all? Didja borrow Uncle Rico’s time machine from Ebay? Cool track…and, as always; a big congrats to the songpoem lyricist…To quote the late Steve Irwin: NOICE!!!

Lyrics are available on Billy’s Blog.

Listen: last night I was speaking of how pretty awesome it was to be able to say that we live in the time of Kurt Vonnegut. The universe would have it that Kurt was dying at about that time. What a cosmic raspberry!

After the Sean Lennon show, Ben and I went for some drinks out at Milltown where we were later joined by Sean. It was disappointing how he just couldn’t close the deal with the sorority girl he was trying to pick up. I don’t know… I just think John’s kid should have more game than that. Also unexpected was the snow. Mike was at the bar drinking tonic water and nursing a jaw recently broken on a dare by a local Rosemary st. resident. Whereas he couldn’t afford health insurance before, he sure can’t now that he has to pay of this 15 large bill. In lieu of a BlueAdvantage card he’s carrying a glock.

I’ve been having a migraine a day for a few days now. What’s odd is that I never really get a headache, but I do get those sickly, nauseating visual fissures.

Four AM came faster than I expected. Get out of work and with a couple of chores still in the gunny, the hours drop off scurvied teeth. When sheets were finally hit, the days events wouldn’t leave me. Cynthia was parading around a new hire and stops by my cube to introduce her. Right away she fires off that my coffee cup has become wretched with caked bean gunge. I explain, yes, I like to remember what is happening to my insides and this increasingly stained porcelain keeps me on the ball. “Your body filters that out,” she says. “I just had a colonoscopy and my colon was beautifully pink.” “Beautifully pink,” so help me she said, “beautifully pink.” The new hire, mute with what-the-fuck style thoughts, teeters, suddenly unsure of what to do with her hands. The awkwardness was delicious and, for the moment, muted the muffled sobs of my fellow developers heartlessly flagellating their own testicles. After finally letting my brain chill the fuck out for enough time to let sleep wash in I woke right back up four hours later, well in advance of the alarm. What dreams I’d had were filled with blurry, mundane what-if scenarios.

This comes on my iPod every once in a while and I always listen to it all the way through. It’s done in synthesized voices; it never fails to crack me up. I’ll upload all the interludes some day, but until then, here is a transcript:

“I’ve been waiting for you Obi Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master.”

“Only a master of evil, Darth.”

“Your powers are weak, old man.”

“You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. My luck hasn’t been all that good lately so I think I may just give up on the big Death Star and Dark Side and evil-conquer-the-galaxy thing. Ha ha ha ha ha. I’m kidding. You bought it. Obi Wan is a sucker. Obi Wan is less intelligent than a small child.”

“There is something that you might like to know, Darth. Your mother was a hooker, and not an entirely good one at that.”

“Okay, that was over the line. I hate you.”

“And your father was a giggilo, although admittedly not an altogether bad one. He wasn’t wealthy, but he certainly made enough to get by.”

“Leave me alone. Who invited you here anyway? I was told that people with British accents were supposed to be polite.”

“Who told you that? Your mother, the hooker.”

“Leave. Leave now.”

“Very well. Your dignity seems sufficiently crushed and now about as harmless as your mother, the hooker.”

“I hope the door hits you on your way out.”

“Charmed”