Give me another look at that map. No, no – not the Earth map… that outer space thingy. You know… the one Mitch gave us last week. Right, right – that’s the one. Thank you.
Hiya, folks. Glad you could stop by. Gives me a chance to ‘splain something… something kind of important. (By “important”, I mean in the relative sense. Not life-changing, not even day-changing, but perhaps momentary thought-changing.) As you know, over the last few weeks, we’ve been referring to the impending release and distribution of our second album, which we’re calling Monacalucci Summer… I mean, International House. (Sorry… I was thinking about that art house film I saw a few days ago. Monacalucci, was that weird!) And, as you might imagine, our rapacious corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, has been kibitzing a bit on the marketing. More than a bit, actually. In fact, LP has put their collective foot down… right on our necks. (This is just like the Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm days.)
Right, so… what have they done? Here’s what. They’ve insisted that we release the album to the extraterrestrial market before sending it to stores on Earth. Their reasoning is that most of our listeners are out there (in fact, most are beyond the orbit of Jupiter) and that we should appeal to our base before trying to break into what is, for us, a new and relatively untested market (Earth, or as we call it, “de Oit”). Now, we disagree with LP on this, and we said so. I don’t think I have to tell you what happened next. I do? Okay, well… I’ll just give you the part after all the guns went off. And the explosion. Right, so… after all that, we more or less… gave in. Let’s face it, friends… they’ve got us over a barrel. (No, that’s not a metaphor. They literally have us suspended over a barrel. Someone help us!)
Anywho, Gertrude Al-Kabar, LP’s Vice President of Marketing and Coercion, came up with something she calls the “Aldebaran First” plan. Here’s the skinny – we start promoting the new album on Aldebaran, and work back from there. 
Why Aldebaran? You mean, aside from the fact that it’s the brightest star in the constellation Taurus? According to Gertrude, the reasoning is quite simple… start with the red giants. If we do well in red giant systems, we can move on to hotter stars – yellow dwarfs, blue dwarfs, etc. Start big, end little. This is fortunate for Mitch Macaphee – he is anxious to determine whether Aldebaran’s long-period radial velocity oscillation indicates the presence of a companion of substantial mass. (Stop snickering. It could, you know.) Ah, ’tis an ill wind indeed that doesn’t blow someone some good, somewhere, sometime… somehow.
So w.t.f., as they say on their little phones (with their thumbs, no less). Looks like another interstellar tour for yours truly. Adelbaran here we come (right back where we started from).
congressional republicans on a bill that would grant the co-conspiratorial telecom giants retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits while underwriting Bush’s claim that the president can break pretty much any law any time he wants to (as well as spy on any of us who happen to communicate with people beyond our national borders – 
which is already making a fortune off of electrocuting our soldiers in Iraq with their shoddy workmanship. And as Klein points out, this type of capital intensive oil production is already taking place on a massive scale in western Canada, which has become the biggest supplier of petroleum to the U.S. and one bound by NAFTA to provide us with oil even if it means sacrificing their own energy security. And yet, this massive supply of oil from a highly reliable neighbor has not exactly brought the price down, has it? Why should we think developing much smaller reserves off shore and in Alaska would make the slightest difference (especially when industry experts say it won’t)?
Okay, what have you got? Mildred… Fitch. Mildred Fitch, 1429 Mulberry Lane, Aurolias, NJ. Got it. Who’s next? Get… Get… Stuffed. Get Stuffed. And where does “Get” live? Up… my… HEY!! 
unnerving. So we took it up with our label, Loathsome Prick, and they put us in touch with their Marketing V.P., Gertrude Al-Kabar, who suggested (no… fairly demanded) that we build a new list. “What the hell,” I said, “most of our most loyal fans are beyond the orbit of Saturn. The post office doesn’t ordinarily deliver to rural routes in that zone.” She was, however, insistent on this point, and we decided to at least appear as if we were doing something about it. Matt took the opportunity to sit down with the two Lincolns and ask about their presidential campaign experiences, direct mail appeals, that sort of thing. (Not a lot of help there – in point of fact, they got into a fist fight. Something to do with Steven Douglas.) John and I spoke with Mitch Macaphee, but he has nothing but contempt for the social sciences and would never associate himself with something so crude as a direct mail campaign. (Now handbills he might agree to, but not direct mail.)
All we do is send junk mail to people at random. In fact, that’s such a wildly adventurous idea, we should try to sell it to other bands. Hey, Coldplay! Hey, Captured By Robots! Here’s a great way to get heard by strangers! Send them shit in the mail! (Shouting across the internet? Another new communications strategy! Get Gertrude on the phone!)