Is this the emergency alert button? No? Okay – the red one. Gotcha. Now… which one is the emergency telephone? No, I’m not an idiot! It’s goddamn dark in here!

Well, we’re off. Off the bottom of the elevator shaft, at least. Whoever thought a space elevator to Aldebaran was a good idea? Oh, yes… Mitch Macaphee. Our mad science advisor. Creator of Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Winner of the coveted Igor prize for depraved experimentation. Yes… that Mitch Macaphee…. he is the guy who thought of this seriously under-engineered contraption. Hey, we fucked up – we trusted him. Not one of us (with the exception of Matt) has any familiarity at all with the concepts of mad science. If we’d done our homework in Mrs. Buehler’s class, we might have known better. But no, not us… we just read our comic books (most entertaining!) and traded our lunch money for second-hand smokes (cough!). In the meantime, geeky kids like Mitch were collecting the knowledge that would make them all-powerful later in life… if occasionally inept.

How did it all happen? Well… I’m gon’ tell yuh. We packed all of our gear into the space elevator. It was a tight fit, to be sure. Anti Lincoln insisted on bringing at least a representative sample from his anvil collection. Then of course there was the man-sized tuber’s terrarium – as necessary a piece of equipment for him as a breathing apparatus or twin-cylinder beer hat might be for us. (Don’t let anyone tell you not to breathe or drink in space.) I won’t even talk about how much kit old Mitch Macaphee hauls along with him. He needs a fully equipped electro-atomization laboratory everywhere he goes, including the goddamned bathroom. (I reached for a bar of soap the other day and ended up with a handful of plutonium dust. Fortunately, Mitch assures me it’s harmless.) I could go on, but…

…I will! Now Marvin needs to walk on stilts everywhere because of a bet he made with Big Zamboola. (He lost, apparently.) So he practically fills the room vertically every time he staggers in, and Zamboola fills it horizontally. Anyway… the bloody space elevator got so jam-packed with personal effects that the laser-beam cable it rides on actually started to fray. We couldn’t reach escape velocity because of the drag, and now we’re bobbing in orbit like an enormous yo-yo. (Look, ma… Earth’s walking the dog!) This doesn’t leave us with a lot of good options. I mean, we can’t carry news of our new album, International House, to Aldebaran in a bucket! So we’re left with a choice between:

1. Bobbing pointlessly in space for the rest of eternity;

2. Climbing back down to Earth on a fire rope; or

3. Finding a used space craft… fast!

Fortunately for us, there appears to be one or two used capsule options up here. I can see one through the porthole right now – “Dimitri’s Pre-Owned Soyuz”. Sounds like the place for a deal.

(Note: No images or political rant today. Tending to a sick friend. jp)

First floor: oxygen, nitrogen, argon and neon. Second floor: carbon dioxide and water vapor. Third floor: ions and free radicals. Fourth floor: absolutely freaking nothing.

Okay, well… that’s what we can expect to hear as we ascend in our space elevator to what promises to be a very eventful launch tour for our new album, International House, now available from HammerMade music (our own bogus imprint). Why such an unconventional method of travel? Don’t ask me… it’s Mitch Macaphee’s call, and he’s not talking to the press. You’re not the press? Well, then I can speak for Mitch. He’s…. a…. mad… man. Got that? MADMAN! We’ve been doing these interstellar tours for nigh onto ten years, and every time we go it’s in some kind of space vessel. This time, it’s a freaking elevator…. just because the guy reads about it in Popular Mechanics. (Did I say “Popular” Mechanics? I meant Unpopular Mechanics … that’s the mad scientist version. Miss a month, miss a lot.)

Okay, so we’re all supposed to pile into this space elevator thing and hit the up button. Personally, I’m skeptical. Sure, it’s cushy and all that – crushed velvet upholstery, brass fixtures, a veritable gilded carriage of the stars. But it’s not exactly… well… roomy. It’s an elevator, for chrissake! This trip could take weeks, perhaps months if we break the light-speed barrier (lord knows doing so could mean the passage of aeons whilest aging only an instant in the time of man… think of it…. ) Am I expected to share a relatively combined cabin with my execrable band mates, as well as Marvin (my personal robot assistant), both Lincolns, the man-sized tuber, an increasingly irritable Mitch Macaphee, and Big Zamboola, who’s been getting bigger by the day? (I blame pizza…. though that’s a bit like blaming the victim.) This is insufferable.

To compound matters, Mitch’s diabolical new “temporal depression” device could make the trip seem a whole lot longer. After all, it was through the use of this brave new technology that the last week was stretched into several months of actual time as perceived by us. Who would have thunk that some gizmo that looks for all intents and purposes like an espresso machine could actually stretch time/space like silly putty? Mitch is very fond of his invention, and he has every intention of carrying it along with him on the space elevator. No doubt every time he’s a little behind in his chores, he’ll flick the switch and turn an hour into a day… or two… or three. Mother of pearl! This tour will never end! Who was the idiot that asked Mitch to come up with a time expansion machine?

Oh, yeah. Guess it was me. Well… I suppose we’ll have to make the best of it. See you on Aldebaran!

Strangest thing. For a moment there, it seemed like time was slowing down, maybe even stopping. And my watch… it’s running … backwards.

Oh, hello, blog-o-files (or, more properly, big-green-blog-o-files). What’s happening in your corner of the world? I can tell you, fairly briefly, what’s happening over in our patch. Pande-freaking-monium, that’s what. The reason is fairly simple. We’ve got a new album on the verge of release – a little collection named International House, available on or about September 30 – and the assembly line is moving as fast as any sane person might imagine possible. That sucker is on fire, man… cranking out discs like greased lightening. I’ve never seen the man-sized tuber’s root tendrils move that quickly. And Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is putting his robotic arm in a sling, handpainting all those awesome disc covers. (Each one meticulously lettered with a nylon-bristle paint brush. Painstaking!) Will they be dry by the time the 30th rolls around? No man can say.

I’ve talked to Mitch Macaphee about this temporal problem we have – you know, too much stuff to do and not enough time to do it in. Mitch was in a helpful mood, so he retired to his laboratory. What happened then? Weeeelllll… the room started shakin’, the walls started hummin’, and the door started shoutin’ mah name! No, not really… that’s just a little blues number I’ve been working on (they love that stuff on Aldebaran). Actually, there was a humming sound… kind of a low pitched rumble, actually, and the storm windows were rattling a bit. God only knows what kinds of contraptions Mitch keeps in that laboratory of his. Crates keep arriving in the courtyard, mostly by air-drop. (We’ve got enough discarded parachutes to start a silk recycling center.) Do we find that disconcerting? Sure, sure… but that’s just one of the things you need to take into account if you want to have a real madman problem-solver around the mill. Everything’s got its price, you know.

So anyway… Mitch patched some kind of gizmo together, and the next thing I know we’ve got nothing but time. That interstellar promotional tour we booked for International House? It’s not just around the corner any more, at least in our little slice of reality. Mitch explained it to me. He’s created a machine capable of squeezing five, ten, sometimes twenty minutes out of every standard minute. When he cranks it up, the clock slows down, then starts running backwards. Cars in the street kick into reverse. Cakes fall instead of rise. (Actually, that happens to me without the machine.) And my hair starts growing back into my head. Freaky! Still, despite the strangeness, it has afforded us a little more time to take pains over our tour preparations. Don’t want to skimp on the pre-launch checklist (even if we are going up in a glorified interstellar freight elevator).

Well, better get back to it. Got to make sure tubey doesn’t start slacking again. He’s supposed to be answering the AIM, but he keeps forgetting to turn the stupid thing on. (Losing track of time, perhaps.)