Let us rock with the cherry-scented hope of a new day.

I'm meeting with the band tonight. Hopefully I can have some time to hang-out with Johnny and Walt. Maybe we'll put together some new songs. I've been writing some lyrics for Lucifer Morningstar. I don't think I'll be ready until at least the end of the month. I've been trying to convince and heavy-handedly drop the hint to some fellow musicians. Maybe Austin and I can write some beats at least.

El Radio Fantastique will be performing on the 19th of January at the Dragon's Den with Ratty Scurvics. I'm not sure if it will be the Invisible Gambling Jews or Singularity.

We're also going to be playing the 31st of January at One Eyed Jacks with A Particularly Vicious Rumor and Ratty again. It will be like a Houston reunion, but with more people and less traveling. I'm really looking forward to that show. A real stage and real lighting, very glamorous. Hopefully with a bit more space than the Circle Bar.

From The New York Times' Book Review

from Darin Strauss's review of Sightseeing, stories by Rattawut Lapcharoensap:

Here's the problem with Write what you know: What too many aspiring writers know, it turns out, is that a suburban American adolescence causes vague feelings of sadness -- especially when one's formative years include a dying grandparent or housepet. A way to avoid such tedium is to write what you don't know, to labor toward peculiarity. The risk there is that your well-researched make-belive might come off as exactly that: a fake. It's the lucky writer whose story is familiar to himself and exotic to his readers.