April 8th, 2007.

Good morning. Easter morning. People send me lots of messages saying “happy bunny day”, which – I appreciate but it’s not quite right, I suppose. The holiday is religious for a lot of people (whether pagans or Christians is, of course, up to debate by theologians and Eddie Izzard fans), so I guess I shouldn’t knock it. It’s bright and sunshiny, and I’m hoping that a lot of kids are finding a lot of eggs out in the warmth of the springtime sun long before the chocolate melts. AND DON’T BE FOOLED!!!! There’s propoganda in them there eggs! I don’t care WHAT you believe, just think about it for Christ’s sake… (or whatever deity you choose).

Dylan and his friend on cello at Cozmic Pizza in Eugene, Oregon make for the first cello / kazoo duo we’d ever seen. It was a very, very slow for the open mic and I though we got a positive response from a couple of people, we were also told that “open mics were really much more for AMATEURS” and there was the implication that we’d somehow decieved people.
Nicole, one of the owners of the Twin Paradox Coffeehouse in Portman, Oregon. She’s hardcore about her coffee, as you can tell from her tattoo.

Wow, I’m ranty this morning. I apologize. It’s been a good couple of days, but this morning I’m in danger of waxing philosophical. Perhaps it’s because I’ve fallen in with My People and therefore are doing what My People do on holidays – which is have a Star Wars marathon: Ah, episodes IV, V and VI – when I could still BELIEVE in the Force! Before the entire spiritual education of my youth was chalked up to a bacterial infection.

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As we drove north towards Seattle, I was amazed… and chilled to see a Constructicon sitting up on the hill mocking the United States. Longhaul, one of the malevelent fragments of the first Transformers Combiner “Devastator”. It’s funny – what with the new movie coming out in July, a very realistic image of my childhood fantasies are being placed concretely in front of me. No longer plastic toys, and no longer primary-coloured poorly animated characters with bad dubbing an absurd plots, the movie seems to give them weight and Life and there’s a weirdly strong emotional response to SEEING these things in front of me. When we first passed him, sighting him as we passed him at 70mph, racing up route 5 – there was excitement, and a kind of tremble – and a strange realization that NO-ONE that I knew would probably care about this except Brennan back home… Star Wars and Star Trek – I can get some people to go along with me on those… X-Files, Battlestar… but the first two generations of Transformers have vanished from everyone’s psyche but Brennan and I, just a vague childhood memory being made into a movie.
Continuing in the theme of our science fiction tour, we cross paths with Vader about an hour into Washington State.

In any case, the last couple of days have found us meandering the north west, playing shows. I just counted and realized it’s been 22 days since our last day off, and we have very little to show for it. A couple of really good nights, a couple of really painful nights…

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