Did you get through it okay? Good. We did, too. Kind of annoying, but it’s over. What’s that? You were referring to Christmas? No, no – I’m talking about the blue-hot sun. Whole different kind of annoying.
So, yes… a bit the worse for wear, our second-hand Soyuz spacecraft (personally checked for soundness by Yuri Gugarin himself) did actually carry us through the burning sun without major incident. The man-sized tuber had to turn up the humidity in his special space terrarium, but that’s no biggy. We have asked our pilot, Urich Von Braun (son of a rocket scientist, I’m told) to take us home via Proxima Centauri, where we may just stand to make a few extra bucks playing on their equivalent of Austin City Limits (which they call “terusdanorf girundolph huzzah” … not real catchy) before slinking home to the Cheney Hammer Mill and whatever housekeeping nightmare awaits us there. Hey – we couldn’t afford domestic help, okay? And that place sure as hell won’t clean itself. (Not yet, anyway. Mitch is working on a device right now…)
So, yeah… we’re pock-pock-pocking along through interstellar space once again, ringing in the new year as has been our custom; with a toast of Zenite cognac (thoughtfully provided by our sit-in guitarist, sFshzenKlyrn) and a demonstration of zero-gravity juggling by Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Very impressive. Somewhat less impressive was Marvin’s rendition of 
Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm”… his high, reedy voice seeming a bit thin even to posi-Lincoln (who himself has a high, reedy voice) and his recollection of the lyrics a bit less than perfect. (Since when does Maggie’s brother “hand you a pickle”?) Still, way out here, you have to take what entertainment you can get, no matter how bad it sucks. What the hell – it beats zero-gravity rehearsal, right? (Just try to hang on to those drumsticks, boy. Just try.)
We had plans to open our terusdanorf girundolph huzzah gig with a rousing performance of our new mp3 single, “High Horse“, which we’re currently handing out for free on our Web site. Thing is, that is a song that requires context. Out on Proxima Centauri, they don’t keep up 
with Earth-bound politics. Hell, they would never have even heard of Dubya if we hadn’t brought him out there back in 2000 as part of our glorious first-ever interstellar tour. Contextualizing “High Horse” would require our filling them in on everything that’s happened over the last eight years, and that might take… well… eight years. The show’s only 45 minutes long, for chrissake. Let’s face it – they just won’t get the irony. And they don’t take well to country music out here, even if it’s gag-country. We’ll need another opener. (I was talking to Marvin just then – he’s trying to open a can of soup with a letter-opener. But yes, we’ll need to open with some other song.)
Wish us luck. Not so much with the gig, but with the getting there. Urich is becoming strangely obsessed with yet another celestial object. I’m hoping it’s Proxima, but my luck hasn’t been so good lately.
