I just wanted to test out some workflow ideas. Sat down, pressed record, and this is what popped out. As usual, no grand artistic statement intended, but once I got the video and audio together, I thought "hey, I bet some people would like to see this; it ain't that bad." If I knew ahead of time I was going to upload it to the Tubes, I probably would have, like, combed my hair or shaved or something. Happy New Year!

EDIT: Some people have expressed interest in having the audio from this. You can grab a 160KBPS MP3 of this recording here.

In other news, the Micronaut record is done, as I mentioned. I'm waiting for a particular piece of software so I can do the final master. We have some changes afoot at Positron (one could say that we've finally accepted the inevitable) so when I'm authorized to talk about that, I'll do so. But the Micronaut record release will be post-change, and that should be interesting.

I've also started writing for the next series of CR releases. This will be done quite a bit differently than the last album. I'm going to make each song so it can be performed in real-time, by me alone, instead of being a production fiesta like the last album. This will entail a lot of proper prior planning, and the songs will necessarily be much sparser (there is, after all, only one of me.) However, I will videotape the performance and put it up on YouTube the day it is done. How we'll end up selling an album after this sort of method is open to question, and will involve some discussion, but that's how we're gonna do it to start with.

I won't wax poetic on the mental and physical constitution needed to swing a pair of children around all day, as I've done that before. Instead I'll say "Santa Monica Pier, with rides!" and then I'll say "Aquarium Of The Americas! Fish, bitches!"

I should note that if you're planning on visiting the latter on a future visit to LA, and you're from either NYC or Chicago, don't bother. Shedd smokes this place. It is touted as one of the better aquariums, but is, in actual fact, not. They have jellyfish, though.

Dinner with the family in a couple hours, then homeward bound.

Saturday morning, we'll be on our way home. Apparently there's another snow storm going on in Oregon right now; hopefully that will have cleared up by Saturday.

Everything here is poisonous, pointy, or both. Not the most pleasant place in the world to just go for an afternoon walk.

A couple new pics from our trip on my Flickr page, if you find that sort of thing interesting. Today is R&R, and I'll probably go snowboarding tomorrow.

Somehow, driving across California always makes me think of that song. Don't know why. I just jotted it from memory, so the lyrics are probably about 80% right; don't take 'em to the bank or anything. (I'm sure some enterprising soul, most likely Jeff Campbell, will compare my rendition to some other equally incorrect source on the interwebs for accuracy. Just note: almost all lyrics found on the web are wrong, wrong, wrong.) We're in some podunk cow town north of Bakersfield; the name is Cunnilingus? (Not positive about that. Coalingus? Something vaguely sexual.)

Traffic was, to put it bluntly, a bitch and a half today. I postulated that today is the sort of the day where people that aren't used to driving long distances on the highway all decide to do so. Since I, myself, am, I find it to be somewhat unnerving that people that are merrily driving along at 80 can all the sudden decide they want to go 35 instead. After about the 15th time this happened, we decided it would be a wise idea to get off the road before they all started nodding off and bouncing off the guard rails and semis and shit.

So, a little short of our daily goal, but hey, there's wi-fi, so it's civilization, as far as I'm concerned. Anywhere you can load the NYT front page is fine with me. Onwards to Phoenix tomorrow.

But that said, the Nitro is a motherfucking beast. (It's a Jeep Commander with a better body and interior, essentially.) So I don't anticipate any problems that can't be managed.

After Phoenix, it's to L.A. for a couple days w/ the Beesons and my sister's family, and then home again. I will update as appropriate.