...just an introductory blog of sorts. Michael am I. Look out.

Some changes in plans have been made. As of late last night, we have a new roadie for the tour. It's going to be a blast from the past, so to speak, because we're bringing our good friend Mike, who came with on our first few tours ever, but hasn't come with us for over 3 years. Noah had other things going on around here that he really didn't want to miss out on, so it's going to work out best for everyone this way, I think. I got a camcorder for tour, so I'm hoping to have a lot of video crap from it. All of Cody's video stills inspired me to sell my digital camera and get a camcorder instead. I hope to even put video files up on the site when we get back. Since I probably wont have much else to do while we're here for a couple weeks at the end of November, I might get around to doing it then.

I sold the delay/sampler pedal that I posted about yesterday. Someone offerred to buy the cymbal, too, but I don't think I'll be able to get it to him before we leave, so I might not be able to sell that.

We leave early tomorrow morning. I imagine we'll still post here a lot, since we're bringing a laptop. Oh, that reminds me... we need to get an AOL account.

So, according to our tour dates, tour started on August 28th, with a show in Moline, IL. Well, we played that show last night, but we're still not actually leaving for tour until Saturday. The show last night was okay, but nothing special. We were fashionably late, because of a fire inspection in our practice space, and due to the fact that we had to buy new preamp tubes for my amp. Some people assumed we weren't coming, so the money from the door was all handed out before we even got there. Then, a lot of kids left because they thuoght the band before us was the last band playing. But it was good practice for tour, I suppose. And the best part is, we got a roadie for tour! Our friend Noah came with us to the show last night, and now he's coming with us for at least the part up until our CD release show. Then Cody's got dibs. If Cody isn't coming, Noah might go with for the rest of the US dates. You don't know how excited we are to have someone coming with us. Touring with just the four of us isn't as fun as added a fifth person into the mix. Usually, anyway.

We're going to get our CDs on September 6th. They're being sent out 2nd day air next Tuesday, so we're getting them on Thursday. We're playing in Omaha, NE that day. If you really want a CD, come to that show. Granted, that would mean you'd have to live relatively close to Omaha, but if you can make it, do so. I wish we'd have them for the first few days of tour, but we're excited to have them this early; we certainly have nothing to complain about.

I put up some new MP3 files from our friends in 7 Angels 7 Plagues (I made their mp3.com site), and they are getting a ton of plays. Go check it out if you are into metalcore with a slight emo influence. They're really good and I expect they'll be a household name in that scene soon.

I'm going to put up some photos of our extremely schlocky merch board soon. Stay tuned.

Trust me, Mark, they're going to laugh AT you.

We made a new merch display tonight, and I'm currently scratching my head wondering whether people will laugh with us or at us when they see it. I guess we'll find out at the show tomorrow.

God, today sucked. I don't want to be a complainer right now, but I can't help it. To start off with, the usual annoyance of having to bring our stuff down three huge flights of stairs in order to play a show was about doubled due to the fact that it was pouring the entire time. We had to worry about our equipment getting wet, etc. etc. Then, I found out my amp still doesn't work for some reason. I think it must be my cabinet, but whatever it is, it sucks. We're leaving for tour in a few days (I don't even know how many, because I don't want to think about it) and I'm having equipment trouble. I can't tell if I'm ready for tour. It certainly doesn't feel like I am. I know that I'm really disappointed with how this summer turned out. There were so many other things I wished I could have done that just never worked out. Oh well.

Then, we played a horrible show. I think it sucked so much for me because you couldn't hear my guitar, and because basement shows sometimes just sound bad; especially when the humidity is about 100%. At least the bands with whom we played were amazing. The Brass were even better than I thought they'd be, which means they were pretty damn awesome. Homesick for Space were awesome, too. I was hoping they would be, because we were all really into their CD. They lived up to it, and then some. Amazing stuff.

Now I'm sitting home when I could be out "doing stuff", because I'm tired and sore and just in a shitty mood. I feel soggy still. I guess I'm going to bed... the floor is calling me!

I put up some photos from our recent recording. If you want to look at them, enter the site, then go to the records page, and then to Quietus. Then there's a link. I'd leave a link here, but I think you need to enter our site for once instead of just reading this page.

I can't tell if today is a horrible day or a great day. Around 4 pm today, my boss (who I like to call Def Leppard Lady, because she told me once that her favorite band is Def Leppard) came and said "I just wanted to see if you were still here. I need to see you before you take off...". So, anyway, we went into this office, and she told me that they were firing me, a week and one day before my last day. The company is really really broke, which is one reason, but she also started telling me how I call in sick too much (that's because we have shows out of town, and we have recording in Kansas, etc. etc.) I should be happy, because I'm tired of waking up at the ass crack of dawn to go into a job I really really hate. It just sucks because it screws me out of some money, and they already screwed me over once, when they hired me on full time after working through a temp agency, not long after I had acquired enough hours to get a week-long paid vacation.

Anyway, here are some things I'm not going to miss about my job, and the reasons I am very excited today:

• The guy with the "corporate mullet" that sat in the cubicle across from mine
  
• Def Leppard Lady
  
• the receptionist that makes an annoying laughing sound after she says anything.
  
• Waking up at 6:30
  
• The half-hour drive into work
  
• The lack of decent places to eat near work
  
• The way this one lady writes "Pheonix" on all of these orders that are going to Phoenix
  

And now let's list the things I'm going miss, and the reason I'm pissed off today:

• money
  

I have to say it was a good day. I didn't even have to use my AK.

Oh yeah, and before I left, I found a picture of a baby "giving the bird" and made that the wall paper, and I made our tour page the home page in the browser. I thought that would be funny, since they are under the assumption that I am going to school starting September 4th, and have no idea that my band is going on a 5 month long tour.

Here's a list of times I called in "sick":

• August 17th: we were in Lawrence, KS mixing our CD.
  
• July 19th, 20th and 23rd: we were in Lawrence recording our CD.
  
• May 18th: we were in Sioux Falls, SD playing with Mastodon
  
• March 30th: we were in Philadelphia playing "Philthy Fest"; the following day we were in NYC playing at ABC No Rio
  

Don't forget about the post below this one.

Ok, the new MP3 is back up, and I'm pretty sure it works this time. Go to our MP3.com site and listen to it...

Our CD is finally at the plant and has begun production. It got sent out one day later than I had hoped, because my inability to actually find the FedEx station at the airport. I was hanging out with my friends Ron and Matt, whom I never really get to see anymore, so that was at least cool. It took us forever to even get into the airport. Once we were in there, we would have never made it to the FedEx station by 9 pm, which is the cut-off time for overnight deliveries. Anyway, it's all taken care of.

Jesse Helms is retiring. Awesome.

I can't find my headphones. I think some fucker stole them out of my desk. Maybe I'll find them at home or something.

I deleted the MP3. I'm going to make a new one on my computer tonight, and then I'll post it tomorrow. This computer doesn't even have a soundcard, so I couldn't tell that the MP3s didn't work. MP3.com is supposed to check for that shit.

The U.S. has decided to ban the cloning of human beings. Apparently, the great fear of cloning is that if you clone a human being, the 2nd generation won't have the same mental
capacity as the first. Kind of like President Bush and his dad....

- Jay Leno

yeah it pops and clicks and skips.....

Can someone please go to our mp3.com site and listen to our new song and tell me if there are weird pops and clicks in the new song? I don't have a soundcard on this computer, but someone told me they downloaded it and that it didn't work. I'll have to take it down and make a new one, if this is the case. Either e-mail me or just post in our guestbook, because those entries get e-mailed to me anyway. Thanks!

Our new MP3, "Summary Treatment" is up at our mp3.com site. If you're going to listen to it, listen to it LOUD.

We're finished with everything! The mastering is finished! Yay! You don't know how what a relief this is. We've all been under a lot of stress to get a lot of stuff finished, and having this one under wraps is just an awesome feeling.

Trevor at Mastermind Productions is the coolest guy, and he's a simply amazing mastering engineer. I think we're certain we're always going to be mastering with him.

I'm putting up an MP3 of a finished, mastered song. I'm making it today, but it won't show up on our site for a few days. I'll let you know when it's there, or keep checking. I'm also updating the MP3 files for a lot of the songs we already had up there, because I have a CD-R of the mastered versions, so they will sound a lot better.

Jim, Nick and I were sitting in the upper level (or "club house", if you will) of our practice space watching Conan, while waiting for some CDs were were burning to finished, I think it was one of the funniest episodes I've ever seen. It was an older one (from last year), but it was hilarious. Conan went ot an apple orchard with Mr. T! I mean, how cool is that? Everyone makes Mr. T jokes with their friends, but to make them with Mr. T? Damn, what a lucky guy. I think the funniest part was when Conan and Mr. T are on the back of this truck with all of these little kids, and Conan and Mr. T are singing "I pity da fool that messes with T". Anyway, then Mr. T gets hit in the head by this branch as they drive under a tree, and Conan says "are you okay?". The response, of course, was "of course I'm okay, fool... I eat trees!"

haha. I don't know why that was so funny, nor do I understand why I felt the need to type it all out for you, but oh well. With the possible exception of a few small children in a certain third world country, you're not being forced to read this site.

This weekend was pretty annoying in a lot of ways, but it worked out for the best, I'm sure. For one thing, Friday was the day The Assistant were playing a show in Milwaukee. I really wanted to go, but I had to finish up recording some vocals. Nick, Jim and Whitney all got to go and said The Assistant were amazing. I got to see them for about four minutes, because they were staying at Jim's apartment (where, as it happens, Whitney and I are also currently staying). It just felt weird that good friends from really far away came all the way to Milwaukee, and I barely had time to even say hi to them. It definitely wasn't cool. I wanted to stay longer, but we were already off to a really late start on our way down to Kansas. We didn't finally get on the road until about 2:30 am. We had to stop back at my parents' house (where, as it happens, Nick is currently staying. hehe) to pick up some of Nick's stuff, but the exit from the interstate was closed. That was bad enough, but then the NEXT exit was also closed (damn construction). Another half hour out of our way that we didn't really appreciate.

So, anyway, we start driving, and I'm falling in and out of sleep, but not really getting any real sleep. Nick and Jim are in the front, and we're trying to listen to a lot of upbeat music to keep ourselves from getting drowsy. Around the time we get to St. Louis, we missed a turn, and ended up going the wrong way. It wasn't for very long, and it wasn't too difficult to fix, but it was yet another set-back we didn't need.

We suck it in, and continue on our way. When we finally get within about 15 minutes of Red House, we hit yet another set-back. We got pulled over by some Kansas she-mullet-having cop, who said we were going a lot faster than we actually were. She asked us what we were doing in Kansas, as though it was some sort of crime. Jim made the experience a little bit better by saying "at least they know it should be illegal". The cop took her sweet time, too, and set us back yet again.

We got to Red House just shy of four hours later than we were technically supposed to be there. I don't think Ed was very happy with us, and it made mixing sort of tense, and it got us all down. I could barely stay awake through parts of it. When it was all over, and we were finally finished mixing and adding whatever little things we had to add, we were finally ready to head upstairs to the apartment above Red House. Much to our dismay, it was locked. We never even thought that it would be locked, because it wasn't an outside door that was locked, it was this one at the end of a hallway that was never locked when we were there the first time. Everyone except Ed, an intern at Red House (not Ed Rose) had left, and Ed didn't have any keys or anything. We had to take off and spring for a hotel. It was a really nice one (for being a Super 8), but we didn't get to take advantage of it, since we were all so dead tired. The worst part is that Jim threw away a bunch of leftover Chinese food that we got when we were at Red House, because he figured we weren't going to be anywhere with a refrigerator or microwave. This hotel room had both. Oh well.

We had post recording depression, I think, and we were certain that it hadn't turned out the way we wanted it to. Moral was extremely low, and because we were facing yet another 11 hour drive, we were even more frustrated.

Through the course of the ride home, however, things got better. We listened to the record a bunch more and got over our PRD (hehe), and the overall feeling was excitement, not disappointment.

Tonight, we are mastering the record, and then tomorrow morning, we're over-nighting it to Furnace, so they can put them all together.

We got our shirts and sweatshirts the other day. They look really good. It has become apparent to us that we should definitely order more sweatshirts. We could have sold most of them here before we left if we wanted to, but we've been "saving them" for tour. Anyway, if you want one, come see us, dammit.

Wish us luck. We're headed off for Lawrence, KS (again) to finish our CD (hopefully). If we don't get it all finished this time, we're going to quit this band and do something more productive like volleyball. Whitney's lucky. He doesn't have to make the 11 to 12 hour trek down there. He gets to hang out around WI for the entire weekend. That's okay, for making us go alone, we're gonna mix his drums really quiet and take out random bass drum hits.

I put up a sound clip from the new CD in the guestbook a few days ago. If you don't visit the guestbook, you miss out on stuff. It's gone now, but look anyway in case I'm lying.

remember these?

its been awhile since i blogged. i just went to green bay's new and first target store to get my favorite kind of pocket t-shirts. the ones that *aren't* extra long to stay tucked in.. my intent was to get pants but hell that isn't gonna happen in green bay wisconsin. on the way back i got taco bell from a scary scary person. i think it was a guy in transition to becoming a girl.. the adams apple, the voice and the stubble were the give away. nice earings though.

on the way back i forgot all about packer practice so i got stuck in that mess for awhile... in green bay they have bleachers at practice for the tourists and other packer nuts. there are some hot girls at packer practice i noticed. the players weren't bad either. green bay is a small ass town most people wouldn't think so cause of the football team and all.. yesterday afternoon two second string players jogged by my house and i always deliver pizzas to players and stuff. 100,000 people... small town. i hate it.

Many apologies to everyone and anyone who went to see us at Dupage fest this weekend - even the guy who called us "sell-outs" on our guestbook (thanks for that, by the way). Things are very hectic and crazy here. In the mess of it all, it got down to the last minute, and I thought Whitney had told the people setting it up. Well, he thought the same thing about me. We never really managed to get organized enough to realize that neither of us had contacted anyone. Only a few of our friends knew that we weren't going to be playing.

We're stressing out about finishing our CD (finishing the vocals here before we go down to mix in lawrence), and we're also working on booking 4-5 months worth of shows, so we're being really incompetent about stuff, and I apologize that you all got the ass end of it this time around.

It's not the end of the world, anyway. You guys got to see Seven Days, and they would have out-rocked us, anyway!

It finally happened! The weather went back to normal in Milwaukee. I went to sleep last night, and it was still unbearably hot, so we had all sorts of fans going, but then I woke up at about 5:30 this morning, and it was really cold in the apartment. I had to go grab a blanket and turn the fans down. Finally!

Today was the first day in as long as I can remember that I didn't wake up before my alarm clock went off. Normally, around the time the sun comes up, I wake up and sort of just lie around, nodding in and out between half-asleep and awake, and some time around 6:50, I'll just shut my alarm off, so that it doesn't go off and wake Whitney up. I'm attributing my ability to sleep longer this morning to the fan I bought last night. I went to Sam's Club with my mom and picked up this 21" commercial fan which, when on at full power, can make a room seem more like a wind tunnel. It eventually got the air moving in the apartment, but more importantly, it was really loud. Loud noise - as long as it's constant - helps me sleep.

Only 16 more days of work left for me. Well, more like 15, since I have to take off Friday the 17th for mixing.

ok, it's been an interesting week. on top of having to sleep on a floor in an apartment that's hot enough to melt a kelvin thermometer for a month, i've been riding my bike to UW-M every morning around 9 to work on booking shows for about an hour, and then washing dishes every night for nearly 8 hours. while i was riding my bike to school on tuesday i was going down a hill on oakland, towards a construction site when a dump trunk suddenly decided to pull out into the middle of the intersection. as if that didn't suck enough, my brakes decided it would be funny to see me try and stop without them. so i had to put my feet on the ground, and i didn't quite stop in time... so i kinda bumped into the side of the dump trunk, as all the construction workers laughed at me. needless to say, over the last couple days the bottoms of my shoes have been wearing rather thin. i should really get this bike fixed.
work seemed to get off to a great start last night, as i picked up my pay check and noticed i'd received a raise. then i was working with my friend joe, who started the same day i did almost a year ago. we were talking about how if we owned a company we would go around and give everybody a couple bucks every time it seemed like working sucked, or things were really busy. it must have been less than an hour later that this old guy came in and gave us samples of the soap that his company makes and told us about how he was a dishwasher and on welfare until he was 22, and how he always worked hard and never felt appreciated. he then went on to open his wallet and give joe and me $16 to buy a meal. we tried to turn it down, but he insisted that we take it, and explained that now that he owns a company that profits $7million annually he feels it's his duty to remember where he came from and help out those who are 'wearing his old shoes.' he resorted to prying back my fingers and shoving the money underneath and then refusing to take it back. as the night went on joe and i realized that i'd received a raise, while he hadn't... and our manager went so far as to point out my raise to me while he was standing there. i asked why i got one and joe didn't, when he deserves it at least as much as i do. long story short, she got in a fight with joe and ended up firing him over the most bullshit reason i've ever fuckin' heard. so i finished the night by slamming shit around and turning my CD player up loud as it would go without skipping repeatedly. on my way out i put in my two weeks, and told her to take back my raise, because joe didn't do a thing that i wouldn't have done put in the same position as him, so if he didn't deserve it than neither do i. fuck work...

We've used it a bunch before with no troubles. I remember Whitney and Jim using their fancy schmancy "techno machines" in the van while we were driving. We even hooked up the cassette adapter for our CD player to Jim's groovebox to listen to the muzak versions he made of "Asterix Legionaires" and "Dying on our Own Terms". Yeah, that's how boring tour driving can get!

Yeah, you better figure out a way to come with. Steal a bunch of records for a distro and then sell them on tour! Just kidding. We should ask people from Kuwait to send us money.

Anyway, we ordered a fuckton of shirts and stickers yesterday. Yay.

careful with that power inverter... don't blow out your electrical system... carry fuses.
shit i wanna go...

I don't know if anyone cares or remembers, but Whitney and I had to move out of our apartment a month early. We've been staying at Jim's apartment for about a week now. Well, actually, I should call it Justin's apartment, since we've yet to see Jim. His roommate (and our roadie for the European tour) Justin is the only one there. It's been okay, but it feels like tour. Whitney and I both sleep on the living floor on our sleeping bags. My back is starting to get sore from it, but I'll live. I guess I'll just be conditioned for the 5 months of touring we start in about three weeks.

Anyway, the apartment is on the top floor of the building, and because it's been right around 100 degrees outside lately, it gets very warm. Yesterday, to combat the heat, I went to the Value Cinema in Oak Creek and saw two movies (hey, admission on Tuesdays is $1). I saw The Animal, which I thought was pretty funny. A lot better than I anticipated. I also saw Along Came a Spider, but I wasn't as impressed by that one. The plot seemed sort of stupid, and although I've enjoyed it in the past, I've seen Morgan Freeman play the same basic character he played in this movie at least twice already, if not more.

I also bought one of those George Foreman lean mean fat-reducing grilling machines (I always want to stick the word "green" in there, for some reason - perhaps because of the little green clean machine). Anyway, that means we can make veggie burgers in the van on tour, since we bought one of those 12 volt converters a while back. That sounds like better van food than the usual sandwiches (the most popular being veggie deli slices, peanut butter & jelly, and the infamous potato chip and mustard). And I think it goes without saying that it's better than the generic spaghetti bites off of which we lived for the majority of our winter 99/00 tour.

PHENYLKETONURICS:
FORSTELLAFORD.COM CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE

Oh yeah, happy birthday to Nick!

This weekend was pretty enjoyable. Whitney and I spent pretty much the entire time with our friend Josh, which was cool because it had been quite a while since we hung out with him. He lived in Texas for over a year, and then went to school in Steven's point, which is right in the middle of Wisconsin (meaning it's pretty damn far away from Milwaukee). Now he's back in Racine, so I'm sure we'd see a lot more of him, if we weren't heading out on tour for five months.

We went to see the Promise Ring and Burning Airlines last night, but it was sort of a let-down. I didn't think either of the bands played very well at all, but it could have had to do with the fact that that it was pretty hot and humid in the Rave Bar last night. That always kills the sound. I'm sure it didn't feel very good to play up there, either.

We're ordering shirts, stickers, and hooded sweatshirts today, for our tour. We've never had hooded sweatshirts before. I hope people actually buy them! We didn't order very many, though, so I'm sure we'll be able to go through them. I remember when we started planning out this tour, it seemed like it was still years away, but now we leave in less than a month. Time goes by so quickly! I think I speak for all of us when I say that I'm extremely excited to quit my job and just go out and have fun. We have a new CD coming out that we're all very very very excited about, and we've always heard that touring when school is in puts touring in the summer to shame, in a lot of different ways. You don't get to cities to find out that everyone is burnt out on shows as a result of having one almost every single day. You don't have to hear that "everyone went home for the summer" (which, by the way, has made me questions whether or not "suburb tours" would be a good idea). The weather will be nicer.

Whitney and I didn't get to work on stuff with our new band with Cody this weekend like we had originally planned. The previous weekend, when he was down here, his car started making this weird sound when he would use his brakes. So apparently, he had to get new rotors or something, which meant he couldn't make the trip down to Milwaukee. We were considering going up to Green Bay, but it wouldn't have worked out because we had practice and other stuff down here to take care of. It looks like we're going to barely get that band started before we leave for tour... so it's going to be early 2002 before it reallys gets off the ground and we can start thinking about shows or recording.

man.. guess what i'm doing? watching the packer inter squad scrimmage on tv... if you guys would have come to green bay we could have gone to packer family fun night and saw the scrimmage at lambeau field and got some beers and nachos. i bet this is the only nfl team that sells out a silly scrimmage. there's also the burger fest going on haha.. the birthplace of the hamburger dudes! and a bunch of tall ships in the harbor we could have toured. fun stuff... i got fitted for a tux today for baraboos wedding.. thats all i did.

Whitney, Josh and I are at the UW-M computer lab, and Josh and I are now just waiting for Whitney to be finished writing his e-mail, so I thought I'd come here and post some more useless babble.

Days like today make me hate my fucking job!

Things are still pretty crazy around here. Whitney and I (along with our roommates - past and present) spent the last couple of days giving our apartment a hardcore cleaning. I wasn't even on the lease, and didn't have a security deposit at stake, but because they were nice enough to let me stay there when I needed a place to live, I figured it was the least I could do. I only really lived there for about 2 months. It was a lot of moving and cleaning, but it's finally over. I keep saying that "hopefully now, things will go back to being somewhat normal", but it seems like something else always pops up. I anticipate getting ready for tour to be our next big project. We still have to get passports and all of that wonderful stuff in order to go over to Europe.

I don't know why, but I felt like making a list of records that have been playing in my headphones while I'm here at work.

Ida | The Braille Night
Appleseed Cast | Low Level Owl vol 1
Cursive | Burst and Bloom
Travis | The Invisible Band
Coldplay | Parachutes
Bright Eyes | Don't Be Frightened of Turning the Page

Hmm... that was pretty pointless.

It was about a million degrees in Milwaukee last night. I hope it's better tonight!