New Space Monkeys comic is up, per our Monday/Friday comic agreement, an agreement into which you entered without even speaking. We can read your mind, bro. Just go with us on this one.

I'll just say major plot developments happen and that they are of the tentacle-bearing variety. Go check it out and spread the word. We feel like nobody's reading it. (Except you, you silent-agreement-signing gadfly.)

I guess when I write in Bloggstyle, I'm a little more free to be all mopey and pensive, whereas for the XL Blog, it's all smiles and shitgiggles.

Testify: The Li'l Floaty Omie Head Obligatory iPod Ownership Entry. It had to be written. I gots to have it. I gots to gots to have my Corn Pops.

To which the reader may ask: What the fuck? Is every entry now about a trip Omar took or some shit he bought or some money he spent on something? Why doesn't he just start posting credit card statements and shit! GAAAARRRRRGGHHH! (That last part was the reader dying of an aneurism just seconds before hitting the SEND BUTTON on a pissy e-mail and dying a painful death culminating in their face landing on a keyboard and their being buried with unseemly keyboard-line marks on their cheek. Not that I'd wish that on anyone.)

I'm really going to write more depressing, "Woe is the world stuff" soon. Or maybe I'll try to write something funnier or do full-blown entries again. I guess I'm saying that I'm getting a little bored here and obviously the boredom is showing and I'll try to do better. You guys deserve more.

There'll be a new Space Monkeys! comic tomorrow morning at least. We've got that to look forward to in the meantime.

Nothing makes a situation more untenable (and please don't mistake this as a marriage rant -- marriage is cool; I'm talking about other aspects of my life. Like work, maybe.) than constant surprise disappointments, the fruits of indecision, fear and ignorance.

I've heard it said before that fear breeds stupidity, and I won't go so far as to say that certain situations in my life right now stem from stupidity. What I do feel is a necktie-tightening choke of frustration as things I thought were true aren't, assumptions I'd made prove untrue, logic I was working from is made false.

Which isn't to say I'm not loving it in a masochistic way. Frustrating, blood-boiling challenges still beat entropy and boredom any day. A day of inner-voice screaming and tense joints is still better than feeling your ass fall asleep from stillness and wondering if your brain cells are turning to tapioca as you go through the motions one more time, same as yesterday, same as the week before, very nearly the same as the year that just passed.

It's a sorry state, but maybe not an unwelcome one, that I'm completely pissed off but happier overall at the same time.

WHAT?! There's a whole other phase? All that before was just one phase?

Oh, Jesus, help us.

Man.

The iPod came in the mail last night and true to Apple's credo of design simplicity, I had it charged, loaded with 1.4 gigs of music and in my pocket as I mowed the lawn not two hours after I got home from work.

The music from iTunes sounds good, better than I expected ever after the sweaty testimonials of Apple's faithful on the sonic fidelity of the little white brick that could.

AAC is Apple's music format, a format the company calls "Lossless."

Lossless is a great concept, a great word, in fact. It's the promise of authentic duplication, of recreating an experience (in this case, hearing songs), with no discernable change in quality from the original source and over time.

I've been trying to think of other things in life that are lossless and it's been nothing but depressing. Even the act of listening to a song changes over time, degenerates. There may be a blossoming period where as you mature, a song gains deeper relevance, but really, every time you hear a piece of music, it loses something in your brain, a trick of the ears, until you're finally sick of the notes you once found exhilaratingly new.

There's a joke about each day being a little worse than the last, but for our bodies it's only true after a certain point. You can exercise and get buff, but past a certain time, it's all going to decay, wrinkle, fall away, bruise and slough.

The thrill of love becomes a warm glow, but in most instances of it, every kiss comes charged with a little less electricity until it's like a 9-volt battery that does nothing when pressed to the tongue.

If you think about the things around you, the experiences and the joys, you'll find that very few stand up to repeated servings. The taste buds conform and adapt, the sex organs grow disinterested with age (so I've heard) as the mind seeks more ambitious pursuits and the adrenal gland dries and lies dormant, finding work only in fear flare-ups of near-death experiences.

It's a nice try, though, Apple. "Lossless" would be very nice if it really existed.

... and they're good.

The Dallas Morning News got in bed with Nick Walker for some hot lovin' (we gave him a hard time about being singled out in the review because we are, essentially, assholes). (May require registration.)

Fort Worth also came Friday night and we're hoping maybe the Observer sent someone in a stealthy manner that avoided our detection. Either way, Dallas was very kind to us.

New Space Monkeys comic is up, fulfilling the Monday+Friday Comic Promise (it's a temporary promise, subject to wavering and lies, like that of a weatherman or a gigolo). This one features an interstellar battle the proportions of which I can only imagine. Once you start fighting an enemy who sports tentacles, you're probably way past the help of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Good sweetness it's early. I'm going to get the coffee I promised myself on that Space Monkeys news post.

My new job is this. I'm going to be editor of this weekly section. See that August 19 date on there? Yeah. It's been a little busy lately.

The trip to Dallas went really well. We got to do a little shopping, have some awesome breakfast and perform our little hearts out at a very lovely venue. Hope some more of you D/FW peeps can make it out next week. My friend Angela and her bud and Pineapple Girl and Gramm made it out as well and we had some post-show drinks last night (make mine a Sprite!) in the most random Dallas neighberhood I've ever seen (crazy industrial laundry? Check. Two people having sex on a car hood? Check. Wild excaped-from-Solid Gold woman in shiny gold strips of a dress? Got her.).

Pineapple Girl asked me for a favor that was one of the most flattering favors I've been asked in a very long time. We miss here in Austin and I'm very angry at that city for not being close enough so we can hang with her, Gramm and their young'un more often. Screw you, Dallas. Send 'em down here already!

Then we drove back, found out that there are whole areas of Dallas where you can't go to the bathroom after midnight and made a stop at the Waffle House which was much nicer than we could have expected.