Day 0: So the Austin show was pretty rad. I guess if you go by a linear timeline, August 13th, 2006 was the first OMEGA MONSTER PATROL! show ever. Of course, if your point of reference is from the members of OMP!, it's far from our first. You know, being from the future and all (remember?). So anyway, the show was at Snake Eyes Vinyl, a rad record store on the east side. There were three other awesome bands: The Carrots, Beta Valentine, and The Kyle Sowashes. The Kyle Sowashes are led by, duh, idiot, Kyle Sowash - formerly of Tom Foolery and the Mistakes. Kyle Sowash can write a pop song like a Genobulan can spin a face web. That is to say, Kyle Sowash is an awesome songwriter. In fact, some of his records resurface in the 26th Century in what is now Thailand and the people there form a religion around the songs. It lasts for about sixty years. Cool people, apparently. Good dental hygiene.

Day 1: As you may know from the song, my spaceship is the Gazelle9000. It's pretty much the best ship ever. Unfortunately, while in your time and on your planet, we can't exactly fly around in it. The denizens would flip out and your governments would go crazy trying to shoot us down (good luck!) or steal our technology. There would be panic in the streets. So anyway, while we're here we're driving a 1994 Ford Taurus station wagon. It does the job. So we made the drive to Lubbock in six and a half hours (it would have taken -16 seconds in the Gazelle9000... sigh...) and enjoyed the Texas scenery along the way. The show was at J&B Coffee Company, a nice coffee shop with a big back room for shows. The Kyle Sowashes played a great set, and Burn the Wagon (from Lubbock) wailed! It was great to see so many friends at the show. We hung out at a bar afterwards where I consumed "soda" and "french fries". The prior was sweet and syrupy and the latter was salty and starchy. Good with "ketchup". The waitress had nice teeth. Then I went to Jake and Mandy's house and allowed myself to become unconcious. Red Sparrow stayed in the car and guarded our possessions.

Day 2: Our compeer and good friend Brian is riding with us on tour, which is awesome. The drive to Albuquerque took us about six hours because of rain most of the way. It's silly, really. Your scientists have been able to control the weather for almost a hundred years, but they don't seem to want to use those abilities for anything other than creating deadly storms. In the future, when needed, weather control will be used to maximize crop yields and feed rivers and lakes. Also, since it's such a waste to water the pavement, no rain will fall on the street, which will also make it safer to drive. We went straight to the house where we were to play. Our hosts, Scott and Jaime were so nice! They made an awesome curry and some hummus. I consumed some of both. Curry and hummus, thank the stars, are still around a thousand years from now. Of course, we have different vegetables in our curry dishes. If only you could try a fresh yormba. A perfect yormba curry could stop a petty human war. Mmmmmmm. Unfortunately, there are regulations about produce and time travel. Anyway, The Kyle Sowashes rocked it out. Everyone was really into them. And then we started setting up, and then... disaster. Red Sparrow was too ill to perform. He had a total blank look on his face. Tina and I decided to go ahead and play without him. Tina was SO GREAT tonight! Everyone wanted to pet her and kept saying how awesome she was. They cheered like crazy after "Double you". People were dancing, too, which is always great. We got to see some friends and drink some delicious water. During the third band, "Mammal Eggs", this totally drunk, scrawny idiot was thrashing around like an Andillian dung beetle, and he spilled booze on an amp, the couch and my ally Lindsay. He sat on Scott and Jaime's record player and broke the cover. He had a four foot radius around him because of his flailing while everyone else was shoulder to shoulder. He was pretty much screwing things up. I was about to end his life, but I decided to let his friends control him. Oh, I was so close. I wanted to punch a hole in his head, grinding his glasses into his powdered skull. It is people like that reinforce my stance as what you Earthlings refer to as "straight-edge".

Day 3 - Morning: It's really nice this morning in Albuquerque. I'm waiting for Lindsay to call us to meet her for breakfast. We'll be going to Java Joe's, where she has an art show up. I think Brian is going to help a friend move today. I sure hope he wears that Alice in Chains bandana he found. I need to go to the post office to mail some paintings. Blarg. I'm so tempted at times to "invent" things for you people that your scientists won't figure out until later. A simple teleporter can be made from a dozen laser pointers, a centrifuge and a sack of apples. You take it from there. Anyway, I'm still not really in the mood to be on tour. I'm always like that for the first few days. I miss Ice Princess Frigidera. I miss my garden. I miss my ship. I miss being able to go to any restaurant and eat for free because of who I am. I mean, We've barely saved the world at all in this time period. Nothing that we can take credit for, anyway. In 3006, though, and in our home galaxy, holy crap, we're the Rygarian bee's knees (and Rygarian bees have four knees per leg)! I'll feel better in a day or two. It's kind of nice to be able to go out in public and be more low-key. There's lots of work to do - lots of monsters to destroy, lot of evil schemes to thwart, lots of shows to rock - but this is also a nice break in many ways.

Day 3 - Evening: Holy crap. I have discovered one of the greatest things to come out of this time period. That's right. I'm talking about Guitar Hero. I played it at Brian's friend Aaron's place for over two hours. I'm going to have to avoid getting a PS2 and Guitar Hero, or I'd really slack in the Monster Patrolling Department. It would take over my life.

Day 4: We just kind of bummed around until heading over to the show. My pal Joe booked us a show at a place called Winnings near the UNM campus. It went pretty well. Lots of kids. I was running low on CDs, so i put a few together. After the show, Brian and I met up with some folks at a bar for a sweet dance party. It was really fun.

Day 5: Movies, movies, brunch, movies, battle. Since I was unable to secure a show in Santa Fe, we had a stinking day off. Oh, well, I'll say this now and I'll say it again later. OMEGA MONSTER PATROL! is first and foremost a special unit in the employ of the Intergallactic Consortium whose objective is the management/destruction of monsters throughout the Unified Controlled Firmament. Secondly, we are a band. So if every once in a while a show stinks or no one comes or there's no show at all... no problem. We'll just spend the time kicking butt. It was not a loss. After watching some excellent 20th/21st Century films and eating some good food, I stumbled upon some Frrbbhhgarian egg sacks in an alley. Wo wo wo. Try another six hundred years in the future and about 900 light years away, buddy. So, of course, Red Sparrow melted them. The smell drew the attention of the would-be hatchlings' mother, who came screeching down theh alley. The thing about the Frrbbhh is that, while very intelligent and manipulative, they're pretty squishy. As it lunched at me, I sort of side-stepped it, grabbed its head... and twisted it off. Through chatter we've been hearing, we've come to believe that the Frrbbhh in that alley were on a mission to infiltrate the Parks and Wildlife department of New Mexico. Mission: failed. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Day 6: We hung around a bit, said goodbye to our hosts, Joe and Nick, and headed to Clovis, NM. It's been raining hard every day all week here in Clovis. Flooding. It looks like the mud pits of Tina's homeworld. She was pretty excited, being a bit homesick, so she and Brian and I walked around. It's nice and cool for a 21st Century August in New Mexico. Especially considering the heat in the upcoming years, thanks to your global warming. Don't worry. Your people will figure it out and slow it down before TOTAL destruction occurs. Red Sparrow waited in the car. He hates getting wet. It's a robot thing. We hung out until the folks that run the place showed up and we were able to load in with the other bands. Because of the weather, and perhaps the county fair (ha ha), the turnout was pretty slim. Mostly other bands and citizens indentured to "The Hole". Nonetheless, the show was pretty fun, and afterwards we went back to the home of Jon and his friends where we were served food. I had "pasta".

Day 7: We drove from Clovis, NM to Abilene, TX. Not much happened. Listened to the B-52s a lot. By the way, they're HUGE in the 31st Century (not that we use your completely flawed calendar system... that's just a reference) pretty much all over the UCF.

Day 8: Abilene, Texas, United States of America, Earth, Sol System, Milky Way Galaxy, 3rd Quadrant of the Unified Controlled Firmament (charter member). Our manager, Travis, used to live in Abilene. We stayed at his mom's house. Awesome lady. Fed us "veggie burgers" and "guacamole". Touring at this time of the year was a risky choice because of school starting back up. It could go either way. The turnout for the show was pretty good, but the other band cancelled last minute. Because of that, the manager of the Bean Counter couldn't really charge cover. That makes sense. However, the savings were passed on to OMEGA MONSTER PATROL!, because we sold a pantload of stuff. Oh. And before and after the show, we watched a lot of cable television. Saw "Star Trek: The Next Generation". Not a bad vision of the future. A bit optimistic. Not enough monsters, hand-to-hand combat, or robots to be accurate. Also, the "phasers" kind of sounded like "ppppffffff", when everyone knows that they should sound like "BEEEEEOOOOOPPP!". And they should be lasers. Phasers? Get real. Oh. In the morning, I went in to see if Brian was awake (I only sleep a maximum of 2 hours in a 24 hour period). I saw that the front bathroom door was closed and called, "Hey, Brian?" I heard water splashing around and Brian answered, "Yeah." I asked, "Are you taking a bath? You know, there's a shower in the back bathroom." Brian replied, "Leave me alone." It was the funniest thing ever. You had to be there.

Day 9: San Angelo. The show was at a small sports bar. Lots of people. Cool kids. Good response. We're staying at our friend Vicky's house. Lots of art everywhere. We cooked "tofu", rice and "potstickers" when we got home. It's about 4AM as I write this. Everyone is asleep except me. Even Red Sparrow is recharging. I guess I'll go enter a quick sleep cycle. Maybe I'll get up at 6AM and run a few hundred kilometers.

Day 10: We woke up and hung around watching television. Television is strange. Watching that flat screen and not being able to interact with the stories is so limiting. That said, I love it. It's a great way to turn off one's brain and just absorb and swallow, absorb and swallow. So after we loaded up the station wagon, we went to the big art museum in town and saw an ASU faculty show. Good stuff. Vicky's father is a great artist. Also, he has a pretty sweet "pony tail", which I discovered means long hair growing out of one's head which is pulled back and tied, and not an actual pony's tail.
Anyway, after that, we ate some sandwiches and drove to San Antonio. The directions to the house where we were supposed to play were trapped in the internet. We drove around close to office buildings trying to find a wireless connection. No dice. They all had passwords or limited access to computers on particular networks. Then we found a bunch of hotels and pulled into a parking space and got on with no problem. I pulled up the email with the address, looked it up on a map and got directions. No problem. Except crazy traffic. Worse than traffic in our Earth-base city of Austin. Traffic - blah! Am I right, guys? Am I right?
So we got to Dan's house and met him and Sab and everybody and had delicious treats. Fruit cups (Brian ate a whole huge cup; I had help from Tina but only ate about half a cup)! Chips! Cookies! Toys! It was a great surprise. We hung out a little and got set up in the back yard. It was a pretty odd show, but totally fun. There were 20-25 people all clumped together about fifteen feet away from us. Most of them kind of just stared. I didn't know what to expect. But afterwards, we got a lot of good response and sold a good amount of "merch". Nice people! We drove back to Austin after a little while and got home at about 10pm. Not bad! I got an email from Sab who said, "Everyone said it was 'weird... but the good weird... put the CD in' and then everyone danced to it." So, it was a good show after all.

So we're back. I had a sleep cycle in my own regeneration chamber. Tina got to cuddle up in her pouch. Red Sparrow got to hang out in his lab. It was a good tour, but it's good to be "home". We hope to go back out there soon. Thank you to everyone who helped book and promote shows, and thanks to all of the bands we played with and everyone who came out to the shows. We really appreciate it.

Love and explosions,
&, Tina, and Red Sparrow