Aldebaran first.

Give me another look at that map. No, no - not the Earth map... that outer space thingy. You know... the one Mitch gave us last week. Right, right - that's the one. Thank you.

Hiya, folks. Glad you could stop by. Gives me a chance to 'splain something... something kind of important. (By "important", I mean in the relative sense. Not life-changing, not even day-changing, but perhaps momentary thought-changing.) As you know, over the last few weeks, we've been referring to the impending release and distribution of our second album, which we're calling Monacalucci Summer... I mean, International House. (Sorry... I was thinking about that art house film I saw a few days ago. Monacalucci, was that weird!) And, as you might imagine, our rapacious corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, has been kibitzing a bit on the marketing. More than a bit, actually. In fact, LP has put their collective foot down... right on our necks. (This is just like the Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm days.)

Right, so... what have they done? Here's what. They've insisted that we release the album to the extraterrestrial market before sending it to stores on Earth. Their reasoning is that most of our listeners are out there (in fact, most are beyond the orbit of Jupiter) and that we should appeal to our base before trying to break into what is, for us, a new and relatively untested market (Earth, or as we call it, "de Oit"). Now, we disagree with LP on this, and we said so. I don't think I have to tell you what happened next. I do? Okay, well... I'll just give you the part after all the guns went off. And the explosion. Right, so... after all that, we more or less... gave in. Let's face it, friends... they've got us over a barrel. (No, that's not a metaphor. They literally have us suspended over a barrel. Someone help us!)

Anywho, Gertrude Al-Kabar, LP's Vice President of Marketing and Coercion, came up with something she calls the "Aldebaran First" plan. Here's the skinny - we start promoting the new album on Aldebaran, and work back from there. Why Aldebaran? You mean, aside from the fact that it's the brightest star in the constellation Taurus? According to Gertrude, the reasoning is quite simple... start with the red giants. If we do well in red giant systems, we can move on to hotter stars - yellow dwarfs, blue dwarfs, etc. Start big, end little. This is fortunate for Mitch Macaphee - he is anxious to determine whether Aldebaran's long-period radial velocity oscillation indicates the presence of a companion of substantial mass. (Stop snickering. It could, you know.) Ah, 'tis an ill wind indeed that doesn't blow someone some good, somewhere, sometime... somehow.

So w.t.f., as they say on their little phones (with their thumbs, no less). Looks like another interstellar tour for yours truly. Adelbaran here we come (right back where we started from).