Drop anchor.

Here in the situation room, no one speaks in muted tones. Everything is shouting, all the time, shouting. Oh, the noise! Can't we all just get along?

Oh, hi, you-all. Hope everything is well back on Earth. We will see you there soon, I trust, as we appear to be heading in that general direction, assuming Mitch Macaphee's navigational skills have not gone seriously downhill in the last month or so. (We walk by faith, not sight.) Rolling to the end of another outer-limits tour - this one a bit more ad hoc than previous outings, apropos of the severe economic recession back home. Couldn't even afford to brand this tour, and that typically doesn't cost much more than a couple of beers at the local pub. (We quaff them until somebody emits a decent idea... or something a bit less savory.) As you know, Big Green always operates on the cheap, but this time was the worst yet. As someone who's used to dry Soy Slice sandwiches, it took some time getting used to sandwiches made with the empty plastic wrappers Soy Slices come in. And water, nothing but water to drink between gigs. That's better than no water, but still.... water for six weeks? What would my bartender say? (Between sobs...?)

But never mind our petty privations. How have YOU been feeling? These are rough times for everyone, as I'm sure you're aware. That's one of the things that have kept in interstellar space for such a long stretch this fall. We even neglected to exercise our franchise in the recent off-year election. I understand the man-sized tuber was going to be on the ballot for town councilman back in our small upstate New York community of [INSERT NAME OF TOWN HERE]. His opponent, a member of the [INSERT PARTY HERE] party, was running on a "no vegetables in council" kind of platform, which seem kind of small minded to me. The man-sized tuber, on the other hand, was running as a representative of the [GENERIC] party. (No, that's not an editor's note. The party's name is [GENERIC] in all-caps and brackets.) The [GENERIC] party's position is that anything you say, do, or write needs to be adaptable to every imaginable set of circumstances. It's the ultimate in egalitarianism, if you ask me. And it's the reason that all of the [GENERIC] party's position papers read like the preceding few lines. After winning that bi-election in [INSERT CITY HERE], the party chairman [INSERT NAME HERE] feels a lot more confident about that strange convention of writing.

Well, anyway... I guess we'll find out if the man-sized tuber is king of the town council when we get home. For the nonce, we can only speculate. (Though Lincoln has taken it upon himself to offer advice to tubey, having had a political career himself at one point in his trans-temporal existence.) Besides, there's plenty to think about. After all, our album 2000 Years to Christmas is approaching its tenth year on Earth, and we're trying to work out an appropriate way of marking the occasion. Maybe it's sending up a fireworks display - Mitch Macaphee says that this spacecraft is equipped with some kind of rockets that, when fired, will spell out his name in flaming letters. (Not sure this is appropriate.) Then there are other, more practical approaches, like a special Christmas performance on terra firma highlighting the numbers that made us un-famous. It's a tough decision, and we've been mulling it over in the situation room for hours now over bowls of mulled cider and mulligatawny soup.

Hey... you got suggestions? We got ears. (Most of us do, anyway.) Send them our way... or your way, whichever way you prefer.