Youll have to excuse me for not being as attentive as usual, but quite a few tables just got sat in my section… Actually, thats not quite true. I’m not realy a waiter. I’m just a regular guy who likes filling-up water glasses.

Seriously, I’m sorry for not being here for you lately. Ive been busy. Im getting ready for the big trip to New York, tying up loose ends at work and at home, and pulling things together that I need for the trip (clean socks, dental floss, magazines, etc). The new camera/phone just came in the mail, so Im trying, as best I can, to get that set up too. (I want to be able to snap hidden-camera photos like these and post them directly to the web.) Shit, theres a lot to do. And, Ive got a lot I want to tell you too.

First, about the band, I had a dream last night. The dream had a few parts, and it wasnt really a dream at all. I should be clear about that. I was awake when I had it, but I was in a kind of dream state. I guess maybe youre supposed to call that a hallucination. Anyway, it had a few parts.

In one part, I saw the band members. There were about four of us (out of the five). We were each getting a monkey head tattooed on our right forearm. Apparently, one of us had died and wed decided that this would be a good way to commemorate and remember him. I guess the plan was that wed add another monkey head for each band member to pass. I dont remember who the missing member was. It could have even been me. My hope is that we were old men when the first one passed, but I cant remember that from the dream/hallucination. I liked the idea though. I liked the thought that one day there would be one old man, with four painfully infected monkey tattoos on his arm, having to keep our one record a year until were all dead promise.

(note: My couch is teaming with fleas. Im sitting here with my laptop, typing with one hand and scratching off handfuls of flesh with the other. (Maybe Im the first MPT member to die. Maybe I get Bubonic Plague from a flea.))

In the second part of my dream/hallucination we were all old. This time I could see the wrinkles. We looked like the cast of Cocoon. There was a plot too. These guys (us) had become a media sensation. It was like a geriatric Hard Days Night. We were being chased around by the media and our screaming fans. All we wanted to do was to spend our one-day-a-year writing and recording, but it had gotten near impossible. The part of the dream I remember most clearly is my character conspiring with his grandchildren to sneak him from an old folks home to the secret destination of that years session. Apparently, speculation as to where and when we would play each year was bigger than the Super Bowl It was a good dream.

OK, I want to share some news now, before I get back to packing and working on my camera phone.

Today, when I got home from work, I ran upstairs, grabbed some scissors, shoved them up my nostrils and began the task of pruning the two great shrubs that Id been cultivating. Linette had been bugging me to do it for the past few months and Id been putting it off. Today, at 9:20 AM, I realized that Id been putting it off far too long.

At 9:00 this morning, we began shooting staff photos for my offices 2003 annual report. The first shot went fine. The photographer was above us, shooting down. We were standing on a marble staircase. With the second shoot, he decided to get artsy though. He had us stand in a circle in the buildings rotunda, beneath an impressive domed ceiling. He wiggled into the middle of the circle on his belly and began shooting up at us, commanding us to, lean further over the lens. It was at this point, I remembered Linette and the long, dangling hairs that shed been telling me about.

From that point onward, I was obsessed by they fact that he was shooting directly up, into my nose. And there was no way to hide it either. I began to sweat. I tried to suck lots of air up through my nose, hoping that some hairs would come back in the process. Nothing seemed to work. I nervously ran my finger beneath my nose between shots and I could feel what seemed like a toothbrush.

Later, just after that shoot, someone I work with took me aside to point out that my left eye was full of blood again. I, fearing the worst, assumed that I was having a stroke and went into the bathroom to splash some water on my face. In the bathroom, looking at my bloody right eye in the mirror, I was suddenly jerked out of my panic by the site of the nose hairs, like giant octopus tentacles wrestling with my upper lip as if it were the submarine from 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea. They were out of control. I could literally grab onto them and wrap them completely around the tip of my index finger Any thought of strokes had been trumped by this ungodly mess.

I tried quickly to pluck one of the longest hairs, but it hurt too much. I ended up trying to stuff them up inside the nostrils. Luckily the photos were over, but I still had a day worth of meetings to attend. (How could Linette have been letting me leave the house like this?)

At some point during the course of the day, I got reflective. I began to think that somewhere, in a grave in Kentucky, the corpse of a proud old man was spinning like a rotisserie chicken. Maybe Im being na�e, but I cant imagine that any male in the Maynard clan, up till this point, had ever cared about such things. Who knows? Maybe they were all plucking nose hairs and waxing eyebrows. Maybe men folk in Kentucky rewarded themselves with seaweed facials after slaughtering the hogs and hauling their crops to market. I cant imagine such things taking place on the farm, but you never know. At any rate, I felt a bit vain for caring about such things. To me it seemed dangerously close to pedicure territory. (Speaking of this, there was an article in yesterdays New York Times concerning what are being called Metrosexuals, supposedly straight men who dye their hair, paint their toenails, wear perfume and do all the things that have traditionally fallen under the domain of women. I havent read the article yet, but I think it has something to do with the marketing of sexually non-threatening boy bands.)

Oh, on the subject of nose hair, I have one other story to share. About six years ago, when I was living in DC, I was eating dinner at a bar. I was just sitting there, by myself, eating, when a man and a woman walked up to the bar and placed their order. I got the feeling that they were on their first date. Anyway, they ordered their drinks. The bartender then asked the woman for her ID, but not the man. The man, trying to make conversation, asked the bartender why he didnt get IDd. The bartender just said, I can tell youre old enough. The kid smiled, I guess feeling kind of mature, and pressed the point. How can you tell? My guess is that the guy was expecting to hear the bartender say, I can tell that youve had your share of women and/or adventures. Instead, he just said, I can tell, thats all. They went back and forth about three times while the bartender was making the drinks. The man would keep pushing and the bartender would keep kindly putting him off. Finally, after being asked the third time, the bartender said flatly, I can tell because of the hair growing out of your nose. That doesnt happen to people under 21. The poor guy looked as though hed had his heart torn out.

Collin, the illustrator who submitted the drawing of me a few days ago, has offered to help graphically represent the Debris Sandwich. Toward that end, he has submitted this sketch. As youll notice, its all stuffed full of a cheese-like substance. That, Im told by Collin, is just a placeholder. He wants to fill the sandwich full of real things. My question to you is; what should those real things be?

What kinds of things do we typically address in the Debris Sandwich? Ive been giving it some thought, and Ive got the beginnings of a list. Heres what Ive come up with: politics, American popular culture, mass media, science, privacy, technology, future studies, entertainment, sex, conspiracy, strange creatures and occurrences, underground publishing, and self-taught art. Im sure theres a lot more, but those are the first threads that came to mind.

If you want, please feel free to add to that list, and also to suggest ways to portray those things visually, in the context of the sandwich. For instance, Im envisioning a naked leg dangling off to the side of the sandwich, perhaps with a pair of panties hanging off the foot. Maybe just next to that there’s a Mothman flying out. Perhaps there’s a robot head. How about an American flag? Be creative and send in your ideas.

Sorry to cut things short, but I have to go to the bar now. (I promise, it’ll never happen again.)