K. Jeremy and his lovely girlfriend are making food right now while I’m typing this in the kitchen somewheres in DC. Don’t really know, but it’s a nice house. Smells good… mmm. mmm.

I know all the other guys have said thanks to all the people and bands we have played with, but I’ll ramble mine off now:

1 - First Night: Thanks to Lindsey and Gretchen for providing us a floor. Thanks to Dino for being sound guy and having more ridiculous hair than Nathan.
2- Second Night: Thanks to my Aunt and Uncle (Louise and Mike) for feeding us, giving us beds to sleep on, giving Jeremy a tennis lesson, and generally making us laugh the whole time. I plan to come up sometime later this Fall with Ashley.
3- Third Night: Hans Smucker. Ok, this guy went far above and beyond the call of duty. I mean, he rose the bar. Made us sandwiches at 1:30 in the morning. Went out and grabbed beer and chips to play poker at three in the afternoon. Soaked Brats in beer overnight in fancy beer to make us sweet sausage in the morning. BEST SAUSAGE EVER HANS!
4- Fourth Night: Cousin J and Wan, thanks so much for letting us crash on your floor and drink expensive liquor all night and letting me rant drunkly about the family. I’m planning to come up in the fall to see Louise and Mike and plan to stop in Queens to see how you’re doing. I’ll call later this month.
5-Fifth Night: Ahh  Sophie in Boston. You really put yourself on a limb letting a rock band sleep on your floor at your first night of college ever.  Your room mate was very understanding as well. Thanks Sophie!
6- Sixth Night: Lane, you recorded use three years ago when you were in high school and now you’re in college; man I feel old. Thanks for giving us a place to stay, some good brews and jokes. And that pack of cigs you found in the couch =  awesome.
7- Seventh Night and Ninth Night: Styers, thank you for feeding us and giving us all beds to sleep on. Alan, thanks for doing sound for us at the show and being excited about us playing. That really means alot. Grace, thanks for feeding us and telling us embarrassing stories about your Father. Good laughs. Can’t tell you much  but it involves Jim Nabor (gomer pyle).
8- Eigth Night- The Millers, thank you for coming to the show at Ashland U for taking us out to lunch and feeding us pizza when we got back from the gig. Your encouragment means alot to us.
9 - Tenth Night - Thanks Emily for helping us out with a place to stay and cooking food with Jeremy for an excellent meal. Diggin’ the home cookin’!

Wow, that’s alot of thankyous…

Reading Mingus’s autobiography right now: Beneath the Underdog. Crazy guy, awesome book. In a weird twisted way, I look up to Mingus. Don’t think I’d want to be a pimp though, too dangerous and probably hard in Harrisonburg, VA.

The guys are watching the VMAs on MTV. I can’t stand TV. It’s not a better than thou attitude, I just don’t dig it.  Especially shows about ghosts (cough cough Jeremy).

Sick at work. I’m sick at work. It sucks I know. I’m sick at work… lame so lame. (now, reread the previous 57 letters with a lyrical rhythm). It’s really freakin’ late.

Did some marathon recording with our Friend adam baber. He’s pretty good at what he does. Hopefully we’ll have some new tracks soon.

Starting writing this poem in my head after I took a bunch of cold medicine:

That girl’s got no taste,
on her tounge is a man and on his tounge
is this knife sleeping with a spoon.
Reflected in which is me and you, and that guy
from down the street; you know the one. Used
to sell eggs on his porch and had the 78 Nova?

Yeah, so the poem really has no point; don’t try to derive any meaning or suffer pointless pontification. Just thought it was silly and I’d write it down somewhere. And I’m sick at work so I figure why not.

Send me all your positive energy for getting better!

So this week John, our wide-smiling drummer, started working with me at MyDataBus.com. He’ll be putting his mad nasty English skills to work proofreading the site, writing up emails, and working on other miscellaneous grammatical and verb-usage problems.

I’ve never really talked about MyDataBus on this blog as I didn’t really feel it was Shapiro related. Now that 1/2 the band is working with MyDataBus, I feel it’s time.  MyDataBus is a project I started working on about 2 years ago. It’s a free file sharing/organization site which you can upload, share, link, email, and do countless other things with your mp3s, videos, pictures, and any other file type. Shapiro has even used it to share our rough recordings with each other.

As I am the primary coder behind the scenes, I have seen this site undergo a huge evolution since it began and it’s been really interesting to see the progress we have made. Right now we have over 100,000 users.We have integrated our site into Facebook, Snipshot, Zoho and other Web 2.0 applications. We’re using Amazon S3 to host our files which means data redundancy and faster downloads.

My goal behind MyDataBus was to create a close emulation of the simple features of a home desktop.  With the amount of space we offer (5 gigs) , the file organization features, Zoho and Snipshot, I feel we’re closer than any other file hosting site

I apologize for the rant, but I’m really proud of what the MyDataBus team and I have accomplished.

But, I’m still working with John, which feels like a step-backwards in some sense. Three years ago, John and I worked at a local golf course. Every morning, I’d wake up at 5:30AM, and deal with his antics. Ice down the shirt, taking the keys out of the utility golf-cart. Throwing random stuff at me. Oi, and it continues today. While on the phone today with a customer, John begins ramming his rolling chair into mine. It was difficult to retain my composure, but I maintained. Oh just you wait John, oh just you wait. I’m making ice right now in the fridge downstairs…

Got to make this quick; at work.

Four strange dreams last night:

1.) Picnic at my parent’s house, but for some reason my parent’s house is on the moon. We all go outside and sit at the picnic table with our oxygen packs. Mine and my sister’s oxygen pack starts running out of oxygen. It is very hard to eat and breathe with the oxygen pack on.

2.) Buying a new car a car lot. Salesman is trying to sell me a car that is shortened to just the driver and passenger seats and he’s trying to tell me it’s the most spacious car he’s got. It’s blue and looks like the front half of the Element SUV thing.

3) Somebody is trying to convince me to buy their acoustic bass, but it’s actually a guitar and I believe that it is an acoustic bass. I spend alot time trying to play bass with a six string guitar and get really confused.

4.) Bowling at a bowling alley. The lane is straight, but where the pins are placed slopes down steeply. I keep throwing gutter balls. I think it’s strange the pins are still standing straight up.

Just shouting out a thank you to all the people who made last Friday night happen. Big thanks to Austin Richards who made the SHAPIRO sign, sewed the screen cover for my bass cabinet, and did a countless other things for us. Ray Wurth for help us with ticketing. Eric and Thomas for selling merch when no one else was around to. Juan for taking pictures. Mikey Dillon for giving me a high five during the set. And a huge thanks to Dan for running sound and just about everything else.

Biggest thanks to all of you who made it out! I had a great time was excited to see some old faces and meet new people.

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Reading Neuromancer by William Gibson right now. One of the first Cyberpunk novels, and you should read it if you’re a big a nerd as I.
Also reading Metamorphoses by Ovid. Its a trip to read and is about 1600 years old. Per suggestion from Adam Sheppard.
Kurt Vonnegut died last week. All the greats seem to be going; Hunter S. Thompson died last year. So much for my literary gods…

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Wathing Fight Club right now. Edward Norton just dropped the quarter to call Tyler Durden and I’m about to eat a bagel.

Peace.