Bloody hell! I’m sorry this update is late! I completely forgot it was Wednesday yesterday and forgot to write an update. Holidays got my days all screwed up, ya know?

Not much to tell anyway. Xmas at home was all good. Saw some friends I haven’t seen in quite some time, had a surreal night out at a club, got to check out a new bar I’d never been to and, of course, got some free stuff from the fam.

Now I’m just deep into preparing for New Orleans. Tomorrow when I get home from work, I’m packing and hoping to be in bed by about 8:00. My alarm will be set for 3:00AM and I hope to be on the road to New Orleans by 4:00AM. Should be about 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon by the time I get there, but dammit, it’ll be worth it.

To hold off the boredom of a 10-hour plus drive by myself, I have seven CD’s of Orson Welles-produced radio dramas that I got off the internet. I’ve also transferred about 1.5 gigabytes of MP3 files to 23 CD’s worth of the most eclectic mix of music you’ll ever hear in your life. On some CD’s I have everything from Blue Oyster Cult to Carol King to Snoop Doggy Dogg to Green Day. Basically I could pretty much make the whole trip without listening to the same song twice – a bit of overkill, I know – but making the CD’s was something I’ve wanted to do for a while now anyway. No time like a road trip to do so, I guess.

Man, I KNEW I did my year-end list too soon. Literally the day after I posted that, I got in the mail what is my favorite CD of 2001 - Dolce Stil Nuovo's "Infrastructure". No, you've never heard of them and, sadly, you probably won't anytime soon. They were a Champaign-Urbana-based band that was together during the late '90's, but after all the members graduated they went their seperate ways. They laid down a few tracks at some point and got them professionally produced and, after almost two years, finally released their one, and probably only CD. Now, this music is not for everyone. It's the most schizophrenic album I've ever come across. Is it hip-hop? Is it jazz? Is it electronic? Actually, it's all of the above and more. Honestly, I think it's the most innovative and entertaining album I've heard in years, but 99.9% of you out there would probably not like it. It's a pretty small niche they've fit themselvs into and I only wish I could hear more of them in the coming years. Where else can you hear someone rhyming over an electronic beat, followed by a trumpet solo, a flute solo, and a saxophone solo? You wouldn't be hearing Britney or N'Sync doing anything like that. Anyway, if you're interested in spending $10 on some quality music - take a chance, folks - go check out http://www.audio8.com and pick up DSN's "Infrastructure".

I wanted to mention something about the future of SMX. I know in the past I’ve been kind of making this my soapbox to talk about issues, but for 2002, I’m going to change that a bit. Of course there will be times when you’ll come here and see me rant and rave about stupid people that populate the world we live in or maybe questioning our purpose in the universe, but really, it’s just going to be more along the lines of what I’ve been doing over the last few months – a journal of what’s going on with me and what’s going through my thick skull. I’m kind of feeling like all the other writing I’m doing is filling the need to pour my ideas out on paper, which this website was essentially created to do. Granted, stories of 75- year old fugitives, blood-sucking house pets and government assassins might not be in the same vein as what SMX has been all about, but frankly, I enjoy the fiction more than my rantings.

This doesn’t mean SMX is going to die. I’ve made a commitment to update it once a week, if nothing else just to let my parents know I’m still alive. A few friends have also told me they like to know what I’m up to since I never call. So, SMX will live on, fear not. And, as I said above, don’t be surprised if I go off on stuff every once in a while; it’ll feel like old times again.

So, with this in mind, I’m pretty much done for the week. I’ll probably be late on next week’s entry, too, as I’ll be making a marathon trip from Louisiana back to Missouri on that Wednesday. Can’t guarantee I’m going to feel like writing much after that, ya know? But I’ll fill you in on all the naughty little details on Thursday…well, ok, probably not ALL the naughty details.

Have a Happy New Year!

Space Monkey X