As you may remember from my Pulitzer-worthy piece of journalism from a late-night SXSW 08 encounter, James from Does it Offend You, Yeah? is way cool in my book. His band’s music ain’t none too bad, too. (See, Pulitzer-worthy blog writer over here. Vernacular my boy, vernacular.) Their US/British Columbia tour kicks off with a performance at Coachella, and if you live near one of their tour stops I suggest you not sleep on it.

“In anticipation their album will be available digitally Tuesday April 1st and in the best retail stores on April 15th. Just so you know the UK version is out today. It has a different cover but the same great music. OK?”

04-25 Indio, CA - Coachella
04-30 San Diego, CA - Casbah*
05-01 Los Angeles, CA - El Rey Theatre*
05-02 Pomona, CA - Glass House*
05-03 San Francisco, CA - Slim’s*
05-05 Portland, OR - Hippodrome*
05-06 Seattle, WA - Neumos*
05-07 Vancouver, British Columbia - Richard’s on Richards*
05-09 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge*
05-10 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre*
05-12 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue*
05-13 Chicago, IL - The Mansion*
05-14 Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop*
05-15 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda’s*
05-16 New York, NY - Highline Ballroom*
05-17 Brooklyn, NY - Southpaw*
*with Yo Majesty

In a guest blog for the Guardian, perennially tortured Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke lays out his somewhat surprising feelings of optimism regarding global climate change:

These changes might be small, but they are in the right direction. Unlike pessimists such as James Lovelock, I don’t believe we are all doomed. It was good to hear Sir David King recently saying he was an optimist and human behaviour is changing. As I heard George Monbiot saying not long ago, isn’t it funny how in the space of a year we went from listening to sceptics who denied this was happening to suddenly saying we’re all doomed - how interesting that both scenarios demand that we do nothing. That can’t be right. You should never give up hope.

Thom Yorke as the voice of hope? What is the world coming to?

They almost got me with Dr. Anton Spiteri’s blog about the Xaiobeetle and its role as a carrier of a flesh-eating, nerve-damaging parasite, linked from their Myspace blog. FUCKERS! I guess my first clue should have been the fact that Spiteri himself had a Myspace page. The second one should have been that his profile song is Saosin. But hey, I’m feeling a bit slow today. The worst part about it is, I’ve now helped this stupid ass shit get even more viral. ZOMG CIRCULAR TRAFFIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

All I’ve been doing for the last four hours is clicking on the fairly new “Random Image” and “Blast from the Past” links located just to the right of this here entry, and enjoying the two and a half years worth of archives here at Ye Olde Synthesis Magazine Blog. What is it about the passage of time that makes blog posts so much better?? For example, this post basically sucks dick right now. But in a couple of years, when it comes up on the “Blast from the Past” link I’ll be teary-eyed with sentimentality over it. Ahhhhh time!