29-06-98 Nashville, TN. Day off

D (drums) and Stilly (tech) are the lucky ones. It's a day off but they have something to do. They've been invited to the Pearl drums factory in town to scope out some kind of a deal. Pearl have already graciously lent us a drum kit for the whole American tour and now the boys are off to the factory to check out the swag. They return triumphant in the late afternoon with a full set of symbols and a collection of roadie-esque clothing apparel. A sizeable horde. Most impressive. The technological rock and roll swindle continues. All we need now is a sponsorship from Apple Mac, Jaguar, and the Bank of England.

I think I've cracked the jet lag from the Ozzfest today. I managed to get up before 7pm. I can join the land of the living once more. I've just looked at Pitchshifter's schedule for the rest of the year and it runs back to back from America to Europe to Australia to Japan to England, and then back to America, finishing at Christmas. I guess I'd better get used to jet lag.

I lock the money away safely in my bunk where I can't hear it yelping. Instead I watch a footy game on the TV, spend a few hours trying to get my bloody computer to work, shoot a couple of pics of the new merch for the website, take a swim in the hotel pool. A middle aged married man with his wife and son corners me in the deep end:

"Lemme just ask ya one thing son . . . did it hurt getting that ring put in >your nose?"
"Not at all . . . it's the one through the end of my penis that really hurt"
"No shit!"

His jaw hits the water. As I swim off I can hear him repeating the story to his wife. I'm such a cheap liar. I would never get a ring in my penis, I'm too much of a chicken. I had to lie to him. SuperId. He wanted to hear something shocking. I was just hitting the spot. I was a Hershey bar or a cigarette.

Later I catch some UK news on the internet:

'Britain is funding biological organisms to attack opium poppies as part of the battle against the drug trade. The sunday times reported that Britain was helping to develop a strain of fungus which destroys the poppies at a laboratory at Uzbekistan.

They are planning to produce enough fungus to infect poppy fields in Asia, the source of 90% of Britain's heroin. The project is part of the UK's drug control programme based in Vienna.'

What? Hello? Didn't we learn anything from Anthrax and the introduction of other 'biological solutions'? There's no way that breeding a fungus to eat a certain plant is good for the environment. That thing is going to have an adverse effect on the ecosystem just like every other harebrained scheme put into practise by Western 'experts' this Century. Genetic misengineering nightmare. And where will all this socio-genetic cleansing end anyway? Biological eugenics? Get rid of the drug users so there'll be no demand for the drug in the first place? Lets read that story again:

'Britain is funding biological organisms to attack drug users as part of the battle against the drug trade. The sunday times reported that Britain was helping to develop a strain of fungus which destroys junkies at a laboratory at Uzbekistan. They are planning to produce enough fungus to infect even recreational drug users in America and the UK, the source of 90% of the world's drug users. The project is part of the UK's drug control programme based in Vienna.'