Digging the new Flaming Lips record, thanks to Brian at work for letting me borrow it. I have a deep admiration for anyone who has gotten to the point where they can do whatever the fuck they want and eke out a living doing that. But I sit here not knowing what kind of sacrifices are made other than knowing what they do is extremely difficult for the average group of people to pull off. And I don't mean that just in talking about the execution of their art and taking the show on the road, itself a very impressive feat - having witnessed a sliver of it in person at sxsw 2000 and also in reading a recent SPIN article about the new record, but in the "spaces between," the stuff that's not as noteworthy in the art world. Need I go on? I assume anyone reading can catch my drift about feeling adrift. The good news is we're in the middle of the lake, not near a rocky shore. And there's plenty of joy in that.