I just don’t understand why everybody in the south is so goddamned friendly. I mean, everybody. We’re wrapping up a delightful 48 hour stay in the care of Wesleyan College, and I can say with some degree of certainty that the women of Macon, Georgia may never be surpassed in terms of both raw hospitality and the ability to make a pair of slap-happy wannabees feel like a bona fide rock band. We initially had our concerns – mine that I was going to somehow impregnate a girl by looking at her funny during the show, ending up on the wrong end of a shotgun wedding and having to live out the rest of my days in Macon; Misha’s that we were both going to be eaten by boars – but our friends at Wesleyan have gone above and beyond the call of duty at every turn. Words, as usual, fail me, but mother of GOD, are we going to miss this town.

Where in God’s name are we? I really don’t even know anymore. We woke up in Lousiana and are now in Alabama, I think. At least we were earlier. We had to drive 500+ miles today, which meant taking the interstate, which meant that the scenery since Shreveport alternated only between small interstate towns (with gas stations and Walmarts) and large interstate towns (with truck stops and Walmart Supercenters). I’ll save my commentary on all that for less Orwellian times.

Not much else to report, really. Just kind of malingering around hotel rooms and guest beds, riding out the humidity and waiting for our digestive systems to forgive us for the terrible things we put them through in New Orleans. How everyone in that town isn’t 350 lbs naked and constantly doubled over in pain is beyond me.

OK. Seven days into the tour and we’ve barely said hello. What a couple of ingrates, you’re thinking, and of course you’re right.

Where to begin? Things have been fantastic thus far, almost eerily so. This particular tour is structured like one of those excercycle programs at the gym, with eleven minutes of warmup followed by eighteen minutes of strenuous, thigh-busting action, finishing up with a fifteen day period of spiraling alcoholism and despair.

I’m poring over my notes and remembering that my parents tend to check this section of the site from time to time, so I’m afraid a lot of what’s happened so far is going to have to be edited out in the name of decency.

For instance:

-The time Chellam and I sat down with a bottle of “Truckers Luv It” pills to see how many we could eat before our hearts started skipping beats.

-The time we took turns throwing rocks at each other’s mouths to see who could chip the most teeth.

-The hitchhiker we killed and ate.

On a more serious note, Misha’s challenge from our last trip to Oklahoma is once again on the table: free drinks for the rest of the tour if I can run down and put my hand on a live skunk.