Joke's on you, we still alive.

JRP stood stunned and slack-jawed Friday night, as if he never expected to hear Kanye West's complex rhythmic obscenities blasting from my crib. But the same day the New Yorker reviewed "Late Registration," AG gave me "College Dropout" in a touching but doomed attempt to jump-start my ancient and corroded synapses. These seemed like signs I'd better not ignore. The album is 65 miles long in moderate traffic, so I got to hear it twice Saturday on my way to Fredericksburg, to have lunch with ABM (pictured with Poor Adelaine), and back. Four tracks seem worth adding to my iPod. With due respect, I'll pass on the other 17.

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D, in her woodsy little writer's cabin by the Tallulah River, reports all is well except for "the boldest f***ing mouse in Christendom. The problem is that it's really his house. He came up on the kitchen table in broad daylight and started eating out of the bowl of peaches. I shouted at him, and he just looked at me. I had to tip the table and shake it to make him leave, and even then he took his own sweet time. They gave me a trap to capture him and release him in the far pasture instead of killing the f***er and burning his entrails like I want."

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Advice for Jadagul: Rush is fine, but more than a little dated. If you're looking for something similar but more contemporary, I'd check out a band called Coheed and Cambria. Coheed's most recent CD, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 came out in 2003. It's a science fiction theme album reminiscent of Rush's 2112. The singer is a guy named Claudio Sanchez and he's got high-pitched power vocals that I think trump Geddy Lee. The record weaves a dark sci-fi story that ranges from mysterious to incomprehensible, with track titles like "Cuts Marked in the March of Men" and "The Velourium Camper I: Faint of Hearts." The best track is the secret song at the end, "2113" (A Rush reference perhaps?). It's an epic song that rises and falls, twisting through ten moods in nine minutes. The music is solid, complex and melodic throughout the album and even if you don't grasp the story, it's a great listen. If you like In Keeping Secrets, you should also check out Coheed's earlier release, Second Stage Turbine Blade, and the new album, Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star iV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, scheduled for release in September.

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The Richmond Chamber Players' odd assortment of pleasant noises this afternoon: Robert Russell-Places, Op.9; Walter Piston-Quintet for Flute and String Quartet; Peter Schickele-Quartet; Samuel Barber-String Quartet Op. 11.

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Peter Maass in the Times: If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession… The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar—assuming, of course, that climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.… When a crisis comes—whether in a year or 2 or 10—it will be all the more painful because we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it.