Poor Tim Owens. First he became the scapegoat for the poor writing of Downing and Tipton in the post-Halford era of Judas Priest, and now he's stepped into Matthew Barlow's boots in Iced Earth. Owens is a good singer, but it seems he ends up in bands where too much is expected of him. That aside, the snippets of Iced Earth's new album sound good; definitely more interesting than "Horrorshow," that's for sure.

In other metal news, Dave Grohl's Probot project should be out soon. I heard some of it, and it sounds all right. Any album with Lee Dorrian, Cronos, Lemmy, Wino, and Snake, among others, is bound to have some redeeming value. Beats the fuck out of anything else Grohl's done in a long time, that's a fact.

I've picked out a couple choice bits from Axis Mundi Sum for the book reading I'm doing tomorrow night at Sam Houston. I have no idea how the whole thing will go over with folks I don't know, but at least there will be a good number of my buddies in attendance. I'm also pretty much guaranteed to sell most, if not all, of the handful of copies I've got, so I can offset the cost of getting Fireball running.

I'd like to hunt down certain customers at work, as well as the upper management, and reduce their kneecaps and elbows to jelly with a ball-peen hammer. That would teach them the lessons they so richly deserve, as well as give me immense satisfaction. Of course, I'm not really a violent man, but to deny that inflicting painful vengeance on one's antagonists is a fantasy everyone has would make the denier a fucking liar.