Update from Paul, the producer of My Toenails...

Greetings, fans of our podcast, "My Toenails are Getting Too Long and They're Ripping Through My Sock." This is Paul, the producer of the show; I've never written on this blog. Dan has granted me access in his absence (his password is, curiously, smokecrackeveryday1). We have been receiving an epic amount of fan mail. Many of the letters are desperate pleas for song suggestions; people think Dan has time to send them personalized musical recommendations to stimulate their "torpid, cubicle-dwelling brains" (Dan's words, not mine). As a man that does Dan's laundry (he has 47 pairs of underwear, and twice that in bathing suits), scrubs his pet donkey, and picks up the scattered rubberbands he perpetually flings about for enjoyment, I assure you he is an extremely busy, international double-celebrity. In the eastern hemisphere, he is well-known for his radio hosting, and in the west, he's a household name for his innovations to the sport of Fire-Swallowing.

However, 99% of the e-mails we've been receiving are from fans wondering where Dan is and when there will be a new episode. Dan wanted his location to remain a secret, but I prodded him to be transparent with his fans. After much verbal lambasting and shrieking at me to "cut the flanger" on his voice, of which there was none (we were speaking on a very solid cell phone connection), he complied.

Dan has taken an Oxford-funded residency in a remote district of Saturn (on the rings, to be specific). He is studying the effects of Saturn-based isolation on the human psyche and, apparently, trying to invent a sport called "ring-skiing." Luckily, Dan has found the time to e-mail me an update on his status, to be posted on this blog, in the interest of making contact with our fans. I wish I could say the cryptic, almost scrambled nature of the letter was due to 2,232,557 lightyears of space-static interfering with his internet signal, or at least some sort of space dementia, but Dan typically writes me in this style.

14:43 SATURN TIME. WESTERN RING, 3RD QUADRANT.

TO PAUL, YOU ROSY-HUED EARTH DARLING:

MAKING QUINTESSENTIAL PROCESS IN MY STUDIES. *BLOOP* ISOLATION ON SATURN CAUSING ASTONISHING EFFEDCTS IN AREAS OF OXGENATION TO THE PELVIS AS WELL AS RIGHT-HANDED PENMANSHIP EVALUATION. *BEEP BOP* THE RINGS ARE COVERED IN VISCOUS RESIDUE, GUMMING UP MY RING-SKIING EFFORTS. LISTENING TO A LOT OF MOS DEF AND SMASHING PUMPKINS'S FIRST ALBUM (IT HAS A SONG CALLED SPACEBOY). PLEASE FORWARD ME ANY AND ALL SONG REQUESTS; I'M BORED AS HELL. DON'T FORGET TO SCRUB AMOS.

POSSIBLE EPISODE THEMES:
- AIR (BOTH THE BAND AND THE SUBSTANCE)
- ANALYSIS OF POPULAR AND NOT-SO-POPULAR HAIR STYLES
- SOMETHING ABOUT HOW I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TIE A NECKTIE OR USE COUPLINGS (COULD BE QUITE POIGNANT)

SMOKE CRACK EVERY DAY!

-DAN

PS: TWO FLIES LANDED IN MY COFFEE. I PICKED THEM OUT- SHOULD I STILL DRINK IT? IF THIS WAS EARTH I WOULDN'T BLINK AN EYE BUT YOU CAN'T BE TOO SAFE WITH THE INSECTS HERE.

There's Dan's e-mail, faithfully reproduced through cut-and-paste. Thanks for your interest in us and The Toenails show. I will do my best to bring Dan back to coherence when he returns to earth; I've ghostwritten a stockpile of future podcast episodes, which I'll slip into his filing cabinet. He'll think he wrote them.

Cheers,

-Paul, the producer