On August 31st, in Glasgow, Chris addressed an autographed promotional vinyl to “Marie”. The signature seeker’s name was “Mairead”. We regret the error.

On August 23rd, Keith invited audience members to “go fuck [them]selves, Leeds.” That night we played Birmingham; Leeds was the following night. The band regrets Keith’s error.

July 18th, we responded enthusiastically to a journalist’s email soliciting an interview. The questions, which we received the following day, went unanswered for nearly a month, and were ultimately addressed with less verve than we’re capable of. We Are Scientists regrets the entire affair.

On August 22nd, in Manchester, we killed a promoter who neglected to furnish the bottle of red wine specified by our rider. Our intention was to beat him savagely but non-fatally – at worst to shorten his life by a handful of years through chronic illness brought on by serious injury. We apologize to the promoter in question, but warn his family that in our view they have inherited his debt.

On September 6th, during an interview with XFM dj John Kennedy, Michael momentarily adopted a British accent and said, “Oi, John. Your mate sounds like a right old geezer, i’nnit?” He butchered it. We regret the error. For a second he actually sounded almost German.

On a flight from New York City to London on September 21st, Chris listened to his iPod, an electronic device, during takeoff. We Are Scientists regret having almost caused the aircraft to crash into an airport hotel or the flight tower or another plane, and also wish to express total uncomprehending surprise that none of those things happened.

Hello guys my name is Malan and I am from THE FUTURE. That is right, I came a long way to get here so listen up if you are even capable of hearing hard facts. My name is the name Alan with the letter M preceding it. I’ve just told you the way to remember it and also how to pronounce it. Excuses that fly will be few indeed for ignorance of my name, knowing as you do I assume the name Alan, probably many of you more intimately than you wish to discuss here today. Here is something you WILL wish to discuss: the year 2000. How many of you are wondering what the hell it will be like? Every last one of you. I do not have to count hands to grasp that figure. Well if you guessed that you are in the right place to learn the secrets of this far distant future and that I am the person who is going to personally thrash these mysteries on your behalf then you guessed with precision and accuracy bound up into one. I see that a few of your are wearing beards. Let me tell you that in the year 2000 every single person in the world and many in space will be wearing beards. And not by choice. For now I will choose not to elaborate, because there is too much material to get through and probably not that much time before I am summoned back to my era away from this unwieldy era of the past via one of four common beaming technologies: Anular, Granular, Physical (Physical Beaming), and Companular, which is used for two people. What else is there to tell you? Well, first off, sandwiches are a thing of the past in the future. In the future we DO NOT EAT sandwiches. We instead eat delicious soups crafted to taste and remind of sandwiches. We do this because sandwich batter has become scant and also can be nosed out by wolves which play an unpleasant role in elements of the future including whether man can safely enter the outdoors. “Haven’t we tamed wolves by the year 2000?” The answer is no. Men have turned their hair white trying in vain. The fact is that some things do not change. We have not tamed wolves, we have not overcome paranoia, and we have not and will never fly to the moon. This last point has however finally been proven mathematically so that we can stop wasting valuable man-energy in vain attempts. A notorious mathematician called Optimus Prime will by the year 2000 have discovered using an understanding of angles and math that the moon is hundreds of trillions of light-years away from earth but is awesomely large, accounting for the fact that it can be seen with the naked eye and even at night.
Nah, I’m just fuckin with ya.

Let me speak in understatements and explain to you the life of a groundhog. A groundhog’s life is harder than eating two hundred trees in one hour. It is more strenuous than running around Earth two hundred times in one hour. It requires greater strength than putting the moon into a milk bottle. It is like the life of a gopher but two hundred times harder. It is more trying than putting Mars inside Earth twice in one hour.

My happiest memory from growing up is when an eagle dropped from an overcast sky and snatched up three of my siblings, its knife-like talons shearing off legs and paws and an ear and leaving them behind in a great gust of rancid eagle scent.

My favorite dinner is a stick. Once while I was eating a stick I was shot in the face with a BB.

My mate fell through the ice in the lake last winter and was under water for several minutes. When I dragged her out she was still alive but she lost her sense of hearing. In the summer she was surprised by a farmer’s thresher, its knife-like talons flinging her everywhere in the evening air. I did not need to tell our cubs because they had died the previous year in a mudslide. Still, I went to the hill where they were lost and gazed into the weeds wondering what I would have told them if they were still here.


I found a child’s backpack. It is torn and has blood on it, but the blood is long dry and I sleep inside the big pocket.

I am most afraid of dogs.

We Are Scientists is in every sense of the word an international band. We all speak dozens of languages, we’re of varying nationalities — Texan, Utahn, Floridian — and we enjoy both Indian and Italian food. But there is also the fact that we are heralded by critics of every nation, and so the surprise factor was zero when we learned the other day that another Russian music website had tossed in their two cents. What was quite surprising, though, was the accuracy and �lan with which this particular reviewer captured in a cage of words the delicate, flitting farfalla of our aesthetic (the Schmetterling of our steez, if you prefer). Please take a look:

http://musicreporters.ru/articles/1103276283-2.html

For those of you who don’t speak the Russian, we’ve commissioned AltaVista’s tranlsation feature to do a version of the review in English. The precision of that software allowed both the spirit and letter of the original Russian to be rendered perfectly into our native tongue.

Nowhere, probably got accustomed pank- fate as good as by heat the climate of South California. True, among a countless quantity of local associations, good fall, directly let us say, sufficiently rarely. We Are Scientists, fortunately from similar. Rare. Maykl Of tepper (impact), Chinese Murray (guitar, vokal), Kris Of geyn (bass) play “brainy” priest -pank, almost most catching from times Buzzcocks. In my understanding, the group by both feet got in into the category “it-is-so-good-4-not-to-understanding-what-horseradish-they-are-not-still-famous”. Possibly, competition is high. In any event, in WAS it is still in front. In the active membership in them thus far only two by its own hands released YER In action and Wolf’.s Hour, and at the given moment continue negotiations with different interested parties, which must according to the idea pour out in obtaining of babla on the record of album.

There has been so much talk about 2004 being a banner year for the We Are Scientists; we (you, us, people in general) sometimes forget that there’s actually room to improve. Indeed, we may have made great strides both as individuals and as a band and as individual members of a band this last year, but we’ll be the first to admit there are a few things we wouldn’t mind improving during the next go-round. Here’s a comprehensive list of our resolutions. Over the course of the next twelve months, please do us the favor of letting us know when we don’t seem to be conducting our lives with these goals in mind. Like we wrote in the last sentence, you’ll be doing us a favor! Besides, you’re probably wrong; we’re probably closely adhering to the resolution and you’ve just misinterpreted it, or we’re honoring the spirit of the resolution while wiping our asses with the letter of the resolution or something tricky like that. So all the more reason to bring it to our attention, this perceived alleged infidelity, because we live for correcting people. Too, we live for giving folks � honest, hardworking folks � their comeuppance.

That list thing, I guess:

ROMAN NUMERAL ONE. Be it hereby resolved that we will cease to mock those less fortunate than us, with quite the degree of viciousness that we’ve brought to it in the past. We’ll tone it down notably.

ROMAN NUMERAL TWO. Be it resolved that we will give up learning to skip rope. Trying to learn to skip rope has consumed too much of our time over the last couple of years, with too few results, and it’s basically not happening and must be given up at all costs, even if the effect is to slash our social lives to jagged bloody pieces.

ROMAN NUMERAL THREE. “Catch as catch can” will be a phrase that we try to use a lot more of, be it hereby resolved. However we will use it to mean almost anything; we’ll use it very vaguely, as though it had no real meaning, even though it does. People will say, “Have you got a light?” and we’ll say, “Catch as catch can,” which could mean no or it could mean yes, I do have a light. People will say, “What time do you guys go on tonight at Madison Square Garden?” and we’ll say, “Nine. Catch as catch can,” in which case “catch as catch can” will literally have no meaning at all. Guy: “What’s up! It’s We Are Scientists [that has just arrived at this party, happily]!” Us: “Hey, hey! Catch as catch can!” Or even, Girl: “Can you fellows excuse me? I need to slide out and use the lavatory, and we’re in an airplane and I’m in the window seat so you guys have to slide out first in order for me to do that, as you know.” Us: “Oh! Catch as catch can, no problem!” Us at a lecture to the graduates: “Out there in the real world it’s dog eat dog, do or die, who’s dating whom, gimme high five, catch as catch can, smoke on the water, y’know? Keep a stiff upper lip and always check for spiders! Launch first, sink second! Piece of advice: don’t date your adversary’s daughter! Crack kills, never the same way twice! Stick to the good stuff and you’ll never miss the bad! In the forest, check logs for animal turds that might be on top of them before you sit down on the log [after a strenuous hike when all you want to do is have a seat and rest your aching dogs!]!”

ROMAN NUMERAL FOUR. Be it resolved that we will invent a new style of music that contains no sound. Rather it takes the shape of animals such as cheetahs, grizzlies, and mice (where a cheetah might be a very fast piece of music, a grizzly might be a powerful piece of music, and a mouse would be whatever). This new genre of music, if you can even call it that, will be kept in The Zoos of The Future, which will take the place of present day music venues. When people want to see some live music, they’ll go to these special zoos. Be it resolved that if we succeed at this incredible task, we should be heralded by all as great geniuses, and our names celebrated throughout the fifty states.

ROMAN NUMERAL FIVE. Be it hereby resolved that we will always be wearing basketball shorts and a basketball jersey under our normal clothes in case a game of hoops materializes out of fucking nowhere.

ROMAN NUMERAL SIX. Be it hereby resolved that we will try to use the word “terrific” as much as possible, and always in place of the word “swell”, which, living in the year 2005, you have to be an asshole to use. Also, be it resolved that we’re going to use the word “horrific” as a synonym for “terrific”. The reason is that we think it’s unfair that “horrific” and “terrific” both come from words meaning essentially “great fear” (that is, “horror” and “terror”) and that both “horrific” and “terrific” have the meaning “causing great fear”, yet only one of them (“terrific”) has a nice positive meaning as well. We’d like to overhear more of this when we’re at the supermarket shopping for produce:

HOUSEWIFE: Oh hey, Meryl! How’s everything! How’s the kids and everything!
MERYL STREEP: Hi, Sandy, how are you! The kids are great, everything’s great. What about you? How’s Mike?
HOUSEWIFE: Oh Mike’s horrific! Just horrific! He got promoted last month and it’s actually been less stressful in his new position.
MERYL STREEP: Well that’s great to hear.
HOUSEWIFE: Yep, yep, it’s been horrifying.

As you see, the transitive property applies here: “horrifying”, since it’s synonymous with “horrific”, gets to make the move to positivity alongside “horrific”. Of course the same applies to “terrifying”, which for whatever reason never really crept over from the pejorative end of the spectrum when “terrific” did.

ROMAN NUMERAL SEVEN. Be it resolved that each of us will drink fewer alcoholic beverages, but will consume more alcohol, net, either by drinking stronger drinks, drinking larger drinks, or by any other method that meets the goal, including maybe, for example, sometimes freezing our drinks and eating them so it doesn’t count as having drunk something. Pulverizing the drinks so that they can be snorted should also be looked into; injecting the drinks should not. Absorbing the drinks by soaking in a tub full of them over vast stretches of time also merits exploration, as does installing a tiny distillery inside our stomachs so that the drinks can be created inside us and thus consumed without ever having been drunk.

ROMAN NUMERAL EIGHT. Be it resolved that this will be W.A.S.’s healthiest year ever! A year of Healthfulness and Holistics! Respect for Nature and Humankind alike! Devotion to Quality Lotions! A Dash of Sass! Fresh-Cut Salmon and Smoked Grass! Fun Friday where Everybody Can Wear Jeans and a Wig! Adherence to Higher Principles, Such as A Moratorium on Facial Tics! Craploads of Fun for Everybody Involved! Never Putting Too Much Focus on Work � Always Remembering that “Fun Is Number One”! “Fun Weighs a Ton!” “Fun Had the Huns!” Lotsa’ Lasagna for Everybody and Smarmy Salami on People’s Sandwiches When Available!

Montegall, one of Santa’s elves, goes missing, so Santa goes to the Missing Persons Desk at the Federal Bureau of Investigations in Washington, D.C., in order to file a report. When Santa walks into the relevant office in the FBI building, the man working at the Missing Persons Desk kind of raises an eyebrow: “Here’s a guy in a red velour outfit with white fur trim and black shiny boots and a big basically Santa hat, okay…” he’s thinking. What he says is, though, “Hello sir, have a seat please and just go through it from the beginning, starting with the name of the missing person and what have you.” Santa says, “His name is Montegall. Montegall Fistenwharf Glicksenhusk the Ninth.” “Okay, perfect, now can you describe this person,” says the man at the Missing Persons Desk of the FBI. Santa: “Well, he’s a jolly little fellow, sort of elvish.” Man: “Wait a minute…” Man: “Hold on a second here…”

Santa is hanging out with some of the reindeer-in-training one day and he says to one of them, “Xenitar, what is your feeling on getting the surgery where we replace your nose with a christmastree bulb. Rudolph is getting old and will soon need to be put down.” Xenitar goes beet-red and says, “I already got that fuckin surgery!”

“Three times!” says Xenitar.

Mrs. Claus is garnishing a pot-roast with tinsel one evening in preparation for dinner when in walks Zophexylon Minimus Superiorius, one of Santa’s oldest and most trusted elves. Mrs. Claus is all, “Oh, Zophexylon! Better get washed up! Dinner is nearly ready!” Zophexylon Superiorus remains silent, staring. Finally Mrs. Claus leaves the room, weeping. Can you explain Mrs. Claus’s reaction?

Answer: Zophexylon is dead.

Scenes from the Boda Dome: Interrogation (Central Security archive 611.8.2t.nov/24/114)

Hey I’m Andy. One time my dad and me were walking over to where my mom works and a guy asked if my dad had a nickle and my dad said to get a job, so then today when Melanie Lippiter asked me if I had the fifty cents I owed her from when I borrowed fifty cents from her on Friday to buy root beer I said to get a job.

My mom said that my dad is a scoundrel and I told her I wanted to be a scoundrel when I grow up and she said a scoundrel is a bad thing to be but I didn’t care. My dad drinks whisky and I drink apple juice and he said when I’m older I can drink whisky. He said whisky tastes better than apple juice, and I drank some of the whisky once when Janet my babysitter was watching a movie but it was the wrong bottle because it tasted bad so I dumped it out and put apple juice in it so at least if dad ever accidentally drinks from that bottle he will get apple juice.

My drum teacher Mr. Tapper says I have the skills to pay the bills and that I’m a good drummer and that my parents don’t like me to practice at home because they like classical music. I asked my dad if he likes classical music and he said no he likes Bob Seeger. I told Mr. Tapper that and he said Bob Seeger is good. He’s going to teach me the song Night Moves for me to play for my dad.

On Monday at soccer practice Coach Miller said I have to throw some elbows and not to be afraid of the ball, and I said I wasn’t afraid of the ball and he said good. Then he told me and Sam and Andrew to stand in a line with our hands over our yankees and to try to block him from kicking the penalty kick, and when he kicked it I blocked it but it hit me in the face and I didn’t play any more and he said I didn’t have to and he gave me fifty cents to buy a coke but I bought a root beer. I asked him if it was okay that I bought a root beer not a coke and he said that was fine and he asked me how my nose felt and I said it stopped bleeding but it still hurt.

Sam got a dog for his birthday and I asked my mom if I could get a dog for my birthday and she said she would think about it so I asked my dad if I could get one and he said I could. I looked on AOL for different kinds of dogs so I could show my dad a picture of which one to get and I found the one I want and I showed it to him and he said I could get it:

I have to write a story for school and so I wrote one about my dog. His name is Rick. This is the story. One day Rick and Andy were walking to Sam’s house to play playstation when they saw a robber wearing a black mask and black clothes robbing Tina Applebaum’s house. They went over to the house and found out that the robbers had also kidnapped Tina so they followed them to their secret hideout in the woods.

At the hideout there were lots of guards so Rick and Andy had to sneak up on them. Rick bit the guards’ necks until they died and then Andy put them in a pit that Rick had dug. Then there were security cameras so Rick distracted them by running around while Andy threw chinese stars at the cameras, destroying the cameras with the chinese stars. Then since it was a long way from the entrance to the hideout to the area where the robbers lived, Andy and Rick took turns carrying each other. Andy rode on Rick’s back for a while while Rick ran as fast as he could, which was 85 miles per hour, then when Rick was tired Andy carried him.

At one part of the cave they had to go through a pitch black part and they couldn’t see anything but they could hear hissing all around. Then Rick said he could smell that they were surrounded by cats that wanted to attack them so Andy started a fire with some matches he remembered he had and sure enough there were 1000 black cats surrounding them. The cats were bigger than normal cats. They were one tenth the size of Rick instead of one fiftieth the size. They had blood on their fangs from the last people who tried to rescue someone who was kidnapped by the robbers and they were hissing and swatting at Andy and Rick.

That’s all I’ve finished. I have to turn it in next Monday after Thanksgiving break. For Thanksgiving we’re going to my grandma’s house in Urbana. Sometimes I like going there and sometimes I don’t. My grandma’s name is Myra. I used to like grandma’s cat Lucy but now Lucy bites you because she’s senile. Grandma makes pound cake that I like and also banana pudding with Nilla Wafers that I like. Dad said that grandma doesn’t respect him and mom said that’s because she tells grandma the things dad does.