My life is not entirely dissimilar from a cosmonaut living on the International Space Station in that I now rely on scheduled deliveries of items formerly available within thirty miles of my front door. In fact, this may be the first time I've lived in a town lacking both a comic shop and a music store. No small wonder everyone's married here; there are no geek vices to keep them celibate.

My first of doubtless many Amazon.com orders arrived yesterday. The box size was a little misleading until I opened it to discover the special edition Smashing Pumpkins CD I ordered came with a larger booklet than I expected. The other item was the British import Tarantula single, paid in full primarily for one b-side, "Death from Above." Both CDs are great, in my estimation, but I'm an unabashed fanboy and it's been several years between albums.

Zeitgeist sounds like a continuation of Machina, if maybe a bit simpler. Machina served to announce the band breaking up, hence the heavy apocalyptic and death-of-rock themes. Seven years later, things are looking up. Zeitgeist responds to the previous album's despondency with a sort of cheerful rebellion- kind of a cockeyed smile and a middle finger to "The Man." Here, "The Man" has shifted from a passive corporate blob to the more modern all-war-all-news-all-for-sale, all for self-perpetuity blob. Back when "alternative" meant "not completely co-opted yet," rebellion against the status quo left over from the Regan years meant passivity and disillusionment. (Which I, for my part, did all I could to buy in to as a teenager even though I was pretty happy and probably more a part of the establishment than I cared to admit.) Now, this "Man" relies on passivity of any stripe, which most of what passes for rock in the mainstream is happy to propagate. It's always the aging rock stars who remind us why rock should be better than that- Ozzy, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, and now it would seem the torch is passed to Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlain, and whoever else they can rope into their crazy rock circus long enough to go on tour. I doubt most current bands will change with society in the coming years as we hopefully move out of the terror decade. If anyone will hear the old guys and take up their cause, it's the kids practicing on starter gear in garages and basements as an escape from the current status quo.

So, yeah, I like the album.

In other news, my comics are shipping weekly now, and the next box just went out this morning according to my e-mail.