When it comes to equine upholstery, we're really just talking about horses in blankets. Of course, "just" talking about horses in blankets is a little like "just" talking about a fire burning down your house: it's actually a pretty big deal. Or squirrels with metal heads.

One question we're asked time and again has less to do with the animals than with the blankets themselves:

"How can you tell me about the blankets?"

Well, first of all, blankets, like all blankets, come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes: cotton & metal. Next, figure out what your horse prefers . . . after all, "it" is the one who will be wearing it. Here's an example of a great purple blanket, classic cut, some insulation, purple:



Notice that the blanket fastens around the animal's chest. This is largely a superstitious measure, but has become standard over the years.

Of course, other shades of purple are feasible and in fact quite popular:



And although it has never actually been done, it is theoretically possible to create a smaller blanket that would concentrate heat in the chest and front leg-tops:



. . . or even a red blanket with a hooding utensil:



No such limitations exist for blue iridescent fabrics, which come in as many shapes and cuts as there are horses:





Where the fuck is this one going:



Although horses are not exceptionally intelligent, their purity of spirit has earned them man's respect. They do not comprehend that by wearing a blanket they are being kept warm. Making the animal understand, however, is often as simple as printing the blanket with hot comets. Looking at the comets, the horse will understand that he is warmer with the blanket than without it:



Of course, a horse wearing a head blanket with comets may not understand that he's being warmed, but other horses will feel encouraged to see that their friend is being heated:



Other animals for whom blankets are a suitable heating option include . . .



. . .a dog . . .



. . . a zebra . . .



. . . and a bear.

In the category of horse blankets, it's exactly what they say: "the options are only limited by your imagination":







(Most of these designs can be had for around thirty bucks. The best place to pick them up is still the grocery store, although AmericanAirlines.com is rapidly gaining ground. If you end up buying one, mention that you read about horse blankets on wearescientists.com and they may spare at least your family's lives.)

Here are the facts:

 Jan 20, 2010 Johnny Brenda's, Philadelphia, PA
Jan 21, 2010 Black Cat, Washington, DC
Jan 23, 2010 Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ

But of course, there's so much more to it than that. Sometimes facts are like medium-sized rocks sitting there on the floor of the jungle: you turn the rock over, and yeah, sometimes there's just dirt underneath. But other times maybe there's a wild little polychromatic swarm of insects and worms, or a piece of paper folded many times, or a key! And which rock-overturner has not at one time or another discovered a treasure chest or a diamond ring or even the door to an underground suite of rooms appointed with devices and technologies that could only have come from a distant utopian future??

And so if you overturn the rock near the top of this post, what will you discover? That at these shows, we will not be drunkenly croaking out a bunch of 90's radio-rock covers! That at these shows, we won't be settling even for a bunch of tunes we wrote years ago which, admittedly, have become cultural touchstones! No, at these shows, attendees will be treated to nothing less than our drunken croaking of probably at least half of our forthcoming third music album! Sure, we'll pound through the classics: your Nobody Move's, your After Hours's, your Cheetah Lick's -- but at evening's end, the bulk of your ball-tripping will have directly resulted from hearing forthcoming hits such as Rules Don't Stop, I Don't Bite, Nice Guys, and Foreign Kicks. Caveat: Unless you take a drug pill(s)! If you take a drug pills, you'll be tripping more leaden balls than most of the audience, and the lion's share of your trip will owe itself to a drug pills.

More on that forthcoming album (spring '10) and related issues (international touring, touring more than a 4 hr. drive from our practice space) coming soon.

In the meantime, have a great new year celebration, pop a drug pills, drive a car around, party, and remember to go see the latest movie, Avatar!

Dear fans who can read,

Tonight is a big night for fans of short-form comedy that stars members of bands. That's because at either 22:55 or 23:55 this evening, our emotionally sophisticated new show Steve Wants His Money premiers on MTV in the UK. (The reason for the confusion about air time is simply a matter of this show being so red-hot to the touch that the folks at MTV are having a hard time handling it! They sent an intern out to buy metaphorical oven mitts, but he's hasn't come back yet! So everybody keeps dropping our show in unpredictable places!)

So here are the specifics on how Steve show will roll out: every Sunday night for the next seven weeks a new episode will premier on MTV (the main channel, guys). Throughout the ensuing six days, the new episode will repeat on the various MTV networks: MTV, MTV2, Base, Hits, Dance and MTVR. We think the show is going to appear in programming guides, but it may appear as "We Are Scientists present... Steve Wants His Money" or simply "Lil MTV", which is the umbrella name for MTV's big foray into funny short programming.*

As we get more accurate info, we'll feed it to this website and to Twitter and to the print version of Time Magazine. That includes details on when Steve show will be viewable outside the U.K. (shouldn't be too long...). Anyway, take a look and let us know what you think in the comments section of this very goddamn post!


* Other shows that MTV has commissioned for Lil MTV include Snuffed Out Too Soon, a show about people, mostly homeless people, mostly kids, who were killed on camera in snuff films; and Nailed In The Caboose, a historical survey of famous men and women who at one time or another were sodomized. Snuffed Out Too Soon is hosted by Robbie Williams, and Nailed In The Caboose -- we've heard -- is being hosted by Jack White(!). Haven't seen either, but they sound LOL.

You manacled mimes,

It's an exciting time in the world of We Are Scientists, a world that sits comfortably within the perimeters of the known universe, blanketing roughly 80% of it. For one thing, we've got our first shows of the summer coming up this week, just weeks before they'd be disqualified from the summer season altogether. Have a look:

Thursday, 30 July - CAMBRIDGE, MA - The Middle East (w/ Bear Hands, Bad Girlfriend)
Friday, 31 July - NORTHAMPTON, MA - Iron Horse Music Hall (w/ Bad Girlfriend)
Sunday, 2 August - NEWARK, NJ - All Points West Festival (w/ Coldplay, MGMT, Echo & the Bunnymen)

Besides the usual mix of hard-rocking country jams and R-rated cabaret-style dance theater, we'll be slipping a few surprises in during these sets. We're talking about things you have simply never seen, and never ever heard. For those of you living outside of traveling distance to these shows, expect a full recap next week -- for now, we've decided to embrace vagary in the interest of causing some heart attacks in the audience.

If this seems like a big tease, trust us when we tell you that this is the kind of tease that you meet at the bar, spend three hours courting, and are about to write off, when everything suddenly accelerates and you find yourself mattress-dancing in a half-star motel down the road -- neon-colored light spilling through the single-ply curtains, the faucet head pissing continuously onto the mirror out of a cracked seal, roaches cocking their antennae inquisitively at the unscheduled performance taking place in the middle of the room, the obsessively repetitive embodiment of a skipping record. And then, of course, there is the first pregnancy, and the second, and the truly-unwanted third. There are the fluctuations in career satisfaction, in lifestyle satisfaction, the waning of thickness and color of hair. There are preschool graduations and high school graduations, and the child who drops out of college, and the one who will never leave college. There are exotic pets, uncreative vacations, larger houses, and, once the kids have all moved out, a smaller one. There is the largely pleasant if blue-tinted shift into much older age, during which so many of the most tangible aspects of your daily life, you find, exist only in memory, the greatest exception, of course, being the person you once spent a couple of hours thinking was probably just a tease, just someone looking for a little entertainment to while away the hours till last call on a Thursday night. And now the two of you have whiled away two entire lives together, largely to the contentment of each -- certainly you are happy to have avoided the solitude so many of your friends seem to be spending their declining years immersed in.

Hope to see you at the shows!

You Poorly Reasoned Arguments,

Two exciting things to tell you about:

1) There's a new iPhone coming out this summer. Chris got ahold of one this morning and wrote up a review. As near as we can tell, this is an exclusive -- the FIRST iPhone review anywhere on the net! Check it out here.

2) We're not doing a whole lot of live work this year; the focus is on crafting the very finest instrumental ambient music album we possibly can. There are one or two exceptions, though. We did Coachella last month, of course. Later this summer we'll be at All Points West in the NYC area. When it comes to intimate, in-a-person's-face type shows, though, there may actually be just this one:

Sunday, May 31st
The Detroit Bar
Costa Mesa, CA

Kind of strange, eh? 2009: one show, in Costa Mesa, CA. Sorry if you live in London, or Japan! Sorry if you live in Boston, or Auckland, or Sao Paolo! Congratulations, though, if you live in Southern California. Congratufuckinglations to you. This should be pretty good. Tickets are being designed here.

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More of these sorts of ideas can be read at wearescientists.com and at Chris's Twitter feed.

On January 21st, a new MTV show called "What You're Watching with Alexa Chung" will shoot a pilot in New York City. We will be performing a song or two. If you want to be in the audience, just send an email with your name and age to mtvshowcasting@mtvstaff.com and put "WAS" in the subject line. They'll get back to you shortly with either great news (you're in!) or terrible news (you're too old/your name is wrong!).

Finally, Chris and Alexa will appear in the same room together, proving, once and for all, that they are not the same person.

We're playing a show at IndigO2 in London next week (on the 18th, for you calendar junkies) with The Charlatans and Newton Falkner, and we've got 100 pairs of tickets to give you, our faithful fanbase (slutty members of the fanbase are okay to win these, too). PUT YOUR LUCK TO THE TEST, you who have only ever experienced loss.

And of course it's "NATO Presents: Chick Lit Week" this week, which means that we are in a heated battle with hip-hoppers, crooners, rockers, and Van Morrison for that most coveted of chart positions: 15. If you want to help us acquire this grail, you can buy the vinyl or the CD, or you can download the mp3. B-sides include an acoustic take .. Hours; the lovely, driving Gauntlet; and Dance Off, which is very literally danceable. There are also two remixes -- one by Matt Helders (Optic Monkeys) and one by Danger -- that will turn your Chick Lit listening party into, well, a real party.

Take care of yourself! Chew multivitamins at all times, as cows chew cud!

You spandex oil tankers,

 It's CHICK LIT Week this week, as declared by NATO. How will you celebrate? We asked a best-selling novelist, a Turner prize-winning artist, and a platinum-selling musician to spend a weekend together at a picturesque retreat in the Scottish Highlands coming up with a few ideas:

1) Order all three physical formats -- a CD and two vinyls -- for ₤3.

2) Download the digital bundle from iTunes for ₤2.50 and get remixes by Matt Helders and Danger.

That's all these people, these celebrated creators, came up with. Buy the physical, buy the digital. When they reported back to us, after the weekend in the Highlands that we had paid for, we looked them right in the eye and told them, "Great job, everyone!" The fact is, we're intimidated by their CVs. But we're fairly sure they're not on our mailing list, so this is the time for us to say, "Really bad job, you guys." ("Super disappointing results from you.")

Well one thing WE'RE doing to celebrate "NATO Presents: Chick Lit Week" is playing some acoustic shows at some record stores. It's a tradition! Here's where we'll be:

Today, ACTION RECORDS, Preston
Tuesday, FOPP, Nottingham
Wednesday, SPILLERS RECORDS, Cardiff
Thursday, SISTER RAY, London

Please join us if you love half an hour of acoustic music and you live anywhere in the UK or northern Europe. From Iceland is also not too far to travel (consult your travel agent for more information). We don't recommend coming from the Mediterranean, South America, Asia, etc. You'll be disappointed. Finland, say, would be on the fence; depends how much you love half an hour of acoustic music. Mexico: too far. Luxembourg: come. Algeria: too far. Germany: come. Switzerland, even: come. New Zealand: stay home; do something else.