Psychic Jazz Band Fundraiser! All this week in the cafeteria, we're raising money for our trip to the Quasi-dimensional Invitational High School Jazz Competition, hosted this year on the moons of Saturn, and we need your help!

Getting there is instantaneous (as soon as we crack the cryptographic jazz-hash), but we'll need money for food and lodging once we're there, and prices in the portion of the arcology built for our species aren't cheap.

So, all this week, drop by our table in the cafeteria, give what you can, and we'll give you a special jazz jingle--created there on the spot--which can help you with anything you need help with. Better grades? Better hair? The love of a crush who doesn't know you exist? We can conjure up whatever you need with our improv, and these sonic spells will be yours to keep, in exchange for your donation.

So don't forget your cash, and come see us in the lunch room this week!

Yeah I bought an improvised melody for the Psychic Jazz Band fundraiser today at lunch. I folded it up and put it in my wallet. It's supposed to "attract a lost love," so I'm whistling it while I walk around campus.

Are you my lost love? You: the intriguing person I met at the Disappearing Valentine's Dance, and all I can remember is... short hair? It's all like a half remembered dream. If you hear my tune then it must be you. Don't be shy!

Who knows how I ended up treasurer of the Psychic Jazz Band. It's all been such a whirlwind adventure since throwing in my spoons with the band, working on our audition, shooting for the moons of Saturn. It's. So. GROOVY!

So I'm counting the money from our fundraiser last week, tap tap tapping out the count on my spoons in the air right beside me, and I can't thank everybody enough for all your support. We've got 385 €, which is like... 5000 € on Titan because of the exchange rate right now. I'm using the immersive 5D to book us rooms and it is such a trip, it's just like you're there and you're a movie star and there's a giant swoopy staircase in red but most the guests are just propelling themselves up through the hole in the dome of the ceiling, floating up to their Rent-a-Bubbles. I'm booking us all rooms here in this place -- the Cephalopodia -- right now!

We are gonna have a GREAT time.

Well, we finally cracked the cryptographic jazz-hash, and we're headed to Titan tomorrow!

We'd played our audition numbers inside out but still weren't getting anywhere. @Mr. Howl was doing his best with the arrangements, and his aleatoric angle proved to be an important key, but as soon as we gave it a cool ska back beat the whole thing lit up, and the portal opened up right there in the band room. It was ruly a window to another world--we could see the reception area at the Cephalopodia (the hotel where we'll be staying, which is connected to Titanic Hall, where we're be playing) and through the big picture windows you could see the hazy golden sky and mountains and even a cryovolcano!

So, we stopped playing right away to let the portal shut, and tonight we're packing and letting our parents know where we'll be. @Mr. Howl is getting in touch with our teachers, so we won't get marked absent. We're all meeting tomorrow in the band room during our regular Psychic Jazz Band class, with all our suitcases, and we're going to be playing the song, opening the portal, and heading through. We'll be sure to up date you on our trip so watch this space!

Competition is fierce at the show. It's interplanetary, and thousands of years old, so some of the schools we're up against are pretty established. The Cryptonians, for example, live for hundreds of years, which means they're in high school for decades and get really good. Plus it's said that they're the race that came to Earth and first taught the Egyptians ska.

But the judges are always looking for something new, so maybe we've still got a shot. In any case, it's an honor to have made it and be able to compete at all. Plus, it's great to meet all these other psychic band kids from all over. We were taking a break at the pool at the hotel and I started talking to a really cute flute player from Deneb IV. We're going to try and meet up tonight after the band from Tond plays.

On behalf of the Psychic Jazz Band, I am very excited to announce: Second place for Best New Psychic Jazz Entity! We are completely stoked.

Judging here works at a higher level than our own terrestrial competitions. Judges are from many different galactic species, but you've got to be a Level II Transcendent Culture to qualify. That means multi-dimensional DNA, multiple timeline residency, eyes-in-the-back-of-next-Thursday (EITBONT) sensory organs... basically, consciousnesses that look at things outside of time and space as you and I generally know it. When they "listen to" a performance, they're not looking at a bunch of musicians all playing the same piece. Instead, they're "seeing" an internally-defined, living organism, created by the musical equation/program expressed. For you and I, a performance has a beginning and an end, and it exists for the amount of time it's being performed. For the judges, it's a living entity that has attained "existence," and has a consciousness of its own, which can be queried or interacted with at any time (even when it's not being performed).

As a musician, that makes sense to me. Even if I can't quite see it.

Our winning composition was entitled Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient. As part of our prize, it gets to visit a reserve that has been set up for entities like it to interact with other such entities, and potentially evolve in unforeseen ways.

Another part of our prize is that we get another week free here at The Cephalopodia on Titan! Which is fantastic because with all the last-minute rehearsing and performing we really had no time to just enjoy our surroundings and explore. And just in time for Spring Break!

Thanks again to everybody who donated to help make this happen. Wait till you see the trophy! It's a three-dimensional shadow of a higher order shape that we're unable to comprehend. Cool huh?