Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

Just tossing around ideas. All plans are carved into chocolate in the hot sun. 

What if The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets put out two albums in the year 2007? One circa January and the second one in August with a big CD release concert at the Penny Arcade Expo (what I call the P.A.E.). Polling various nerd experts gets a figure of about 20,000 attendees to the last one, with the next one to double. If even one percent of that number purchases some variety of Thickets merch, we could do well. We just need some kind of trustworthy, hardworking rep down there to prep everything for our arrival. That gives us almost a year to get our byakhee in a row with regards to merchandise. 

One of the albums would be The Shadow Out of Tim storyline. The second would be “just” a collection of songs, with a DVD retrospective of the band (the one I’ve been planning for years and which almost happened this past winter). Don’t know what order they’d be released. Each album would have at least 9 songs on it. 

Here’s a question for you – if we were to include a “remix” (aka do-over) of one of our older songs, which one should it be? It wouldn’t just be a re-recording, we’d want to alter the song, do it in a different style, or otherwise make it unique. It shouldn’t be one of our most popular, polished ones, because a song like The Math Song or Burrow Your Way To My Heart doesn’t need fixing. 

We’ve got an Eastern sounding song coming down the wire and I had an interesting thought. A la “Dies ist Unverschamtheit,” what if we did a song in ancient Egyptian, or Coptic, possibly about Nyarlathotep or Irem, City of Pillars. I’ve composed an email to Stuart Tyson Smith, noted Egyptologist from University of California who was a language coach for the Stargate and Mummy films. Forgot to send it last night in all the gaming excitement but I’m hopeful. Turning now to The Shadow Out of Tim, I had an interesting idea for a song this afternoon. As mentioned in a previous blog entry our marine biologist protagonist retraces the voyage he has made while his mind was possessed by a Yithian, taking his boat, the R.V. Steadfast, far out to sea in the Indian Ocean. I think it would be fun to have a song that just illustrates all the terrible way his various crew members meet their respective demises one fateful night. Kind of like a Gashlycrumb Tinies set on a boat.

Oh and we’ve got a show at The Vault in Chilliwack on the 30^th, and I’m working on a Hallowe’en one here in Vancouver (any suggestions?).

I went from having no dreams for months to having really weird dreams almost every night. I dreamt that I went to Chilliwack to visit Amber and her hubby and some old guy was crucifying storks out back. That’s how my subconscious works, folks.

I didn’t make a big thing about this at the time, but in June I sat Marlo down and told her that for a little while I would have to sever all contact with her so that I could get her out of my system, and she understood. Yesterday was the first time I’ve spoken to her since then. I called her to wish her a happy birthday and we caught up to some extent. I think it’s important to keep my emotional life uncomplicated until my zen reserves are 100% recharged, so the segregation must continue until my emotional ducks are in a row. You know how some relationships end with “let’s continue to be friends – I’m totally going to call you” and it’s all a bunch of B.S? I’ve been on the receiving end of that and I refuse to be the source. So I just wanted to say “Hi, happy birthday, talk to you later” and so I did.

I think I forgot to mention – but you may have heard – Pluto has been voted out as a planet by the International Astronomical Union due to it’s literal eccentricities and small size. We now have 8 official planets again. It’s just like we’re back in 1929. Let’s hope the stock market doesn’t crash this time. If they didn’t vote Pluto out they’d have added Charon, Xena and Ceres to the list of official planets instead.

We had our last session of Mutants & Masterminds last night. We defeated the big boss villain and nobody died except for many civilians thanks to silly old Deus Ex (Mike’s character), not that Zero (my character) particularly cared, being essentially neutral. That’s what happens when you throw characters from my gritty Power Enterprise powered government agents universe into a four-colour Justice League superhero universe. The more I play D&D and M&M and other d20 games, the more I like the Spaceship Zero rules system.