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The New Album is Officially Released (Tooting My Own Horn)

It’s on amazon.com and everything. It’s worldwide! Go get it!
iTunes, cdbaby.com, eBay, etc etc!

And, if you have heard it, feel free to review it on the amazon by clicking [here]
Add it to your wedding registry! I DARE YOU.

http://stores.ebay.com/Dead-Space-God
http://gangland.com/tim.html
http://cdbaby.com/cd/dotht4
http://www.interpunk.com/item.cfm?Item=67752&

And if you’re wondering whether it’s worth picking up, let me show you some of the feedback I’ve got so far:

I received my order today. If you could hand out high fives to the rest of the band, then stand in front of the mirror and give yourself one, I’d be grateful. You guys have really outdone yourself with this album.

Wowsers! Very pleased with the new album! It rocks in a new and old skool thickety way…and worth the wait! Fave track…#7 [Cultists On Board]… and Nyarlathotep. But they’re ALL fab. I’ve found myself humming and whistling away all day in a thickety way… And kudos on your a capella track. Love it. Your voice is improving…less strain is evident…sounds nearly effortless.

I just have to say again how much I love the new album. Awesome stuff. Also, Alannah thinks any song that includes the lyrics “You can publish your [findings] in a peer-reviewed journal” to be the greatest song ever written.

Brilliant. Do you guys have tabs? I want to learn to play it.

SOOT rocks! Very funny to hear songs name dropping the Royal New Zealand Navy and the University of Auckland. This album is definately more guitar oriented (I call it “Happy Metal”) than previous albums. Would this be the influence of Mario on the song writing process? “Nyarlathotep”: Wow. Toren I recall something from your blog about the Nyarlathotep lyrics being actual Egyption. Is this correct? Any chance you could post the lyrics (translated or not). Thanks again Castewar and thank you Toren and band for some new good music!

“Duuuuuuuuude. I just listened to the CD in the car. AWESOME. Man – you guys rock! It must have been so much fun to make! AND I got locked in the mess. Sweeeeeet.”

The new CD f*ckin’ kicks ass, guys! It was worth the wait, but don’t take so long to give us the next one!
Cthulhu lives!

Awesome new album guys!
“Some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know” is in the running for my new favorite TDotHT song

(this last one was from Kat Bolstad, who is Dr Steve “giant squid” O’Shea’s assistant. She and Steve are both killed in the song “Cultists on Board.”)

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The Funny Thing About Regret Is, It's Better To Regret Something You Have Done, Than Something You Haven't Done.

And if you see your mom this weekend, would you be sure and tell her: “SATAN!!!”

I’m single again, as of Wednesday the 13th.

After a breakup, my thoughts often turn to the fallout. What does the girl tell her friends and family about what happened? What version do they get, and what are things going to be like the next time I see them? Will I ever see them? Do they even get any version at all or is it just “we broke up”, “oh I’m so sorry” *hugs*? Who is saying “I never saw you so happy” and who is saying “I never saw you so miserable.” I think that any version that either side gets is going to be biased by nature, and by time. What I would tell my friends now will be different than how I see things, hopefully a little more objectively, after a year or two has passed. And now that we’ve broken up, I think about what concerns were founded and what were not. Was I getting enough of X or Y? Did Z bother me less than I made it out to, or more? How much will I miss N vs how much I had to tolerate R?

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Quirks And Quarks Do Not Rock

I suggested to Quirks and Quarks radio show that they could and should use our track “A Marine Biologist” for the next segment they have that involves marine biology. Their response was polite but disheartening:

Despite the fact that you are the first band to ever use the phrase “peer-reviewed journal” in a rock song …. it’s not really our style. But thanks for thinking of us.

Don’t they realize that 78.4% of their listeners like to rock out? Those are the findings from 37 double-blind trials!

But we did get a mention on the official blog of The Scientist: Magazine of the Life Sciences. http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53202/

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Vancouver Comic Jam Is Not Work Safe

Every month there is a “Vancouver Comic Jam.” Robin, Brian, Ed, and many others get together to draw comics and drink beer at the Jolly Alderman. This month will be the last one at the JA as it’s shutting down – I feel bad for all of the businesses along Cambie Street who are struggling due to RAV construction. And they said the Olympics would be GOOD for business. Only if you can survive 4 years of barely any. So next month we’re trying to find another good place – let me know if you have a suggestion.

Anyway, what happens at these jams, typically, is collective comic creation. One person will do the first panel of a comic and then pass it along to somebody else. Last night Robin brought photocopied pages where the panel sizes and captions were already laid out. It is interesting to see how everyone interpreted these parameters [see link here]. Here’s mine:

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Sketches of Funny Animals

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Tonight I went to the Vancouver Comic Jam at the Jolly Alderman and practiced my funny animals. At the last ComiCon I bought a small stack of comics like Supergoof and Donald Duck, and in the stack was Disney’s Robin Hood – you know like the movie with the fox as Robin Hood. Of all the comics in this vein that I picked up, this one is the best, clearly. Lots of different animal characters and well drawn. I’ll have to try to track down some more of these. The first two characters are a couple of unsavory scoundrel types, a hyena and a croc, and the last is the lion, Prince John, who I totally missed when I was trying to think about lion characters (see http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/04/16/ant-lion/ and http://www.thickets.net/toren/2007/05/01/world-wildlife-federation-of-justice-studies/. I modified the design to give him some top mane instead of the crown, and gave him a jacket instead of the robe. I think the design is a winner and my final will probably be closer to this than anything previous.

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Movies: Do and Do Nots

I’m going to quickly go through some movies that you could, if you wanted to, go and see in the theaters right now, and whether or not that would be a mistake.

Pirates of the Caribbean: mistake
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: big mistake
28 Weeks Later: not a mistake
Hot Fuzz: not a mistake
Paris, J’taime: not a mistake
Spider-Man 3: mistake
Sharkwater: not a mistake

Paprika: hopefully definitely not a mistake
Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman: hopefully not a mistake

Sicko, Michael Moore’s new flick about the US health system, should be opening very soon.

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A Man With A Sword Made From A Real Swordfish's Sword.

toastjaws.jpgLast night I finally had a face-to-face meeting with Dr Chris Harvey-Clark [link], marine biologist, zoologist, veterinarian and underwater photographer/videographer. We talked about quite a few of the possibilities. He’s got tons of amazing footage, has been all over the world, shooting whale sharks, Greenland sharks, great whites, etc, plus cuttlefish, chambered nautilus, and much much more. He also knows someone who has a warehouse full of bathyscaphes! And he has one of those old timey diving suits, with the 70 lb helmet, which I’m sure we’ll use for lipsynch closeups.

We discussed what we’d do if we had an unlimited budget. The band would be playing underwater, with sharks swimming all around us. Of course we’d have to have junk instruments and it takes real diving prowess to stay underwater and in one spot without floating around like a yutz. But other, more realistic, options are to shoot the band in front of a big bluescreen, or even a big blank wall, and throw us into a marine environment with special effects. Hopefully we can get a day to film inside a bathyscaphe, all huddled together in a dome looking out at the wonders of the sea.

Good times, and some good burgers too. Now I need to have a meeting with Mike our co-director/editor/producer and get the ball rolling, and try to squeeze some footage out of the other marine biologists I’ve contacted. So far lots of interest, but no footage provided. I’ll try to take care of that presently.

Oh yeah, Chris also has footage of a sperm whale being cut open, and the internal gases causing intestines to explode out of the flenced gash in its stomach. EXTREEEEME MARINE BIOLOGY!

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In Other News….

Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately. Some things you just can’t say on a blog. Well maybe you can after the appropriate amount of time has passed. But not now.

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Play Enjoyed By All

I went to see Lovestruck Tuesday night, kind of expecting the Lovecraft angle to be all that was going for it, but my expectations were pleasantly obliterated. Good writing, deftly performed, and lots of laugh out loud moments. You don’t need to have any Cthulhu Mythos knowledge to enjoy the play – I think anyone who’s seen an Evil Dead movie will get it – and it’s a good deal at $10 I think. I mean how many times do you get to see Cthulhu theater? This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I strongly suggest you see it before the run ends. Last show is this Saturday. [click here for more information]
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Spoiled Chocolate Muffins In My Locker

I just woke up from a dream about being at school. College actually. School dreams are like nightmares to me. I’ll take a dream about being chased by monsters over a school dream any day of the week. In this particular dream I spent most of my time wandering around the school looking for my locker. It was the last day of class and I was going to clean it out. I finally found it and when I did, of course, I didn’t have the combination so I ripped the door off with my tremendous strength (there was also a bit of levitation, Holmes, in this dream). I hadn’t opened the locker in months, and there was strata of sweet treats gone bad on the top shelf. The best part of the dream was that the school security guard caught me with my broken locker and he started scolding me not as a regular conversation, but as a heavy metal musical. As with many rock songs, I couldn’t make out most of the words, so I started quizzically repeating back the mondegreens that I heard.