Toren Atkinson

I would like, if I may, to point out that I never actually printed up or used those “get out of conversation free” cards. It was just a hilarious idea. No human feelings were harmed in the filming of this motion picture.

I’m still a misanthrope though. Make no mistake.

Confessions (Not mine – not until I get the comfy chair)

Some of these entries are as boring as CBC daytime television:
http://grouphug.us/

Here are some excerpts that I don’t find as boring as…well you know.

At the age of 16 I did a sponsored walk for charity. I collected the money from friends and family and spent it on cigarettes, drugs and alcohol.

Sometimes I’ll go through a fast food drive thru and order one of the combo meals plus another burger or entree. But because I don’t want the cashier to think I’m a pig, I’ll order another drink to make it look like I’m ordering for two people.

I told my daughter that all my children let me down. I am very sorry

I have slept with more people in the time I have been seeing my boyfriend than he has slept with in his whole life. I justified this in the name of research – I wanted to see if they were better than him. Some of them were.

I once hit a guy on a bike driving home one night. I just kept driving…. I wonder if he’s ok.

I had crabs in the 11th grade. I was too embarrased to buy the shampoo to kill them. So I put it in my pants and started out the door. I got busted in front of everyone. [I think this one is about shoplifting]

When I was little I had guniea pigs. I would sit with them on the floor and toss them towards the ceiling. I delighted in hearing them squeal louder than any had ever squealed before. I would do this for hours, meanwhile continuously laughing.

I once bit the beak off of a live duck thinking it would impress my gothic girlfriend. She split up with me soon after that but I told all my friends that I was the one who dumped her because she was a bit too wierd for me.

I live with my flatmate. He really annoys me sometimes (he picks scabs off his neck and forehead and stealthily puts them in his mouth, but I can see it out of the corner of my eye). Anyway, he pisses me off, and I wonder how it would turn out if we got in a fight. I think about this too much, and the other day I saw him carrying a TV up the stairs and he was really struggling, because it was heavy. I didn’t help him, but when he went out of the room, I picked it up to see how heavy it was, to get an idea of how strong he is.

When I was nine, I was fiddling around with the telly. The tv was on this swivel stand and had a vase of flowers sitting on top. The inevitable happened: I bumped the tv and the water in the vase ran down the back. The idiot box made this “WHUMP!” sound, the screen went black and a small puff of smoke rose. I discreetly left the room. I heard my mum yelling soon after and she demanded to know what had happened. I mocked sympathy for my younger sister and said to her quietly “I think Jacinta might’ve knocked knocked the vase before and is too scared to say anything.”
Jacinta got screamed at, then smacked. She was five years old.

A very Thickety blog entry.

Nobody believes I can drive.

I can drive. I really really can. I have a license and everything. I just don’t have a car. In fact, I do some of my best songwriting while I’m driving and while I’m taking a shower (I was going to type “while driving and taking a shower” but that would be wrong on more than one level) which is tragic because I rarely have ready access to my dictaphone during those times.

Yesterday Marlo and I played a board game I created many many moons ago. It was fun and Stewey did a bad thing: he told me I should finish it. So last night I started working on a bunch of revisions when I should have been working.

After that short visit with MarMar I took the bus to Stephane’s, borrowed his car, drove to Chilliwack, where the sun meets the rain (rainbow!) and practiced with The Thickets. Warren’s in Australia so it was just Mario, and Boob Foostie is coming back into the folds of rockdom for this special Hallowe’en show. It’s been over 2 years since Bob played with us. It should be fun and exciting. At the moment we’ve got 21 songs on the set list. Including some awesome oldies we haven’t played for years and years. So, come and see us on Hallowe’en at the Marine Club. Word is we’ll have all-new costumes, too.

From the “and you thought it would never happen” department :

Geez I’ve been reading too much of that Mad Magazine I got in the mail.

Cthulhu Strikes Back: Special Edition, is finally ready for consumption. Originally slated for, I think, May or June, then slated for “summer 2003”, now at long last here in Rocktober, just in time for Hallowe’en, the CDs are finally done. Phew! I’ll assume they’ll be on amazon.com and cdbaby.com shortly, and they’ll be listed on http://www.divineindustries.com/Thickets.html as soon as they update their site. In the meantime, you can get them from me!

Is anybody moving next month? I’ll help you move.

This is an idea I came up with a few years ago. You are in a conversation with somebody you don’t want to talk to. Say, you’re at an art gallery and somebody comes up behind you vomiting artspeak; or you’re at a bar and somebody starts hitting on you. Well, you just reach into your pocket and pull out a card, hand it to the person, and walk off while they’re reading it. The card reads:

CONGRATULATIONS
You have just received a
“get out of conversation free” card
Don’t be angry at the person who gave you this card – you’ve just received a valuable gift! This card is now yours, and can be used in almost any social situation as an easy, hassle-free way to get away. Simply hand this card to your conversation partner, and quietly walk off as he/she reads this very sentence. Hopefully, by the time they’re done reading, you’ve made good your escape, and they are now left with this legacy to a less-awkward, simpler life with a higher standard of living. Enjoy!

Unfortunately this little scheme won’t work if you’re in a bank lineup, buying groceries, or any other situation where you can’t just walk off. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I actually got around to making these cards up.

Kevin Murphy reviews Kill Bill Volume 1.

Too much emotion makes Scudworth uncomfortable.

On the other hand, too much stiffness makes Toren uncomfortable.

I was looking at Kathryn’s recent photos of thanksgiving. Wow, that table…is intimidating to me. Now I don’t mean to slag Kathryn’s parents. I’m sure the food was good, the conversation stimulating, and everyone had a warm and fuzzy time. But for me, that setting screams “don’t touch! No eating until we say grace! Prepare to sit in this straight-backed chair until you’ve finished all your peas!” The irony is that whoever set that table obviously put a lot of time and effort (and dare I assume, love) into it, and here I am ascribing all this negativity into it.

I guess that’s my problem. I don’t know – what is your optimum meal-eating state? See, I’m a laid-back kind of guy, and I believe you should be relaxed when you eat; not tense. Eating around the table is anathema to all that is me. Few situations make me feel more uncomfortable; the more reserved the setting, the more reserved the Toren. My father, and I’m sure he meant well, drilled in all manner of, well…manners into me when I was growing up. After every dinner, the recital of “Thank you for the lovely lovely supper” was mandatory. Now my dad was a good cook, and I appreciate that. With the budget and resources at hand he whipped up some fine meals. But all this 1950’s puritanical table-sitting, fork-on-the-left, knife-and-spoon-on-the-right (or vice versa, I don’t know), saying the things we’re trained to say, playing the parts we’re trained to play, rubs me in the wrongest way. (Bit of a poem there.) I much preferred making or ordering pizza and eating it in front of the TV, as I remember doing on more than one occasion.

Make no mistake, though – it’s not a generational/authoritative hangup (although it may stem from that). The last time I ate around a table was at Yvonne’s, with her roommates. It was a good meal, and I like her roomies. I look forward to seeing them next time I’m over, (I hope to arrange a Muppets-watching night for Satomi) but not around a dinner table. Those things are casual-bane; they facilitate awkward silences; they bring out the traditionalistic worst in us. You’ve guessed it: I’m against them.

I’m also against neckties. Call me a bohemian.

Kathryn, Mom, Dad: forgive me.

Oh yeah – so: The reason I bring up anonymous commenting is that I refuse to recognize internet anonymity. I find it annoying and rude. On my ICQ etc – I rename all contacts to their real names. Handles muddy up my world – I have no use for them. If I could go back in time to 1992 I would get toren@uniserve.com instead of thickets @ uniserve.com, but it’s too late for that now. Anyway – if any comments (on any blogs – mine or otherwise) have no author, or questions are posed anonymously, I ignore them. It’s not that hard to sign your name, and if you don’t have the common courtesy to interact with me as a person, then I feel no obligation to acknowledge you as a person. Strong words, I know, but there they are. Just so everyone knows where I stand.

Interesting side note: as a disembodied head in a jar, I envy the dead.

I got some junk mail from Mastercard today. Everyone in my building did. Many of them tossed it in the recycling bin. I fished them out. Each one contains a Postage Paid envelope. Those of you who were daring enough to give me your mailing address know why this is significant. For the rest of you: Pbt.

I also got some Rocket Robin Hood cartoons in the mail. These are hard to find, so I’m excited. I’m trading them for some Incredible Hulk and the Lost In Space animated pilot.

In other news: Anonymous commenting: why?

Where does the school board find them, and why do they keep sending them to me?

I was talking to Yvonne about youthful obsessions with famous people the other day. I never had any crushes on movie stars. I never had magazine-clipped photos of famous cutie-pies in my locker. I guess my mind was too full of Star Wars and Transformers to worry about such nonsense as healthy natural development. However I did have a crush on Moose (AKA Christine McGlade) from You Can’t Do That On Television. Today, in an odd coincidence, I realized the tape that I was recording Enterprise on was an old YCDTOTV tape. After the tremendously dull episode of Enterprise ended, I watched a couple of episodes of YCDTOTV. Guess what? Last year they had a YCDTOTV convention in Ottawa. I missed it. I could have met Christine. Damn. Once again I’ve let true love slip through my fingers.

Just like Darth Vader tightening his grip on star systems.

There, you see? Tragic.

I should really be working….

Some news items from the past 7 days:

Australian researchers found that the brain really does experience pain
when your heart is breaking.

A Princeton graduate student was in trouble for pointing out on his website that the copy-protection software on a new music CD could be defeated simply by pressing the shift key when one inserts the disc. SunnComm Technologies Inc. claimed that the student had violated criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and threatened to sue him.

A lightning bolt killed 20 pregnant cows in Florida.

Physicists were arguing over whether the universe is shaped like a soccer ball.

Japan was investigating an orgy in China involving 400 Japanese tourists and 500 Chinese prostitutes.

A monkey moved a robot with its mind.

Transparency International released its annual corruption survey; Bangladesh was rated most corrupt, just beating out Nigeria and Haiti. Finland, Iceland, and Denmark were the least corrupt.

American soldiers bulldozed ancient groves of date, orange, and lemon trees in central Iraq because, the soldiers said, the farmers know who is in the resistance but refuse to tell.

Rush Limbaugh, who was forced to resign from ESPN after he made unkind comments about a black football player, admitted to being a drug addict.

A Muslim girl in Oklahoma was suspended from school after she refused to take off her head scarf.

Don’t panic if my comments seem gone. This happens from time to time. They always come back in a day or two. I received this email today, I thought I would share it with you.

Dear Sir,
My name is Grzegorz Gadomski. I live in Poland. I study at one of the biggest universities in Poland: Unversity of Marie -Curie Sklodowska in Lublin. 2003/04 is my final year at UMCS and I’m in the middle of writing my M.A. paper on HP Lovecraft. I’m really in trouble now, because I find it extremely difficult to find suitable material, essays, theory for my MA. I have aspirations to write about adaptations of Lovecraft’s motives in computer and other kinds of games (e.g.RPG), music or films. If there is any chance to help please, let me know.
Greetings!
Grzegorz Gadomski

One of the things I like about weekends is the cartoons. One of the things I hate about weekends is there’s no mail. Yesterday, however, was an amazing mail day, that made up for the long weekend. Amongst the goods was a big package of crap from a Thickets fan. Included were some comic books, including Sandman and Howard the Duck, and some stickers. Yay. I also got my contributor copies of The Necronomicon Files (second Revised and Expanded edition, softcover this time), a keen book about Lovecraft’s fictitious tome, that is so comprehensive they spend 4 pages talking about the episode of The Real Ghostbusters (this link goes to a pdf file) in which the GBs track down the cult of Cthulhu. I got five copies of the book (I did the cover art) so if anyone wants a copy, I only need to keep one for myself.