I am now a contributing member of stillnotdead.com.  Most of my blogs will be posted there, except for totally non-music related posts, which will be at mikalkhill.blogspot.com

Check 'em out, leave some comments.

Thanks!

-kHill

http://www.myspace.com/thoughtcriminals
That's my main focus these days.

Thanks!

-kHill

Fallout 3's new expansion, The Pitt, is fun, but it's initial distribution was a total clusterfuck.  After downloading the original version, apparently running it makes all the Anchorage content inaccessible.  They re-upped it, I followed the instructions to run it, but it still locked up three times until I deleted Anchoarage and The Pitt and then redownloaded them both.  I played it today, and it was fun, but they did a pretty terrible job of handling the whole situation with thier corrupted initial download.  I have wondered how people that aren't on the net a lot have possibly handled the situation, they must be calling Microsoft raising all kinds of hell.  It still isn't running flawless for me,  but at least it's playable.

Also, this expansion puts you in an extremely tough place morally.  The game prides itself on that sort of thing, but this one was tough for me.  I was left depressed after finishing it, and replaying it to do the other possible ending actually ended up striking me as worse.

-kHill

So, I posted a previous blog about my lay-off.  It was immediately met with messages from friends saying, "Dude, you've been laid off for a month, why a blog now?"  I don't know, gentle friends.  I needed to say SOMETHING.  I hadn't posted a blog in literally months.  Christmas has come and gone.  So has Laura's birthday, valentines day, and my job.

So, what exactly HAS been going on?  Why the lack of posts?

In all honesty, I've been posting on this particular website less, and trying to focus on the band's page more.  Our record is, fucking finally, nearly complete.  By Saturday night, we'll have moved on to mastering, and ideally, by the time we do our show on March 7th, we will have physical copies there that you may purchase.  We're pretty excited.  We've been booking more shows, rehearsing like crazy and the future seems promising.

In other, more personal news, I have developed insomnia since I lost my job.  I lay awake at night staring into the dark, feeling paralyzed with hopelessness and dispair.  Obviously I have no job, and that makes things seem pretty bleak, but it's not that.  I don't know what it is.  I am, by a personal inventory, very happy with who I am, what I am, who I am with and what my life entails.  So, why the 4 am stare down with the cat?  Why the creeping anxiety that keeps wrapping it's hands around my neck when I try to close my eyes?  Why the nightmares that are more tragic than scary?  Why the hell does Craig Ferguson have a tv show?  Jesus, that guy isn't funny on any level.

On a more positive note, I am done with my solo record.  All that's left to do is press it.  Expect it about two weeks after the band's record drops.  Then I start working on handling the recording side of a project that is rather hush hush with Rx/ThoughtCriminal affiliates Severous Black and Melee & Morbidly-O-Beats of the Guttersnipes Crew.  THAT should be interesting.  Also, I'm helping with Ntrop's solo record, Cum Laude's solo record, working off and on with my zombiekHill folkpunk project, hoping to help as much as he'll let me with Andy's solo project, working on my Vs. Remix mixtape that will be available for free in the coming month, and to top it all off we're writing material already for the next record.  In the meantime, I've also managed to stockpile about 30 beats, and that number is increasing rapidly.  And that's not even ALL the projects we have planned. 

It's our year, dammit.

-kHill

I'm reading a collection of Mark Twain essays.  The latest one I have read is about his daughter, Jean, and her death.  By that point in Twain's life, he had already lost one daughter previous, in addition to his wife.  The weight of burying a second child must have been soul-crushing.  He did not attend the funeral, saying that at his wife's grave he vowed not to see another burial of a loved one.  He wrote this:

"2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed.  The funeral has begun. Four
hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there.  The
scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where
her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where
Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five
years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time."-Mark Twain

The weight of those words is astounding, at least to me. 

Which leads to the subject of my rather morose "blog" here...  What is it with my preoccupation with death?  It fills my songs, I am drawn to learn more about average people that have already died more than I am ever intersted in the living, and I have to admit, a large portion of my day is frequently filled with thoughts of what I will do when the people close to me die.

Can you imagine the weight of losing the people you love most?  A child, a spouse, dear friends...  Ah, the weight must be incredible!  The loss of my brother emotionally devistated my parents.  The holidays have suffered especially because of it, with his birthday so close to Christmas.  So was my grandmother's birthday, and now she is gone as well.

While reading the aforementioned Essay, it occurred to me...  I can't remember what my grandmother looked like in the coffin.  She looked far better than she had in the months preceding her death, but I can't remember howso to save my life.  I keep her liscense in my wallet.  It's the only picture I have handy of her, but it is from my early childhood, and represents how I prefer to remember her.

I guess it's the blessing and the curse of the human memory.  So many of the things that infuriated me about her...  I can't remember them.  They exist, somewhere, but when I reach for them they fall away.  Other than her last betrayals of my mother, which, admittedly, may not be hers at all, I can't remember what it was that used to make me so angry with her.  I do remember exactly what her mashed potatos tasted like.  I remember how it felt to sit beside her in that recliner in her living room.  I remember the sound of her turnsignal when she would make that last left on Belva Street.

I suppose, in the end, I am at least partially fascinated by the act of mourning.  You can see it even in animals, if you take time to notice.  It is a largely selfish act.  Sudden preoccupation with people, pets...  whomever you may have taken for granted is suddenly snatched from you.  I struggle to avoid that intense feeling of regret, but even with my grandmother it still stings me.  I can't believe I let them convince me the "right" thing to do was let them take her to that place.  It will haunt me forever.

"FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over." - Mark Twain

-kHill

 

Here I sit.  It's the company beach trip.  The entire staff is here, and my plans to spend the entire 4 days in a state of deep intoxication are off to a slow start.  I've got a bottle of 1792, and I hope to dip into it breifly.

There's a dead bird in the fireplace.  Now, I don't mean to imply that this place is a dump.  In fact, it's pretty fuckin' top notch.  It has around 8 bedrooms, it's beachfront, and best of all, I'm not paying for it.  That doesn't detract from my initial point:  There's a dead bird in the fucking fireplace.  I'm a little alarmed.  At the same time, no-one seems especially interested in removing it.  I mean, it's chilling there behind the glass, and it's brown plumage sort of blends in with the fake fireplace logs, so it seems like the general consensus is that the bird is probably best left alone.  There's no smell, so he isn't really bothering anyone, I suppose.  The big question is, there's no chiminey to begin with, it's a decorative fireplace, so how exactly did this poor creature come to recieve this fireplace as it's solumn resting place?

Ah, well.  Such is life.  You flap your wings, you soar through the skies and the next thing you know you're stuffed in the fucking fireplace beside of some fake logs.

I miss the wife and daughter.  I'm glad to be here with my friends, but yah know.

It beats the fireplace.

-kHill

Here are some flyers I made for a class in high school.  Clearly this was pre-Columbine.

Alright, for starters, these first two were for a contest (to be judged by the principal) designed to "celebrate the return to school."




Alright, now for some fliers...  These were created for formatting exercises where we had to come up with fliers for non prophet organizatins of our own design, and for school events.  Beneath each, I will type out the teachers comments.  They are funnier than the fliers themselves.


My teacher said, "The grade of 100 does not relect my approval of the content of this flyer, Kermit."



"Kermit, The content of your messsage really frightens me.  Be careful of what you say!  It could be used against you in teh long run."

Now, we also did a little "yearbook" thing for this class.  Here's the class propheices...



Now, lastly, this is my crowning achievement.  An essay I wrote on why I would vacation in florida again.  The teacher ended up taking me aside and we discussed my motivations for writing these thigns...



-kHill

Alright, I don't have much to comment on right now, other than:

PS3 isn't getting the same DLC content that 360 is getting for GTA4.  Apparently MS paid out the ass to get exclusive DLC. 

Maybe this DLC will make it have half the options San Andreas had.

Secondly, the Bioshock movie is going to be directed by one of the guys that directed Pirates of the Caribean and will be scripted by the guy that wrote the screenplay for Tim Burton's Sweeny Todd.

Things look promising.

Thirdly:  I love GTA4, BUT, this game is a dissappointment after I've had a little more time to spend with it.  It is a great game, but just like Dynasty Warriors, they are really just doing hte same shit again...  and this time giving you less ways to do it.

Friends are telling me that it's a desert-island disc, and I'm thinking they're crazy.

Anyways, that's it for now.

Peace.

-kHill

My ideas about faith, death & religion are kind of in a transitional period.  My core belief is that there is a God, that he did create existence (albeit not exactly as depicted in the bible), and that Jesus Christ was sent by God to permanently end the cycle of sacrifice & the separation between God and man, or at least their ability to directly communicate without a mediating "priest" or "rabbi" or whatever you want to say.  This was intended to eliminate some of the unnecessary rules and laws dictating people's lives to this point.  The initial rules and laws served to establish society as we now know it, and are now irrelevant.

These are my personal beliefs...  I'm not insisting that you agree with me.  I'm not even insisting that I am necessarily right.  It is important to remember to allow your own beliefs and spirituality (assuming you have a form of "spirituality") to evolve and change.  Nothing is absolute.  Nothing is so constant that it never changes.  Not even God.

I believe God created existence by simply writing the laws of science.  Upon the creation of these laws, existence sprang forth in the form of the Big Bang.  I  believe animals evolved to their current state, but I don't believe it was an accident that they evolved the way they did.  I believe existence is a long, probably very boring, math equation designed to end with the result we have here on earth.

Nothing makes me more uncomfortable than being around a "young earth" creationist.  10,000 years?  Really?  There is a definite conflict of interest there...  Something a teacher told me once was that your ultimate goal in establishing a scientific principle OR a religious one should never be to prove or disprove, but to answer the question as truthfully and honestly as possible...  and therein lies my problem with evangelical atheism & orthodox organized religion.  These people are not concerned with anything but proving and disproving.  There is no median answer, and no room for differing opinion or discussion.  Smarmy bastards like Christopher Hitchens and sleazy douche bags like Pat Robertson and the currently-decaying and/or roasting in hell Jerry Falwell simply repel with their self-important ages-long essays and interviews.  You aren't convincing anyone with that shit.

I think it's unrealistic to say that God literally created man in a week of our time.  I think it's offensive that the average Christian would act as if it's impossible to accept that God could have directed change and evolution through natural means.  God created nature by creating the principles that guided creation to exist and thrive.  Seems logical to me.  Maybe I'm crazy.  Maybe not.

Anyway, this is already longer than I intended.  I'm sure I will rant about it some more later.

-kHill

So, I’m going to start throwing in some videogame news and stuff on here.  Generally, I’m only going to talk about shit that I care about.  It’s my blog.  There are like...  7 people at most that read my blog on a regular basis.  So, fuck it.  Here goes.  You aren’t going to agree wth everything I say, but that’s why you can leave comments.

Videogames:

Word is that Ken Levine, the artistic director and general "guy in charge of the story and development" of Bioshock will be less involved with the making of the second game.  Now, I’ve read horror stories about the nightmare of working with this guy, but the fact remains that Bioshock has one of the most engaging stories and atmospheres I’ve ever seen in a game.  Anyone that knows me knows that I obsessed over this game when it was released, and I have, to date, beaten it at least 10 times.  The only positive here is that the person who will now be in charge of the game is the same guy that originally did the levels that revolved around "Sander Cohen," which is probably one of the most interesting characters in the game.  We’ll see how it goes...  I hope that this all meansthat Kevn Levine will be writing the script for the movie they are saying will be coming out... i’m just not entirely sure that tat’s the case.

Music:

The new Atmosphere is coming out.  I preordered it at strangefamousrecords.com, and I ordered the deluxe version so I could get the children’s book slug wrote.  Should be interesting. I don’t have much to add to all that, except to say that I think Atmosphere have gotten progressively better with each release. 

I remember when cats used to say that the black eyed peas were awesome concious rappers and their coffeehouse vibe was some banging shit.  I agree, it was shit, but not of hte banging variety.  To me, their concious material was boring as hell.  It wasn’t even good at being vaguely preachy rap.  They got better by taking that leap to "more accesible" because it meant they were no longer just assholes biting the supersoothingboringsounds of rappers like Common and Mos Def.  Yeah, I just dissed two of the favorite rappers almost anyone who likes my music has.  I’m sorry.  I just can’t dig those dudes.  Common, with his anti-interracial dating bullshit, and Mos Def with his...  last record.  *Shudder*  I still really hate the black eyed peas, though.  So much that I can’t bring myself to capitalize their name.

I say all that to say that I think Atmosphere, though more accesible, has really found thier sound in the past few years.  "You Can’t Imagine" was, for me at least, the most consistent record the group has ever released.  We’ll see if I’m still singing the same tune when the record drops on the 22nd.

Dangermouse is producing the new Beck record.  We’ll see if it ever comes out.  Seems like DM’s new thing is to pick up abandoned Automator projects.  Maybe he’ll do an instrumental collabo LP wth El-P next.  That’d be...  not as good as if Automator had ever followed through.

Vast Aire is releasing a new record.  If my suspicians prove to be true, it will be the worst thing ever recorded.

The new Roots record sounds like it’s going to kick your balls in, then make you eat your own vomit.  It’s that awesome.  Both of the initial videos were very dope shit, and their last album, "Game Theory" was the most consistant and listenable record I’ve heard out of them since...  ever.  Organix remains my 2 favorite roots, but i’m suspecting it will move farther down the list once this shit drops.  Looks like Hub left the group...  what the fuck?

Movies:

Jesus, there’s a lot of crap out right now. 

Well, that’s it for today.

-kHill