Sdtrk: none right now, but ‘Suffragette city’ by David Bowie is running through my head

What the — it’s snowing again. I thought we were done with this bollock?! At the beginning of the week, temperatures were in the low fifties, and now, we’re told to expect three to four inches of snow. Ugh. Goddamn inconsistent Michigan weather. Mother Nature attends to the rest of the 48 contiguous first, then kicks back with a couple of drops of blotter acid, and then attends to Michigan’s climate. ‘Partly cloudy, with patches of sandpaper, and an intermittent shower of pound cakes by late this afternoon.’ Ugh.

MY ‘SOCIAL’ CALENDAR, BOTH NEAR AND FAR:
+ the Main Art Theatre in Royal oak will be showing ‘Steamboy‘, Katsuhiro Otomo’s latest long-awaited film, on 18 Mar. I remember reading stuff and seeing pre-production stills for this waaay back in the late Nineties. Even though we’ll be seeing it dubbed, it looks pretty ace
+ the magnificent Dears are opening for The Soundtrack of our lives at the Magic stick on 27 Mar. I’m going for The Dears; hopefully the other group won’t be entirely repellent
+ Tim tells me Bloc party are quite good. Well, they’re playing at the Magic stick 1 Apr, so we’ll see
+ Woo hoo! Adult. comes back home 6 May! Wait, that’s in May, that’s too far away right now to think about. Mark it down anyway, cos they’re a fine band, a fine band

OTHER JUNK I BELIEVE TO BE ENTIRELY IMPORTANT:
+ The most recent fillum by Takashi Miike, director of the lovely ‘Ichi the killer’, is called ‘Izo‘, and it looks like the most insane thing I’ve seen all week. Links to the trailer are labelled ’56kbps’, ‘500kbps’, and ‘1mbps’; Javascript is foxing me this evening, hence the lack of direct links.. ‘Izo’ is loosely based on a real-life samurai from 19th cen. Japan, who was unjustly sentenced to crucifixion. Now, since it’s Miike, all ties to reality pretty much end at that point, cos Izo’s spirit is so consumed with such a burning need for revenge, that not only is he resurrected, but Time and Space don’t mean a damn thing to him anymore. So he teleports from the feudal era, to WWII era Japan, to the 20th and 21st centuries, cutting up authority figures as well as anyone who opposes him. Thumbs up! Like I said, it’s Miike; expect nothing less than complete and total brain sodomy
+ I broke down and ordered my copy of ‘Weekend’, so I’ll be giggling like a schoolgirl when that arrives
+ Still haven’t bought Devil may cry 3 yet. I came close the last time I was at WorstBuy; I entered the store, and made a beeline for the videogames section, and grabbed a copy. It all started to fall apart when I wandered over to the DVD section to see what was out. Having seemingly found nothing, I was just about to head to the counter, when I saw that volume 2 of Sealab 2021 was out. ‘Holy crap,’ I mentally exclaimed, ‘volume 2 is already out?’ Seeing as that was a little over $20 cheaper, I put DMC3 away, and picked up the Sealab 2021 DVD. Then, I wandered over to the Cd section, which is where I spotted that Three imaginary boys reissue Cd, which was cheaper than the DVD I was gripping. I’m certain you can suss the rest. 😛
Not only that, I’ve been hearing a lot of reports that DMC3 is fecking difficult. I’ll pick it up eventually, but I’d like to believe I’m saving my dosh for Red ninja first, if anything else..

And that’s all I can think of! Wow, look at the time!
My brain is shuting dwn now. I’m goingt o put myslef inna bednow gbye

Sdtrk: ‘G turns to D’ by Sloan

Usually when I’m on das InfoBahn, I’m either spending the majority of my time going through my bookmarks of RealDoll and similar Synthetik companion sites (twenty-one, at last count), or I’m wasting time on my two favourite image boards, 4chan and WAKAchan. It was on WAKAchan where I learned that some artist bloke that I’d never heard of before, by the name of Zdzisław Beksiński, was stabbed to death in his home in Poland.
Now, cos it’s an image board, someone had posted a couple of pics of Beksiński’s pieces, and at first glace, I thought they’d been done by H.R Giger. Pretty close, yeah, but Giger’s territories seem like they’d be more likely on an alien world, whereas Beksiński’s works somehow seem more suited towards our planet; albeit after Revelations.

Give his stuff a look-in. In their own nightmarish way, they’re beautiful paintings, and they tend to remain in your mind long after you look at them. It’s really a tragedy that Beksiński was senselessly murdered, but at least his works will always be around

Sdtrk: ‘L’enfer’ by Coralie Clément

Today, I ventured to the mythical and hazardous land known as Outsidemyhousevania, in order to run some errands. I was also expecting a call from an ex-coworker in order to see if we could get together on Friday, but as I more or less expected, she didn’t call back. :-\
So I filled the void in my heart with purchases! Hooray for Stuff!

+ the March issue of Newtype (woo hoo, ep.2 of Cromartie High school is on the free DVD! Now I can see if the series is worth buying)
+ Party of one: The Loners’ Manifesto, as suggested by Lily‘s lad, PBShelley
+ the Bye bye Beauté Cd by Coralie Clément. I’d never heard of her before, but there was some sort of sticker on the front that suggested that if you like Ivy, Stereolab or some other bands, that you might like this; plus the fact that I’m a sucker for Sixties-style French pop chanteuses forced me to pick it up. So far, not altogether bad, but the only similarity to Stereolab is that Coralie sings in French
+ the remastered version of The cure’s Three imaginary boys Cd (two disks, 20 extra tracks)
+ plus some sushi (eel & cucumber gunkan and one shrimp nigiri), five pieces of inari, and a can of UCC Coffee

So my question: When did BestBuy start ‘requiring’ your phone number whenever you make a purchase? I’m at the cashier’s desk, paying for the Cure Cd, and she asks me ‘Telephone number, staring with area code, please?’ I of course gave some number that doesn’t exist — or, at the very least, isn’t mine. And it wasn’t as if I a) made a large purchase over $200, or b) paid with a credit/debit card or cheque! It would be a little more understandable for them to ask for a phone number for verification *coughsolicitingcough* purposes, but this is a $16 Cd here! I remember when they started that bollocks, asking for ZIP codes at RadioShack years ago, and once again, I’d always lie, but that isn’t as ridiculous/invasive as asking someone’s phone number.

My other question: Does anyone actually give out their real number to these companies? If so, d’ya think they’d like to buy a bridge from me?

Sdtrk: ‘Music of spheres’ by Delia Derbyshire

Thought I’d catch up on some loose ends, blog- and news-wise..

For those of you who post comments, and don’t have a proper Gravatar, now you get one of my default ones, heh heh. 🙂 I think I might change them around once a month, so fair warning: if you don’t want to be represented as a member of SHADO (that’s March’s entry), or something ‘worse’, get your own smegging Gravatar..

Wednesday morn/afternoon, I was ambling round downtown Detroit with Wolfgang and Mike (of the RoToRs consortium), madly snapping photographs for about six hours, and cursing the bitter Northern winds. Apart from the cursing, it was fun! We took several shots in the John King building, as well as the RenCen/GM headquarters, the People Mover, and one of the finer examples of Art Deco architecture (there’s that word again), the Guardian building.

from the John King breakroom. Sound advice!

Actually, Wolfgang wrote up a pretty good summation of our adventures, which you can find right here.
O, I don’t think I’ve introduced you! RoToRs is, as it’s stated, the Online Journal of Vulne Pro, which is an art collective begun by Mike/aneamo several years ago, that I’m occasionally involved with. You may have seen Mike’s work on Sweetie’s site, or in various gaming books, or on the Vulne Pro site itself; now he and Wolfgang have a blog with which to show off new ideas, projects, etc.

Also, new notable blogs of note worth noting, so take notes, would be Undercover in Japan, a tale of a young Englishman trapped in a strange and futuristic world, where AIBOs run amok, and ninjas and magical schoolgirls in towering mecha fight against giant ramen-eating Yakuza lizards. Yes.
And there’s Nothing To Do With Arbroath, which is Silliness Compiled. See if I’m lying.

And I dinna get a chance to pick up Devil may cry 3 yet, as we were too busy running round for me to cash my cheque before the banks closed. Mnyeh. Perhaps tomorrow..

What the hell else was I gonna say?

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