Holy crap, another one? Already? So soon? Yeah, why not.
Sdtrk: ‘Ushiwaka kurama iri’ by Merzbow

Europe, you need to send some of your cooler architecture over here. Or at the very least, some of your cooler architects…

I’m sure a lot of you have seen this building before, and never knew what it was called. I just learned its name recently, cos I remember seeing it years ago, on the inner sleeve/lyric sheet of the ‘Sparks in outer space’ 12″ vinyl. This would be the Atomium, in Brussels.

Designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn for the International Exhibition of Brussels, that took place here in 1958, the Atomium is a structure that is half way between sculpture and architecture, symbolising a crystal molecule of metal by the scale of its atoms, magnified 165 billion times. [..]

The Atomium was not intended to survive the Exhibition of 1958. Its popularity and success, however, ensured its place as a major landmark on the Brussels skyline.

If that doesn’t scream ‘ATOM AGE FIFTIES FUTURE’, I don’t know what does. It’s a bit too wonky to be practical, but who says all buildings have to be practical?
Thankfully, not only did the Belgian government not tear it down after its initial usage was complete (yes, it was an exposition building), but they’re currently renovating it. Gooooo Belgium!

Sdtrk: ‘Choking on air’ by the Ladybug Transistor

This selection is something I don’t know if I’d want to live in, but I’d definitely love to see it. Tonight, we look at The Farnsworth House.

The one-room, steel-and-glass house designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe that has been called one of the most important works of 20th century architecture. Located in a beautiful meadow on the banks of the Fox River two miles south of Plano, the Farnsworth House has been called “sculptural” in its simplicity and a masterpiece of design. Mies’ temple-like pavilion both invites and challenges visitors.

This would be one of those places that I’d seen a few times before in print, or some other media, but I never really paid genuine attention until I saw it on the front cover of The Aluminum group‘s ‘Plano’ Cd. Their choice of the Farnsworth House fit the music perfectly; very smooth, seamless, polished, light and airy. It’s the exact sort of building you’d expect from a man who worked as the director of the Bauhaus school in Dessau. (ooh, the Bauhaus.. I’ll have to cover that soon..)

It’s a beautiful home, but I couldn’t picture myself living there. You wake up in the morning, sluggishly making your way from the bedroom to the kitchen in your PJ bottoms, and you notice several woodland creatures observing you from the other side of the glass. A couple of bears have set up lawn chairs a few feet away, from which they sit comfortably, watching you as you nervously try to make your eggs benedict. A group of rabbits titter when you accidentally pour maple syrup onto your slippers for the second time. Who can live with that sort of scrutiny day after day??

Tours are available! Wear clean socks or stockings though, as I understand you have to take your shoes off before entering

Sdtrk: ‘Lynda (Let her go)’ by Strawberry switchblade

Actually, this is Tomas.
Tomas has a Blog, called Cerebral Waste Disposal! Actually, he’s had a Blog, but he wouldn’t let anyone link to him before. Something about making sure everyone washes their hands before they access his page or some fumfuh.
Anyway! The link’s the ‘Cerebral Waste Disposal’ (duh) one over there to your left. Go say Hi, shake his hand, and call him friend

Sdtrk: ‘Yoshino no yamazakura’ by Merzbow

Another site added to the ‘colleagues & co-conspirators’ Family of Links: please welcome S N A P P E R H E A D, and all that stop round here because of him. Greetings!

And after a fine dinner at our favourite Macomb county Japanese restaurant, the lads & I caught ‘Ong bak‘ over at the AMC Forum 30 last night. You know what that fillum needed more of? It needed more kicking. More kicking, and more flying elbows/flying knees. Good lord. Does anyone have any statistics on how many Muay Thai kickboxers and wanna-be kickboxers get gruesomely killed just in training alone??
Highly entertaining? I’ll say. Of course, after the film, we were all giving each other plenty of flying elbows. What fun!

Sdtrk: ‘Wow’ by Kate Bush

Due to the nature of an extended joke between myself and Steve, my first ex-roommate, I was doing a bit of research on Teh Internets on the godlike* Morrissey, and ran across a splendid quote from this interview with him last year in the Guardian Unlimited. To be honest, it’s a Morrissey interview; most of the quotes are gonna be splendid. But this one really stood out in my mind:

“Well, you see, I consider [choosing to be alone] to be a privilege. I don’t feel like I live alone because I’ve made a terrible mistake or I’m difficult to look at. Can you imagine being able to do what you like and never having to put up with any other person? And their relatives.

“You can constantly develop when you’re by yourself. You don’t when you’re with someone else. You put your own feelings on hold and you end up doing things like driving to supermarkets and waiting outside shops – ludicrous things like that. It really doesn’t do.

“We feel that there’s a shame to being uncompromising and there’s a terrible sadness to solitude, but none of the great poets ever thought that.”

There he goes, striking nails on the head again. One of the things I always say is that I love my friends to death, but one of the best things about them is that at the end of the day, I can say ‘Bye, friends!’ and go home to be by myself. With other people in your home, you always have to take their wants & needs into consideration. Which may sound selfish — and I’ll admit that in a way, it is — but if you’re constantly doing stuff with or for others, when exactly do you have time for yourself?

Ideally, once I move North, I’d like to have a big enough place for a couple of mates to crash at, which will prevent them from forking out money for a hotel room or whatever, but as I’m fairly certain they’re not gonna be driving up to Canada every week-end, 99% of the time it’ll just be me, and my upcoming passel of RealDolls and other Synthetiks. 😉 Which is just the way I prefer it. No strange and unwanted people staying round wearing out their welcome, no having to drop everything you’re doing to drive someone from point A to point F, no panic at the end of the month when your roommate doesn’t have their half of the rent money. The only person I’ll have to answer to is myself.

Some people are just natural isolationists; this doesn’t make us sociopaths. It’s better to be by yourself on your own terms, than to be forced into living with others against your better judgement. I find that ever since I moved out of Steve’s place, we get on ten times better than we used to living under the same roof. Not to say that living there was bad, but it wasn’t all rootbeer & skittles, either. And needless to say, living with The Slag was fifty times worse.
Solitary living really is a much better solution than people initially think it is

*’godlike’ status only extends to Morrissey during his years with the Smiths. Now, he’s just ‘iconic’

Sdtrk: ‘The cold song’ by Klaus Nomi

It appears that HaloScan comments are now Gravatar-enabled. Huh.

I believe this calls for another microbutton!

Sdtrk: ‘Another way’ by Vitesse

This doesn’t exactly fall under my usual standard of 20th.cen Modern architecture, but this building continually fascinates the living hell out of me. This spooky titan is known as the Ryugyong Hotel, in Pyongyang, North Korea.

The Ryugyong Hotel is, in my opinion, the single most unsettling structure ever erected by the hand of man. It’s 1,082 feet tall, has 105 floors, and encloses 3.9 million square meters of floor space. And it is completely empty. It doesn’t even have windows.

The North Korean government began construction of the building in 1987 at an estimated cost of $750 million, or 2% of the country’s GDP. [..] Work was halted in 1992, and nobody knows exactly why.
from The Shape of Days

I’ll hazard a guess as to why work was halted, apart from the lack of funding and the dodgy concrete. Cos the building is gigantic, creepy, and evil. Would you want to spend your happy holiday in North Korea (yes yes, it’s a contradiction in terms) staying anywhere in that hotel? Seriously, how would they expect to attract paying tourists? I mean, being fair, there are a few Communist-inspired buildings that I like, just cos they’re so relentlessly sturdy and imposing, but jesus, Mordor isn’t as evil as this thing.

It’s funny; I’ve known about this place for a couple of months, so when I first saw it in the PS2 game Mercenaries, where it’s known as the Song Tower, I cackled with glee. It’s on the level where you find the Ace of Clubs. You can blow it up with a bunker buster bomb, and it is o so satisfying.
But hands down, the coolest thing about the Ryugyong Hotel is if you look on any contemporary map of North Korea, you won’t find it there, and tourguides patently refuse to talk about it. The building will probably never be completed, it’s too expensive to tear down, and pretty much all of North Korea denies that it exists. You stare, goggle-eyed, at pictures of it, it’s the tallest structure in the country, but according to the denizens who have to literally live in its shadow, it doesn’t exist. Heh. ‘What hotel? What sinister presence?’

*shudders*

EDIT (13 Jan 08): Links updated. Well, one of them