Seems like the Tri-county area of southeastern Michigan got its first genuine snowfall this morning. Which was great, cos I love nothing more than waking up to see my car buried in about five inches of the white stuff, you’ve no idea. :-\ And to think I want to move to Toronto, where this sort of thing probably occurs far more often. Maybe I should rethink that plan.. Granted, it’s not Christmas without snow, but that’s not the sort of thing you’d want to see when you’re up before 9am, and persuading yourself to go to work. It was all so incredibly disheartening that I took a brief five-minute nap that lasted for twenty minutes. Yeah, I left the house late, but the weather was going to make me late anyway, so it’s all academic, really..
After unearthing my car with the help of my dad’s snowthrower (and subsequently getting stuck in the unplowed part of the driveway) I headed out to work, like an idiot. I should’ve feckin’ called in. The roads were pretty dodgy throughout my neighbourhood, seeing as that Detroit’s DPW doesn’t get their shit together until noon-ish, but it wasn’t altogether bad; at least until I reached the Michigan Left that I needed to go the proper direction. Remember how I’d said that DPW was on holiday? Well, they hadn’t plowed the turn lane, so consequently, my car got stuck. For three minutes. I got out of it unassisted, but that delayed me more than it should’ve..

My musical accompaniment on my slog westward was ‘Non-stop erotic cabaret’ by Soft cell, and two self-burned Cds. One of the Cds contained a song by Ruins, that Japanese noise-rock duo that sings entirely in Kobaian. Kobaian, if you’re not familiar with it, is a ‘fictional’ language devised by French madman maestro Christian Vander, lead singer/despot of the prog rock band Magma. I thought to myself, you know, I don’t know enough Kobaian. I don’t know any Kobaian. Hrm. Perhaps I’ll get onto that after I’ve learned Japanese, German, French and Latin, in that order. And maybe Esperanto. That’s The Language of the Future, y’know.

Despite all the complications — when I attempted to slow down to make the right to enter the parking lot, I simply skidded past it instead — I arrived at work only about half an hour late. I worked dutifully, meaning that I tried, for the most part, to not sound noticeably sarcastic over the phone. I didn’t say I was successful, but I did try, for about twenty minutes..
Then at 11.30 we had our office potluck / Secret Santa Gift Exchange Extravaganza. When we all drew names last week, I picked someone that I’ve never spoken to before during their five weeks of employment at our office; all I had to go on is that her name was Cathy, she’s middle-aged, and her cell has an annoying ringtone. So last night, I rummaged thru mum’s ‘stock gifts’ selection (for occasions such as these) and chose a blank book with black sheets and a gold gel pen, as I thought it would be innocuous enough to pass as a decent gift. Wouldn’t you know it; the silly bint didn’t even show up for work today. 😛
Apparently Pam, our resident Paris Hilton lookalike, had gotten my name. Heh, funny story: About two days ago, I was in my cubicle when one of the supervisors-in-training approached me, saying that the person who drew my name for Secret Santa had absolutely no idea as to what I would like, as going by my appearance & demeanour, that what I’d be into is so out there that my Secret Santa would have no idea where to even start looking for something for me. I literally laughed out loud, as I’d pretty much expected that. I mean, come on. So my supervisor handed me a piece of paper and told me to write down five things I’d want.
1) Queen’s Greatest Hits Cd
2) BestBuy gift.cert
3) Borders gift.cert
4) Fight club by Chuck Palahniuk (book)
5) The bell jar by Sylvia Plath (book)
So I got a $15 BestBuy gift certificate. 🙂

Round 4pm, I jetted out of there, after getting a box of miniature KitKats and two (!) hugs from Dianna, our resident sexy receptionist. And that’s pretty much it!
O, and whilst I was waiting at a sushi bar for my order to be filled, some drunken Eastern European man wanted me to take my coat off cos he didn’t like wool. At least, that’s what I think he said. See, I knew I should’ve studied Kobaian before Japanese

Not much to report; I’ve been busy tearing thru my Zeta Gundam box set. I’m already up to ep.15. Damn, that’s a great show. Besides, it’s too feckin’ cold to be outside these days..

And like the Subj.title sez, this would be the last set of walls available from the Good People of ‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. Perhaps one day, in the far-flung future, I’ll offer them again, along with the recent additions to my collection (I’m sporting 123 walls now). Perhaps one day, I will use the term ‘far-flung’ again.

Set Five was enjoyed, for great justice. (3.37 MB)

A couple of days ago, I was wasting time on das InfoBahn doing vanity searches for both my name & Sidore’s name, and one of the Sidore-related links was a site called mangoat.net, that had a mini-review of ‘Kitten with a Whip!’, under the title ‘real doll creepyness (sic)’. Here’s the article in its entirety:

01/28/2004 Entry: “real doll creepyness”

Great mother of Snuh?, I think I finally found the worst site on the internet.

I.. I just don’t know what to say. Be careful clicking that at work.

/shudder

Sure, sometimes bad press is better than no press at all — one of the two comments for his post read ‘Woah…she’s hot!’ — but I had to say something. Hence, fueled by a mix of ire & curiosity, I wrote goatman back..

To: Mike Kremkau (mangoat@gmail.com)
Subj: RE.your 28 Jan entry “real doll creepyness”

Hi there, Mangoat!

Davecat here, maintainer of the website ‘Kitten with a Whip!’, and boyfriend to Sidore Kuroneko, the Goth RealDoll. I was doing an MSN Search on ‘KWAW!’ and stumbled across your witty posting. Suffice to say, being called the ‘worst site on the internet’ is a bold statement. What about it did you find bad? Was it the layout? Or was it the content? You don’t really go into specifics, so I’m at a loss, here. Care to explain? We’d enjoy hearing from you..

Cheers,
Davecat

About two days later, the erudite philosopher goatfucker sent his riposte:

To: lamia_doll [at] hotmail [dot] com
Subj: Re: RE.your 28 Jan entry “real doll creepyness”

Dude, you have a site dedicated to the life and personality of a fuckable latex sculpture of a woman. Plus, you really need to drop the tables, or at least make the borders invisible. Also, choose a better font and text color because my wife can’t read the site at all.

So I fired back with this missive that same evening:

To: mangoat@gmail.com
Subj: I guess we can’t all be as clever as Mangoat

Okay, so let me guess:
1) You don’t like fiction, or the development of fictional characters.
2) You can’t appreciate beauty, whether it’s artificial or not.
3) Sex without emotional baggage doesn’t really appeal to you.
4) The simple concept of a person spending their time to create a website around a subject that they enjoy, one which does no harm to anyone, makes you cringe.

As for your table complaints; no, I won’t be dropping those, unless you can come up with a better solution for me. And I happen to like dark colours such as black, dark blue & purple, so the colours are pretty much staying. If they’re too dark for you, I would suggest turning the brightness up on your monitor. Or just do what I do on sites that I think are too dark – highlight the text.
As far as the font for ‘KWAW!’, it should be Arial; if you’re not seeing it in that, check your browser settings. I would’ve used Futura T Light, but not everyone has that installed, and I refuse to use serif-based fonts. In short, if you don’t like ‘Kitten with a Whip!’, don’t visit it. I’m sure you can find other sites to mock.

Shi-chan & I say thanx for your input! We will give your comments the attention that they deserve.

Cheers,
D. & S.

And so far, I’ve not heard anything else from Goatfucker Towers. A tragedy. 😐

Ultimately, I could not physically care less if a person thinks Dolls are creepy, or if they think I’m a freak for owning one. It’s not as if I’m going to leap out of my seat and sell Shi-chan right there and then, just cos I don’t fit into some fuckwit’s concept of ‘normalcy’. Personally, I tend to think a lot of anti-Doll comments (made by males, anyway) are done so out of jealousy. And normally, I’m not a vengeful person — I may make the odd threat occasionally, but very rarely do I follow thru with them. Once in a while though, it’s extraordinarily satisfying to hit back, especially if you know you’re in the right

Wow, and it’s only Wednesday!

+ a new copy of the recently re-released Hewligan’s Haircut, by Jamie Hewlett (of Tank girl fame) and Peter Milligan. I guess I’d be insane too, if I had a hole in my fecking hair
+ The Office: The Complete collection — includes the Christmas specials. COMEDY GOLD
+ Firefly: The complete Series — wow, American sci-fi that’s actually worth watching? How is that even possible??

aaaaand the jewel in the crown of my acquisitions, the Zeta Gundam DVD box set. Yeah, baby.

The box that it all comes in is a little over 15in long, and 4in deep. That’s to accomodate the poster, the nine pencil sharpeners modeled after various Mobile suits, the 48-page guide, and the ten-volume box set of all 50 episodes of the best Gundam serial ever made. When I first started getting into anime almost twenty years ago, I, along with countless other fanatics, had no idea that we’d ever see any parts of the Gundam franchise over in the States, let alone Zeta Gundam. But after a couple of false starts, it’s finally here. Happy? Decidedly so!

(sharpeners & DVD box not shown)

Thanx, Goddess of Stuff! Remind me to plant thousands of kisses on your most honourable lovely sexy feet, but only right after I finish watching the first Zeta DVD

I’m currently working on my ‘100 things’ list. It should be finished before 2005, he said, trying to sound confident

A couple of days ago, I finally got round to installing Firefox, and let me tell you, it’s very much a ‘why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?’ kind of thing. One of the coolest features it.. features.. would be the Extensions, which are applications you can download for the browser. My favourite? The on-the-fly translator. Highlight some Japanese text, right-click on it, and a translation pops up nearly instantly onscreen! It’s a literal translation — if you’ve ever used BabelFish you’ll know what I mean — but it’s still feckin’ impressive. *geek mode OFF*
Remember those microbuttons I mentioned two posts ago? Do yourself a favour and click the ‘Get Firefox’ one. Go on, I’ll wait.

Last night, Derek & I got round to Jeff’s digs for our usual week-end chicanery, and viewed Samurai fiction, which was a neat little fillum. Nothing I’d buy (well, I say that now), but definitely worth seeing. The thing that puzzled me was that it was listed as ‘Samurai Fiction: Episode One’, yet no-one’s heard hide nor hair of there being any additional films.. After Derek took off, Jeff & I watched Georges Franju’s Eyes without a face, which was rather messed-up, especially considering that it was released in the early Sixties. It’s your typical ‘scientist’s daughter gets involved in a horrible disfiguring accident, so he has his assistant abduct young women to take back to his mansion/lab, whereupon he surgically removes their faces so he can graft them onto his daughter’s skull’ film. I know, I know, that genre’s overdone, but Monsieur Franju makes a pretty good stab at it, ho ho ho. And upon coming home, I sat down and watched episodes six and seven of Mezzo. Have I mentioned that Yasuomi Umetsu is all kinds of ace? Not in the past five minutes, you say? Well, then.

The Mysterious Wallpapers of Davecat, Set Four, was available
right here, but alas, no longer. (2.92 MB)

Yes, Tim Burton still rules. Once again, I am excitable!

Hrm. Nothing else to report, really. Gods, I’m fucking boring sometimes