Finally, a new one!
Sdtrk: ‘Farfisa’ by Stereolab

Upon your first casual glance at the picture below, you might exclaim ‘HAY! You’ve already done a feature on the Monsanto House, you filthy layabout!’ But alas, you’d be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. While this structure is rather similar to Tomorrowland’s late-lamented House of the Future, this would be different. For one, it was designed by a French bloke by the name of Jean Maneval. Also, the Monsanto house was nowhere near Europe. So there. Nice try, though.
So this evening, we present the creation known as “Bulle“ à 6 coques, or the Six-shell Bubble House.

each living unit (6 shells) was easily transported by truck. the prefabricated shells were made of reinforced polyester insulated with polyurethane foam in three colour-versions: white, green and brown. the bubble blended ‘perfectly’ into the landscape.
quoted from this site

Aaand that’s almost the extent of what I’ve been able to ken (in English) about the “Bulle“ à 6 coques. Apart from that, the interior had its own special furniture line that fitted within the house’s shells, and production ceased in 1970, after only making 30 houses.

When first reading about the detail that the homes were moulded in three different colours in order to ‘blend in’ with the landscape, I chuckled heartily. Ha ha! Good Job, Mr Maneval! But after further reflection, I think the idea was rather fab. You have green for a home overlooking a lush, verdant hill; you’ve got brown, for the homeowner situated at the edge of a forest; and you have white, for those of you who live in predominantly snowy climes. (The white ones would probably be best used as chalets.) That’s Forward Thinking!
A large drawback though to the design is not so much the fact that there’s not a lot of privacy — unless you live by yourself, thereby making the “Bulle“ à 6 coques completely deserving of the title ‘Space-age Bachelor Pad’ — but they just don’t seem to offer a hell of a lot of room. Hrm.
O well. I suppose you’d just buy two of them and weld them together, then!

Sdtrk: ‘Why don’t you sell out all stocks?’ by Incapacitants

No; apart from ‘teh Internets’, I’ve no idea how I find this stuff, as I certainly didn’t go looking for it. I suppose you could say on some cosmic level, it finds me. Maybe you could chalk it up to synchronicity, as I’ve been re-reading my copy of ‘Beyond belief‘ over the course of the past week..

Police go big with victim picture
BBC News | Published Monday, 23 May 2005

A 60ft high picture of a murdered prostitute has been projected onto a derelict block of flats in Glasgow.

Detectives hope it will help to turn up clues about the death of Emma Caldwell, whose body was found in woods in South Lanarkshire on 8 May.

The image was displayed for four hours on the multi-storey flats in Cumberland Street, Hutchesontown on Monday night.
the rest of the article is here

I’m sure it left one hell of a haunting impression on people in the area, at the very least

Sdtrk: some bloke yelling

OMIGOD RUN AWAY FAST NOW

The Quiznos round here are never as interesting as this. Is that a Good or Bad thing?

Sdtrk: ‘Jumpin’ Jap crash’ by m1dy

Right, now cup your hands tightly. I SAID CUP THEM!!
*pours links into your cupped hands*

+ People these days with better cameras than mine are all about that crazy tilt-shift photography. That’s where you take a picture of a landscape from some distance away, but you fiddle with the settings, so that parts are focussed, and other parts aren’t, thereby resulting in a photo that looks like a highly detailed micro-miniature. Select from two links — here, or here. It’s quite fab, I’m sure you’ll agree

+ Longtime readers of this blog (both of you) may recall the wee article I wrote last year about my seething hatred for Garfield. Well, through the miracle of Modern Science, *coughPhotoshopcough* the strip featuring America’s favourite overweight marketing juggernaut and his delusional, physically repulsive owner has actually been transformed into something funny! As a poster on the forum I spotted this on stated: ‘It’s a given that Garfield has a base quality level of zero. Therefore, any change made (random or otherwise), cannot do anything BUT improve the strip.‘ Entirely true!

+ I’ve never read any of Philip K. Dick’s novels, which would explain why this doesn’t get its own posting here on ‘Shouting to hear the echoes: All Gynoids, All The Time’, but apparently, the Philip K. Dick Android has gone missing. If it was Actroid-chan or the Warhol Android, all eyes would be on me, but I’m not a suspect this time. Perhaps he’s out hunting Replicants? Ahhh, Irony

+ Last episode of the first, err, season of ‘The Ricky Gervais Show‘ podcasts will be aired on 20 Feb. Hope you’ve heard the previous 11 episodes, otherwise you’ve missed most of the Humour Train! WOO WOO There it goes without you! You better start running, squire!

+ ‘Mobile suit Gundam: Climax UC‘ would be Bandai’s latest offering in the long line of PS2 Gundam-based videogames. I’m particularly frothy about it, as it’s ALL UNIVERSAL CENTURY-BASED BATTLES, BABY. Recreate fights from familiar chestnuts such as Original Gundam and Char’s counterattack, as well as Gundam ZZ and The 08th MS Team; plus, there’s a create-your-own-character-and-determine-where-they-will-pledge-their-allegiance mode that looks quite engaging. Bandai, if you do nothing else for me ever, you will export this game to the States. When that glorious day arrives, you will be witness to Climax DC

+ I’ve swapped out Penda/Monti’s links in the sidebar to reflect her new URL and site: MontiLee Stormer.com. Don’t worry, you can access the Diner through it, but this is her new ‘professional’ corner of teh Intarwub

+ I have no idea what to make of this. None whatsoever. Do you?

+ Remember my post on North Korea’s Ryugyong Hotel, a.k.a, The Soul Accumulator of Malkunofath? Well, if you think that’s bad as it is, keep in mind it’s rather representative of the general Nork mindset – monomaniacally focussed and shockingly obsolete. Here, then, are the tour diaries of one bloke and a couple of fellow tourists as they experience all that North Korea has to offer. Meaning, all that the government has selected to be experienced, that is

+ And speaking of outmoded thinking, whilst validating a passel of bookmarks this eve, I find that the crazy feminazi shits o’er at Pandagon.com no longer have that lengthy anti-iDollator post of streaming invective up on their site. You remember; the one that was written shortly after Meghan’s article appeared in Salon.com, claiming that since not only do I have a RealDoll, but I say that I have a relationship with ‘it’, that obviously I’m a filthy misogynistic tool of the patriarchy that eats kittens for breakfast? I have to say, Shi-chan and I are almost offended. We brought you over five hundred responses to your mentally crippled post, and obscurity is the way you pay us back??
Huh. It just goes to show that you really can’t please some people
EDIT (05 June 2008): The Pandagon, err, ‘people’, have deleted the above-linked post for reasons unknown. Thankfully it’s archived on the Internet Wayback Machine, so you can view the baseless vitriol here

thanx to Penda and Zip Gun for some of the links

Sdtrk: ‘Carnis vale’ by NON

(EDITED 3 DEC, 2006)
So Sidore-chan went and got herself an account on Dailymotion, it seems! HOOREJ

Actroid Repliee Q1-type 001

This post originally had me going on about how I had a YouTube account, but apparently their sensibilities were offended by topless Synthetiks, so I left them posthaste. Then I discovered Dailymotion.com was run out of Europe — or at least, someplace not in the United States of Prudery — so I encouraged Shi-chan to take the reins as far as posting video clips. It’s ironic, you see.

She’ll be uploading more Doll / Gynoid-related fillums from our personal vaults in short order. Of course, when I say ‘in short order’, I mean ‘when she gets round to it’. You know how it goes with us!
There’s quite a few up on her personal Dailymotion page now — be well advised that some people might consider some of the videos a bit pervy (i.e: naked Doll boobs), so there’s your warning — but as an apéritif, here’s a video of the Repliee Q1 version of that delicious Actroid-chan, showing off a couple of her abilities. Personally, I’d like for her to stand up and tell the nearest individual present to get her some less dowdy clothes, but I would say that