Sdtrk: ‘Black ships ate the sky’ by Current 93

Winkin’ blinkin’ Lincoln.. linkin’:

+ Tokyoflash has got some rather innovative watches that you’d have to sell a baby to purchase. Not that I’m opposed to selling babies, but where would I acquire one? You may recall me blathering about the Morse code one they had for sale, but one of their recent watches caught and held my eye (ew):

Eye Test by EleeNo

Have you ever had an eye test that looks like this watch? In Japan when you take your drivers test, or an eye exam, this is what you see. You are suppose to say, TOP, BOTTOM, LEFT, RIGHT as the circle gets smaller and smaller. Well now, you too can test your eyes every day, while wearing your new Eye Test, by EleeNo.

The minutes are shown by the center ring, and the floating dot indicates the time. Different but not too different, and easy to tell the time.

Quite fab, but I’ll only pay the $70 they want for this timepiece if I can shout ‘BIG O! SHOWTIME!!‘ into it, and have a large Megadeus appear when I do so

+ When the living hell is Panzer elite Action due out? I would really like to Sturmgeschutz IV my way through life, and ‘2006’ is not specific enough of an answer.
And speaking of hysterical historical fighting, the domestic release of Samurai warriors 2 has been pushed back to September. Why do you do this to me? Why do you hate freedom? However, I’ve learned that another game I’m salivating over, Okami, is due out that month as well. Which is nice, cos for a while there, a few of my mates and I thought it would never actually come out in the States..
It’s kinda fortunate that they have September dates, as my recent purchases of The Nightmare before Christmas, Otogi 2 and Burnout: Revenge are all jockeying for my full attention right now

+ Using fantastical laser-based technology, the people at Ikemen offer 3D mask/wall-relief things of various Japanese idols – the first one in the series is Yuko Ogura. Wouldn’t it be something to cover an entire wall with those?

Yeah, it would be something, alright..

+ Y’know what I despise doing? Double-dipping for DVDs. A&E/Carlton have finally released The Prisoner series in a thinpack, which also includes a whole passel of extras; there’s a new two-disk R2 edition of Quadrophenia in August; and the rumour mill has it that there’s supposed to be a new edition of A clockwork orange with Malcolm McDowell’s commentary baked right in, as well as an R1 version of The Super Inframan that comes with the extremely lysergic English dub, both due out sometime this year. Yes, I already have these fillums, but the shiny new extras compel me to buy the feckers again. Gah. So, who wants to buy my copies of Quadrophenia, A clockwork orange, The Super Inframan and that oversized Prisoner boxset?
Amazon.com has informed me that my *coughmorallyspuriouscough* copy of Ultraman vol.1 is on its way. At least I didn’t double-dip for that (not counting that VHS tape that came out in the Nineties)..

+ Tell me, friend; is your very existence plagued with despicable Thetans that you wish to exorcise, yet you’re not overflowing with sums of money to donate to L.Ron Hubbard’s noble cause? Friend, your troubles are over, as now, thanks to this site, you can build your own E-meter, and audit yourself! Due to copyright restrictions, the DiY-er behind this has called it a ‘C-meter’, but it provides the same results, at a fraction of a fraction of the price!
Don’t live your life paying for Xenu’s sins! Build yourself a C-meter TODAY!

+ July finds the always-lovely Penda being published again, in issue no.36 of a publication called Black Petals. Yes, again! Where will it end with her?? I cannot say

+ Finally, I bring you: Kitty Pistol.

bang bang, mew mew

Thank you WAKAchan, for teaching us how to laugh again

Sdtrk: ‘Monologue’ by Adult.

It’s yet another linkdump! CAN YOU SMELL *needless pause* WHAT TEH ROCK *raises eyebrow* IS MICROWAVING

+ La Vie à Bord – ephemera concerning the history of Air France, but concentrating on the Jet Set years of the Fifties and Sixties. SWEET JESUS, YES

+ ‘Serenity and Firefly are worth fighting for, and we will show our numbers by purchasing Serenity on June 23 en masse, proving to Universal that Serenity deserves to keep flying.’
Serenity Day on 23 June. Good job I’ve not bought my copy yet..

+ The Institute for the Study of The Goat, The Pole, and Their Relative Positions, a.k.a, Goat on a Pole. Sure, why not

+ Are you a fan of Ricky Gervais’ podcast series? Well, then you must certainly know of the Pilkipedia, which of course is all about everyone’s favourite vacuous roundheaded Manc, Karl Pilkington. And praise “Bob”, he has a book coming out in September. WOOOOO

+ Samurai warriors 2 is due out in the States in May. Heh, technically I still don’t have 100% completion on the first one. But then really, who does?
And unf unf, Armored core: Last Raven is out sometime this Spring. It’s the last one for the PS2, so I expect it’ll go out with a bang. Heh, technically I’ve not finished Armored core: Nexus, but I’ll get round to it eventually

+ I’m looking at these pics and saying ‘Has The Hafler trio considered using these for their Cd covers yet?’

“BANG!” – an open letter

The room is actually painted in this fashion (above), so that when you look at it from a certain angle, you get the correct result (below). Brilliant

+ Death note (Vol.5 is the most recent release) is still rocking the bells. Apparently there’s going to be a live-action fillum version of it as well! At first, I was wincing when I first heard of this, but apparently the director is Shusuke Kaneko, who more famously directed the Heisei-era Gamera trilogy. All together now: ooohh

+ Speaking of Gamera, I’d like to see ‘Gamera: The Little braves’, even though it seems a wee bit.. kiddy.
Also on my must-see list of revivalist tokusatsu features would be Mirrorman Reflex and Bio planet WOO. And why has no domestic company picked up the rights to Keita Amemiya’s Mikazuki? It’s only six feckin’ episodes long!

+ Finally, I’m still madly in love with Delia Derbyshire. Apparently, in 2005, BBC 4 aired a documentary about her and a potted history of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which can be obtained from here. Fab! (link courtesy of ektopia)

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: ‘Too late’ by New order

It’s a linkdump! Rinkudampu dessho! You may now commence your furious right-clicking.

+ This is so cute it gave me cavities: Snake ‘befriends’ snack hamster. Cue Bill Murray from ‘Ghostbusters’, shouting ‘Dogs and cats, living together..’

+ Transform your blog into a tree-killin’ print book, through BlogBinders. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yeah, you’re thinking this post alone wouldn’t translate to print well, either? Yeah. Hrrm

+ Polish film posters have always brought bold new meaning to the term ‘singularly unsettling‘. (Although I’d proudly display the ‘Rosemary’s Baby‘ one on my wall..) A casual observer seeing these would almost get the impression that Poland is a land that has never known joy. Still, they’re worth a look

+ A transcript of a radio interview from 2002 with Gaby Wood, the author of ‘Edison’s Eve’, a fab book about the history of automata. The interview is like a Cliffs Notes version of the book, somewhat

+ I want this feckin’ house so hard.

I would’ve written an instalment of ‘This was the Future’ around it, but there’s practically no facts on it, save that apparently it’s a house you can rent as a set if you’re shooting a film. Well, if that’s the case, then call me Kubrick

Most of these links, except for the snake / hamster one and the Gaby Wood interview, are courtesy of a lovely blog I’ve run across that’s densely packed with links, called ‘I like‘, which appeals to the esoteric in me, and quite frankly, is the worst timewaster since heroin.

And that appears to be it! Five consecutive days, five consecutive posts. I don’t see that sort of confluence happening again anytime soon, so this is truly a Christmas Miracle

Sdtrk: ‘Black moon bog’ by Xenis emputae traveling band

Stuff that Davecat likes that has (almost) nothing to do with RealDolls, Gynoids, or Sixties architecture? Unpossible!!

+ This would be the only reason for me to want to become a father. The Ultraman Dream Stroller. It’s naturally made in Japan, and its colours are red and silver, of course. Raise your infant to want to grow to gigantic proportions and beat the living hell out of kaiju! This is what being a responsible parent is all about

+ Speaking of Ultraman, buy me a replica of the original Ultraman’s beta capsule, and I’ll be your sex slave for the rest of your life. I could display it next to my sonic screwdriver. O wait — I don’t have one of those, either!

+ Here lies a trailer for a Jack Nicholson film. It’s not new — it’s from the Eighties, so I guess it was shelved for quite a while — but it’s proof that not all of his roles are either ‘crazy guy’ or ‘screaming maniac’. Although I have to say it kinda resembles something I’ve seen before..

+ Fab archive of vintage reel-to-reel taperecorders, auf Deutsche. There’s a staggering amount of pages on the site, so make yourself a cuppa, and commence right-clicking in earnest! (arigatou for the link, Steve)

+ Speaking of retromode sound recorders and players, the German team (again with the Germans!) of Markus Bader and Markus Wolf have redesigned three iconic playback devices from the Sixties through the Eighties, with contemporary standards. In other words, they look the same, but they have updated functions, such as the ‘Audio 1 Kompaktanlage’: originally designed by Dieter Rams for Braun in the Sixties, the new ‘ReBraun‘ version sports an integrated .mp3 player and wireless LAN connection. Ooo, sexy

+ Sometime soon, Criterion will be releasing the first Truffaut film I fell in love with (which was also the first French ‘new wave’ film I saw as well), ‘Shoot the piano player‘. It’ll be whenever they get round to it, I guess

+ Also; shitty american cover art notwithstanding, ‘Godzilla: Final wars’ will be out on DVD in December. Ryuhei ‘Versus‘ Kitamura directing? Gigan with twin chainsaws? Gojira beating the living hell out of the hideous american wanna-be Godzilla? Worth the price of admission

+ I’m hoping one day, some enterprising individual at Bandai America will release all of the Gundam Evolve and MS igLoo material on Region 1 DVDs. It’s Gundam! It’s practically a license to print money! I mean, come on.

+ And finally, the last volume of Mitsukazu Mihara’s Doll will be out on the 11th of this month. Of course I had to get something Gynoid-related in there, just so that no-one forgets what blog they’re reading..

‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. Wasting more time than heroin, but infinitely cheaper

Sdtrk: ‘C’est la mort’ by Stereo total

New items and articles relevant to your interest:

+ 20 Sept is the release date in the States for ‘Tender buttons’, the new Cd by Broadcast. I’ve heard a couple of the tracks, and despite the fact that the band is essentially down to a two-piece, what I’ve heard so far is quite ace. And they’re visiting Detroit again on 5 Nov!

+ Stereolab has three singles due out on 12 Sept: ‘Kybernetická babička’, ‘Interlock’, and ‘Plastic mile’. Three singles released on the same day?? Unpossible!

+ I’m carefully watching another Stylophone on eBaaah. Details to follow after the bidding is closed, cos I don’t want anyone else bidding on it, damnit

+ Lord knows I love the microcars. Apart from the smartcar, which is illegal to drive in the States, Brazil is throwing their hat into the ring with the Obvio ! (exclamation mark theirs). The 828/2 isn’t bad, despite its hallucinatory colour scheme, but that black-and-silver 012 is sexay. Undoubtedly, these will be illegal to drive in the States as well

+ And an inflatable church?? Yes.

Right, that’s the lot! Well, that’s all I can think of for now, at any rate

Sdtrk: ‘Alsh’ by The focus group

Articles of negligible importance:

+ Take the ‘Mod or Fraud’ quiz! TAKE IT!!
I scored 12 right out of 17, which is actually a bit embarrassing

+ New Death in June rarities compilation due out this month, entitled ‘Abandon tracks!’ Funny, you’d think this sort of news would be announced on their website, but it’s not been updated since October of last year. :-\

+ My new favourite music label: Ghost box. They are virtually dripping with that esoteric audio-scientific Sixties British vibe that Broadcast so fervently cultivated in me. ‘Ghost Box is an independent music label for artists that find inspiration in library music albums, folklore, vintage electronics, and the school music room’, they say. O yeah

+ The Main Art Theatre in Royal oak is supposed to be premiering ‘Howl’s moving castle’ this Friday, I believe? Gotta round up the lads for that

+ In playing Otogi for the Xbollox, I noticed something very intriguing. It has what might well be called the best soundtrack for any videogame ever made. It’s like a Heian-era Cocteau twins headed by Brad Laner, if you can dig that shizzle. Lots of taiko drums, lots of shamisen, lots of loops, lots of creepy voices from out of nowhere. Unfortunately, it seems that a soundtrack Cd only exists in my fevered imagination, cos I can’t find one for the life of me. Grrr. And now I gotta buy the sequel??

+ new Japanese mook (one of those Engrish portmanteaus of Magazine + bOOK), called ‘My Doll Friend’, that deals with, well, Artificial companions. Obviously I have to procure a copy by hook or by crook, although fellow Japanese iDollator t-dash (of BACKxFORE fame) mentioned in a recent Email that ‘[On the Japanese Doll BBSes], they say that MOOK doesn’t have the contents which correspond with its price.‘ I remain undeterred!

+ No new Actroid news! Just give it a month or so

+ Finally, it’s supposed to be in the upper eighties outside all this week. Christ in shitty knickers. :-\ One of the things I neglected to mention in my 85 things list is that my ideal temperature is between 60 – 65° Fahrenheit. I can’t stand being out in anything above 75° or so for long periods of time. Sweating is really undignified, unless you’re having it off with someone, and even then I suggest air conditioning

‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. You can’t say you didn’t learn something