Albert Speer couldn’t make something this creepy

typed for your pleasure on 6 February 2005, at 4.38 pm

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

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At least they didn’t kidnap Barbie

typed for your pleasure on 1 February 2005, at 6.27 pm

American news sources are going out of their way to prove themselves to be reactionary idiots these days, but at least they’re passing the savings onto us.

Web Site Claims GI Captured in Iraq

Feb 1, 3:03 PM (ET)
By ROBERT H. REID

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The U.S. military said it was investigating, but the claim’s authenticity could not be immediately confirmed.

The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants’ statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back. The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless, and the photo’s authenticity could not be confirmed.

A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and behind him on the wall is a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet.”

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Marine Sgt. Salju K. Thomas, said he had no information on the claim but “we are currently looking into it.”

Take a good look at that soldier there, the one with the ‘stiff and expressionless’ face. Take a good look. Now, have a look at this.

Now go have a look at that linked article before it’s pulled from the Internet.
My christ. When you’re letting stuff like this slip through your verification nets, why even bother with retaining a verification staff? Why not just change your name from Associated Press to The Onion and be done with it?
*singing* Someone’s gonna get fiiired..

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‘So stick your fingers in your ears, then’ / Waka waka what?

typed for your pleasure on 30 December 2004, at 8.47 pm

Just finished watching ep.33 of Zeta Gundam. Damn, that show’s ace. I’m watching it in the original Japanese with subtitles, cos American voice actors drive me completely insane, but they needed to slap on big ol’ SPOILER ALERTS whenever the ‘next episode summary’ comes on. The subtitles will say something ambivalent about such-and-such character, but I’m listening to the audio, and I’ll hear ‘Such-and-such character shin da (dies)‘, and I’m like, GodDAMNIT!!@

Also — Patrick, you’ll dig this in particular — I don’t know if this is genius or madness, or mad genius, or genmadniusness. Witness: Pac-Mondrian.

‘Pac-Mondrian closes the perceptual distance between fine art and video games by combining Piet Mondrian’s Modernist masterpiece “Broadway Boogie Woogie” with Toru Iwatani’s classic video game Pac-Man.’

Well, if that isn’t the damnedest thing. Alright, now I want to see a version of DigDug filtered thru Warhol. Or better still, Street fighter in Lichtenstein-style… o, wait

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Festive, in its own fashion

typed for your pleasure on 25 December 2004, at 11.49 pm

Here’s hoping your holidays are not marred by the Great Annihilating Reindeer

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Machines 1, Fleshlings 0

typed for your pleasure on 22 November 2004, at 5.28 pm

A couple of years ago, my first ex-roommate Steve & I were sitting around in the livingroom of our townhouse, discussing something or other, and somehow the subject of Androids & Gynoids came up. (With me in the room? The devil you say!) ‘Wouldn’t it be ace if you could put your brain in the body of an Android?’ I remarked. ‘You wouldn’t have to worry about getting sick, or having to eat, or getting old, or at least a dozen other things!’ Steve, in a shining moment of hyper-lucidity, replied, ‘Yeah, but I’d rather put my brain in a Gynoid’s body. Think about it.’ OMIGOD YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES. I would probably never leave the house. *big pervy grin*

Yesterday my parents & I were ransacking the house for disposable items, as today is Bulk Garbage Day for our neighbourhood, and my father decided he wanted to finally get rid of the stove-converted-from-an-oil-barrel that had been sitting inactive in the basement for at least a decade. So, believing I had nothing better to do with my time, he handed me a bucket and a garden trowel, and told me to empty the ash from the stove into that, so we could haul it out. After using a larger implement, like, y’know, a fucking shovel, he decides that it’s light enough to haul it out. I had maybe left about two-thirds of the ash in there, as it was so sedentary over the years, that it had become compacted and dense. Nevertheless, out it was going. Everything was alright until we headed out the door, and that’s when I felt a rather sharp pain in my lower back. I don’t think either one of my parents had ever heard me curse to that extent, so it’s nice to know I could teach them something.
So last night, I went to bed at just before midnight, with a throbbing feeling in my back, and I called into work this morning, as Monday is our nine-hour day, and I wasn’t gonna put up with this shit while at work for nine hours. Yeah.
Now who do I grab by the lapels so I can get hooked up with a Gynoid body that resembles Alyson Hannigan? I DEMAND SATISFACTION!!

Right, back to bed wi’ me, I suppose

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Speaking of Hallowe’en..

typed for your pleasure on 1 November 2004, at 2.58 am

I went in costume for the so-called Hallowe’en party at work on Friday. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with my appearance, here’s a semi-recent picture:


The author, in repose

Now, you see that pic? I dress like that all of the time. It’s an extraordinarily rare occasion when I’m not wearing black, white and grey, and I’m usually in either green or purple. No exceptions whatsoever.
So this year, for shits and giggles, I decided that I would dress up for the party. And seeing as that the entire point of dressing up for Hallowe’en is to go as something you’re not, I decided to dress as some preppy tosser. Between scouring two Value Worlds and buying clothes that I wouldn’t be caught dead in, deliberately choosing colours that I despise, I came up with something quite nice on a limited budget. I obtained a blue sweatshirt, a pair of bluejeans, some brown & blue Timberland-like shoes, and borrowed a blue-and-white checked shirt from my father, so my costume expenditure total came to about $13. I combed back my bangs, removed my chrome-and-black leather wrist belts, scraped off my black nailvarnish, and removed five of my six earrings for better assimilation, and, combined with the dodgy clothes I was wearing, I pulled off something fairly hideous.

Most of my coworkers didn’t get it, but the few that did found it pretty funny. I suppose it was really more to amuse myself than anyone else.. I’ll tell you this, though; I could not wait to get home and change

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Doing their part to Advertise and Confuse

typed for your pleasure on 30 October 2004, at 6.22 pm

Here we go again! Another dodgy-yet-intriguing missive from Spam Email Technologies Co. Ltd. Inc.; this one beginning with the sentence ‘You sleep with your eyes open’, which I thought was kinda cool. The body ov the message itself is your typical ‘G.e.n.e.r.i.c V-I-A-G-R-A – No Prescription Needed !!’ shill, but the paragraph at the bottom, which I’ve quoted in its entirety, is what really grabbed my attention:

“Why am I here?” They will be wearing their most revealings underwear, which is what they happened to be wearing when the car broke down. The employers were also asked to list the “most unusual” questions that have been asked by job candidates. If you are beautiful, your makeup never rubs off, even while scuba-diving or fighting aliens. I feel uneasy indoors. You get a speeding ticket even when you’re parked. You’ve worn out your third pair of tennis shoes this week. This involving fuses, deadly gasses, lasers, buzz saws and hungry sharks. You can take a picture of yourself from ten feet away without using the timer. A German accent will do. Whenever a man is with a woman he is usually thinking about sex.

Wow, it’s W.S.Burroughs writing song lyrics for Pulp. Well done, Spambots!

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