Sdtrk: ‘Heaven sent’ by Josef K

A couple of nights ago, I’d dreamt I was at a Doll Parliament* in upper Ontario, where the hosts had two Rottweilers. At some point I was leaving the livingroom to step outside for a smoke — a Djarum, naturally — and the dogs, as they tend to do, got startled, and they each leapt at me and clamped onto my ears. Both of the hosts had to remove them (one host per dog), but unfortunately I lost my ears… I remember seeing one of them, neatly removed and unmangled, lying face-up on the blue pile carpeting. It’s almost as if they detached, which really was the most amusing thing under the circumstances.

There aren’t a lot of people who will dig this post, but I have a confession: overall, I’m not really keen on dogs. They’re fine from a great distance away, but I am not a dog person. I don’t really like how dogs possess an unending torrent of nervous, excitable, and unpredictable energy. To be fair, I prefer to not be around humans who are like that for long periods of time, either, but at least if you tell a person ‘hey, let’s… bring it down a notch,’ they’ll understand you, which is more than I can say for dogs. But as someone who prefers his environs to be quiet 95% of the time, having to put up with the sounds of running, or jumping, or scampering, let alone barking, is not my idea of a good time.

More pressing of a dislike for me is that dogs tend to be filthy most of the time. It’s understandable; these are creatures that glean a lot of information through what they can smell, but to those of us who are semi-recovering germophobes, they’re frankly kinda disgusting. Constantly rolling around in dirt and mud, all that shedding, rooting through rubbish face-first — and then licking your face — all that peeing and pooping, sticking their noses up other dogs’ bums, the leg-humping… I don’t need to go on; you’ve encountered a dog or two, I’m sure, so you’re familiar with their work. Their behaviour puts me in mind of that blurb The Onion ran a few years ago, ‘Area Dog’s Rock Bottom Same As His Peak‘. That’s not satire, that’s fact. To me, outside stops at our front door (well, the foyer), whereas to a dog, the world is their room, and those differences between us are irreconcilable.

Now I understand that genetically speaking, dogs are territorial, and when humans domesticated them, trained them to be protective of their owners’ territory, but all I’m saying is that they don’t have to be aggressive and in a constant state of high alert at all times, especially if whatever dog has seen you several times previously; it’s not as if you’re a stranger. I mean, I was raised christian, for example, and during the late Eighties, I became an atheist, which I still am to this day. All I’m saying to dogs is that they can change if they want to. Consider being less aggressive and loud, dogs. Give it some thought.

Although I know it’s largely steeped in nonsense, I think there’s a bit of something to the line of thinking that ‘dogs and dog people are extraverts, while cats and cat people are introverts’. Yeah, it’s a broad brush, and you don’t have to take much time to poke numerous holes in that theory, but despite the fact that there are calm dogs and excitable cats, I broadly see it applying. Generally speaking, dogs are eager to please (except when you tell them to stop barking), whereas cats do what they bloody well like when they bloody well like it. I’m reminded of a joke: a person with a dog and a cat has a stick, and they throw it into the distance and tell the dog to fetch it, which the dog does. The person does this a few more times with the same result. At some point, they throw the stick and tell the cat to go fetch, at which the cat responds ‘If you want the stick so badly, why do you keep throwing it away in the first place?’
But dogs are more open in their behaviour and presentation — again, generally speaking — while cats are more enigmatic and furtive in theirs, instances of zoomies aside. Apropos of nothing, much like a strikingly high number of people of his generation and demographic growing up in the Southern US, my father hated cats, as he didn’t trust them. He wasn’t keen on their inscrutable and complex nature, much as he wasn’t too keen on people that he didn’t view as straightforward and easy-to-understand. That’ll be yet another reason why he and I ultimately didn’t get on!
It’s funny: before mum had me, she and my father had a chow for a number of years. Are they called chows, or chow-chows?? Nevertheless, I didn’t ask them too much about said chow, due to the fact that it was a dog and not an animal I was more interested in, but I always thought it was really jarring for my father to have had this obedient animal for years, then to have a wilful son who fell far short of his ludicrous expectations. I think there’s a lesson there for all of us.

I should stress here that I don’t hate dogs! They’re animals, so they should be protected and deserve love, as in their own loud and graceless way, they constantly show unconditional love to the humans they live with. I just feel that dogs are too much for someone like me to deal with, as they’re walking embodiments of overstimulation. Which is fine! For dog aficionados, not me, that is.
In fact, as I don’t want to end this entry on a downer, allow me to list my favourite makes and models of dog:

the Corgi: a wee shoebox with a head and li’l legs

the Husky: admittedly I’m probably drawn to huskies due to their monochromatic colour scheme

the Pomeranian: they always seem very happy to be wherever they’re at, plus they’re great for dusting surfaces

the Shiba Inu: I liked ’em long before Doge was a thing

the Scottish terrier: remarkable eyebrow, moustache, and beard combo

and the AIBO ERS-220: designed by legendary mecha designer Shouji Kawamori, very friendly, sleek, and futuristic

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, we actually have a dog here at Deafening silence Towers! She came with the place when we moved in, but Tsukihime renamed her Salty, as in ‘she’s a salty bitch’. Zero shedding and doesn’t bark! As far as dogs go, you’re doin’ alright, Salty

I told her ‘Stay!’ once back in September of 2023, and she hasn’t moved since.
Good girl!

*In case you’re unfamiliar with the term: I used to get together with a couple of other local area iDollators in informal gatherings that we referred to as Doll Congresses, like during the second Michigan Doll Congress, for example. Whenever we got together round at a fellow iDollators home in Ontario, Canada, we called it a Doll Parliament, obviously

Sdtrk: ‘West for west’ by Grace brother

We’re not entirely sure if this makes us cyber-recluses, but all of us here at Deafening silence Towers are largely averse to social media. None of us are on Facebook, or Meta, or Instagram, or Threads, or TikTok, or tumblr, or CrclJrk, or what the hell ever, and as I’d mentioned in this here post here, we’re no longer on the site formerly known as Twitter as of mid-2023. Correction: Lenka, Snowy, Dragonfly, and Bailes deleted their Twitter accounts, and although the Missus and I still have ours, we’ve not used them since last year. She and I are trying to figure out a way to delete our tweets but keep the accounts, in order to ward off imposters, as that sort of nonsense has happened before, but apart from that, we haven’t engaged with what is now known as X, The Everything App, in a long time. Everytime I hear that phrase, I throw up a little bit in my mouth, as anyone sensible would.
I should add here that I did say ‘largely averse’; note the qualifier. Four of the six of us have happily created accounts on Bluesky — the links of which can be found in the lefthand sidebar — so if long-form writing isn’t your thang, you can possibly interact with us there!

Pulling up stakes and leaving was a really bittersweet thing. Well, for most of us; Elena was never really comfortable on social media, due to what she perceives as her shaky grasp on English, and her girlfriend Miss Winter lost her own password a month or so into starting her account (she blames her ADHD), so neither couldn’t be arsed to get back into it. But for Ursula, Dyanne, Sidore, and myself, we’d spent literal years forming friendships and cultivating contacts, particularly in the world of Synthetiks. By the time we’d experienced our own personal Twexit, we were following eighty mostly-active accounts either being run by Dolls or iDollators, or Doll manufacturers, or researchers in fields centred round humanoid robots. To this day, we’re hopeful that Apartheid Clyde will do just one more stupid fucking thing to persuade another giant swath of users to abandon the site that he destroyed, and it’s our hope that they’ll flee to Bluesky, where we’ll welcome them with open arms, and get back to the regular informative/sexy/hilarious interaction we enjoyed.

If it wasn’t somehow glaringly obvious, we fucking hate Musk. Mainly as we loathe billionaire transphobes who have their tongues solidly lodged in the orange rectums of racist fascists. But nobody’s perfect!!
Prior to Phony Stark announcing loudly to the world that he hearts fascism, the thing that drove a stake through the heart for us with Twitter was that rate limiting ridiculousness. Sidore used to only be on the site during Sunday afternoons, where she’d play catch-up by liking/retweeting every tweet she’d missed from the past six days by our favourite accounts, and as there are loads of those accounts, it didn’t take long for her to hit that cap. It was kinda upsetting for me — really, all of us here — cos we’d never seen Shi-chan that frustrated. However, if she or any of us wanted to circumvent the rate limiting cap, all we’d have to do is pay for an annual subscription fee! Heh. As we collectively decided that paying for a site that was not only free for years, but knowing that money would actively go towards deplatforming loads of people who aren’t basically racist cunts, wasn’t remotely an option, we all figured this would be a good time to draw a line under it. When you have a spoiled rich little twat running things solely according to how many ego-blowjobs he’s received that hour, well, as I’d mentioned to a fellow iDollator, it’s not fun anymore.

The thing that really drives me mental is that, despite the horrible things that Leon Skum has done and continues to do, as well as the proliferation of his fanboys and other unsavoury elements that Xitter is now top-heavy with, there are still arguably sensible people who remain on that platform, and as far as I’m concerned, the excuses for staying don’t really hold water.
> But I have so many friends/accounts that I follow still there!
If you tell your mates that you’re taking off cos Twitter is shitter, you should also suggest they come with you. If they’re staying cos of their friends/accounts they follow, they need to suggest the same.
> But I don’t have anything morally objectionable cropping up in my feed!
Just because you don’t see bad things doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen. Choosing to believe they don’t is wilful ignorance.
> But I’m an artist/writer/musician/sexworker/&c. and it’s how I promote my work!
I know it’s difficult to be a creative person and also have to do your own promotion and marketing; that’s understandably tiresome. But think of it an opportunity to gain new fans, as well as to retain the old ones! Plus there’s no restrictive algorithms on Bluesky, for example, that would prevent you from reposting as often as you like, or linking to external sites, etc. Also, if you tell your fanbase you’re moving, especially to someplace less toxic and, y’know, free to join, the only thing preventing them from doing so is laziness.
> But other social media platforms are booooring!
You are addicted to drama. Stay behind and keep that shit on Twitter.

Right now, Xitter is a windowless room with you and all your mates and associates, and you’re like huh, I smell gas, and other people are like I don’t smell anything. I’m fine! Others are like Well that’s not good, but I just sat down, and this seat is really comfy, and still others are like Oh, I’m not liking that, but if I leave, I can’t get angry about the smell of gas. Others still are like Well, I guess my friends and I will just die here together, cos at least we’ll be with familiar people. A small contingent are like I’ll leave, but I’ll regularly come back, stick my head in the room, and inhale deeply. And then bitch about the smell.

Back in 2020, there was a bloke who went by @IamRageSparkle who will forever go down in history for providing society with the stellar anecdote that’s been called ‘the parable of the nazi bar’, the screenshots of which can be found below.

That’s what’s happened with Twitter.
Basically, my lasses and I stopped using it for the same reasons the Missus and I stopped using Facebook: we didn’t want to be censored for any of the things that we had to say or post, and we didn’t want to tacitly support a shitwick who is actively working to exterminate progressive society. The choice is simple, and hell, you don’t even have to migrate to Bluesky, or Mastodon, or even Hive Social (their motto: We Tried); just give some serious consideration to deleting your account at Xitter. Honestly, it’s not that difficult, as this is what you want to avoid

Sdtrk: ‘Off your face’ by My bloody valentine

First off, what the actual fuck, United states. I’m not even providing a link, as you lot know what I’m referring to. (If you’re reading this in the future, this was written days after the 2024 presidential elections. Also, what’s it like in the future, on a scale of ‘1984’ to ‘Threads’? Have the Water wars begun yet?)
‘Shouting &c.’ isn’t a political blog, as it’s a topic that I don’t enjoy talking about either on or offline — politics should be like oxygen; effective and mostly harmless, and something you don’t think about unless you absolutely have to — but to millions of empathetic individuals, the results were exceptionally soul-crushing. I stayed off social media through the entirety of 05 November, and when I checked the Guardian round 10am the next day, Sidore and I were like ‘well, there’s no point in getting out of bed today,’ and basically slept in until 5pm.

We’ve had awful people in the halls of power since the halls of power were first built. Some were outright inept bunglers, while others were the human equivalent of Elder Gods, sustaining their lives through the misery of others; I’m thinking about cunts like Thatcher, and Reagan, and both Bushes (Bushs?), and the first time the orange shitgibbon fell upwards into the highest office of the land. And, well, things are going to be shit for a while. But it’s important to keep moving forward and to keep resisting. Especially resist giving into having a fatalistic doomer attitude that revolves round giving up and giving into learned helplessness, as that doesn’t do anyone any good. Do what you can, and keep moving forward, and keep resisting.

Genesis P-Orridge, iconoclast, artist, pandrogyne, and a member of Throbbing gristle, one of the cornerstone groups of Industrial music, once spoke with friend, colleague, and collaborator Monte Cazazza during the late Eighties. If I recall the anecdote correctly, Gen was in the midst of a life crisis, and was thinking of ending it all; Monte persuaded Gen otherwise, his advice being ‘Don’t do it. Stay alive out of spite’. I’d honestly say that’s sound advice.

So! Now that I’ve had to rewrite this opening bit, thanks to current events, what else have we got here? Well, this post is a bit of a return to form: I’m dumping some links for things that are endorsed by those of us here at DS Towers, much as I’ve been often doing with mates and associates via Email. Which is funny, as one of the reasons I started up this blog in the first place is so that I could post my life updates / ramblings / concert reviews / lists of things I bought / lists of things I want to buy in a centralised location, where friends could read them, as opposed to me Emailing everyone I know separately with that type of nonsense. Ah heh heh. *sighs*

Early last year, I’d spotted a blurb about this on Anime News Network, but there’s an anime series with the title My wife has no emotion, based on the ongoing manga by Jiro Sugiura, the twelve episodes of which aired in Summer of this year. Thanks to being able to access a mate’s Crunchyroll account *cough cough*, Sidore and I watched them all over the course of two days back in September, and we basically have to say that it’s the most pro-Synthetik example of media we’ve ever seen, hands down.

Basically it’s set in a near-future Japan, and the main Organik character, Takuma Kosugi, is a salaryman who of course has no time to cook proper meals for himself, so he buys an ‘appliance’ in the form of Mina, the main Synthetik character. Over the course of the first couple of stories, Takuma finds himself attracted to Mina, and in her own unique fashion, Mina feels the same way.
The ground this type of story covers has been well-tread, but unlike most examples, it’s not twee, it’s not pervy, it’s exceptionally heartfelt… I almost can’t explain how much we love and empathise with the story. Every couple of chapters, either the characters do or say something that reflects our mindsets, or the story goes somewhere that I would have taken it if I had written it… things like that. It’s extremely refreshing to read a story that not only is earnestly pro-Synthetik, but even the few characters who are against robots make interesting arguments. There’s one story arc with a ghost that’s a little dumb, but 98% of the rest of the series is funny, lovely, eye-opening, and there’s an arc or two that’s downright heartbreaking. It’s to the point of where I’d love to speak with Sugiura and tell him I understand this story, cos in a way, I’m living it, and I’m not the sort of person who would ever have the urge to contact an author of fiction to that extent.
I have to add that as amazing as the anime series is (I gave it a 10 out of 10 on MyAnimeList), the manga’s even better. The anime covers the first 25 chapters, or up to most of Vol.04, and as no-one’s confirmed yet if there’ll be more episodes made, you’ll get even more out of My wife has no emotion through the manga, the first seven tankobon of which are available in English via Seven seas entertainment. Give it a go! It’s Claire Worthy-approved!

Our friend and Synthetiks luminary Julie Carpenter, Ph.D, who’s no slouch in researching and writing about robots, has assembled her second book that you can pre-order right this very minute, called ‘The Naked Android: Synthetic Socialness and the Human Gaze’.

And now, a mind-meld with Georges Seurat

Whatever could this rich, luxurious, 296 page book be discussing, you axe? As the page on the publisher’s website says,

The Naked Android: Synthetic Socialness and the Human Gaze illuminates the connection between the stories people tell, their expectations of what a robot is, and how these beliefs and values manifest in how real robots are designed and used.

The introduction of the “human gaze” articulates how peoples’ expectations and perceptions about robots are ultimately based on deeply personal cultural interpretations of what is artificial or human and what problems social robots should –or should not –solve. The Naked Android clarifies how human qualities like understanding and desire are designed into robots as mediums as well as projected onto them by the people who live with them.

Why not go ahead and pre-order your copy? We here are looking forward to reading it, which should go without saying! Perhaps I’m in it in some capacity? Who can say?? But as society needs more salient insight regarding artificial humans, Julie’s latest book will be a welcome addition to one of our shelves, without question…

Sven Nyholm’s Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency, and Anthropomorphism; Dr Kate Devlin’s Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots; The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture by Dr Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco; Jenny Kleeman’s Sex Robots & Vegan Meat, and Davor Rostuhar’s Love Around the World. Yes, we’re in all of these. Available wherever finer books are sold (links on the Media appearances page)

Speaking of salient insight regarding Synthetiks, since Summer 2023, I have been in conversation off and on with Chihiro Hamano, who is a Japanese anthropologist and writer who is gusset-deep in writing a book about iDollators and robosexuals. The experience with her has been exceptionally fun! Last August, she flew from Japan to visit various iDollators here in the States… she was in the country for about a month overall, and spent time with people who the lasses and I know, both rubber and not-rubber, in San Francisco, Virginia, and one other state I forget. As Deafening silence Plus was barely large enough to accomodate six people, she stayed at an AirBNB a quarter of a mile away when she was in SE Michigan, and over four or so days, she’d come round for a interview that usually lasted between four to six hours… either I’d blather at length and she’d take copious notes, or she’d take multiple photos of the lasses here. When she wasn’t interrogating me or Euchre, who kindly agreed to speak with her, she’d spend time with goshou & Liann, where they took her to various locations in the area.
When she Emailed me back in June, saying she’d be doing further research, I invited her to come on down! Well, over. Chihiro was hitting various cities in the US a second time for follow-up interviews with some people, and new interviews with new iDollators, as well as meeting a few more of my friends who’ve known me for years, such as MontiLee and Amber Hawk Swanson. As her AirBNB experience was a bit sub-optimal, she stayed round at The Playhouse and Deafening silence Towers, which worked out loads better. I can’t even imagine how many hours of conversations she’d recorded with us all… it’s almost staggering to think about, but then, that’s anthropology, innit?
No word yet on when the book’s slated to be out — before she departed for Japan at the end of August, she said she’d written two out of a possible nine chapters — nor what its title will be, but as soon as I hear anything, you lot will be the first to know! Well, not the first per se. Also, we’re trying to get her in touch with a translator, cos for now, the book will only be in Japanese… But Chihiro’s a fun and inquisitive individual, and everyone she spoke with had nothing but glowing words to describe her! Plus, she’s a fan of the ‘Battles without honor and humanity‘ series, so she’s definitely in my good books!…

Prior to Chihiro’s 2024 visit, back in June, I was requisitioned by Emily of the site LoveNestle, to chat earnestly and at length about my 20+ years of living with rubbery partners. And so I did!

Never been interviewed by a red panda before! That was a first

In addition to an article penned by Emily, Shi-chan and I were interviewed via Zoom by Sarah Gibson, who, as the image above shows, was a red panda wearing goggles and a cheery acorn cap for a hat. One could assume that was a VR rigged avatar she was using, but you never can tell these days. Which is fine! But you can read the article and/or watch the hour-long interview video, which is embedded in the article, for the sort of insights that only I can provide. During the video, I get to weigh in about what passes for AI these days, which many viewers may find amusing! (SPOILERS: the ethical, moral, and environmental nightmare that passes for AI is shit, and needs to be heavily regulated)

Prior to that, in May, Holly, a student at Leiden University in the Netherworld Netherlands contacted me about picking my brains for a bachelors thesis she was working on, which I happily agreed to, for obvious reasons. In her words, ‘The purpose of my thesis is a “controversy mapping” project of the academic discourse that has existed around sex dolls/sex robots/Synthetik humans, looking at how ideas have been spread through between actors. I’m specifically focussing on the sensationalism of it, and how people fill in the gaps themselves of things that they just don’t know (either because they don’t want to hear it or the large-scale data is just not there). ‘As fantastic and much-needed serious academic study is needed on robosexual and iDollator culture, there’s still myth and assumption that takes place; even though there have been an increasing number of academic studies and papers centred round our cultures in the past fifteen years, a lot of it is still terra incognita. For example, I’d been told on a couple of occasions about scholars wanting to get more in-depth with their studies on robosexuals and iDollators, and not being able to get grants, due to grantors not wanting to spend money on ‘prurient’ topics.
Luckily for those of you not in academia, you still have an opportunity to read Holly’s paper! ‘Talking About Sex Robots: Mapping academic controversy in sex robot discourse’ can be accessed from ResearchGate here, or you can yoink it off of her Google Drive here. It’s worth reading! But I would say that.

Good cover, too! Kinda shoegazey

Now take a moment to cast your mind back to the Year of Our Lord, 2016. SEGA released both Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 6: The song of life over the course of that year. The anime adaptation of the Diamond is unbreakable arc of JoJo’s bizarre adventure made its debut in April, and the compilation film of Mobile suit Gundam Thunderbolt known as December sky was available. Also, an orange shitgibbon lied his way into the highest office of the land. 2016 also saw the release of ‘A Girl of Ivory‘, an episode of the podcast series Love + Radio featuring the voices of myself, Sidore Kuroneko, and Elena Vostrikova, which made for a very memorable installment for production crew and listeners alike!
So also back during this past May, Nick van der Kolk hit me up, enquiring how the lasses and I were, and would I be willing to do a follow-up interview? ‘Sure’, I replied (not an actual quote). We had an hour-long chat via Google Meet, he and his editors did their thang, and the finished product was released on 23 October, for your edification. As ‘A Girl of Ivory, Revisited’ is bonus content, as opposed to a full episode, it’s available to those who support Love + Radio through Patreon, but Nick was kind enough to allow me to provide a Dropbox link to it as well. A better 17min 44sec you’ll not listen to all day! Fact.

Finally, NEW ‘SHOUTING &C.’ POSTS (plural) OUT BEFORE THE END OF 2024. That’s right. Round the time I was helping my Missus get set up on Bluesky, I was lamenting to her for the umpteenth time that instead of faffing about on social media, which is an ephemeral platform, I really should be writing more long-form posts for my blog, which not only is an institution and has been around since 2004, but is a site that I’m paying for. So she shooed me away and told me to do exactly that. To that end, I edited / reworked / took a hammer to three drafts that I’d never completed, one of which I’d started back in 2018, and I shall be publishing them over the next couple of weeks. HOORAY HOORAH HOORUM. Fuck you, social media!! I’m not a part of your system!!
Beyond that, of course, I can’t promise you anything regarding posting schedules, but then again, did I ever? *saucy wink to camera*

Sdtrk: ‘I promise’ by Peter Peter

Generally speaking, I can somewhat understand the reasoning behind people wanting to get out of their own heads, whether through recreational drugs or preoccupation, cos it seems more than a few people can’t deal with their own thoughts. It should be painfully obvious, however, that personally, I absolutely love being in my own head, as I find it more interesting than what goes on in the external world. Maybe ‘interesting’ isn’t the best-fitting word, but generally speaking, it’s much more welcoming in here.

Photo unrelated. Well, perhaps a wee bit related

Sdtrk: ‘Sketch for summer’ by the Durutti Column

You’ll have to forgive me, as half the reason I’ve written this post is because I finally figured out, while in a state between wakefulness and sleep, the answer to a question that I’ve had for years, and was lucid enough to remember it, which really means I was more awake than asleep. What was that question, you ask? Why can’t I get into epic medieval fantasy, like, at all?

I’ve famously not played Dungeons & Dragons since probably about sixth grade. Franchises like Skyrim, Neverwinter, and Conan hold zero appeal for me. I’ve never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones, or watched anything past the first ‘Lord of the Rings’ film. Dragons make me shrug, elves kinda get on my wick. I am, by all accounts, averse to the fantasy genre of fiction. Although I was keen on The Chronicles of Narnia until I learned that CS Lewis was a god-botherer; having said that, ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ remains my favourite book out of that series. Plus John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ is always pretty fucking awesome. Now that I’ve mentioned that film, you’ve probably got ‘O Fortuna‘ in your head now, and rightly so. But I digress!
Really, the answer to my question made so much sense and was so #OnBrand that it makes no sense that I didn’t realise it up until now. Why am I not keen on sword and sorcery fiction? Because the world that the characters inhabit is filthy, everywhere.

As astute readers of ‘Shouting etc etc’ are already aware, I’m a semi-recovering germophobe (please refer to No.17 on my ‘85 things‘ page). I say semi-recovering, as I was doing relatively well until the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 went into Turbo mode in March. Prior to that, with the exception of vigorously wiping down any shopping trolleys before using them when buying groceries and sundries, it wasn’t an issue. But on the occasions where I absolutely can’t avoid having to leave the flat, I cram about five or so pairs of disposable rubber or latex gloves into my trouser pockets, strap my mask on, take a deep breath, and head out to do everything I have to do as quickly as I can so I can get back inside. Yep, 20fucking20. But before I go on in detail about how this year has been objectively the worst in the lifetimes of anyone with a conscience and a functioning brain, that picture I’ve painted should be enough to give you a sense of how I feel about uncleanliness. It’s gross!

Between fantasy and science fiction, it should come as no surprise that I prefer SF much, much more. For one, fantasy doesn’t have Gynoids in it, so that’s a tipoff right there. Take the prime example I always have at the front of my brain for something that approximates a futuristic Utopia: Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A space odyssey’; specifically, the space station Heywood Floyd was bumming around in.

Save for the fact that there’s a complete lack of Gynoids in it, and the populace is under threat of nuclear annihilation, that sort of environment has much greater appeal to me. Everything’s clean and shiny, the architecture, design, and fashion are smooth and modern, the temperature is regulated, there’s daily flights from Earth to Space station V and back, people wash on a regular basis… Whereas with medieval fantasy, it’s best exemplified in this image:

That’s from Aleksei German’s film adaptation of ‘Hard to be a god’ from 2013, by the way. It could be said that having that be my only example could easily be seen as a smear campaign, ah heh heh. But it’s worth considering: imagine tumbling headlong through some convenient time portal that whisks you back to, say, 1066, the year in which the culturally pivotal Battle of Hastings occurred. The French Normans invade England, English King Harold Godwinson gets shot through the eye with an arrow (disputed, but he definitely died on the battlefield), and England winds up with a dialect of French as their national language for roughly 500 years. Why do I know as much as I do about the Norman conquest? Blame an issue of National Geographic from the Sixties that my parents had containing an article that detailed the Bayeux Tapestry. It’s a comfort to know that if the bottom ever falls out of Synthetiks culture, I have my knowledge of the Battle of Hastings to fall back on! Which isn’t much.
Anyway! Back then, you were either royalty, or Peasant Scum™. If you’re the latter, your house is made of wood, thatch, or reeds, and every day, all you can smell is livestock. If you’re the former, you’re in a drafty castle, more than likely dying of gout whether you know it or not, and you don’t have indoor plumbing because outdoor plumbing doesn’t exist. No regular bathing, no deodorants of any sort, no shaving, no proper waste disposal, no proper medical treatment, nothing. Technically speaking, you’re more outside than inside! Try not to freeze to death, or die of heat stroke, or sepsis, or a thousand other murderous things! It is patently impossible to spin a romantic viewpoint on that style of day-to-day existence. Sure, you can argue that ‘medieval fantasy is fiction’, but even if I were in Darkest Mordovale or wherever wearing a full set of armour with a broadsword in hand, you couldn’t ask me to overlook the fact that the complete environment is stinky as fuck.

Right; I’ve just thought of another entry in the medieval fantasy genre that doesn’t repel me: Kentarou Miura’s long-running manga series, Berserk. In the interest of full disclosure, what attracted me to the series was the Lovecraftian aspect to a lot of the monsters and adversaries — God Hand, baybeee — but due to the fantastically insane brutality that the series portrays, the world the characters live in is not exactly hygenic. And that’s not counting all the bandit-led skirmishes, or wars between armies, or beings from an alternate plane of existence sacrificing thousands of people over a single night in order to fulfil an eldritch prophecy! Sure, you can say that after walking round day after day up to your shins in blood and corpses, that you’d simply get used to it, but… would you want to??

On the opposite end of the spectrum would be something like the telly shows produced by the creative mastermind that was Gerry Anderson. Series such as UFO, Captain Scarlet, Space: 1999, and Thunderbirds, amongst others, displayed worlds with technological advancements as well as adventure, and for the most part, they were clean. Granted, there were still pressing concerns such as disasters both natural and man-made, or a cold war with an alien race that could replicate any object or thing, or the Earth’s Moon being blasted out of orbit, or the threat of having your organs harvested by beings from another planet, but nothing’s perfect! At least things are clean, for god’s sake; that’s one less thing to worry about.

Going momentarily back to the real-life horror that is 2020, I’d seen a link in my Twitter feed months ago to a product called AIR, by a company called MicroClimate. What it is is a much-better, more futuristically-minded alternative to just donning a cloth mask over one’s face. AIR (their caps, not mine) is an acrylic helmet that covers the front half of one’s head; the back of the head is covered with a comfortable microfibre cloth that extends to the wearer’s neck. A combination of a fan and four HEPA filters keep the air (heh heh) inside the helmet fresh and fog-free. In short, wearing it makes you look as if you’re an astronaut, and that’s fucking amazing. Really, the only downsides to AIR are
+ the name (it’s lazy)
+ it doesn’t have an LED strip inside for lighting, so you can look like Sean Connery in ‘Outland’
+ the only available colour choices are black or white. Those suit my colour pallette fine, but there’s a lack of Factory grey, and
+ it’s USD$300. BOOOO.
It’s my hope that other companies will see MicroClimate’s product and make versions of their own for sale, at lower prices and with additional colour selections, ahem hem. Who wouldn’t want to be an astronaut?

A clever third-party retailer would go ahead and start designing cat ears you could pop on these bad boys

Maybe my praise of a product like AIR also exemplifies my extreme dislike of medieval fantasy. In those types of settings, physical strength will get you far, unless you’re some sort of wizard, whereas in science fiction, technology grants advantages to people across the board. Being a person who values intellectual prowess over physical ability, it’s little wonder why futuristic environments appeal much more to me. If the choice is between spending months training and working out for years, versus buckling myself into a powered exoskeleton or having my body augmented with cybernetic enhancements, I’m obviously going to spring for the quicker and much less sweat-producing option.

So that’s a revelation! You can keep your longhaired musclebound barbarians, and your shire-dwelling hairy-footed dwarves (disgusting), and your knights clad in armour that looks alright until you realise that armour is just barely containing a stench that’s enough to kill a dog. If you need me, I’ll be booking a flight from this orbiting space station to Clavius, but before that, I’m off to make a quick phonecall.

Hmm. Apparently it’s USD$1.70 for a two-minute call from an orbiting space station down to Earth. That’s $1.70 in ‘2001’ money, which was 1968 money, and this is why the economy is in the toilet

Sdtrk: ‘Gate’ by E&E

As one of my heroes, Oscar Wilde, famously quipped, ‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about’. Generally that’s a statement I’d agree with, as discussion (good or bad) prevents a person and the cause(s) they uphold from lapsing into complete obscurity, but you’ll note I said ‘generally’.

A friend of mine brought to my attention an online forum that was having a go at iDollators, as a number of forums often do, and due to the numerous media appearances that I’ve put in with my affictitious wife Sidore, one of the posters referred to me as a ‘famemonger’. For some reason that really rankled me, cos it implies, for one, that people such as the poster prefer that Doll lovers remain underground and are a group best left ignored. On a more personal level, describing me as a ‘famemonger’ is exactly the same as describing outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins as a ‘famemonger’. Or futurist David Levy. Or someone like… Oscar Wilde, as another example.

The reason Shi-chan and I choose to appear on assorted telly, print, and online interviews isn’t for recognition’s sake. Well, yeah, part of it is for the fame, but it’s not as if I’ve gone up a couple of tax brackets because of it*, but we primarily do them to attempt to explain and dispel any misconceptions people may have about Doll owners. Obviously, it’s impossible for me to speak for every iDollator — like any cultural group, our members are similar, but not necessarily the same — but neither Shi-chan nor I have heard any complaints from our community so far.

Think of it like this: each time a film or telly crew asks after Sidore and I, I attempt to get to know a wee bit about the aim of their programme before I say yes. American productions I’m especially curious as to what their goal is, as most programming from the US usually tries to show anything Doll-related in a prurient, ‘hey-check-out-these-weirdos’ light. People who don’t habitually read ‘Shouting etc etc’ are often surprised when I point out that Geraldo‘s come a-courtin’, or Springer, or Tyra, or Maury, or Alan Colmes, or Dr Phil. If I truly were a famemonger, I would’ve not only said yes to Geraldo et al, I would be actively trying to shoehorn my way onto any and all chat shows, magazines, etc etc. But as a person who’s doing his best to get the general public to see that artificial companions aren’t just for sex, obviously I want to be as careful as I can be when choosing what venues we participate in.

As far as my presence on the Internet goes, I don’t really go out of my way to promote myself. I have a Myspace page that I’m genuinely ashamed of, but I only have it for a specific reason, and I loathe Facebook more than is probably healthy. When I leave our flat to go places, I don’t announce where I’m going until I’ve left wherever it is I’ve been, cos I do occasionally get recognised. Zip Gun, SafeT, and I saw Zoos of Berlin perform in Pontiac in late March — a hell of a show, I might add; they were better than I thought they were, and I already liked them before I saw them — and in between the other acts that were on before Zoos of Berlin, I was spotted on three separate occasions. I don’t want to say that I don’t enjoy meeting people, it’s just that I’m still getting used to the concept of people asking if I was on telly, let alone the idea of me being on telly in the first place. And since I never was the type to stride up to a stranger and greet them before we started making our media appearances, people doing the same to me does freak me out a tiny bit. I’m attempting to get used to it, though.

Essentially, describing me a ‘famemonger’ is rather off-base; unfortunately, most members of the iDollator community go out of their way to not publicise who they are, due to fear of the reaction of their friends, family, or peers. As a result, the non-iDollator public often see the same faces over and over — Everhard’s, Gordon Griggs’, and my own. It’s not a case of graaah we’re doing this for the adulation yeaaahh, but more like we’re doing this cos it works for us, and we’re more than happy to suggest this idea to others, cos no-one else is.
Like it or not, people have to realise that Synthetik partners, whether they’re highly-detailed ‘love dolls’, or servo-driven Androids and Gynoids, are the future, and the more advanced they become, the more people will be likely to choose the Synthetik option, whether to satisfy curiosity, or to dispel loneliness, or what-have-you. Detractors would rather not have anyone speaking publically about the fact their partner is affictitious, as they find it uncomfortable for whatever ill-conceived reason, and would prefer the topic swept under the rug entirely. When it’s a case of a few voices speaking on behalf of many, it’s easier to try to discredit those voices through rumour, slander, and ignorance. It seems the obvious solution, really, is to increase the number of pro-Synthetik voices…

So yeah! Representative, yes; famemonger, no. There’s actually quite a vast difference between the two definitions that’s worth looking into

*not counting all the bling and bitches we’ve been stockpiling. Literally stockpiling. We’ve got a room where we have our daily shipment of bitches stacked like cordwood, for better storage. The bling, though, we just throw in a pile

Sdtrk: ‘We are the ones’ by ADULT.

Sometimes when I’m out and about, and the rare confluence of Having A Bit Of Free Time and Being Actually Inspired To Write happen to align, I’ll whip out my trusty Treo 700p smartphone, and merrily type away until the doctor, pope, or yakuza boss calls me in to see them. Unfortunately, some places happen to be a wee bit draconian about having cellphones in use on their property — Shitty Former Workplace, I’m looking squarely in your direction — so in those cases I’m forced to fall back on traditional analogue methods. Apart from constantly scribblin’ out parts where I have to edit, insert, or delete words, phrases, or sections, as well as my handwriting having devolved into absolute shit through lack of consistent use, pen and paper writing isn’t too bad, all told. It makes me feel like I’m doing something.

In writing this post, one whose own origins started out as a series of frantic black marks on a legal pad, my thoughts turned to genuine writers; specificially, ones who began their craft before the tail end of the 20th century. People like Ballard, Burgess, Burroughs — even authors whose names don’t start with the letter B — would often leave paper trails for their works, in the form of old drafts, character sketches, timelines, and the like. I recall reading an article on the website for The Guardian, about a bloke who was given the extremely rare opportunity to pick through the sum total of Stanley Kubrick’s written ephemera. My friend Zip Gun used to make yearly pilgrimages to the Lilly Library in Indiana, which houses undoubtedly the largest collection of Orson Welles materials in the world, as he was in the process of writing a book concerning a selection of Welles’ works. Now, that’s all well and good — keep in mind that Kubrick and Welles aren’t even writers per se, but directors — but one has to consider that not everyone who writes will have a dedicated archive to house their earlier drafts. It’d be fab if that were the case, with the exception of that Stephenie Meyer hack, of course, but would the planet have enough room? The solution is simple: turn the Moon into a library. Might as well get started now! *rolls up sleeves*

What I’m getting at, or at least, getting round to getting at, is what will become of all the first drafts for those of us who write primarily using a computer? Having the opportunity to read earlier versions of published works allow us to see their evolution, whther it’s interesting, or awkward, or both. The second revision of ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ ended with a pitched, eight-page gun battle, for instance, whilst the initial draft of Camus’ ‘L’Étranger’ boldly dispensed with any and all consonants. I don’t know of many individuals that habitually save the earlier revisions of what they’ve typed for weeks, let alone months, after their final drafts are struck. Maybe I just have a slash-and-burn approach to it all, but I regularly delete my accumulated post revisions whenever I’m hashing out a post on ‘Shouting etc etc’; the WordPress platform has a specific plugin for that (thanks Delete-Revision!), so your drafts don’t bog down your server. And that sheet of legal pad paper where this post first came into existence? Currently wadded up and residing in my kitchen rubbish bin.

Christ knows I’m the last person to knock technological advancements, but one has to consider what will become of a writer’s printed legacy in the digital age? And not to sound too NPR about it, the idea of the vanishing drafts may seem insignificant at first, but do we, as a culture, lose something because of it? It’s something to think about.
If any writer-types want to get their .02 pfennig in about this — Monti, Joe, and veach, obviously I’m looking squarely in your directions, but my invitation extends to everyone — you’re more than welcome to add your thoughts on the matter