Sdtrk: ‘Wow’ by Kate Bush

Due to the nature of an extended joke between myself and Steve, my first ex-roommate, I was doing a bit of research on Teh Internets on the godlike* Morrissey, and ran across a splendid quote from this interview with him last year in the Guardian Unlimited. To be honest, it’s a Morrissey interview; most of the quotes are gonna be splendid. But this one really stood out in my mind:

“Well, you see, I consider [choosing to be alone] to be a privilege. I don’t feel like I live alone because I’ve made a terrible mistake or I’m difficult to look at. Can you imagine being able to do what you like and never having to put up with any other person? And their relatives.

“You can constantly develop when you’re by yourself. You don’t when you’re with someone else. You put your own feelings on hold and you end up doing things like driving to supermarkets and waiting outside shops – ludicrous things like that. It really doesn’t do.

“We feel that there’s a shame to being uncompromising and there’s a terrible sadness to solitude, but none of the great poets ever thought that.”

There he goes, striking nails on the head again. One of the things I always say is that I love my friends to death, but one of the best things about them is that at the end of the day, I can say ‘Bye, friends!’ and go home to be by myself. With other people in your home, you always have to take their wants & needs into consideration. Which may sound selfish — and I’ll admit that in a way, it is — but if you’re constantly doing stuff with or for others, when exactly do you have time for yourself?

Ideally, once I move North, I’d like to have a big enough place for a couple of mates to crash at, which will prevent them from forking out money for a hotel room or whatever, but as I’m fairly certain they’re not gonna be driving up to Canada every week-end, 99% of the time it’ll just be me, and my upcoming passel of RealDolls and other Synthetiks. 😉 Which is just the way I prefer it. No strange and unwanted people staying round wearing out their welcome, no having to drop everything you’re doing to drive someone from point A to point F, no panic at the end of the month when your roommate doesn’t have their half of the rent money. The only person I’ll have to answer to is myself.

Some people are just natural isolationists; this doesn’t make us sociopaths. It’s better to be by yourself on your own terms, than to be forced into living with others against your better judgement. I find that ever since I moved out of Steve’s place, we get on ten times better than we used to living under the same roof. Not to say that living there was bad, but it wasn’t all rootbeer & skittles, either. And needless to say, living with The Slag was fifty times worse.
Solitary living really is a much better solution than people initially think it is

*’godlike’ status only extends to Morrissey during his years with the Smiths. Now, he’s just ‘iconic’

Los Angeles Times, I salute you for your forward thinking.

‘L.A. Times’ Drops Daily ‘Garfield’ as the Comic Is Blasted and Praised
By Dave Astor | Published: January 05, 2005 12:50 PM ET

NEW YORK The Los Angeles Times dropped the daily version of “Garfield,” the most widely distributed comic in syndication.

“Garfield” has received mixed reviews in recent years, but the Times is one of the few papers to ever dare pull it. Reader reaction? “We are getting complaints,” said Jennifer James, a Times editorial aide, but she declined to reveal how many.

The Times dropped the daily “Garfield” effective two days ago — while keeping the Sunday “Garfield” — to make room for “Brevity,” a new comic by Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry of United Media (E&P Online, Dec. 9).

“We’re always trying to get some new talent in the comics pages,” said James, who did not make the “Garfield” decision.

Gene Weingarten, a humor columnist for The Washington Post and Washington Post Writers Group, praised the Times decision during his weekly washingtonpost.com chat yesterday. He said the paper displayed “the kind of cojones missing in too many places” and described “Garfield” as “a strip produced by a committee, devoid of originality, devoid of guts, a strip cynically DESIGNED to be inoffensive and bad, on the theory that public tastes are insipid. [emphasis mine] Now we need others to follow suit. Like the Post.”

When asked for a response to Weingarten’s comments and the Times action, Universal Press Syndicate Director of Communications Kathie Kerr said today: “Our understanding is that ‘Garfield’ ran in a children’s section of the Los Angeles Times. When a feature is dropped on pages which are predominantly read by children, those young readers are less likely to complain or demand its return.”

She added that Jim Davis is “hands on” with his comic, and concluded: “‘Garfield’ is the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world, and that speaks volumes to its popularity. More than 2,700 newspapers worldwide publish it, and, in the last year, more than 50 newspaper clients were added. It’s an easy-to-get laugh a day and that endears it to millions of children and adults worldwide.”

I can remember when Garfield was actually funny. That was for a couple of weeks, back during the fucking Reagan administration. I can understand wanting to milk a ca$h cow dry, but I mean, jesus christ already. How many times can you do a variation on the ‘fat lazy Monday-hatin’ lasagna-lovin’ cat oversleeps’ four-panel strip? Apparently, several thousand times.

If I had limitless sums of monies at my disposal, I would bestow a grant to some programmers, so that they could create a programme that would take every single Garfield strip and variant thereof (i.e, calendar installments, greeting cards, etc) made, and see exactly how many times Jim Davis has done the same three or four ‘jokes’ over & over. Then, I would give another grant to a group of scientists, so they can run a battery of tests to see how much more raw Banality has entered the Universe since Garfield’s inception. Finally, upon receiving and analysing the results from both groups, I would write another sizeable cheque, and give it to some bloodthirsty contract killers, and immediately dispatch them to Jim Davis Estates.

Good christ. For that matter, why is Bil ‘The Family Circus’ Keane still alive? Does no-one else see that as being a problem??

My brakes are going tits up! Also, today I was fired!

I’m going to bed, before anything else fucked-up happens. Wake me up when my classes start next Wednesday

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

Dear so-called ‘hardcore’ gamers that think that cheat codes are for ‘pussies’: Fuck you. I love cheat codes. I heartily approve of cheat codes. All videogames need cheat codes. I look at it this way: If I pay $50 for a game, I want to be able to enjoy it as much as I can, in order to get the most for my dollar. That means unlocking every mission, getting every weapon, acquiring all outfits, rolling up every object, etc; or, at the very least, the ability to squeeze a lot of enjoyable replay out of it. Sometimes — not all the time, but sometimes — I require a little extra help to reach that goal of Game Satisfaction, and if that help comes in the form of a cheat code, then so be it.

At the time of this writing, I own thirty PS2 games, two PC games (American McGee’s Alice and No one lives forever), between ten and twelve PSX games, and my beloved copy of Tekki/Steel battalion. Concentrating on the PS2 games, out of thirty of those, I’ve finished about twenty-one. ‘Finished’, in my definition, means seeing the ending credits. Now, as all gamers know, just because you’ve seen the credits roll doesn’t mean that’s it for the game — that’s why I say ‘finished’, and not ‘completed’, as there may be items to obtain, or extra areas to clear or what have you, that I’ve not accomplished yet. My tally of completed PS2 games is about four. That’s not something I’m entirely proud of.
SoulCalibur 2, for instance, has a clock feature that enables you to see, in real-time, how many hours you’ve logged in on that game; mine reads somewhere around fifty hours, and I still have yet to unlock Lizardman, and I’m missing a bunch of art cards & weapons. GunGriffon Blaze, the second game I ever bought for my system back in 2001, remains two stages away from completion. And I still haven’t gotten all the feckin’ compasses in Disaster report, and I’ve finished the game three times. I’ve clocked hundreds of hours with these games, but despite that, Total Completion continues to elude me.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not as if I view these games as a chore to play, otherwise I’d have sold them a long time ago. I’ll still fire up my older games every now and again, and play them for hours on end. So why bother with cheat codes, you say? Well, just because I’m still playing these games doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve gotten any further on some of them — I’m content to play the opened/finished stages over and over again. But if I keep hitting a dead end where I can’t progress past this or that level, to me that means I’ve not gotten my full money’s worth. If I had the kind of free time where I could afford to spend six hours every day of the week attempting to take out Nine breaker, that’d be great, but I have other things I have to do. But I won’t feel fulfilled if I don’t see what else there is of the game past Nine breaker’s demise, or whatever.
Good example: I paid $150 for my copy of Tekki/Steel battalion. (yes, one hundred and fifty US dollars.) The game contains 23 missions total. I’ve finished five. Did I get my money’s worth there? I mean, I love playing the game, as it’s fun as hell, but I’d like to at least finish the initial 12 stages..

So, yeah! Cheat codes are the solution. And no, I don’t entertain any thoughts such as ‘if you use cheats, there’s no challenge’. Bullshit. BloodRayne 1 and 2 have built-in cheat codes, and even with them in use, they’re still difficult games. You can still very easily get killed in Way of the samurai even if you use the ‘Restore life’ cheat. And don’t even talk to me about Grand theft auto.
So I have absolutely no qualms about using cheat codes in difficult areas, and as far as those games that really don’t have any helpful codes to speak of, I’ll be investing in a GameShark sometime later this month. It’s not as if I’ll stop playing my collection once I have Everything, but having Everything will definitely increase the enjoyment of my games

Four more years of a hillbilly despot. That’s fucking fantastic.

I have to say that at this point, I’ve completely lost faith in the general American populace. Obviously I’m not the only one disappointed, but I was hoping against hope that enough voters, even republicans, would recognise what a mindless rolling twat Dubya is. Heh, I really should’ve lowered my expectations.

O well. I suppose there’s nothing left to do now but hope Dubya doesn’t suddenly instate a retroactive draft, or alienate any more allied countries, or sodomise the economy even further, or get us all nuked into oblivion, or etc etc

Although I wouldn’t call myself Pagan, as I feel that I’ve not studied enough of it to call myself one, I’d say that per capita, Pagans are more sensible than those who follow christian-based dogma. But I would say that.
So today is Samhain, the Pagan New year! And this year’s Samhain marks a vaguely special occasion for me, as I will no longer be spelling words in that ‘pseudo-Genesis P-Orridge’ fashion anymore. Yes, from now on, I’m spelling like a *gasp* normal person. No more ‘ov’ for ‘of’, no more.. gods, well, that’s about it, really, now that I think of it.

First of (man, that’s gonna take some getting used to) all, since this Blog is still relatively new, you’ve never really experienced the full horror of What Used To Be My Spelling Style. I began my alternate spelling back around 1991 as a tribute to one of my favourite bands of all time, Throbbing gristle. Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Chistopherson, and their ostensible front-man, Genesis P-Orridge, were four art-terrorists from Manchester back in the mid-to-late Seventies, who could well be held responsible for starting the whole Industrial music & culture scenes. They were practical philosphers, they were influential trendsetters, they were artists & musicians, they were perverted deviants. They were, and still are, entirely ace.
One of their main goals was to ‘subvert from within’; meaning, transmitting non-mainstream thoughts, ideas, and concepts to the masses using mainstream methods. They maintained that just because you were brought up to think and behave in a certain way, that you didn’t have to stick with it for your entire life, especially if it wasn’t producing the desired results for you. One of Genesis’ early experiments was to transform his spelling style into something entirely ‘other’; and, being the big slobbering TG fanboy that I was at the time, I thought it would be a good idea to follow suit. Allow me to run thru some of my past writings and lay some examples on you:

Referring again to the above statement made by Mr LaVey, he says, ‘Artificiality is more than completely honest; it forestalls disappointment at things not being what they appear to be.’ W/ Artifice, wot you see is truly wot you get. However, knowing beforehand that you’ve aquired something Synthetik, it also becomes the best possible excuse for stretching yr imagination to its fullest extent, because if yr’e anything like me, yr dream/phantasy life is much more preferable to yr waking life.

Heh. I had hoped to cite more examples by pulling from some of my older fiction, but as I still don’t have a copy of MS Word 2000, I can’t open any of my files, which were saved on the screechingly obsolete MS Works 98. Goddamn you, Micro$quish, and your stupid .wps extensions. :-\
Needless to say, my writing was a lot more impenetrable back then; the above example is when I was just beginning to curtail my unusual spelling. In my ‘heyday’, the pronoun ‘I’ would be spelt as ‘E’; a ‘y’ at the end of a word would be swapped out with ‘ie’; an extra ‘e’ was added at the end of ‘the’; most all words containing a hard ‘c’ had it spelt with a ‘k’ instead — but not if the ‘c’ was the first letter in said word, so I’d spell ‘contact’ as ‘contakt’; if the word ended in ‘ve’, I’d drop the ‘e’, etc etc. As you suspect, this was a lot of work to keep up with! It was interesting, and definitely distinctive — people on the various BBSes and Forums that I’d populate would instantly know it was me whenever I posted — but after doing this for around a decade, I think I’ve pretty much had enough. Not to mention the fact that I am a rather high-ranking spelling & grammar Nazi, so even though I knew that my alternate spelling was incorrect (and I still justify it by saying that only when you know what the rules are, then you can break them), but I’m sure to many people it seemed hypocritical.

Happy Hallowe’en! Normal spelling from Davecat, for now, and forever! Not counting when I spell like a person from the UK, ov course…
Whoops! Mea culpa!