Sdtrk: ‘When it rains, the puddles shine black’ by Leyland Kirby

It appears that another one of my favourite authors has passed away: Jerome David Salinger has died of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire, at the age of 91.

JD Salinger, in a recent photo

Obituary: JD Salinger
BBC News | Published Thursday, 28 January 2010

When The Catcher in the Rye first appeared in 1951, chronicling 48 hours in the life of a teenage rebel, Holden Caulfield, as he wanders the streets of New York in a state of mental collapse, it enjoyed early, but modest success.

But within a few years, it had become a bible of teenage dissent in America and a staple of high school and freshman college English courses.

A study of adolescence — at once tender and harshly honest — it spoke for millions of young people who didn’t want to be “phoney” in a commercial, materialistic world.

Caulfield became a cult figure comparable with James Dean, but it seems the novel also had an undesirable influence on Mark David Chapman, who said he killed John Lennon to promote Salinger’s work, and the man who shot and wounded Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley.

Almost immediately after “Catcher” was published, Salinger became disillusioned with publishing.

He hated interviews and contact with the public and in 1953, increasingly fed up with publishing and the public, he bought a house at Cornish, New Hampshire, and retreated into a seclusion that was to last for the rest of his life.
the entire article is here

Like many people, I was introduced to Salinger through ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, which stands as an honest tale of disillusionment. It may be slightly dated — it takes place during the very late Forties — but its sentiment still holds true. But then I began reading his other stories, and pretty much fell unhealthily in love with the Glass family, a family of five brothers and two sisters. They were blessed with precociousness at a young age, which was exploited for years through being panelists on a radio quiz show, and suffered the price for it as they grew older.
From Holden to the Glass family, as well as many other Salinger characters, the underlying theme of many of his stories is that of a dissatisfaction with the way society is, and how short of falling into lockstep conformity, living a decent individualistic lifestyle can be extremely difficult.

Salinger is once quoted as saying that he was in this world, but not of it, which is a sentiment I can completely empathise with. It may sound strange coming from someone who enjoys being a public face for the community that he represents, but apart from the resonant and bittersweet tone of his characters, I always admired the fact that Salinger was a recluse’s recluse, and yet still managed to garner the attention of millions. That’s really something to be proud of

Sdtrk: ‘Notre Prof d’Anglais’ by Chantal Kelly

Ah-hem. Some news in brief!

Last Tuesday, I was unceremoniously fired from my mentally and morally offensive job, after three years of sterling service. ‘Consistently rude and terse to customers’, was their cowardly excuse for letting me go. Frankly, I’m surprised that it took as long as it did. I’m in the midst of rejoining the dole queue, but I’m trying not to let it get me down. As much as I hated that job — and believe me, I fucking loathed that job — I enjoyed receiving money from it. I’m viewing this event as the much-needed arse-kicking I… err, needed… in order to get something that isn’t as hideous and/or pays more. Since the past year and a half, I’d been looking into changing employment, but this should really get me motivated. I’m just not entirely keen on jumping without a parachute, but I’m hoping it turns out for the better real soon…

Just after that, iDollators Euchre, CJD, Mahtek and I attended the AVN expo in Las Vegas, from the 07th to the 11th of this month. It’s safe to say that we had a hell of a time! I managed to compile notes, in between walking up and down Vegas’ main drag and fondling Doll jubbleys, so expect a couple of posts describing the meetup, in protracted detail, relatively soon! Technically, I’ve really no excuse for dragging my heels! It’s not like I have a job to report to or anything!
Sneak preview: one of the many, many highlights of those four and a half days was meeting sexpot photographer of sexpot Dolls, Stacy Leigh! Her sassy firecracker attitude makes me think that meeting her is about as close as I’m gonna get to meeting one of Warhol’s Silver Dream Factory superstars.

photo by Mrs ARDO, who is a star in her own right as well

And would you believe I was interviewed for an article for the Las Vegas Weekly whilst out there? It’s true.

So as I have a bollockload of notes and photos, I’ll attempt to sort the lot out this week and get it all finished!…
Now, let’s see about this godforsaken ‘jetlag’ that I keep hearing so much about. Personally, I don’t believe it really exisZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

EDIT (13 Jan): Just got a date confirmation: the episode of National Geographic’s ‘Taboo’ series that we’re in, ‘Strange love‘, will be aired on Wednesday, 10 February, at 10pm. Which will undoubtedly be spread all over the Intersnet about a week later, but there you have it

Sdtrk: ‘The romance of the telescope’ by OMD

Now that I seem to have my iPod properly functioning (although that Shake function is completely worthless. Drop your iPod by accident, and bam! Suddenly you’re listening to a different song. Yeah, that’s practical), I’ve begun downloading various podcasts that catch my fancy. One of them, which is to say two of them, cos they cover the same topic and are released by the same group, would be Talking Robots and Robots, both by the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (EPFL), in Lausanne, Switzerland. As I usually listen to them on the way to work, currently I’m a third of the way through the interview they conducted with one of my favourite people, David Levy, author of ‘Love and Sex with Robots’, and it makes for encouraging listening! Both podcast series have quite a backlog, so I’m fairly sure they’ll keep me occupied for some time…
Incientally, if anyone out there can suggest any more podcasts that you think I’d like — not just robots and Synthetiks, mind you, but stuff that fits in with the whole ‘Shouting etc etc’ oeuvre — do please let me know!

So what with the timing of me stumbling upon these podcasts, and learning about the following piece in the Washington Times from spurtBOT, it makes for a happy bit of synchronicity:

Are artificial wives on the horizon?
By Paul Christensen | Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Futurologist Ray Hammond says he thinks […] machine consciousness will happen toward the middle of the current century – the same time frame in which Mr. Levy has said robot marriage will occur.

“There will certainly be emotional attachment between humans and machines,” Mr. Hammond says, “although I don’t think ‘marriage’ is anything other than a word for headline writers. People already form weak emotional bonds with inanimate objects, and as objects become increasingly intelligent, these bonds will strengthen.”

Mr. Levy, however, says he thinks sentience is not the real issue. He points out that it isn’t the algorithm people fall in love with, but the convincing simulation. “If a robot appears in every way to possess consciousness, then in my opinion, we should accept that it does,” he says.
the entire article is here

Now, if you’ll recall, the date in this post’s title would be January 2010. That’s two thousand and ten, ladies and gentlemen. Now, it seems to me that if we’re in the future, which is now the present, we should be that much closer to fully-realised artificial humans, right? THIS IS NOT HAPPENING FAST ENOUGH. I’ll even overlook the distinct lack of manned commercial daily flights to one of the many colonies on the lunar surface, or the non-appearance of flying cars, if we can just get this whole Synthetik companion thing kick-started. Not just passive ones, such as Dolls, but active ones, like, I dunno… Cherry 2000. Let’s not have another decade pass without consumer-market Androids and Gynoids, here. *claps hands impatiently*

Until that glorious day arrives, however, we still have new models of Dolls to look forward to, thankfully. SynthCreations, for instance, have secretly debuted a new head for their standard Mecadoll body! Her name is Emanuelle; won’t you make her welcome?

Improved cleavage for… better cleaving

Her face is unusual, cos it falls between my particular parameters of being attractive, and not attractive. But that’s all right, cos again, it fills a niche! What may not be stunning to me may be pants-shrinkingly luscious to someone else, you know…

This here was brought to my attention via Wolfgang: an Organik lass had doll joint tattoos done. It should go without saying that I like the cut of this girl’s jib!

Very nice, but you can’t just stop at the legs! Perhaps this will inspire some enterprising young lass to go for an all-over ball-joint doll tattoo scheme. Hans Bellmer would be proud! And, more than likely, aroused, but you can hardly blame him, really. You can view the rest of the pics over at BME.

And thanks to various friends on le Twittré, I was informed that the episode of National Geographic’s ‘Taboo’ documentary series that Shi-chan and I shot back in June of 09 is finally due out! The episode is apparently entitled ‘Strange Love‘, and the Missus and I are occupying a segment of it, airing our views and voicing our opinions, cos that’s what we do. As of this writing, I don’t have the exact airdate — at the very least, it’ll be after 17 January — but you’ll want to keep an eye out for it, obviously, and I’ll let you know when I know, yada yada yada.
Hey, does this mean people will be hitting me up through Myspace again? Ergh

Technorati tags: Android, Gynoid, robot, Synthetiks, technosexual, Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, David Levy, Love and Sex with Robots, SynthCreations, tattoos, Hans Bellmer, Body Modification Ezine, National Geographic Taboo