Sdtrk: ‘jean-louis’ by Popporu

Just got back from Tomas‘ digs, helping him eBay his — well, pretty much everything he owns — so I’ll have to come up with a more substantial post later.

In the meantime, have you seen this? Those of you who loved Firefly, I’m sure, will be ecstatic. I know I am!

Sdtrk: ‘Cave control’ by Screaming MacGregor

Since Kokoro Company Ltd’s very own spokesmodel is at the Aichi World Expo 2005 right this very minute, they’ve updated their pages concerning your favourite Gynoid and mine (mostly mine), Actroid-chan, with two new movies (click on the Actroid banner, and click on the second link from the top that reads アクトロイド　ムービー公開中, cos the URL redirects are making sport of me), and a handful of new photos. Apparently, as they have an Actroid-chan working each of the information kiosks at the Expo, Kokoro has developed three different versions — one for each entrance — plus a sexay new standing version that does the emcee duties in another part of the exhibit. Roger that, and drooling now. Yum.

Miyu-chan, the East gate entrance Actroid

Sakura-chan, the North gate entrance Actroid

Sara-chan, the West gate entrance Actroid

the MC version at Kokoro’s Robot Station exhibit

Also managed to find this link, on a Japanese robot developer’s blog, to a very brief .avi of the pre-Expo Actroid-chan. Very cute, but she seems a wee bit irritable! Which I guess would make sense, if you had people poking you once every ten minutes to see if you were ‘real’ or not.

‘Please stop poking me already; it’s rude’

And (copied and pasted from my post about it on the Doll Forum) can’t believe I forgot to mention this before: Tokyopop is translating a somewhat new six-installment manga series called ‘DOLL’. It’s a loosely-related grouping of various tales having to do with Androids and Gynoids — called Dolls, obviously — and how they affect the lives of those who own them, those who hate them, and those who love them. They’re by one of my new favourite manga-ka (manga artist), Mitsukazu Mihara, who used to do the covers for the Gothic & Lolita Bibles, until she apparently started asking for too much money.
Like I said, there’s six issues total; they’re up to No.4, which I just picked up the other day. Ace artwork, compelling stories, and all about a subject we love so dearly. Give it a look!

Finally, this is a fab article that ran in The Japan Times last year that might help to explain the rationale behind a lot of us who own, or are aspiring to own, an Artificial companion. Damnit, Japan’s got it all over us!

‘Shouting to hear the echoes’. The only Blog you’ll ever need, for unashamedly biased Android / Gynoid / Synthetik / high-end love doll development news

Sdtrk: ‘Winter (studio outtake)’ by the Cure

Heh; today, for my Windows XP productivity class, we all had to do our PowerPoint presentations as part of our final.. whatever it was. I estimate that I spent 12 – 16 drawn-out hours developing my presentation, and what’s more I had to do it in the lab, as none of the computers here have PowerPoint. (Or Access, or Excel, but I do have Word, as that would be something I use in ‘real’ life.) There seemed to be an underlying theme — most of the women did more personal or human-related topics, i.e, the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, a nephew, a cruise, natural wonders of the world, post-partum depression. Whereas the blokes mostly did stuff that most blokes would go on about, i.e, motorcycles, wakeboarding, Mercedes-Benz cars, Chrysler cars, etc. The topic I picked was the history of the Mini Cooper, so I guess I slotted neatly into the latter category. I was the last to go, and I probably blazed my way through it faster than I would’ve liked (each student had five minutes), but I’d like to think I did rather well, especially compared to a lot of the other speakers.. I can say this: a lot of spellchecker buttons went unclicked, wherever these people assembled their projects. For fuck’s sake, people.
I’d also like to think I gave myself a wee bit of a boost by printing up several copies of a papercraft Mini, and passing one out to each student and the teacher. That was my ‘secret extra credit weapon’. 😉

You’ll forgive me if I don’t really discuss my school experiences on ‘Shouting etc etc’; despite my current drive to get my other 14 courses over and done with, academia and I are still rather estranged. I view school as a necessary evil, a means to an end. I really don’t like being there, and I highly doubt there’ll be a day when I don’t feel like an impostor whenever I walk up and down the corridors of my campus.

On Tuesday, I got to hang out with Marika, a friend of mine that I’ve not seen in a long time. We only got to convene for an hour before I had to get round to the lab — we stopped round to Quizno’s for lunch — but it was really great seeing her. I hadn’t physically seen her in over a year, and we hadn’t been able to get hold of each other until February of this year. She’d moved in with some furfucker for a while *shudders*, then she met a bloke and moved in with him, then she lost her job, and moved back in with her mum, and had her cellphone switched off. Now she’s got a job, and a new phone, and we’re back in business, as it were. She’d been wanting to reach me for a while, as back in early February, Derek said she’d stopped round to his house out of the blue, and wanted to know my phone number. Which was bizarre, cos I had attempted to contact her, and her old cellphone number was obsolete. So a couple of weeks after that, she called me from her folks’ house, but her mum didn’t want all sorts of calls at all hours of the eve, so Mari merely waited until she could afford a new cell. And that brings up to now.
Why is it ace, really, that Mari and I are speaking again? Mainly it’s cos back in the days when the Slag was living with me at No.23 Deafening silence, she accused Mari for doing something that was undoubtedly not her doing at all, and I, having no reason to suspect that the Slag was lying/just plain fucking delusional, went along with it, and informed Mari that when we bought our house, she wasn’t to set foot in it ever. Cue lots of crying and screaming. I think it goes without saying that it was a horrible day, and despite the fact that Mari forgives me for, well, thinking with my cock, I still feel guilty about being suckered to the point where I cut off our friendship.

So like I said, it’s nice to have Mari back. After Monti, she was my second female friend to learn about Shi-chan and RealDolls in general, and not only was she happy to appear with Sweetie & I when the French came round to film, but she’s open-minded enough to think that sort of thing is really ace. (She has been designated Shi-chan’s Organik sister.)
Plus, her height makes me feel taller than I actually am, and that’s always nice 😉

Sdtrk: ‘Noise grinder’ by Speedranch ^ Jansky noise

SOME GUY: ‘JESSE!!’
JESSE (setting up his bass amp): ‘I don’t know your name, so I can’t yell back.’
SOME GUY: ‘It’s Steven!’
JESSE: ‘Hey, Steven!’ *waves*
As predicted, Jeff and I trekked out to the Lager House to see Death from above 1979, and I even managed to persuade Derek to come with, and enjoy his first live performance since the late 90s. None of us had ever been to the Lager House before; it’s this bar located within the shadow of the original Tiger Stadium, and it was rather small, to say the least. ‘An intimate venue’, as papers would probably describe it. Which isn’t bad at all, but we thought that since DFA’79 had played larger venues elsewhere, they’d be playing one here. Alas! Like I said, though, it wasn’t a bad bar — the performing area was roughly the length of a typical basement — but they kinda need to address their soundboard problems. I’ll get to that in a bit..

DFA’79 and their two opening acts were doing a two-shows-one-day thing; the doors opened for the all ages show at 5pm, and the 18+ show was at 9pm. We elected to go to the earlier one, so we could get back round to Jeff’s afterwards and catch the recent episode of Doctor Who, among other things.
After a 45min long soundcheck, and a premature start due to a problem with one of the guitarist’s amps, the first act up was Controller.controller, some band none of us had heard of, but they had their following, as quite a few of the emo kids were singing along. The musicians were pretty tight (despite the fact that the drummer wore a ski mask. If your drummer has a ‘gimmick’, your band is probably shite), and the vocalist lass, who reminded me a bit of Siouxsie Sioux, seemed to be enjoying herself, but her voice just didn’t seem all that polished as compared to the rest of the music. Maybe she sounds better on Cd. It’s a bit like Photoshopping supermodels; they look ace in print or on telly, but meet them in ‘real’ life, and you might be disappointed.. Overall, Controller.controller get a B for effort.

I’m gonna derail my narrative for a wee bit, and point out that I really have no idea what the fuck today’s hipster kids are supposed to be dressed as. It’s like they’re taking all the bad parts of the 70s and the 80s and squishing it together into some supposedly-ironic heap of crap. Girls with razor-cut hairdos and guys with those goddamned trucker hats. And every third person with either facial machinery, a white leather belt with pyramid studs on it, or both. And don’t even get me started on those fucking emo glasses. I don’t like emo, and I wish to set it on fire.

Anyway! Second act was Lee Marvin computer arm. I wish I could say something memorable about them, but I can’t. I can, however, note, that we couldn’t even hear the lead vocalist; either his mike wasn’t plugged in (a real American tragedy, to be sure), or he was screaming at a level that only dogs can hear. Hooray for the Lager house soundboard!

Around quarter to eight, DFA’79 finally went on, and about ten minutes after that, they started playing, having kinda sorta ironed out their own problems with the soundboard. It was a fast set, but it was pretty ace, and loud as hell (we were standing about eight feet away from one of the PAs). Sebastien’s vocals sounded a little blown out, though; I mean, even moreso than usual, but DFA’79 really proves that you really don’t need a guitarist to demolish your opponents musically. Is Jesse as good as the God of All Bassists, Peter Hook? No, but he’s damn close..
Towards the end of the set, DFA’79’s new best friend Steven (see above) kept requesting they play ‘Little girl’. He’d requested it about five or six times.
STEVEN: ‘LITTLE GIRL!!’
SEBASTIEN: ‘Fuck you.’
*audience laughs*
JESSE: ‘We don’t tell you how to suck dick when you’re out on the street corner.’
AUDIENCE: ‘OOoooooohh!!’
Then they launched into ‘Little girl’, ‘by request’, Sebastien added. 🙂

I’d say we all enjoyed ourselves. Good show!
Now it’s Sunday eve, and I’ve got like 95% of my hearing back! Woo hoo!

Sdtrk: ‘Steven Smith’ by the Organ

Here’s another example of one of those buildings that I’ve seen hundreds of times before, but I never really knew much about it: Marina City, located in Chicago.

Architect Bertrand Goldberg designed Marina City to be a “city within a city”. The apartment portion of the complex was completed in 1964. The two towers contained 896 units and a variety of amenities. [..] Amenities include the Marina Cleaners, Marina Food & Liquor, Crunch Fitness, 10 Pin Bowling, Bank One and several restaurants.

For my money, this is the way we should be living — cities that grow up as opposed to out. It’s pretty much self-contained! Any structure that contains living amenities as well as parking and shopping AND a bowling alley is beyond ace. Also, from what I understand, there’s a House of Blues in one of the towers.. which I find repellent, but apparently it used to be a theatre. Niiice.
Not only that, but the buildings themselves scream ‘retro Jetson-style living’, from their cylinders of concrete and steel, to the 19 lower floors used for car park purposes. But that’s to be expected from an architect that studied under my man Mies van der Rohe.

Should I suddenly decide to move to Chi-town instead, you’ll find me at those towers

Sdtrk: ‘An eye for optical theory’ by Michael Nyman

I’m back on the Internets! After browbeating two SBC Amerifuck tech ‘support’ monkeys, who I daresay were calling from India, we now have better speeds than last time. Going back and forth with some tosser named Sam, we assessed that the problem was their fault, not ours, and it’d be seen to before 6pm that Tuesday eve. So after still having hideous non-speeds at 11pm, I called a second time, this time speaking with a different churl, and telling him that nothing had improved. The connection speed was ramped up about twenty minutes after my call. Results!
Just so you have an idea of what I was dealing with, I took a screenshot of the speed our connection was at at its slowest point, after visiting the SBC Americunt speed test site. (It’s kinda helpful to know the URL if you happen to be cursed with their DSL service, so I’ve reproduced the link here.) Anyway, the screenshot is kinda dodgy, but you have to see it. Yeah. Now wouldn’t you agree that’s a reason to be angry?

On the lighter side of things, I have finally found the name of the style of shades/glasses that I love. If you’re a mate of mine that’s actually seen me in person on more than one occasion, you already know that I own four or five pairs of shades. All of them have the same frame, but they’re all slightly different — one is transparent with mirror lenses, one is black with blue mirror lenses, etc. I’ve always wanted to find more variations of those shades, and eventually buy a pair of (fake) glasses with those frames, as they’re the only kind that look good on my face, but I never knew what they were called. Well, now I know — they style is called the browline, and the models are called either the ronsir, or the clubman.

Classically ace! They’re fine frames, fine frames. Now I need to scour online stores and estate sales for those bad boys..

Gonna try to catch Death from above 1979 at the Lager house this Saturday. The more I hear them, the more I like them, even though the cover for their latest Cd kinda scares me

Sdtrk: none

Short and sweet: Both of the computers here are having difficulties getting a decent internet connection. Everything is moving very very slowly. I was online with a so-called SBC technical assistant for an hour last night, whereupon he had me go to their test page to assess how fast my connection was (or wasn’t). According to the test, my current speed is slower than dial-up.

Back later. Angry now. So there you have it