Sdtrk: ‘All tomorrow’s parties’ by the Velvet underground and Nico

Just so you know, Sweetie’s site has been updated, for those of you who are into that sort of thing, of course..

And isn’t Devil may cry 3 out today? What the hell am I doing at home??
*runs out door*

Sdtrk: ‘Love without sound’ by White noise

Saturday eve Jeff & I got round to Derek’s, for our usual festival of hullaballoo, chicanery and folderol. Jeff brought his copies of ‘Waking life‘ and ‘Infernal affairs‘ for viewing. (Might I add here that he didn’t just buy the domestic version with the shitty cover art; he sprung for the six-disk box set that includes all three films, a ‘Making of’ disk for each film, and a miniature binder that includes critical notes — all housed in a black plastic box protected with black bubble wrap. Most impressive) ‘Infernal affairs’ was rather good, and ‘Waking life’ was alright, but didn’t do a whole lot for me — it was a case of a lot of people presenting various points on lucid dreaming, the nature of reality, and social evolution, but the characters/points that didn’t interest me seemed to go on and on, whilst the people I wanted to hear didn’t get enough screentime.

But lemme tell ya, the highlight of the evening? SpikeTV’s Hey! Spring of trivia, the best psychotically-dubbed Japanese television show since Iron chef. The episode we caught was one wherein they attempted to judge how far the tortoise and the hare ran when they had their legendary marathon. The staffers went to a library in New York that contained the oldest known print versions of Aesop’s fables. Since the distance was never actually mentioned, they took a tortoise and a hare, and had them each run down a length of perspex tunnel. Then they calculated the distance each one of them moved in ten seconds’ time, and had a college professor multiply that, factoring in that the overconfident hare took a nap (which they closely monitored the length of as well, using a videocamera), to come up with the answer, which was 894km, if I remember correctly. It’s properly demented, which is how I like my television, but it’s fat-packed full of trivia, which makes it double-plus good. The show rules, pure and simple.
I cast a vote for it on TVShowsOnDVD.com, but between now and the time it’s actually released, I REQUIRE TORRENTS!!

Sdtrk: ‘Fuses’ by Stereolab

I must be in some sort of building rut. Perhaps long-dead architects are attempting to contact me from beyond the graaaave. You know, like the Ghost of Architectural Christmas Past That Was Designing Buildings For The Future or something.

Anyway! Do these photos look as creepy to you as they do to me?

It’s as if it’s 1982, and I’m flipping through an issue of OMNI, staring at those bizarre illustrations that graced the pages between the short works of science fiction.
I mean, I want to live in a high-rise apartment, but these are just slightly more colourful versions of the buildings in Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’. There’s hardly any sky, it’s just walls.

Ace photography, but I mean, good lord. J.G Ballard characters would refuse to live in these structures

Sdtrk: ‘Never understand’ by The Jesus and Mary chain

D’ye remember how I was exhorting people to take a Gmail invite from me cos Shi-chan & I had so many? Well, I gave away four, but since then I’ve discovered that even if you give them away, Gmail just sends you some new invites, thereby perpetually keeping you at ’50 invites left’. It’s like an Internet version of Sisyphus’ little problem! You give them away, they keep coming back! YOU GIVE THEM AWAY, THEY KEEP BUH HUH HUH *drops to knees, weeps openly*

And you have to check out this recent post that Penda’s scribed.

So I promised that I would scan and post some early journal entries from my childhood.

Scary, but a funny kind of scary. 🙂
I’d do something of a similar nature, but I kinda had a scorched-earth policy on any school-related documents prior to 9th grade. No, I mean, literally — I set them all ablaze

Sdtrk: ‘Sweet hit sherbet’ by Masonna

Instead of tackling architecture (sounds painful), this volume is about a really fab Danish designer by the name of Verner Panton. It’s still on topic!

Panton’s other great contribution to mid-century design is his ceaseless experimentation with lighting. His “Fun” series of shell lamps, his hanging “Globe” lamp and a wide variety of chandeliers introduced a new approach to lighting. He designed entire walls filled with lit panels and futuristic UFO shaped hanging lights. Panton’s designs were made to sway, spiral, create sounds and, most of all, to use color to create completely unique lighting systems for interiors.
quoted from this site

Verner’s designs exemplified a lot of the Euro-design from the mid-to-late Sixties. Back then, even if you didn’t know his name, more than likely you’d have seen one of his lamps, or sat in one of his chairs, or been lucky enough to wander around in one of his environments. You could argue that his style is ‘dated’ today, but that makes it all the better. These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find any contemporary styles that even come close to his uniqueness, and that’s what makes Verner’s futuristic Pop-art visions even more worthy of investigation