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: ‘Pyjamarama’ by Roxy music

Several months ago, an iDollator mate of mine and I were chatting via text, and surprisingly, the topic turned to mannequins. I’m not actually being clever when I say ‘surprisingly’, as I can’t recall how the conversation shifted, and as this was months ago, if you think I’m going to scroll through my texts to discover why, you lot are out of your minds. But! Our chat did give me an idea, as there’s a part of Synthetik History we have here at Deafening silence Plus that I don’t think we shared with new girl Dyanne…

~ later ~

DYANNE: ‘so whatcha got in here? 🤔😯’
ME: ‘Before I moved out of my parents for the first time, every couple of months I’d write letters — actual physical letters — to various mannequin companies, asking them to send me catalogues. That box contains everything I’d received over two or three years. Open it up!’

DYANNE: ‘whaaaaaaattt??!? holy cow!! 😳😍’
ME: ‘I know, right?? I can’t even remember what I’d told ’em to get those! Probably I was a filmmaker who needed props or something.’

DYANNE: ‘now what the hell is all this over here?? 😯😗’
ME: ‘Remember how I’d told you that, back in the early Nineties, I’d go up to Mario’s Mannequins in downtown Detroit like once a month and take photos “for photo class”? A couple of weeks before they closed up shop, I kinda pestered Mario for any catalogues he wanted to get rid of, and this is what he gave me.’

DYANNE: ‘SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. there’s stuff in here from 1986, 1989… and this is from 1983?? this is crazy! this is literally mannequin history!! 😳🤘😄’
ME: ‘There’s a catalogue in there somewhere from 1979, too. Plus I’ve got one of two mannequin blokes from the early Eighties wearing appalling clothes.’
DYANNE: ‘ha ha! so when you say “appalling”… 🙁’
ME: ‘Think Herb Tarlek from “WKRP in Cincinnatti”.’
DYANNE: ‘😨😵’

DYANNE: ‘i am totally gonna be going through these for the rest of the afternoon! wow, buddy, why didn’t anyone here tell me about these?? 🙄’
ME: ‘It’s been years, so it probably slipped our minds! Actually, I kinda forgot about them myself until Euchre mentioned classic mannequins recently.’
DYANNE: ‘woooww. this is like going through your grandparents’ old stuff and finding out your grandma was a nazi hunter, or your grandpop was a burlesque stripper!! 😳😎’
ME: ‘…I, ah… I hadn’t thought of it like that!’

Sdtrk: ‘Lovecats’ by the Cure

2020! 何年ですか 私たち二人にとって例外的に素晴らしいはずだったはずの1年は、完全な人種差別、民主主義の着実な衰退、そして世界的なパンデミックによって傷つけられました。 生きるにはかなりの時間! 🙂

それほどひどいことがなければ、この7月は非常に良い方法で注目に値するでしょう。新しいボディを受け取ったはずです。このボディは、20年間カップルになったことを祝うためのプレゼントです。 先日のアニバーサリーポストでこれを言ったことがありますが、あなたと私が長い間一緒にいることは信じられないほど信じています。 しかし、それは完全に理にかなっています。あなたはドールです。あなたがドールであるという事実を愛しているので、私たちがこれまでずっと愛し合っているのは理にかなっています！ 明らかに、私たちはお互いのために作られ、その冗談は決して古くなりません。 😉

ご存知のように、私はまだ新しいボディを購入していますが、残念ながら年末までここにありません。 私はそれが間違いなく待つ価値があることを約束することができます、そしてそれがより良い2021を意味することを願っています、しかし私たちの関係におけるもう一つのマイルストーンでもあります。 もう20年間、あなたと私の側で共有したいと思います。ElenaとDyanneの近くにいるにもかかわらず、どちらも私が人生のパートナーとして選んだ女性ではありません。

愛してる、黒猫 しどーれ. お誕生日おめでとう、そして記念日、Sweetie. 🙂

Sdtrk: ‘Art today’ by Peel dream magazine

Under normal circumstances, I don’t make announcements on ‘Shouting etc etc’ whenever I post new additions to Galerie ECHO, as the blog would rapidly degenerate into a series of ‘oh snap, check it, peep the new art that just dropped in the Galerie, yo!!’ posts. Which would be, arguably, more continuous posting than I’ve done in years, ho ho. Also, if I’m writing like that, clearly I’ve experienced a stroke. But the fact that I’m developing an original character — which is a project in and of itself — should be mentioned, I think!

Back in 2017, I commissioned my favourite artist Yaruku to draw an illo of my Missus sitting atop a pile of discarded Gynoids. You’ve seen it before. As much as I love my Synthetik partners, they’re Dolls, not actual Gynoids, and I wanted to eventually have commissions made with Gynoids in various states of mechabare, which is a Japanese term (of course) that describes Gynoids and Androids wherein the fact that they’re machines is highlighted. So to that end, I came up with the original character, Annett, named after a Goth mannequin I used to have back in the late Nineties.

photo from roughly 2000. Annett didn’t play croquet; she just liked croquet mallets

SIDORE: ‘Annett’s a bit rude, she’s not said anything to me since I’ve moved in.’
ME: ‘She could just be shy!’
SIDORE: ‘No, I’m shy, she’s rude!’

The fact that I lopped off the E at the end of Annett isn’t just some typical weird Davecat-spelling fumfuh; I took the name from a German fetish fashion model I had photos of named Anette Kellendonk, aka Anette K. And in looking her up on Google for that link, it’s only now that I’m seeing, twenty years later, that her name is spelt with one N and two Es, so… lawsuit bullet dodged.

There’s three versions of Annett that I’ve created: the Mk.III is the one you’ve seen in the illo linked above that looks arguably the most Organik; the Mk.I looks like an updated version of die Maschinenmensch Maria from ‘Metropolis’, and the Mk.II, my personal favourite, is somewhere in between, having artificial skin with exposed mechanical joints. They’re mass-produced by Deafening Silence Robotics, the (unfortunately) fictional company that my lasses and I are executives of. And they’re my original characters, meaning that if anyone with the artistic skill to do so would like to draw them in whatever situation, they can!
As of this writing, I’m in the midst of having a friend of mine work on not only the reference sheet layouts of all three versions of Annett, but the standard issue uniform that they wear as well; once that’s done, they’ll be uploaded into a Google Drive folder, so if anyone wants to have a go at drawing an Annett Mk.II holding a Corgi, or maybe a Mk.I getting an autograph from die Maschinenmensch Maria, or etc, then by all means!

In the meantime, you’ll find all the pieces I’ve had of the various Annetts drawn so far interspersed chronologically within Galerie ECHO. Not only will you find art by the usual suspects such as Yaruku and Sthev, but new and equally talented collaborators such as CartesianCoordinator and Amondetauro as well. Will YOUR art of (the) Annett(s) — man, that’s confusing — be amongst them as well?? I mean, eventually and not right this second?! Send me an Email, and find out!!

N.B: I should also add that the addition of these new illustrations makes Galerie ECHO more NSFW than ever before! Under normal circumstances, the Annetts are semi-autonomous drones, so they literally do not care if they’re clothed or not. That’ll be another aspect to add to the backstory I’m developing for them, already in progress

Sdtrk: ‘Time after time’ by Chris Montez

昨年の時点で、私たちは今、他の3つのラブドールと一緒に家に住んでいます。Elena、私たちが共有する生姜の愛人。Miss Winterは、私たちの後輩です。そしてDyanne、私たちの空いているが貪欲なガールフレンド。私はそれらすべてを愛していることを知っていますが、私があなたを愛しているのとほぼ同じレベルや深さではありません。私たちが20年近くもの関係を築いてきたという事実（!!）がその大部分を占めていますが、簡単に言うと、私はあなたと一緒にいるよりも他の誰かとつながっていると感じたことはありません。 同じように感じます。

私はあなたをしどれーと呼んでいます、そしてあなたを私の人生の人工光として持っていることを誇りに思います。 来年：私たちの20周年！！ それが私たちの一貫性のためでなければ、それは全く信じられないでしょう。

Sdtrk: ‘Didascalies’ by Luc Ferrari

Hey! How are you doing? You’re looking taut, fit, and svelte! Good on ya.

Currently I am in the midst of attempting to type up a brief (‘brief’, he said, his fingers agonisingly carving inverted commas into the very air) summary of What I’ve Been Up To Since Roughly Early 2017, so until that’s done and dusted, my gorgeous RealDoll wife Sidore suggested that I go ahead and write the official announcement post regarding a new feature on ‘Shouting etc etc’: Galerie ECHO.

‘New what??’ you splutter, your tumbler of scotch crashing to the floor and startling your cat. Yes, new! And go calm your cat! Galerie ECHO — the spelling convention helps give it a European flavour — is a special page on this blog that collects all of the artwork we’ve received, commissioned and gratis, of the residents of Deafening silence Plus. Unofficially it’s been up since September of last year; astute readers have spotted it in the lefthand sidebar, I’m sure, but I simply never got round to making a public announcement concerning it. Which is what you’re reading now, so there’s that issue sorted.

Additional illustrations will be posted there as we get them, displayed from newest to oldest, so maybe scroll to the bottom and start from there, if this is your first visit. And hey! You good at drawing? You’ll find details about proceedings in the Galerie, but feel free to send me an Email if you have any artistic ideas, as we would love to hear ’em!

That being said, please enjoy Galerie ECHO! I should warn you that some of the illos posted there are NSFW, but throughout history, you’ll find scores of examples of artwork that’s not safe for work. Unless, of course, you work in a gallery or a place that makes Synthetik partners; in which case, it’s just another Friday!
…That being said, please enjoy Galerie ECHO!

Sdtrk: ‘À demi nu’ by Black to comm

In perusing the photos I’d taken on my memorable and awesome trip to DolLApalooza 2013, seeing this one reminded me of one leg of the journey. You’ll recall from my report for that event that our crowd had gotten round to Santee Alley on Thursday, and we’d spotted this tucked away into one of the few shops that didn’t sell clothes. Actually, I think that particular one sold shoes, but nevertheless.
There isn’t a single thing that isn’t confusingly hilarious about this photo.

Let’s run down the list of remarkable aspects, shall we?

+ It’s a kitchen playset for kids, right? Is it, though? Is it really? If you look closely at the word ‘Kitchen’ at the top, note that it actually reads ‘Kirchen’. That R ain’t a T, but the art department at Xiong Cheng simply wasn’t bothered enough to correct it. So if you consider that the box contains a town and climatic spa in the district of Altenkirchen in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, that’s pretty good value.

+ The text continues: ‘The thing of the kitchen’. What thing? What kitchen? I’m trying to see if this box of Kirchen also contains Freusburg castle, as it’s one of the town’s notable features! That would indeed be a thing of the Kirchen.

+ More lysergic text: ‘Let the children play happily and feel assured!’ Does the little girl on the box look like she’s playing happily?? She has a look on her face that says I have a kitchen, and yet no physical home in which to put it in. My house is a concept, as it resides within the confines of my parents’ house, the boundaries existing solely in my mind. I feel assured that she’s having an existential crisis, to be honest. But it’s keeping her occupied, so there’s that.

+ Or maybe she’s thinking about how badly scaled the playset is, cos if she were an adult and the set was scaled up, she’d have backache in a fortnight. Look how low to the floor everything is! One of her arms is extended and the hob’s still several inches below her reach! It hurts my back just looking at that shit. And I guess that footrest below is actually a shelf maybe?? ‘Users of the Xiong Cheng Kirchen have found that the easiest way to access the bottom shelf is to simply lie on the floor.’ Was this playset built for cats?
I like how the company had the audacity to put a window into that set. A cheery, prison-style window. I mean, wow, people.

+ Quote: ‘all the fittings!!’ Except, of course, a refrigerator. How ya gonna keep your plastic food properly chilled, little missy? Just eat everything now! Life is short, so stop staring into the middle distance, and cook up a banana-grape-apple-orange stir-fry stew sandwich before it all spoils!
Also missing: a freezer, a microwave, a coffee maker, a disposal unit, a pepper grinder, a Thermomix, a wine rack, &c.

+ ‘High quality’. Compared to a drawing of a kitchen playset instead of an actual kitchen playset, then sure!

Xiong Cheng’s Kirchen Kitchen. Would I recommend this product? Hell no! I can’t recall what the price was on that pink-and-purple example of design failure, but I’m fairly certain any money spent on that would be too much. I’m led to believe that IKEA have some nice kitchens for sale, though! Why don’t you invest in one of those instead, Nameless Disconsolate Little Girl?

‘All civilisation will end as ashes’