Sdtrk: ‘Holiday’ by the Bee Gees

Well, no. Well, yes? Not so much, but I’m merely bringing your attention to a few things:

+ That nutty cyber porn goddess person Violet Blue has an interesting two-part article on SFGate.com, entitled ‘The Rape of the RealDoll‘, which touches upon performance art duo Amber Hawk Swanson and Amber Doll, the upcoming Hollywood film ‘Lars and the Real Girl’, and looks at some of the sociopolitics behind the existence of everyone’s favourite artificial women.

+ Also, on her site tiny nibbles, she mentions a new photo series orchestrated by Low Tek Photography: much like the projects by Juergen Specht and Mario A., Organik photo models are made to look like Synthetiks.

The Doll series

Lovely to look at, no question…

+ And heh, ManneCamp.

The ManneCamp is the home of the free-range Mannequin, a place where they get introduced into a more natural habitat.
We adopt discarded or mistreated Mannequins and help them find a new life.
Every new arrival has plenty of time to decompress and to get used to their new feedom. They are given a complete physical exam and receive any medical treatment as well as plastic surgery they need and request. [..]
The ManneCamp Habitat covers an area of almost 5 acres and contains open fields, wooded areas and wetlands. Several buildings and improvements offer shelter and entertainment. A swiming pool and a tennis court are available for use during the warmer months of the year.

Their site has live video feeds as well. Man. *snickers* That pun was unintentional, by the way.
A question that springs to mind, though — as large as that refuge is, surely there’s enough room to build a skateboard park or two?

Sorry for the bare-bones quality of this post, but it’s like two hours past my bedtime, and as we all know, the news waits for no man

Technorati tags: Violet Blue, tiny nibbles, RealDoll, Amber Hawk Swanson, Lars and the Real Girl, Low Tek Photography, Juergen Specht, Mario A., Mannequins

Sdtrk: ‘Inner mind mystique 7’ by Masonna

Who likes Stuff? You like Stuff. Yes, you do. Here’s some Stuff that I like, that I think you’ll like too, if you think like I think.

+ Remember back in the days when you could easily tell the difference between house, acid, techno, rap, hip-hop, et al? Those were great days, but they’re long gone; now you need a scorecard to keep track of all the hybrids and mutations of the differing genres and offshoots of electronic music. Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music would be that scorecard. Between the various irreverent-yet-detailed descriptions and helpful samples, you’ll kill an hour there, guaranteed

+ These are Items Essential for Living, as seen on Wired’s website:

Left, an LED alarm clock that looks like a telly from the Seventies, and right, a reproduction in miniature of a late Shōwa-era Japanese livingroom, with A/V inputs for the functioning television. MUST HAVE BOTH NOW

+ I’ve never seen more than like half an hour of LOST, but I have friends that are addicted to that show. Recently, they told me about a new theatrical release in production by that show’s co-creator, J.J Abrams. By this point, I’m sure a lot of you know what I’m speaking of: the upcoming film referred to as either ’01-18-08′ or ‘Cloverfield’. If you’ve not seen the trailer yet, cast your gaze here, cos it’s kinda enticingly freakish in that whole post-Blair Witch-pseudo-reality context. It’ll be interesting to see if my own interest is maintained between now and when it comes out next year

+ As it is, I own a passel of videogames for my PS2, and a handful for my XBOXEN, so I really don’t see the need of picking up a PS3 (too feckin’ expensive) or an XBOX 360 (not inexpensive enough) in the near-future. However, I might rescind that statement — at least as far as the XBOLLOX 360 — cos I’ve just seen trailers for Bioshock, and it is, in the parlance of our times, gripping my shit. An intelligent first-person shooter that manifests a sense of immediate terror in a retro-apocalyptic landscape, where you have the ability to set people on fire or launch insects out of your forearms through the use of hazardous on-the-fly drug enhancements?? Sign me up! My gods, have you seen the trailers? I swear, between Bioshock and Dynasty warriors: Gundam, that XSLAB 360’s lookin’ kinda good…
(aside to PB Shelley: do you have enough Plasmids?)

+ Thanks to Bandai Visual, the DVD imprint that’s known for their pricey-but-well-done releases, such as the very fab Gunbuster boxset, now I can look forward to buying a crystal-clear copy of one of my top three favourite anime films of all time: ‘Wings of Honneamise‘, which is due out in September. Only thing is, Bandai is forcing people to purchase the regular DVD with either an additional HD-DVD or Blu-ray disk along with it (or, if you’re an A/V elitist, forcing you to buy a mere bog-standard DVD with your HD-DVD or Blu-ray disk). I suppose not just including a book with the regular DVD — like what you’d done with the Patlabor films — wasn’t good enough, eh? Ah well, as long as I have my Honneamise, I’ll be happy

+ It’s a tiny house!

The micro compact home [m-ch] is a lightweight, modular and mobile minimal dwelling for one or two people. Its compact dimensions of 2.6m cube adapt it to a variety of sites and circumstances, and its functioning spaces of sleeping, working – dining, cooking, and hygiene make it suitable for everyday use.

Under normal circumstances, I’m not too keen on studio apartments, as usually they’re slightly larger than a shoebox, but I think the space-age austerity of the micro compact home would make it quite appealing. It’s a bit like a more permanent version of the Hotel Everland, now that I think about it… [m-ch] actually contains two levels, if you can believe that, and can accomodate about six or seven of your closest mates. At the very least, if you weren’t close before, you will be in short order

+ Finally, for years, I’ve wondered, and still wonder, why as super-hygenic as the American populace claims to be, the whole concept of the bidet confuses and frightens most people. It’s a good idea. I suppose you could chalk it up to the expenditure of having to make bathrooms slightly larger to accomodate both a toilet and a bidet, but concessions could be made. Other countries don’t have to worry about that shit (pun), as Japanese bog manufacturer TOTO has been exporting fancy high-tech bogs for years; the Washlet is a product that’s like a bidet, yet fits over your existing toilet like a big seat. Lovely! I don’t mind saying: I would love to own one of those bad boys

ta very much to Dave Z and Derek for some of the links

Sdtrk: ‘Love of the loved’ by Cilla Black

Obviously Norelco were racking their brains, wondering how to specifically grab my attention. Gentlemen, your research dollars were not entirely wasted.

Much like Björk’s famous ‘All is full of love‘ video, the Heineken DraughtKeg Gynoid, and the lass from the Svedka vodka campaign from a couple of years ago, sexy machines are beginning to crop up everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but it’s a start. But when I see marketing like this, it gives me hope that more and more people are becoming more hip and open to the concept of Technosexuality. Fantastic!
She’s actually a live-action version of a character that appears in a Flash-animated serial called ‘Robot skin‘, that looks like a hideously-animated version of The Matrix… as sponsored by Norelco. They piqued my interest, but they failed to hold my interest. Back to the drawing board!

Personally, I prefer my Gynoids with fake skin (a fact well-documented), but I wouldn’t say no to any of these Sorayama-style Synthetiks, especially Norelco’s ‘Grooming Robot’. Shaving is a bloody hassle, but she’d definitely make it fun! Although it wouldn’t cut down on shaving time, meaning of course, ‘time not exactly spent shaving’, nudge nudge wink wink. There’s pros and cons to everything, really

Technorati tags: Gynoid, Android, robot, Hajime Sorayama, Technosexual

Sdtrk: ‘Romeo’s distress’ by Christian death

ME: Hi, Mrs (muddling through impossibly over-syllabic Russian name)?
*pause*
GLORIOUS SOVIET MATRON: rrrrRussian. English. No. *click*

I laughed like a drain for like three solid minutes

Sdtrk: ‘Intercity 215’ by Merzbow

This can be, in no way, shape, or form, a good thing.

Gaping hole found in universe
Thu Aug 23, 2007 7:31PM EDT | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies, stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday.

The team at the University of Minnesota said the void is nearly a billion light-years across and they have no idea why it is there.

“Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size,” said astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick.
the rest of the article is here

Let us… let us consider this for a moment. Space contains an awful lot of, well, space, but it’s not completely empty, as we all know. Then there’s the issue of dark matter, which is, quoth Wiki, ‘hypothetical matter of unknown composition that does not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation to be observed directly, but whose presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter’. Which basically means that although it’s bastard hard to detect, there is something there where you’d think there’s nothing there, out there.* But these astronomers and scientists have stated that this void they’ve stumbled upon contains no stars, no planets, no black holes, no dark matter, no nothing. Actually, the only thing it seems to have in it is Nothing.

I don’t know about you, but with the discovery of this Void, a number of various apocalyptic scenarios are forming in my mind. You know: a great rift between universes, the walls of reality being rent asunder, Elder Gods of unspeakable power and malevolence pouring into our fragile little cosmos to wreak devastation until the end of time itself, stars winking out one by one, breathable atmospheres of inhabited planets turning into blood, the endless screams of anguished souls praying for a sweet release that will never arrive… huh. I think I’ve just described a typical day at work

*The Wiki entry then goes on to say, ‘It has been noted that the names “dark matter” and “dark energy” serve mainly as expressions of our ignorance, much as the marking of early maps with “terra incognita”‘, which I found to be pretty funny

Sdtrk: ‘Welcome to the circus’ by Susumu Hirasawa

This occurred while I was at work, but ‘Shouting to hear the echoes’ received its 100,000th visitor yesterday! Who are these people? Actually, the thing is is that a lot of the hits aren’t garnered from actual humans; they’re from Google image search results, so that hardly counts. So perhaps it’s better to say that ‘Shouting to hear the echoes’ received its 100,000th symbolic visitor yesterday. N.B.: that’s not necessarily a more accurate thing to say, just better. Yeah.

I don’t really understand that either, but it’s late and my sinuses are testing my patience. Nevertheless, Thanks to all of you for stopping round!
*toots horn, stumbles off to bed*

Sdtrk: ‘Ne cherche pas à plaire’ by Mireille Darc & France Gall

A fitting epilogue to my whole Wacky Voyage into Myspaceville. The ironic thing is that I actually found this on a Myspace profile.

And I’d spotted this outside of a party store a couple of days ago:

But how exactly would the Devil throw up the devil horns? That’s one for the philosophers