Sdtrk: ‘L’éducation’ by Aline

Mice! They’re small, they tend to squeak whether or not you’re squeezing them, and they keep chewing on stuff. Sometimes they wear little rollneck jumpers, and star in films. Despite the fact that cats seem to enjoy them, a lot of people don’t really like ’em. But I’ll tell you this: don’t fuck with them, or they’ll set your whole goddamn house on fire.

Blazing mouse sets fire to house

A US man who threw a mouse onto a pile of burning leaves could only watch in horror as it ran into his house and set the building ablaze.

Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, found the mouse in his home and wanted to get rid of it.

“I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,” he was quoted as saying by AP.

Though no-one was injured, the house and everything in it was destroyed.

“I’ve seen numerous house fires, but nothing as unique as this one,” Fire Department Captain Jim Lyssy said.

New Mexico has seen several major blazes after unseasonably dry and windy conditions which have destroyed 10 homes and devastated more than 53,000 acres (21,200 hectares) of land.

In a way, he kinda deserves what he got for throwing a live mouse into open flames, but nevertheless..
First we had to watch out for squirrels, now the mice are after us. THESE ARE TRULY THE END TIMES

Sdtrk: ‘No love to give’ by The United States of America

O, this entry’s a bizarre one. Not necessarily due to the building itself, which brings bold new meaning to the term ‘fab’, but of the odd circumstances surrounding it. Tonight, our spotlight swivels with a bit of a squeak, due to insuficient joint lubrication, and illuminates Villa Spies (pronounced ‘spees’, just so you know), designed by Staffan Berglund, and finished in 1969.

At the press of a button, Jetsons style, the central table and chairs rise into the ceiling, while a dining table rises up from the kitchen below. At the press of another button, slides can be projected onto the walls or the colour of the room can be changed via lighting control – an idea that has only recently reappeared in interior design.
quoted from this site

Lovely, lovely, lovely. HOWEVER! Finding info not in Swedish on Villa Spies (now known as Villa Fjolle) was a bit of a barney, as it was pretty much looked down upon by the architectural community upon completion, and the first monograph to actually discuss it and show it in detail was only just published in 1996. ‘Looked down upon?’, you ask, incredulous. ‘Why, wouldn’t this be the perfect place for sexy Moonbase operatives such as Lt. Gay Ellis to relax after her month-long shifts on the Moon, working with SHADO to defend Earth from alien attacks??’ That’s exactly what I said! Well, it appears that with the aforementioned design of the elevating diningroom column, it was implied that the homeowners would have servants preparing your meals downstairs, which, in an enlightened Sixties-era home in progressively thinking Sweden, was simply ‘not done’. Hrm…

Were I an occupant of Villa Spies and inviting people round to dinner, I’d just make it down in the under-kitchen, set the readied plates on the table, and then have my guests enter. ‘Where the heck’s Davecat?’ they’d ask, approaching the centre of the livingroom. Then suddenly, I’d flip whatever switch, and ascend dramatically from the lower floor, smirking like a pro from behind the dinner table, as the meal would arrive. Preferably as the theme from ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ played over the speakers. ‘No, Mr Bond, I expect you to eat!’

Many thanks go out to Marc Berting, proprietor of ‘Seventies Design‘, which is where I first spotted Villa Spies. Ta very much for the info!

Sdtrk: ‘Here comes the Love Gang’ by the Raveonettes

Rather nice kimono, missy

There’ve been quite a few entries in various blogs having to do with Actroid-san recently, as a cursory whirl on Technorati will show you. Going by the ones that have a handful of new pics, it looks like the DER version of My Favourite Gynoid made a recent appearance somewhere. Only problem is, as of this writing, none of the blogs are in English — they’re in Spanish, which is Greek to me. (note pun)

I have to get to the bottom of this. I must know what new Actroid news there is out there.
Or I could just wait a couple of days until someone makes a post in English, I suppose

Sdtrk: ‘Neat neat neat’ by the Damned

This is just plain embarrassing.

Holy crap, it’s ô:41? I’m late!!

As the top two vertical bars on the second-from-the-leftmost digit have suddenly vanished, it looks like now I have to buy a new watch. I’m like the White Rabbit*; I always have to have a watch on me so I either can be assured that I am indeed running late for whatever, or so I can periodically check it in order to formulate a proper excuse for taking my leave. The funny thing is is that I’ve had this watch since.. egad, it’s been since at least 1999, cos I’d bought it for my Quest job. I needed a timepiece small enough that would allow me to stretch a pair of rubber gloves across it.
No, unfortunately that job was a lot less kinky than it sounds. There was pee involved, however.

Compared to my gradeschool/highschool tour of duty, my timepiece needs are a lot simpler. In fact, up until my Quest job, I’d gone through several different versions of the calculator watch, finally reaching my peak with the first version of the CASIO Databank that stored addresses and phone numbers and the like. It’s true; I was kind of a nerd! So fuck you. But I’ll tell you this: with my last couple of watches, I was getting tired of the plastic strap it came with, so I bought this black leather affair for it, which sported one wide strap down the middle, and a narrower strap on either side, which made for a truly cyberpunk presentation, even without the silver studs that it boasted. I wore that bastard until two of the three straps gave out. I loved that watchband..

These days, however, I don’t need to store all of my sundry information into my watch, for goodness sake, that’s what I have my phone for! So a smaller watch is what I require. Anything 1) digital and 2) under $15, cos let’s be honest — spending more than $15 on a feckin’ watch is lunacy. Unless, of course, it’s one of the retro-futuristic watches sold on Tokyoflash. But sweet slow-roasted Christ, those are expensive. Not to mention complicated. And heavy. Here’s a prime example:

Morse Code by Morse
‘Tokyoflash is proud to present the first ever Morse Code watch.

The watch has 3 modes for telling the time.
Using a bulit in speaker that refracts the sound off your wrist through the solid stainless caseback it sounds out the time in Morse Code.
If thats to hard to follow, you can press a button to see the time in Morse Code on the LED display.
If that’s still too hard to decipher or your running out of time, one more press of a button you can see the time in regular digit form.

Stimulate your mind and learn to tell the time in Morse Code.

The quality is second to none with 150 grams of solid stainless, this watch is built like a Navy Seal!
With its high polish strap & mirrored lens – in bright sunlight you could even signal in Morse Code.’

JAPAN RETAIL: ¥18900 (161 USD)
TOKYOFLASH PRICE: ¥12900 (110 USD)

Looks ace, but the price is a wee bit prohibitive. Plus in comparison, by and large you’re not gonna be too concerned if anything adverse happens to a $15-or-less watch.
Getting back to my malfunctioning timepiece, frankly, I’m surprised that it’s taken as long as it has to start going out-of-order. Note that I say ‘start’, as it still basically works — it’s not as if the screen has gone out — but it just doesn’t work very well. It’s like driving a car where the left turn indicator doesn’t work. You can still drive it.. just not very well. Funnily enough, between the time I bought this one and now, I’ve actually gone through three other watches, not to mention the fact that I’ve only replaced the battery once (a couple of months ago) since purchase. Hrrm. Maybe this watch killed the other watches? I suspect foul play.

So I suppose this week, I’ll scour Target and/or Meijer half-heartedly for a new timepiece. O, the Excitement.
Upon reflection, this post reminds me of the time that I went on about buying a new electric shaver! I am dutifully continuing the legacy of being a cheap bastard

*Speaking of the White Rabbit, d’ya know what would be absolutely perfect? A digital pocketwatch. That would be the best product ever, hands down

Sdtrk: ‘Fifth international love’ by Pete Dowling

Did everyone enjoy their year-end revelry? Well done! I spent the eve round at Jeff and Kari’s, playing a couple of hours’ worth of Apples to Apples with them, and Derek and Steph. We were hoping to get in some poker and mah jongg as well, but if you start the eve with Apples to Apples, it’s pretty much established that that’s what you’ll be playing for the rest of the eve as well; such is its Pure Entertainment Magnetism. Plus, Tomas rang me, and I put him speakerphone and we filled him in with ‘the dilly-yo’ as to what’s been going on round here, and vice versa. A fine eve!

It’s odd; this is the first time in five years that Sidore and I haven’t done our first post of the new year update on ‘Kitten with a Whip!‘. Next year, we should be back to normal as far as that routine, however. I think today I’m going to muck about with Dreamweaver, and see what sort of results that produces..
To be honest, I’m at a bit of an impasse. I’d been speaking with a couple of people about using the much-lauded PHP for the redesign of ‘KWAW!’, and not only am I not certain if our provider even offers PHP, but I’ve been looking round, and even though I’ve never really had any problems with who we’re with right now, I could probably get a better deal — space-wise, with PHP baked right in — elsewhere. Cos not only am I taking Sidore-chan’s site into consideration, ideally, I’d like to move ‘Shouting etc etc’ over to WordPress, due to the all mod cons that it offers, and therefore have both that blog and ‘KWAW!’ run off a single account. However, not only do I want to wait until I’m a bit more financially stable (i.e, after I’ve paid for this upcoming semester’s class) before I make the ISP jump, but the renewal time for Sweetie’s site is in a couple of months. Which is good, as that gives me plenty of time to deliberate/do research/procrastinate about the whole thing. I’ll have to see what our current provider offers as far as upgrading plans, and how much that’ll run. Should I stay or should I go? etc

No Doll/Gynoid news to report! There’d better be a flood of stunning new developments this year, is all I’m sayin’. A flood.

Finally, if you’ve any interest at all in Sixties-era electronic artists — and I know I’m not the only one — apparently there was a stage play performed in Glasgow two years ago called ‘Standing wave’, about the life of the godlike Delia Derbyshire. Delia, if you’re not familiar with her, was a pioneer of arranging and composing electronic and everyday sounds into the semblance of music, and pretty much brought the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to the fore as far as purveyors of unusual soundtracks. Her most famous piece is something that everyone’s heard: the main theme to ‘Doctor Who’. Yeah, that would be her.
Anyway, unfortunately there are no plans for the show to go on touring (perhaps a film would be a good idea, hint hint), but you can find nearly the entire soundtrack they used on the ‘Standing wave’ website, available as free downloads. And as a wee bit of a prezzie, I’ve uploaded one of my favourite pieces here:

Pete Dowling – Fifth international love (link has expired)

You can also check out delia-derbyshire.org, for more info on the Mistress of musique concrète..

Right, time to put my day off to negligibly Good Use. *cracks knuckles*
So! 2006!
*looks around*
I really don’t see much of a difference, to be honest

Sdtrk: ‘J’achète des disques Américains’ by Stella

It’s recently just struck me that I need to buy, borrow, or rent a copy of the book ‘Watership down’.

In browsing the mecha board on one of my favourite Internet time-wasters and hard-drive-fillers, 4chan.org, someone had posted some more illustrations of mecha from the Gundam side story ‘Advance of Zeta‘, serialised in Dengeki Hobby magazine. It’s not (yet) officially canon in the Universal Century Gundam timeline, but ‘Advance of Zeta’ profiles various models of Mobile suits that the Titans were testing, I believe prior to the events that took place in ‘Zeta Gundam’. At this point, it’s not even a manga, let alone a television or OVA series; it’s simply a bunch of model kits designed by Hajime Katoki and Kenji Fujioka. Well, I think there’s some sort of story wrapped round the mecha maybe, much in the same way that they built the Gatling cannon for the A-10 Thunderbolt II first, before they even designed the plane. Derek, you wanna help me out with the details here?
At any rate, one of the interesting/fab things about the Mobile suits from ‘AoZ’ is that a lot of them have development names that are taken from ‘Watership down’. It’s rather ace; almost all of the logos for the Titans Test Team are stylised bunnies, as seen here.

two of the insignia used by the Titans Test Team

You’ve got the Hazel, the Bigwig, the Dandelion, the Kehaar, etc. The Hazel’s booster scramble pack is called the Hrududu, which is what the rabbits called motor vehicles.

So after the initial statements of ‘O, that’s feckin’ ace’ were made, it’s occurred to me that I’ve never really read ‘Watership down’, and I haven’t seen the 1978 film in years, as I’d found it to be creepy and moribund. All I remember is unsettling 70s animation showing rabbits dying horribly, and gnashing of teeth, and lots of blood everywhere. But in looking up info on Watership down on the Interbutt, in particular the Wiki article, I’d noticed something about that story that I didn’t remember at all: the rabbits had their own language, called Lapine. Again, refer to ‘O, that’s feckin’ ace’ statement above.
Despite my rigid adherence to the idea that English-speaking people should speak English properly, otherwise I throw them headfirst down a well, I love it when authors manage to alter or augment language, or devise a language all their own — this would be one of the reasons that I really dig Anthony Burgess. ‘A clockwork orange’ was the first book of his that I’d read, shortly after seeing the film, of course, and words like ‘ptitsa’ and ‘korova’ and ‘horrorshow’ and ‘malenky’ thrown in amongst English much in the same way we use ‘croissant’ and ‘rendezvous’ and ‘zeitgeist’ and ‘sushi’ nowadays fascinated the hell out of me. So discovering that the rabbits of Watership down spoke a vaguely Welsh-sounding language definitely piqued an interest in wanting to read the novel.

Now I want to know what the hell those rabbits were saying, and eventually, I’d like to learn Lapine. I may not have a whole lot of opportunites to use it, but nevertheless..
Knowledge is Power, The More You Know, etc etc

Sdtrk: ‘Calloway’ by the High Llamas

After being out and about amongst the crowds a couple of days ago and being innundated with horrible music and shopping drones on search-and-purchase-and-destroy missions, I have concluded that the only Christmas music worth listening to is the soundtrack to ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ by Vince Guaraldi; in particular, the song ‘Christmas time is here’. This is known as an irrefutable statement.

At this point, I’d also like to bring a riot of a post to your attention. Nicked from Penda’s Diner, who in turn obtained it from, err, someplace else. It’s a Festival of Theft Borrowing!

What is this Empire Coming to?

As soon as I find a link – I’ll post it.

What’s this empire coming to? Now they want us to stop greeting people with “Io Saturnalia!” “We have all these different cultures in Rome,” they tell us. “We shouldn’t offend anyone,” they tell us, “We’ve got to be inclusive.”

We’ve got the barbarians from the north with their tree decorations and their fire rituals. And the weirdos from Gaul, cutting mistletoe with a golden sickle. And the Mithraists, the Zoroastrians, the Isis cults, and, of course, those characters who hang out in the catacombs. “Hail, Winter!” we’re supposed to say. I ask you, what next: we lose the feast? We stop the Solstice parties? No more honoring Ops, goddess of abundance?

I was buying some greenery down by the Forum the other day, and there’s old Macrobius with some Visigoth chick, and she goes, “Gut Jule.” And I go, “Hey! In this country, we say, “Io, Saturnalia! Maybe you should go back to where you came from.” Then Macrobius goes, “She can’t, she’s a slave.”

Whatever.

At this time of year, the Visigoths sacrifice a pig and burn a special log that they dance around, instead of acting like normal people and going to the temple of Saturn.

I swear, I was at this party over at Septima Commodia’s house the other day. She always has a Saturnalia party. Anyway, she decorated the place with prickly green leaves. “It’s holly,” she said, “The latest fashion from Brittania. They all do it in Londinium.”

It gets worse.

She had this statue of some goddess from Ultima Thule or somewhere, name of Frigga, sitting right there on the dining room mensa. I mean, this is darned near blasphemous. I’d be scared about what the lares and penates would do if I put that thing in my house. But Septima Commodia just said, “Oh get over it! We’re cosmopolitan around here.” Cosmopolitan. That’s what they call it. Well by Jupiter, I live in Latium. I’m a Roman. And this empire was founded on the principle that the gods, our gods, must be honored at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way. None of this foreign heretical nonsense or these strange customs from Germania or Hibernia or Palestine. I say, “Io, Saturnalia!” and if you don’t like it, you can leave.

Finally, a non-sequitur excerpt from a conversation I had with Derek whilst out at a Burger King recently:
DAVECAT: ‘What the.. They’ve brought back Furby??’
DEREK: ‘Furby never went away.’

So let that be a lesson to you! Happy hols, everyone

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

Outside again, enthralled by disco lighting on June 3rd, 2005

this post inspired by 'So what?' by The Cure on August 31st, 2004