Sdtrk: ‘I like Mozart’ by France Gall

This morning, like I’d said, I managed to stumble out of bed and successfully type out notes to my most recent dream. Hoorah!

It occurred during a morning in late Autumn/early Winter, cos I remember the light had that kind of super-clarity that you only get during the colder months. There wasn’t any snow on the ground, but it was definitely brisker than I like it. After walking along the stretch of small office buildings on northbound Livernois between Eight and Nine mile, I entered one of them. Soon, I was in a room about the size of your typical small office centre, where there were rows of desks, of the same sort that you’d find in school. There was even a chalkboard down the front. As I sat down in the rightmost desk at the front of the class, other people started arriving, and took seats of their own, and shortly after that, Boyd Rice entered with two other blokes, all of whom were wearing cold weather coveralls. They all sported either some kind of bag or backpack, and one of them went to the chalkboard and started writing things on it, whilst Boyd and the other bloke (Michael Moynihan?) began walking up and down the aisles, distributing papers and pamphlets to everyone. Boyd caught my eye, and he acknowledged me with a ‘Hey, Davecat,’ to which I gave a wave. The person sitting behind me had gotten up for a second to leave the room, so Boyd took a seat.
‘Hey Boyd, what’s been up?’
‘Man, I feel like shit. I’ve got this pounding headache, and my sinuses are all screwed up from this cold I’ve got,’ he replied, and I could see that his nose was indeed runny and puffy. There was a little bit of snot too; it was kinda gross. ‘But you ‘ll never guess what’s getting me through this.’
‘Err, Sudafed?’
‘No — Pepto-Bismol! It coats everything, and it’s so pink and reassurring. In fact, I took some last night and it helped me get some writing done.’ He reached into his bag and pulled out a bubblegum pink notepad, with copious sentences written out in longhand in blue ballpoint ink. ‘Check out how much I wrote!’ He sectioned off about 3/4ths of the pad’s pages with his thumb and forefinger.
‘Damn! Not too shabby!’ I replied.
‘Also,’ he continued, ‘I’ve been speaking with some people, and it turns out they really want me in the role of The Master in the upcoming season of Doctor Who.’
I was impressed. ‘Wow. You’ve been busy! Which reminds me — I saw a flyer stuck onto a telephone pole that says you’re running for some kind of office?’
‘Yeah, actually, that’s why I’m here now, in order to speak to people.’
‘Well shit, I’ll let you do your thing, Boyd, and we’ll talk more when you’re done.’ And then he stood up.
‘Okay, cool, we’ll talk in a bit.’ As he got back to handing out pamphlets, I wondered to myself — I had seen that flyer on a telephone pole in Ferndale, which is in Oakland county. Now, since I live in Wayne county, would I be able to vote for him? *stroking chin*

And that’s it!
Hrrm.. Boyd Rice as The Master. On the one hand, he’s no Anthony Ainley, but on the other hand, he’s no Eric Roberts, thankfully. Plus, he has had a goatee in his life. And been accused of being evil incarnate.
Personally, I think he’d be better running for office. But what the hell kind of office would he find suitable? Furthermore, Ferndale is like a Fisher-Price city — it’s about two-tenths the size of Detroit. What kind of motions would Boyd pass, if elected?
I’m sure he could bring back the Circus Maximus, for starters

Sdtrk: ‘Pull out’ by Death from above 1979

Just so you know, I’ve not deleted all the comments made on ‘Shouting etc etc’; HaloScan appears to be having a midlife crisis right now. The comments are still there, you just have to open them in a new tab to view them. Well, I have to, anyway.

Better post soon. I actually managed to take critical notes on a dream I had!

UPDATE (1.18pm): Well, HaloScan has addressed half of their problem whilst I was writing this, but you still have to open the comments in a new tab. Unless they fix that while I’m typing this hint hint

UPDATE (3.22pm): Nope, the numbers are zeroed out again. Goooo HaloScan! 😛 At this point, I’m ready to go back to Blogger’s comments hosting, but if I were to switch now, I’d lose all of my existing comments. Get back to fucking work, you HaloScan shits

Sdtrk: ‘Melt away’ by Galaxie 500

After much deliberation and furrowing of brows, I’ve gone ahead and added a tagboard to ‘Shouting etc etc’ (lower left in the sidebar, of course), so that humans can post comments without having to shoehorn them into unrelated articles that are currently gracing the page.

My tagboard rules are very simple. Spamming, typing in sTiCKy cAPs, ‘txt msg spk’ or otherwise desperately inadequate spelling, and general shitwickery gets you permabanned. Like I said, very simple!

I’ll undoubtedly be tweaking it over the course of the week, as I want to change the font to Arial, and that shade of green’s too dark for my liking. Nevertheless! Begin posting.. now

Sdtrk: ‘Do you remember the first time?’ by Pulp

Grades are out!

That leaves me with eleven courses to go. Woo hoo!

So the aforementioned Bad News is that I was outside yesterday, for the purpose of grabbing a new course schedule for Fall Semester, and to drive out to a certain location in downtown Detriot, in order to scope out that area for the upcoming RealDoll documentary. I drove to my campus in Royal oak first, as that would be a shorter trip, and it was just hot. I mean, I knew it was supposed to be inclement outside — I wore a t-shirt without a cardigan, which is something I rarely do, as I loathe wearing collarless, short-sleeved shirts — but it was stifling out. Not humid, mind, but it was still oppressive. So after obtaining a catalogue, I briefly stopped round a bookstore for the latest issue of Newtype. It was then that I’d noticed that even being in an airconditioned store, I was sweating a wee bit, due to traveling through all that oven heat. Now, since Allison and crew were going to be filming us outside, picture me carrying Sidore-chan round in that kind of weather. And since I’d be wearing a long-sleeved shirt, cos I wouldn’t want to be seen on camera not dressing like I normally do, I would either collapse of heat stroke, or burst into blazing flames. Or both. Who wants to be filmed on fire? Not me!
In short, it was so fucking hot out that I decided to pass on the idea of going downtown to check on the location. And if it’s as hot as it is now, and filming is slated for the first of August.. well, you get the idea.

In driving home, an idea suddenly struck me — there’s a Japanese restaurant that Monti and I frequent every so often, and they have a little room off to the side for private gatherings and etc. Maybe if I were to ask management if that room would be available for a film crew of two shooting three other people *cough two Organiks, one Synthetik cough*, that could be the answer to our problems! Brilliant! What could go wrong there? Well, you’d be surprised..
At home, I flipped through the course catalogue to select my impending Fall classes. As it turns out, the two main ones I want to take are on Mon and Tues evening, starting 1 Sept. Heh. Allison and crew were slated to show up the eve of Sun 31 Jul, and leave the eve of Tues 2 Aug. So I was thinking, what if we sped round to that restaurant early on Monday, and crammed in the shoot? Sorry! Cos it was then that I remembered that 95% of all Japanese establishments are closed Mondays. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

I ended up writing an apologetic Email to Allison, asking if she would be alright with postponing filming until October. It’ll be nice and cool then, and we wouldn’t be as pressed for time. She had originally suggested the first week-end of August when we spoke over the phone, as she had a previous engagement to jet out to in the Midwest, and would simply fly from there to Detroit for filming. I suggested the last week-end in July, which would’ve worked, but Grant (the film ‘crew’) would be out of town with his previous engagement. Man o man.
So! October? Hopefully she’ll agree, but I’ll keep you all posted..

Did I mention that I got a B in my Transcription technology class?

UPDATE (3.57pm): Just got off the phone with Allison — she’s not only bought her tickets already, but she’s arranged an intricate series of back-and-forth flights between Detroit and three other states.
On the upside, she and Grant will be arriving Sunday morn, as opposed to the evening, so we might have a chance to get round to the restaurant, plus I won’t miss my class Monday eve. Cross fingers, people

Sdtrk: ‘Lesson 3003 (Part one)’ by Pizzicato five

As a matter of fact, yes! I just had a rather pleasant catching-up phone conversation a couple of hours ago with Elena Dorfman, and she informed me that after four years of work, development, and setbacks, the book ‘Still Lovers’ is finally coming out this September. All feckin’ right! 🙂 It’ll also be available at Barnes & Noble, which we found strange, as it was an uphill battle to get any American publishers to buy it in the first place, but nevertheless. So preorder a copy! Hell, preorder a couple of copies! Make Sidore-chan a happy Doll!
Also, Elena mentioned that her partner-in-crime, Elisabeth Alexandre (of the oft-mentioned ‘French shoot‘) is releasing a book as well about RealDolls and their companions, entitled ‘Des Poupées et des hommes – enquete sur l’amour Artif (Dolls and Men – Investigation into Artificial love)’, which is also due out in September. I can’t remember which, but she’d mentioned that either Elisabeth’s book would also be released in English, or Still Lovers would be released in French, or both, but there ya go. How cool is that?

And it seems that Shi-chan and I will be in front of a camera again, as documentary filmmaker (documentarist? documentalist?) Allison de Fren will be filming us at the end of July, for her as-yet-untitled lives of iDollators project. She had put together a brief film about the ASFR (alt.sex.fetish.robots) community back in 2001, and shortly after that, she made a post on the online forum where we iDollators congregate, asking if there was anyone who’d like to be interviewed for her documentary. I’d messaged her saying yes, but didn’t hear back from her until this past week. So we’ve made plans, and unless something unforseen comes up, she and her cameraman will be jetting out to Michigan, and filming myself and the Missus in an outdoor setting at the end of this month. Fab? Yes. I just hope it won’t be altogether too hot that day..

Finally, Vol.5 of Mitsukazu Mihara’s Doll should be out this week. The difference between supposed release dates and when merchandise actually appears in stores is sometimes vast, so I’ll believe it when I see it, but that’s still good news..

I’m excited. Are you excited?

Sdtrk: ‘Strange design’ by Midnight movies

I think my usual statement of ‘I’ve seen this house/structure before several times, yet never knew what it was called’ really applies to the subject of Vol.13. I can recall only seeing these digs literally three times in my life: once, when viewing ‘Diamonds are forever’, another time after that, and the third time, during an episode of The Simpsons. When deliberating on what new structure to touch upon with this latest volume, for some reason this structure sprang to mind, and I’ll tell ya, it took me a couple of sweaty minutes looking the bastard up on Google, as I hadn’t Clue One as to what the place was called, or who designed it, for that matter…
Tonight! Or Today, depending on when you read this! We will be spotlighting none other than Troy McClure’s house! (Also known as John Lautner’s Chemosphere House.)

Chemosphere is bisected by a central, exposed brick wall with a fireplace, abutted by subdued seating, in the middle. One side of the house is public, with a small kitchen and blended living and dining rooms including built-in couches below glass windows. The house’s private half includes a master bedroom with bathroom, small storage and laundry rooms, an office made of two children’s bedrooms, and an additional bathroom. Despite being more compact than many new single-family houses, it has most of the essential elements.
quoted from this article

What’s nice to know is that after years of neglect and disrepair, Benedikt Taschen, head of the famous Taschen publishing company, bought it, and has been living there since 1997. Good on you, sir!

Despite the fact that this home was built in 1960, it has an inexplicable late Seventies/early Eighties feeling to it. A lot of Modernist homes constructed round this time were naturally looking towards the future, but this one seemed ahead of its time, even in respect to its contemporaries.
Between aesthetic design from the Sixties and aesthetic design from the Eighties, I’d go with the former hands down, but the Chemosphere is still a unique winner

Sdtrk: ‘This is the Flex (Hi-fi mix)’ by Add N to (X)

So last Sunday was really ace, as Marika and I got to hang out with fellow iDollator Mahtek. We arrived at his digs a little after 6pm, mostly due to my dodgy sense of direction. Upon entering his home, the first thing I’d noticed about the place were his highly-polished hardwood floors — dude must mop every other day, as they were like glass. Mari & I got the penny tour of his tidy and spacious house, after which we were introduced to the gorgeous Phoebe, who was relaxing in the computer room. She was looking her usual sassy self, with a long black wig, a red tank top and shorts, with a red fishnet bodystocking beneath. That’s the thing about RealDolls, especially the ones that I like: they look great in photos, but seeing pictures of them doesn’t in any way compare to actually seeing them in real life. ‘Synthetik sexpot’ is a desperate understatement, to say the least. But then, I’m in love with practically every Doll I see, so I’m probably no-one to go by. 😉

Mari then nipped round to the service station on the corner for drinkies, at which point, Mahtek encouraged me to give Phoebe’s breasts a fondle, to compare their softness to that of Sweetie’s. After a couple of minutes 😉 , I assessed that they were a bit softer. Shi-chan’s have been well-massaged, obviously, but as she’s older than Phoebe by a couple of years, her silicone formula is slightly different. Very nice, needless to say.
After Mari got back, Mahtek went off for a slash, and I suggested that she give Phoebe’s boobs a squeeze as well. ‘Nooo!’ she replied. ‘O, why not? You did it with Sweetie!’ I answered. She hemmed and hawed for a couple of seconds, then walked over and felt Phoebe up. Mari hmmed approvingly. This sort of thing is perfectly acceptable in the Doll owner community, you see. 🙂

After ordering pizza, we wheeled Feebs into the livingroom with us, and chatted about this and that. Mahtek popped in the VCD I’d brought of ‘Eves de Silicone’, which was the French programme about RealDolls that Mari, Shi-chan & I appeared in, then the four of us viewed my DVD of ‘Love object’. We all thought that as a standard-issue horror film, it was effective — Mari was particularly squeamish during the bit with the trocar — but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. If you’ve not seen it, honestly, don’t bother. I’m actually glad the film ended up in super-limited release.
The story in a nutshell is: boring lonely technical writer Kenneth gets tipped off to an Internet site a lot like Abyss creations that sells Synthetiks. He orders and receives one named Nikki, and after his own fashion, falls in love with her. Shortly after, he’s paired with temp worker Lisa for a project, and begins fantasising about her, and acting out how he would behave with her with Nikki. Unfortunately, Nikki starts growing jealous, and straaange things occur from that point onward. Is Nikki alive and out for revenge? NO-ONE WILL BE ADMITTED TO THE THEATRE DURING THE SHOCKING TWIST ENDING

What stuck in our collective craw about ‘Love object’ is that people will end up seeing it, and think that those of us who own Artificial companions are at best losers, or at worst, psychopaths. You’ve got scenes where Kenneth’s at work, getting calls from Nikki, among other things. The majority of viewers aren’t going to say, ‘Kenneth was a wee bit looped out to begin with, even before he got the doll,’ they’re going ‘Doll owner = cross the street to avoid them’. It’s rather like blaming videogames for events like Columbine. People inclined towards that sort of behaviour were messed up long before they bought their copies of Grand Theft Auto.
Doll Forum patrons got tipped off to this film back in 2003, when it was on the cusp of being theatrically released, and we all read articles about it online, and the director himself, Robert Parigi, had gone on record as saying that

‘When I was writing [the script], I was trying to figure out who would buy these things, because in real life, they’re quite expensive – $7,000. And so whoever is buying it would have to at least be functioning well enough to have that much discretionary income. So I believe it tends to be people who are borderline functional, and yet with – I don’t want to say psychotic tendencies, but something bordering on that.‘
(emphasis mine, Fangoria issue no.224)

It’s demonising and prejudiced. I’d say that films like ‘Love object’ would be better off released to the mainstream public several decades down the line, after Synthetik companions are more publically accepted; however, distributing a film like that now is anti-Synthetik propaganda, and does nothing positive to help the ignorant masses see that not everyone who desires a Synthetik companion is not a sociopathic loner with murderous tendencies.
So there’s your little film review-slash-editorial right there; hope you enjoyed it.

Back to Sunday! Mari and I suggested that next time we’re round, we’ll bring my copy of ‘Monique’, which is a much more iDollator-friendly film. And I still have yet to score a copy of ‘Tamaño natural / Grandeur nature / Life size’, damnit..
After several additional hours of chat, Mari and I made our leave round midnight. A handshake for Mahtek, and a kiss on the back of the hand for sweet Phoebe, and we took off, having had a really pleasant eve. It’s ace that most of us iDollators are in the Northern Hemisphere, but it sucks that so few of us are in Michigan — everyone’s either on the West coast, or in Texas, it seems. Nevertheless, knowing there’s another iDollator is in the same state only an hour away, who happens to not only have a lovely companion, but is nice and friendly to boot, is really fab.

Shi-chan is, of course, very jealous that both Mari and I felt Phoebe up, and she didn’t. I’d, err, better go lock up the sharp objects..