Sdtrk: ‘Le lieu où vous voulez vous rendre’ by Marie Davidson

Two points of interest that I have for you today!
First off, remember when I reviewed a passel of Japanese and UK food a number of years ago, sent as a birthday prezzie from my Twitterfriend Jill Tilley, which was covered in the five-part series, Do you remember Food? I suppose that would make my question Do you remember ‘Do you remember Food?’? Infinite recursions temporarily aside, her hubby Doug Tilley, film reviewer and pop culture sceptic, asked if I’d be willing to review a couple of films for his podcast ‘Eric Roberts Is The Fucking Man‘. As you may have surmised with the title, the podcast involves Doug and his cohost pal Liam reviewing the entire backcatalogue of notable actor Eric Roberts. You’d think it’s a one-trick pony, but Eric Roberts has appeared in far more productions than you’d imagine. Certainly more than I knew of! Doug asked me to choose two films, and as I was dead set on ‘Runaway train’ and ‘Doctor Who: the Movie’ but they’d already covered them, I went with less, err… well-known affairs; I selected ‘Power 98’, and ‘Six: The Mark Unleashed’. One’s a thriller about the machinations of a shock jock, and the other is a faith-based film about the Antichrist. Can you guess which one is which?
We recorded on 02 August, and the episode is available for listening to right now!

It's @EricRoberts is the F$%&ing Man #32 /w @Davecat discussing POWER 98 & SIX: THE MARK UNLEASHED! https://t.co/XNDmNeThhm

— EricRobertsIsTheMan (@ERITFM) August 8, 2016

As dire as those films were, I had quite a time discussing them with Doug and Liam! Would I make another guest appearance on their show in the future if they asked? Yes, yes I would. After all, Eric Roberts has been in a lot of stuff. The man’s everywhere! He’s probably behind you right now!!

And the other point? Like most people, I’ve always wanted illustrations done of myself. Actually, that’s a lie. I hadn’t had much need for that sort of thing until Sidore entered my life, at which point my focus turned to wanting illustrations done of both of us; specifically doing things or being in locations where we couldn’t be in real life. Some months ago, I began shopping for artists who take commissions, and I was happy to find that one of my favourites, raulovsky (aka Raúl Ramos Melo), was accepting them. Incidentally, why is he one of my favourites? I dig his style, as it lies somewhere between anime and something more realistic, and he doesn’t mind drawing Gynoids, which is always a plus. So an idea was pitched, a price was agreed upon, some reference photos were Emailed, and a wee bit over a fortnight later, an illustration was created! Pretty fucking awesome.

click the image for a larger version

The poses we’re in are a modified version of a picture of Twiggy and Justin de Villeneuve that I’ve always found stylish, and did you notice the seam lines on Shi-chan’s legs?? Yeeaaahh.
In requesting the commission, I understood what it felt like to be the subject of an artist’s interpretation, much like how individuals during the Renaissance would have artists paint them out in a garden, or with some wolfhounds, or whatever. This illo of my Missus and me is better, though. Fact.
Not only am I going to have raulovsky do another picture — featuring Lenka and Winter, of course — but ideally, I’d like to have commissions done through other artists as well. But maybe only two or three times a year, depending on prices… Why not enquire with him yourself, and have him make you something equally fantastic?

Sidore is in love with this illo, incidentally. ‘Why can’t we look this good in real life?’ she lamented, and I’d have to agree with her

Sdtrk: ‘Some days’ by Martial Canterel

Don’t we all, insidious cash register; don’t we all.

At Shouting to hear the echoes, the official blog of Deafening silence Plus, we do our utmost best to bring you the most information possible concerning artificial humans, 20th century architecture and design, and above all else, relevant news regarding Davecat, his wife Sidore Kuroneko, their live-in mistress Elena Vostrikova, and their flatmate Muriel Noonan. This blog has been chugging along for a wee bit over ten years, and it’s the visits of viewers like you that keep stoking the coal fire, as it were. Why, if you’re reading this post, that means that at some point very recently, ‘Shouting etc etc’ has had its 700,000 visitor gaze upon its countenance! That’s a lot of visitors! Heck, most people can’t even count up to 100,000 without taking off their trousers!

Anyway, we’d just like to publically recognise this milestone, with a heartfelt Thank You, to those of you who weren’t just here looking for photos of Synthetik women. And even if you were, we hope you enjoyed your stay, and sincerely hope you’ll be back for — as we like to say here — more of the same! Cos let’s face it: you really can’t get writing like this anywhere else

Sdtrk: ‘Past majesty’ by Demdike stare

People love that 2048! Well, I’m assuming that people love 2048. Then again, I normally assume people even know what I’m on about, and if they don’t, that’s par for the course…
2048 is a game I just recently discovered that involves sliding tiles, each of which is numbered sequentially starting from 2. Using your arrow keys, you match up the tiles until you have gained satisfaction, or run out of moves. I’m led to believe that 2048 is based off the iOS game 1024. In any case, both of them involve math, so I can’t be bothered.
Internet online website usvsth3m, a spinoff of the amusing b3ta.com, developed a version of 2048 which uses picture tiles instead on numerical ones, for those of us who equate the use of numbers to witchcraft. The game is Flash-based, so you can make your own version! And so I have, and it’s exactly what you’d expect.

So which one of them is Ann B. Davis?

Click here for non-stop image-related excitement: 2048: Super Synthetik Girls Edition by Davecat. Why not play a couple of rounds while awaiting your bus, your date, or the grave??
As it uses the guest Gravatars on this blog, it just reminds me that a lot of those are old pics, and I really could stand to make some new ones. But that reeks of effort!

In other, more horn-trumpeting news, back in February, I was contacted by Dr Bertalan Meskó, medical doctor and medical futurist, concerning getting my thoughts on how humanoid robots will effect social change. He’d fired a few questions at me, and my responses ended up in his latest book, ‘The Guide to the Future of Medicine: Technology AND The Human Touch’. I’m really glad he’d asked! Apart from robots, his book also spans emerging trends such as stem cells, cryonics, prosthetic limbs, and more as well — in short, the future of medicine. You can order a physical copy for yourself, or a digimal version for your hoity-toity Kindle, here on Amazon.

And this very week-end, the Missus, our mistress, our flatmate, and I will have another film crew observing us in our natural habitat. This film crew is headed by another doctor, one who paints in her spare time, and she wants to get my insights as far as how recent technological advances are influencing our relationships and interactions. As she doesn’t seem like a pop psychologist — ‘Dr’ Phil, I’m squinting in your general direction — I’m looking forward to speaking about how being an iDollator has changed my life for the better, and how having a Gynoid, an Android, or a Doll as a partner can do the same for thousands of individuals. Also, it’s a much nicer change of having a camera crew come round when it’s not boiling Summertime, but then, everything’s better when it’s not boiling Summertime. Fact.

O, and expect a couple of new Synthetiks-related news posts relatively soon, as just recently, there’s been a handful of noteworthy things worth writing notes posts about

Sdtrk: ‘Structures’ by John Baker

No, I haven’t fallen in a hole somewhere, nor have Shi-chan, Lenka, and Mew-Mew tied me up and subdued me, ‘Faster pussycat! Kill! Kill!’-style. Although that’d be interesting. No, recently I’ve been reconciling my post-work free time, clocking in many hours of Earth defense force 2025 with goshou, SafeT, and Euchre, finishing Far cry 3: Blood dragon, and replying to Emails, cos I’ll be rolling that particular boulder up that mountain for eternity. O, and keeping up with this year’s World Cup! As of this writing, our favourites England, Japan, Italy, and the US are out, leaving a match with Germany going up against France. Those would be two of our other favourite teams, so having to choose between them was like choosing your favourite child, or pet, or pet child.

@Davecat Well, you know ma soeur @AnyaManikin is not in Germany. So there, I made it easy for you. 🙂

— Rachel Madison Wells (@mydollyvita) July 4, 2014

But you’ll be pleased as punk to know that I’m working on a new post! A Synthetiks-related one! And there’s so much info/effluvium in it that it’ll have to be split into two parts! So if you like your women rubbery, you’ll have those to look forward to. And who wouldn’t? Idiots, that’s who. Idiots.

For an interlude in the meantime, why not enjoy some vintage footage of some fashionable models amongst the amazing architecture of Sixties London, whilst a piece by John Baker of the BBC Radiophonic workshop plays in the background?

I’ll be back after the break. O, and looks like Germany won! *stands up and starts to sing ‘Deutschland über alles’, realises he doesn’t know the words, sits back down*

Sdtrk: ‘A A A A A A R’ by Two daughters

It may be too premature to tell at this juncture, but it seems that Deafening silence Plus is back to a state of DEFCON 5. What that means is that I’m employed again. *overenthusiastic thumbs up*
Frankly, the entire ordeal has been a fucking nightmare, and has probably taken about a year off my life with worry. I’ve never been keen on rollercoasters, and securing employment, let alone decent employment, was needlessly difficult. By the time things ended, I was working with six separate temp agencies, who couldn’t seem to get me anything in the field I really desired — data entry — and the best two or three of them could offer were positions in call centres, or in sales. As you’ll already know, I’d spent nearly twenty years in various call centres, and returning to one would be akin to taking a Vietnam veteran back through time to 1970, to spend some additional time ‘in the shit’; the best outcome for that person would more than likely be suicide.

Oftentimes either I wouldn’t be able to find something suitable, or there were instances where a place would want to set up an interview, which I’d attend, and whatever prospective employer would end up choosing someone else. One of my favourite bits was when I went to an interview and totally aced it, but ultimately, I was told I’d have to cut my ponytail off and not wear earrings in order to get the position. It’d be one thing if it was something I really wanted, but this was for a call centre that was paying $10 per hour. Even the temp agent who organised the interview was baffled at their Fifties-era dress code requirements, so what does that say?
No wait, I take that back: the best bit had to have been when a temp agent scheduled an interview; it went well, they told me I was hired and report to work in a week, but between then and the start date, the agent then informed me that the employer had a hiring freeze take place, and I wouldn’t be able to start when I was due to. That happened twice. With two different temp agencies, serving two different employers.

Thankfully, however, I’ve had a full-time job now since late April! I work for a place… wait for it… doing data entry! It’s Monday through Friday in the morning — actually, they have flex time, wherein I can come in as early as 7.30 or as late as 9am — and I’m in a room with eight other people, entering data and doing imaging for a national health-related company. It’s dead easy and stress-free, I can wear my headphones, and it’s five minutes away from a place that sells sushi. Plus, it’s the highest paying job I’ve ever had, so needless to say, it’s a pretty fantastic gig. The only downside to it is that it’s a 20-25min drive to work, and with insidious rush hour traffic, it’s nearly an hour home. Sure, I’m catching up on my podcasts, but ergh. I’m going to try my damnedest to start getting to work at 7.30am, so I can circumvent traffic both ways. That’s gonna take some training, as nearly seven months of being on the dole has eroded any concept of a ‘normal’ wake-up time. But it’s nice being at a stage of my life where I actually like what I do at work! The drive, however… not so much. It’s all for a good cause, though; i.e, me keeping a roof over my head.

Apart from freaking out due to lack of job prospects, what else have I been up to, you axe? Among other pursuits, I watched all of Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy, a passel of episodes of the fantastic QI on YouTube, put a sizeable dent in my ‘anime that needs to be watched’ list, as well as seeing ‘The Lego Movie‘, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel‘, ‘The Raid 2: Berandal‘, and Gareth Edwards’ ‘Godzilla‘ in the theatres with the miscreants I normally hang out with, so there’s that. (Each one of those films is highly recommended, in case you were wondering).
Also I bought a copy of the reissue of Joy division’s debut EP ‘An ideal for living’ on Record Store Day! After all, I had my orders.

#RecordStoreDay is coming up! I told @Davecat that unless he found a copy of that Joy Division reissue, don't bother coming home 😐

— Sidore Kuroneko (@leahtype) April 13, 2014

Despite the fact that I have a modest vinyl collection, composed mostly of stereo demonstration records, we don’t really have space for a proper hi-fi here at Deafening silence Plus, so the EP is currently being displayed in our record frame in our flat’s ‘hallway’, as seen here.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Upon reflection, I should’ve bought two extra copies, now that I see people on eBay flogging them from $40 – $60 apiece…

And the other major event was that my third Synthetik flatmate, Muriel Noonan, arrived home on 31 March! She’s from Coventry, used to work in a library, and is made by Textile Doll, the company from Latvia that I’ve mentioned a handful of times on ‘Shouting etc etc’. Expect a full review on her when I manage to get my post-work time sorted, but she likes it here, which is good, as we like having her here!

So that’s pretty much what’s been up with what’s goin’ down / In every city, in ev-er-y town. As I’m fond of saying, I have to get the barrels up to speed before I’m posting on what passes for a regular basis round here, but now that I’m no longer freaking out every other day for fear that I’ll have to move back in with my father for the second time, I should be posting again again! ‘Woo’, with an additional ‘Yay’

Sdtrk: ‘Long as the sun’ by Medicine

Ladies and gelatin, it has been a heady couple of weeks. Let me get you lot up to speed with things:

In the process of lifting my lazy affictitious Russian one Saturday evening in late September, I did something unpleasant to my back, to the point where I was in excruciating pain for about a week and a half. This is the thing that kills me: I’ve lifted Sidore (just under 100 lbs from 2000 to 2010, now down to 78 lbs) thousands of times over the course of 13+ years, with no ill effects, but the one time I have a go at lifting Elena (57 lbs), something goes wrong. Really, what are the odds?

Due to my injury, I took the week off work. I saw my GP… well actually, I had to see the other GP who shares the clinic with my GP, and after determining that I had a herniated disk, she gave me some cyclobenzaprine, which is a muscle relaxant, and some prescription-level ibuprofen, both of which did the business. When I went back to work after my week of cursing this ineffective meat body, my job laid me off on the 30th. It wasn’t to do with my injury, but work had been extraordinarily slow for a couple of months prior to me fucking up my back; when I returned, one of my coworkers was doing my job, but saying there was nothing for him to do. However, at the very least, I was laid off, not fired; my boss told me with his own mouth that as soon as things picked back up, he’d give me a call. So there’s that. Thankfully, I’m collecting unemployment, though…

You’d think it’d be nice to take advantage and get caught up on things in the absence of a day-to-day job, right? Get some reading in, start and finish building any model kits that need to be assembled, that sort of thing? Well, yes and no. Fellow iDollator Everhard summed it up pretty well in a recent Email to me:

Being unemployed really is a full time job that leaves no energy for the creative things. I have plenty of experience with that. You need proper freedom of time and effort to achieve worthwhile things. Even when you attain that state, or something approximating it, it seems to take a while to get acclimatised to it. Old habits die hard.

Instead of digitising all those pieces that I’d recorded as Wreath.VCA onto cassette tape years ago, or scanning all those print photographs I’d taken over the years, I’m spending my time seeking work online, or sleeping, or catching up on telly shows that I’ve been wanting to see for a while — the first two eps of The Owl Service are good, then it kinda gets bogged down in a Young Adult Fiction vibe, but the last episode is basically The Exorcist, and Children of the Stones is like The Prisoner crossed with ‘The Wicker Man’, and its last episode wouldn’t be out of place during Pertwee’s run on Doctor Who — or compulsively checking my websites. A large part of it, I think, is if I weren’t so concerned about trying to find ‘gainful’ employment, I could relax a lot more…

Apart from the idle distractions I’ve been engaged in, I’ve also been busy either accepting or deflecting loads of media appearances, brought on by Julie Beck’s article about me in the Atlantic! A few days after my back felt well enough for me to not spend 23 1/2 hours in bed per day, I’d received enquiries from two separate radio chat shows — one in Vancouver, the other in Australia, as well as some bloke working for Barcroft Media who mentioned eventually selling my segment to Dr Phil, and a writer who wanted to publish her article in Cosmopolitan, but had ties to the iDollator-hating feminazi site Jezebel. Obviously I’d said No to all of those, as if they didn’t look insubstantial or derisive, they seemed like too much of a risk.
What I’d said Yes to, though, was a fun and in-depth two-hour interview via Skype on 16th October with Maya Docha, a freelance reporter/writer, and a five and a half hour interview by Roc Morin, who entered Deafening silence Plus of his own free will on the 28th of this month. Maya struck me as funny and insightful, and the fact that she’d spoken with the Kinsey Institute means she was looking to do more than a puff piece, and when Roc and I weren’t discussing Dolls, Gynoids, and the past and future of artificial companions, he was telling me hilarious/unsettling anecdotes about his trip to North Korea a few years ago. Neither one of their pieces are published yet, so hold your horses; you’ll know when I know.
And to top it off, on the 26th and 27th of October, Shi-chan, Lenka, and I were filmed by a telly crew working for RTL Germany! We’re due to appear in a segment of a programme called Explosiv, which looks like… a show on telly. Most pop culture news shows look alike to me. It was an experience involving a bit of a drive out and about, digging for soundbites, and last-minute planning. Loads of last-minute planning. Every single one of us will have the final product to look forward to in the next couple of weeks, so hold your horses; you’ll know when I know.

Lenka, still unsure about the whole ‘being on telly’ thing; Shi-chan, showing off a prezzie from Mr Morin purchased in Pyongyang, North Korea

At the very least, our appearance on Explosiv will have a number of firsts: it’ll be the first time an Anatomical Doll has been on non-Russian television, as it’ll also be Elena’s first foray into being on telly, and the segment will possibly show her first trip with me out of doors! We went to a cemetery, which should surprise absolutely no-one. Lenka found the cemetery thing to be wonderful — any time you can be outside without being harassed by people is always fantastic — but she’s still shy when it comes to being displayed on other peoples’ telly screens. ‘It’s not all that bad,’ Shi-chan had reassured her. Onwards and outwards!

A number of weeks ago, one of the Missus’ tumblr friends left this in her Ask box:

Sidore agreed that, were it not for the fact that I’m currently on the dole, it’d be a hell of an idea. Maybe since we can’t actually dress the part for this year’s Hallowe’en, perhaps some keen and generous artist could draw us as the aforementioned Blade runner characters, hint hint?
Just so you know, I nearly typed ‘Blade rubber’ there. Really, what are the odds?

Sdtrk: ‘I box 20’ by To kill a petty bourgeoisie

As I type this up, I can imagine regular readers of this godforsaken blog — all nine of you — seeing the title of this post, indignantly flinging their mug of coffee through the nearest window, and bellowing at their computer screen, ‘Oi Davecat! This isn’t “Let’s meet some of California’s Synthetik residents, Part II”, this is some other bunch of crap!’ Well, you aren’t wrong! Also, shame that you shattered your ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ mug; you’ll never be able to replace that.

This post has two purposes: one, to say Hello to the sudden influx of new readers. Hello! Please be seated.
The other purpose is to explain why I’ve got new readers in the first place: remember in the previous post how I’d mentioned that a reporter for a notable online news site wanted to interview me about my iDollator lifestyle? Well, Julie Beck of The Atlantic sent over a passel of questions via Email, and I replied with some thorough answers. Last Friday it was published, and you can read it here: Married to a Doll: Why One Man Advocates Synthetic Love.

Also, if more men do start “choosing the synthetic option,” as you say, and begin having relationships with objects that are shaped like women, do you think that will encourage the objectification of real women?

The belief that the existence of synthetics encourages the objectification of organic women is baseless. If anything, those of us who are iDollators or technosexuals find that it’s more a case of personifying objects. But then, 98 percent of the iDollators and technosexuals I know treat their Dolls like goddesses. I can’t really speak for those who don’t, and it would be safe to assume that those who would objectify an organic woman would’ve been practicing that behavior long before knowing about synthetics.

As I’d told Julie, I think it’s one of the top five favourite online interviews I’ve done, as it lacks any conjecture or bias! Which is the way reporting should be. Although I do wish that she’d have pointed out that Elena was made by Anatomical Doll; she’s not a RealDoll, like my Missus is. Not all Doll manufacturers are the same!
So do enjoy the additional reading material, and I’ll get back to writing about DolLApalooza 2013. Or getting in a couple more minutes hours with Suda51’s KILLER IS DEAD. You know how these things go.

Now I shall show you a photo of the Gynoid actress/personality Actroid-F (aka Geminoid-F), in lieu of ending this post in a responsible manner

‘Why the hell did I do that? I’m really gonna miss that coffee mug’