Sdtrk: ‘Able bodied’ by Subliminal self

So I should be back online in the next couple of days! No, I’m serious; Comcast is sending one of their finest agents round to mine this Friday, in order to throw the enormous knife switch labelled ‘Inter Net’ into the On position. Which’ll be nice, as I’ve got some tidbits of negligible interest that I’ll nevertheless be writing about coming up soon.
In the meantime, lookit:

Looks like crap, tastes like shite. Such value!

Management actually went up and down the aisles a couple of nights ago at work and passed out cans of luminous intestinal bile Vault, in an effort to get us all whooped up to make more sales. No, I’m serious.

I have a question: who habitually drinks that swill? In my mind, I’m picturing people with lobotomy scars, dribbling rivulets of Vault down their hospital gown shirtfronts… and even they’re wincing at its extreme ‘citrus’ ‘taste’.

Hours later, I passed the can, which was only 2% empty, to our janitor. He probably naturally thought it was completely drained, as it slipped from his grasp and landed on the open end, dumping most of its lurid contents onto the carpet next to my cubicle. About a minute later, I couldn’t stop smelling Vault.

Clearly, management has it in for us

Sdtrk: see below

So yeah! Still moving. I’m actually typing this from my parents, where there’s a functioning Interonet connection…
We’re about, err, 60% done? That’s not including the ‘arranging things where we want them’ phase, so this will be a Work in Progress probably until the end of the month. How did you spend September? they will ask. Our answer: Moving shit around and sweating like New York waiters.

In the meantime, I’d like to share this with yü: Driving around today, I was listening to disk one of New order’s ‘Substance 1987’. It had been a number of months since I last heard it, and I was utterly floored again as to how unbelievably good The perfect kiss (track 07) is — it’s either my favourite, or my second favourite song by them, I’ve not decided which. The video for it (FAC 321 in the Factory records listing) is rather good too. Directed by Jonathan Demme, the man behind ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and other feature films, it’s an austere affair that fits perfectly in with the early days of the band’s ‘anti-image’, as it’s simply Bernard, Hooky, Gill and Stee performing the song in a practise room. This video was particularly notable for me, as when I first saw it,
1) I had no idea that the band members switched up their instruments during the song
2) I’d never seen a sequencer in ‘action’
3) Peter Hook is a fucking Bass God
and 4) seeing Gillian simply confirms why I find English lasses into New wave so very very lovely. Yum.

So with that in mind, please enjoy the full 10.38 version of The perfect kiss.

GILLIAN YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU

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: ‘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: ‘Across the universe’ by Laibach

At times, I’m glad I’m not rich, as I am a bonafide sucker — perhaps one could even call me a sucka — for obscure and anachronistic technologies. ‘Technological white elephants,’ as Danielle Dax once called them. I used to own one of the infamous Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorders back when they debuted in the late Eighties — you know, the ones that record sound and image onto normal audiocassette tape — and since I sold mine, I start each day weeping softly into my pillow, regretting the tragic mistake that I’d made. Especially since working PXL-2000s run about $400 – $500 on eBay these days.
So you can imagine my Glee Meter (and my Esoterica Meter) going well into the red when I saw this online: VinylVideo.

VinylVideo™ is a fake archeology of media.
We designed a device that retrieves videosignals (moving image and sound) stored on a conventional Vinyl (LP) record. The discontinuity in the development of electronic film technology constitutes the historical background for this fictitious video disc technology: Even though television, the electronic transmission of moving images, had been feasible since the late 1920’s, storage of these images became possible only after development of the video recorder in 1958. Recording images for private use did not become available until the mass introduction of the VCR in the early 1980’s (!). Before, the average consumer was confined to use Super-8 film, a technology dating back to 1900, usually without sound. Recording of television was not possible at all.
VinylVideo™ reconstructs a homemovie technology of the late 40’s/early 50’s and thus bridges a gap in the history of consumer technology. The images are stored on a conventional analog record, with a running time of ca. 8 min / side (Singles 4 min / side). These records are played on a standard turntable with an ordinary diamond needle, the signals are then processed by the VinylVideo Home Kit into a videosignal that is displayed on a black and white TV-set.
taken from the presskit

So it’s basically like the bastard child of Edison’s wax cylinders and SelectaVision, RCA’s well-meaning-but-doomed analogue storage format from the Eighties. Huh!

The site is fab, in and of itself; there’s a lengthy infomercial that explains, in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion, what VinylVideo has over boring conventional television. Essentially, VinylVideo is a medium for video artists to make their art arguably more available to the public — it’s easier and cheaper to purchase a VinylVideo kit than it is to buy a work by Nam June Paik — and its super-lo-fi technology (they call the image’s quality trashpeg, tee hee) makes it easy to use and alter for one’s own purposes, if you’re into the whole deconstructionist thing. Personally, the biggest draw for someone like me is that it’s composed of sexy retro-tech!

You hook up your telly and home hi-fi turntable to this outsized converterboxthing, fiddle with a few knobs to fine-tune the image, and voila! Greyscale visuals flicker across your screen in a ghostly fashion, for as long as the record plays. The images that the conversion present seem like the perfect sort of medium for videos done by the growing crop of ‘eldritchtronica’ artists, such as those found on the Ghost box and Blank workshop labels — even the high-contrast pictures seem washed-out and murky. Lovely stuff…

It’s a shame I’m not rich, as the playback kit alone for VinylVideo goes for the horrifying amount of just over $3,400 USD. Kinda makes the highway robbery that extortionists want for a PXL-2000 seem quite reasonable and pleasant, eh?

Technorati tags: VinylVideo, Ghost box, Blank workshop, SelectaVision, Fisher-Price PXL-2000

Sdtrk: ‘Sister Ray’ by the Velvet Underground

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this.

Nice boots, missy

Lars and the Real Girl

Written by Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl is a heartfelt comedy starring Academy-Award nominated Ryan Gosling as Lars Lindstrom a loveable introvert whose emotional baggage has kept him from fully embracing life. After years of what is almost solitude, he invites Bianca, a friend he met on the internet to visit him. He introduces Bianca to his Brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and his wife Karen (Emily Mortimer) and they are stunned. They don’t know what to say to Lars or Bianca – because she is a life-size doll, not a real person and he is treating her as though she is alive. They consult the family doctor Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson) who explains this is a delusion he’s created – for what reason she doesn’t yet know but they should all go along with it. What follows is an emotional journey for Lars and the people around him.

Hm. Hrrrm. On the surface, it sounds like a cross between French black comedy ‘Monique‘, and Luis García Berlanga’s ‘Tamaño natural‘. Granted, though, there aren’t a lot of Doll-related feature films to really compare it to; ‘Love object’ doesn’t count, as it’s hardly sympathetic towards iDollators.

There are two main problems I might have with this film.
1) As I was lamenting to New Best Blogger Friend barstowmama (she’s linked, y’know), the trend in popular media ‘culture’ is that whenever a person is given a choice between a Synthetik partner and an Organik one, by the end of the film, the script will have him choose the Organik, having completely forsaken the Synthetik that he was completely happy with before (see ‘Cherry 2000‘ for a prime example, or this music video by Lim Jeong Hee). As professional photographer Elena Dorfman once commented, love can take many forms — just because someone’s partner is artificial doesn’t make the partnership less valid, which is what popular culture doesn’t seem to understand.
2) Society has a vibrating neurosis about people being happy introverts. Extroverts seem to believe that the only good experiences are shared amongst the company of others, which is patently false. Granted, it’s obvious that a person can have fun with others, just not all the time. They don’t understand that not everyone is a go-gettin’ Type-A personality — some people happen to like it quiet and calm. Extroverts are particularly nosey, and seem to be almost offended when introverts want to keep to themselves. ‘How can he be happy if he’s inside all the time by himself?’ Sure, there are people who actually want to reach out and just don’t know how to go about it, but there are others who have done that, didn’t particularly like what they saw, and decided to stick with what they know.

This film says to me we are going to drag you kicking and screaming into the outside world, whether you like it or not, cos that’s what we think is what’s best for you, which is reprehensible. Speaking for myself, I enjoy hanging around people I’m friends with, but large groups of people — especially ones I don’t really know — kinda freak me out, mainly cos I don’t know what they’re pondering. It’s not as if I dress, speak or act like the common herd, and in the back of my mind, I’m thinking that most people don’t really like what they see. Trying to ‘fit in’ isn’t an option any more than getting enormous crowds of people to switch over to my way of thinking, so I prefer to keep to myself or amongst those who I’m familiar with.
From the trailer, Lars alternately seems okay with being out and about, or fearful of leaving his house, but that’s like two different types of introverts rolled into one character. Some are shut-ins due to fear, but others simply don’t want to leave the house cos they know they don’t have to deal with people’s rampant shitwickery.

(I owe a debt, as always, to fellow iDollator and hard-working scribe PB Shelley, for recommending Anneli Rufus’ fantastic book, ‘Party of one: the Loner’s Manifesto‘, as reading and re-reading it has gotten me through some difficult periods…)

One thing’s for certain, however — Bianca is definitely a hottie. Anyone wanting to abandon someone like her would have to be delusional.

(insert typical tongue-rolling sound here)

In fact, she looks like she’s a Leah-type RealDoll; at the very least, she definitely has the Face 4, and as short as she looks, she’s probably got the Body 2. Probably tweaked a bit for the film, but I’d recognise that face anywhere, as that’s what Shi-chan is. I’m not normally a betting man, but I think once the film comes out, there’ll be a handful of orders placed with Abyss to make a Doll that ‘looks just like the Doll in “Lars and the Real Girl”‘. And with good reason!
Like I said, I’ll pass proper judgement when I see it, but as it’s a Hollywood production, I’m visualising Bianca getting the shaft in the end. No, not like that — get your minds out of the gutter

Sdtrk: ‘Ceremony’ by Joy division

One of the reasons I prefer architecture — and by some extension, city planning — from the very late Fifties to the very early Seventies, is that there was still a sense of general optimism. Especially during the Sixties, when new technological innovations were popping up on a regular basis, man was setting foot on the Moon, and space travel was a new and fantastic thing. (Although there’ll be something to be said when space travel is no more unusual than taking a trip from one country to another.) It was this exact sort of well-meaning thinking that inspired the subject of this instalment: Brasília, the futuristic capital of Brazil, designed by the architects Oscar Niemeyer and the urban planner Lúcio Costa.

Teatro Nacional (National theatre) ‘Cláudio Santoro’
Photo © by Augusto Areal

In 1956, Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira is elected President and creates the Company of Urbanization of the New Capital (NOVACAP). Kubitschek invites a young architect, Oscar Niemeyer, to command the project. In the same year of 1956, the work on site starts. In 1957, a public contest is won by urbanist Lúcio Costa, who presented the inovative ideas for the design of the new capital, in his work which became known as Plano Piloto (Pilot Plan).

Juscelino Kubitschek, or JK, had the motto “fifty years in five”; his plan was to make Brazil grow during his five year term as much as the previous fifty years; JK invited car makers (like Ford, GM and Volkswagen) to come to Brazil, and opened several highways (in detriment of railways) to stimulate cars selling. However, JK’s darling was Brasília; to have the city finished still during his term, he didn’t hesitate in allocating financial and human resources into the works; several Boeings were rented to fly cement, sand and other supriments into the sites.
Juscelino was so obsessed with the idea of being founder of Brasília, that he officially opened the city on April 22 1960, before it was finished.
taken from this site

Considering that only five years before the city existed, it was a barren wasteland, that makes this urban accomplishment all the more impressive. Apart, of course, from the fact that all the main structures of the city, such as the Presidential Palace, the Federal Chamber, the residential sectors, the Supreme Federal Court, and the Brasília Cathedral, among many others, are all disparate, yet uniform. Kinda like the Bauhaus School, but filtered through 20th century Modern aesthetics… entirely lovely stuff.

The dichotomy of Brasília is that it’s classified by the United Nations agecy UNESCO with the status of Historical and Cultural Heritage of Humanity, due to its uniqueness. As I recall reading somewhere, this effectively means that the city is trapped in an architectural timecapsule — changing or updating the overall aesthetics of the city would be the equivalent of placing an enormous flat-screen monitor behind Lincoln’s head in the Lincoln Memorial. Some say that this handicaps the city’s ability to compete with the modernity of more contemporary cities across the globe, but I’m certain I echo many peoples’ sentiments when I say, ‘so what?’ Just because something is new or modern doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good. Besides, we need cities like Brasília to show future architects and city planners how things can be more effectively managed.
But seriously, a citywide monument to Sixities architectural design? Fantastic