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: ‘Ashes to ashes’ by David Bowie

Just a brief notice to inform all and sundry that Sidore-chan’s Flickr account has had two new photoshoots uploaded, ‘Velveteen bodice’, and ‘Skirt & crop’.
We’ve already run into a bottleneck with Flickr; if you have the basic account, it’ll only allow you to create three sets. You can upload as many pics as you wish, but you can only group them into three sets, which is just ridiculous. You get what you pay for, I suppose, but we do apologise for the inconvenience..
This just fills me with more of a burning fervor to start working on redesigning ‘Kitten with a Whip!’ Well, not so much burning, really; it’s more of a smoulder. But it’s a pretty damn hot smoulder.

Nevertheless, enjoy the photos! Leave a tasteful and/or witty comment, as Shi-chan loves receiving tasteful and/or witty comments

Sdtrk: ‘Crash for Hi-fi’ by Merzbow

Now, if you’ll throw a sidelong glance towards the lefthand sidebar, you’ll notice something new beneath the hit counter. Shi-chan has a Flickr account of her own!
I’ll commence work on rebuilding ‘Kitten with a Whip!’ when I can scrape up some spare time, but for now, Sidore has an effective way to display her photos. It seems that Flickr has a limit on how much bandwidth (there’s that word again) per month that you can use when you upload pics, and I’m already at the halfway point, so you can expect a monthly upload of about two photoshoots; of course, you’ll be notified when the new ones are up. Currently, we’ve got the ‘Short black hair’ and ‘Red is the new purple’ shoots uploaded, so for the six or seven of you who’ve never seen the Missus before, do give them a look..
We might even throw in some never-before-seen material as well! Who can say?

Sdtrk: ‘Such a little thing makes such a big difference’ by Morrissey

The people at 4woods have been hard at work, apparently, crafting a sexy new Synthetik. And good on them!

Lipstick: frosted, not frosty

Their latest variant of lovely artificial companion is the A.I.NEO, the first model of which is named Yu-ki. She’s just over 5’1″, 66 lbs, and her measurements are 34.24.35. According to the 4woods English page, the NEO series has improved features, among which are a stronger and more moveable skeletal structure, softer skin than previous models, bigger breasts (always good), and a lighter weight. Gentlemen, you’re speaking my language. 🙂
I’m so taken with the look of this model, that I believe once I’ve graduated, I’ll have to get one — after I buy a new body for Sidore-chan, an A.I.Doll Kunika-type, and a Jenny-type RealDoll, in that order.
So sexy! How is that even possible??

4woods has more pics are available here. Unfortunately, it’s in a Flash format, which makes saving them nigh-impossible, but I’m sure photos will be available through the usual channels soon enough.
Above photo shamelessly stolen from atsushi-san and MaRi-chan’s blog

Sdtrk: ‘Pretty girls make graves’ by the Smiths

So I was musing to myself a couple of days ago — what bands have I seen perform live? Hrrm.. *strokes chin in thought*

+ GLOD (four times — I miss them)
+ Batterie acid (twice — I miss them as well)
+ Silver apples (before Simeon and Danny Thomas got back in touch with each other, but a good show anyway)
+ Princess Dragon-mom (at least five times)
+ Mystic Moog Orchestra (twice)
+ Crash worship (a very Bacchanalian show)
+ Medicine (twice)
+ Lush (twice; the second time round, it was so hot at the concert venue that Miki’s hairdye began running down her face)
+ Mojave 3 (so boring, I actually fell asleep)
+ Shonen knife
+ Tasty bush (twice; a rather underrated band)
+ Laibach (unfortunately, it wasn’t during their heyday, it was when they toured for ‘Jesus christ Superstars’, their worst album ever)
+ Combustible Edison
+ Broadcast (three times)
+ Stereolab (five times I think, I can’t remember)
+ My bloody valentine (fucking ace show)
+ NON / Death in June / Scorpion wind / Strength through Joy (also, filed under ‘fucking ace show’)
+ Merzbow / Masonna (a pair of fantastic performances, only marred by the fact that Psywarfare opened for them)
+ Death from above 1979
+ Interpol
+ the faint
+ Adult. (three times)
+ Add N to (X) (twice)
+ Subliminal self (I know one of them!)
+ New order / The sugarcubes / PiL (the others weren’t bad, but I was there for New order)
+ Morrissey (the ‘Kill Uncle’ tour… largely meh, but nevertheless — it’s Morrissey)
+ The Dears (four times)
+ The Divine comedy (an ‘intimate evening’)
+ Destroy all monsters ‘reunion’ show (eh)
+ Social outcast (twice)
+ Bloc party (hooray for free tickets!)
+ Labradford (opened for Stereolab once)

I’ve actually restricted this list to the good, or at least memorable, performances; other bands I’ve seen would predominantly be hateful and/or boring opening acts for the shows mentioned above. Also, I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple; if I remember them, I will be sure to surreptitiously insert them into the list and pretend they were there in the first place, heh heh.

Unrelated! I may have a cunning plan as far as displaying Sidore-chan’s pics in the interim between now and ‘Kitten with a Whip!’ going back up. Details are, of course, forthcoming

Sdtrk: ‘Sorry for laughing’ by Josef K

Wee bit of a story behind the choice for this evening’s installment: A couple of years ago, I commissioned Mike, a mate of mine, to do an illustration of Sidore-chan for ‘Kitten with a Whip!’, and I wanted her drawn standing in a fab and distinctive setting. So Mike pointed me towards his vast library of reference material, and after poring through a couple of rather heavy books, I settled on a place in New York City, NY. I was really pleased with Mike’s ace rendition of both Sweetie and the background, and it was profiled as an omake (bonus) on ‘KWAW!’ for a couple of months. I’m sure some of you remember it.

Click here for full-sized version; opens in new window

For years afterward, the name of the actual location managed to elude me, until recently, when doing research for Vol.18 of the ‘This was the Future’ series. Now that I know what the place is called, I can finally sleep at night, thank god thank god.
And so! We bring you the Rockefeller Guest House, by Philip Johnson.

The home is one room wide, and upon entering, the living room stretches far back until it is book-ended by floor to ceiling windows that closely mimic the façade’s layout. The living room space has white brick walls and features lighting fixtures designed by Mr. Johnson. Beyond the windows, there is a small courtyard that features a prime example of Philip Johnson’s concept of “safe danger”. In the courtyard, visitors must carefully walk on square travertine stepping-stones and avoid falling into the shallow reflecting pool on either side.

Oddly enough, there’s really not a lot of info on the Rockefeller Guest House; well, none that I could find. Sure, you’ll run across articles left and right on his Glass House, and I probably would’ve done an installment on the Glass House myself, but I’ve already done the Farnsworth House. (Zing!) But the Guest House is pretty ace as well. Granted, it might look like an uninspiring sort of miniature Fifties-built warehouse from the front, but the interior — especially that courtyard — is amazing. Subtle? Yes