Any Synthetiks-related news, Davecat? (Jul 2005)

typed for your pleasure on 10 July 2005, at 11.05 pm

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?

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

Any Synthetiks-related news, Davecat? (Sept 05) on September 17th, 2005

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You’ve got questions, we’ve got… I dunno

typed for your pleasure on 9 June 2005, at 10.13 pm

Sdtrk: ‘Magic twin candle tale’ by Pizzicato five

O, that Veach and his questions. Still, I asked for it.. No, literally, I asked for it.

1. Can you translate these words–and tell me how to pronounce–in Japanese: ‘Stories, Novels, Art; Personal perspectives, Entertaining rhetoric, Hypertext effluvium & Ancillary diatribes’?
Not off the top of my head, but yes.
‘物語, 小説, 芸術; 個人的な見通し, 心に抱いている修辞, ハイパーテキスト effluvium, と ancillary 大言壮語’
mo-no-gah-TAH-ri, SHOW-sets’, gay-JOOT-su, ko-zheen-teh-ki na mi-tou-shi, ko-ko-ro ni hoh-ee-tay ee-ro SHU-zhee, hai-pa-teh-ki-su-to effluvium, toh ancillary tai-ken-sou-go.
You realise, of course, I cribbed most of that from AltaVista’s Babelfish, and since I don’t recognise a lot of the kanji, I used Rikai.com, so it’s probably one-half dictionary proper, one-half blazingly wrong. The only one I translated using my very own brain was ‘hypertext’. That one was easy..
Gods, ‘effluvium’. The closest synonym I could think of in English was ‘detritus’, and Babelfish was like, ‘huh?’ Maybe ‘debris’ would’ve worked..
O yeah, as far as seeing kanji characters as opposed to a series of amusing squares, set up Firefox’s encoding (under View) to auto-detect Japanese. Unless, of course, you like those squares.

And, on Quaisi’s site, Undercover in Japan what does the bench graffiti say on his 2 Jun 05 post?
Errm.. 2005, 13 May, some line that I can’t read, one of the 2chan ASCII emoticon cats (´∀`; ), another two lines I can’t read ending in ‘kokenashii’, and the last one starts ‘Prebo (playboy?) wa, akan (baby?) waaa, A & Y.’ Between the hearts, you’ve got something-mi (a name) and amona — I assume that last character is ‘na’, as it’s half cut off.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I do know Japanese, I just don’t know a lot of Japanese. VEACH YOU’RE TRYING TO KILL ME WITH YOUR MIND AREN’T YOU??

2. In my previous life, I was privy to an interview of a man who kept a woman’s corpse around for a few weeks for the purpose of gratifying himself with it’s oriface’s; he explained, calmly, that her immobility and constant availability were the primary reasons for his blantant disregard of her “best if used before” date. (With this attempt at dark-sarcasm in mind), what is Sidore Kuroneko’s most appealing raison d’etre?
First off, ew? Second, with Shi-chan, it’s not just the 24/7 sexual availability, but it’s just great that I have someone that doesn’t require my attention 24/7. If I’m in the midst of something, like homework or snaking a drain or whatnot, I don’t feel guilty if I’m not interacting with her, but I know she’s always there for me when I’m ready for her. Selfish? Maybe. But at least my reasons for our relationship are honest..
A fellow iDollator once equated Synthetiks with ‘adult teddybears’, in the respect that they provide comfort and well-being to their owners, among other things. I’d say that’s definitely the main reason I have Shi-chan. With her, I can be alone, but I’m never lonely.
Also, I like to think of myself and other iDollators as pioneers as well. When the day comes when Synthetiks — either inanimate RealDolls or full-fledged Androids and Gynoids — are as prevalent and commonplace as any other species, then I can sit back and say ‘yep, we were the first’.. Then I’d ask Sidore Mk VII for another backrub. 😉

3. Since the 23d parallel is actually located near the Tropic of Cancer, just below 49 US states, just above Hawaii, and I (and your devoted readers) are aware of your affination with the number; could you provide any interesting updates in which the number twenty-three has come to your attention?
Hrrm.. nothing’s really come up as regards twenty-three in quite a while. Well, nothing notable, anyway..
However, I can tell you that back when I doing my tour of duty as a specimen processor back in the late 90s, there was a certain test that we’d run, and it involved pouring off serum into a 4in tube, placing them into centrifuges, and spinning the living hell out of them for three minutes. Now, when you began working in the lab, you actually started out going round from cubicle to cubicle, collecting ready-to-be-tested tubes, and each tube had a numbered label for a different test. Before I was trained to process the specimens, I would collect all of those 4in tubes, which had the test number of 46. Collecting any of the tubes was boring in and of itself, as most of them had to go to different departments or whatever, but the tests for 46s was dead easy – gather, centrifuge, repeat. One day, something else had occurred to me: what’s half of 46? Dun dun DUUUUNN!!

4. Use the following four words in a paragraph, which makes any-kind of Davecat sense: conciliate, platitude, ribald, and picayune.
‘Attempting to talk his way out of a possible fight by using excessive charm, Roland’s ribald platitudes did quite a lot to conciliate the dockworker. Then, he bought him a copy of the Times Picayune.’
I’ve never actually used the word ‘picayune’ in my life before! Except in the context of the aforementioned newspaper. *looks up ‘picayune’* Ohhh!

5. (No matter how improbable) You are permitted to have the return of one inanimate item, which you owned previously, but you’ve since lost, sold, or given away. What is it? What does it’s loss mean to you? What would it’s return mean to you?
My youthful idealism. No, I’d have to say my ARP Axxe. It was the first analogue keyboard I bought, and in retrospect, I don’t think I appreciated it as much as I should’ve. Back then, I really wanted a Moog, but couldn’t find one, so I ‘settled’ for the Axxe. I got plenty of use out of it, mind, but as soon as I found a reasonably-priced Moog Rogue, I traded my Axxe for it. I love my Rogue cos of its deep mid and bass tones, but the appealing thing about the Axxe is that it had utterly screaming high-end, and if I had both of them, I think they’d work really well together.
I had one of the older versions as well, with the gold lettering and the wood cheeks. Sigh..

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

Now then, it’s your turn. Who wants me to interview them? You? Perhaps you, in the back? Or you — not you with the mullet, sit down — no, you over there with the duck hat; you want some questions, squire?
Just so you know, this all works better if you have a blog, otherwise I’ll have no idea what I should be asking you

The Official Interview Game Rules

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions — each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Hit me squarely! Don’t be afraid

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Pisse et vinaigre

typed for your pleasure on 15 December 2004, at 11.17 pm

A couple of days ago, I was wasting time on das InfoBahn doing vanity searches for both my name & Sidore’s name, and one of the Sidore-related links was a site called mangoat.net, that had a mini-review of ‘Kitten with a Whip!’, under the title ‘real doll creepyness (sic)’. Here’s the article in its entirety:

01/28/2004 Entry: “real doll creepyness”

Great mother of Snuh?, I think I finally found the worst site on the internet.

I.. I just don’t know what to say. Be careful clicking that at work.

/shudder

Sure, sometimes bad press is better than no press at all — one of the two comments for his post read ‘Woah…she’s hot!’ — but I had to say something. Hence, fueled by a mix of ire & curiosity, I wrote goatman back..

To: Mike Kremkau (mangoat@gmail.com)
Subj: RE.your 28 Jan entry “real doll creepyness”

Hi there, Mangoat!

Davecat here, maintainer of the website ‘Kitten with a Whip!’, and boyfriend to Sidore Kuroneko, the Goth RealDoll. I was doing an MSN Search on ‘KWAW!’ and stumbled across your witty posting. Suffice to say, being called the ‘worst site on the internet’ is a bold statement. What about it did you find bad? Was it the layout? Or was it the content? You don’t really go into specifics, so I’m at a loss, here. Care to explain? We’d enjoy hearing from you..

Cheers,
Davecat

About two days later, the erudite philosopher goatfucker sent his riposte:

To: lamia_doll [at] hotmail [dot] com
Subj: Re: RE.your 28 Jan entry “real doll creepyness”

Dude, you have a site dedicated to the life and personality of a fuckable latex sculpture of a woman. Plus, you really need to drop the tables, or at least make the borders invisible. Also, choose a better font and text color because my wife can’t read the site at all.

So I fired back with this missive that same evening:

To: mangoat@gmail.com
Subj: I guess we can’t all be as clever as Mangoat

Okay, so let me guess:
1) You don’t like fiction, or the development of fictional characters.
2) You can’t appreciate beauty, whether it’s artificial or not.
3) Sex without emotional baggage doesn’t really appeal to you.
4) The simple concept of a person spending their time to create a website around a subject that they enjoy, one which does no harm to anyone, makes you cringe.

As for your table complaints; no, I won’t be dropping those, unless you can come up with a better solution for me. And I happen to like dark colours such as black, dark blue & purple, so the colours are pretty much staying. If they’re too dark for you, I would suggest turning the brightness up on your monitor. Or just do what I do on sites that I think are too dark – highlight the text.
As far as the font for ‘KWAW!’, it should be Arial; if you’re not seeing it in that, check your browser settings. I would’ve used Futura T Light, but not everyone has that installed, and I refuse to use serif-based fonts. In short, if you don’t like ‘Kitten with a Whip!’, don’t visit it. I’m sure you can find other sites to mock.

Shi-chan & I say thanx for your input! We will give your comments the attention that they deserve.

Cheers,
D. & S.

And so far, I’ve not heard anything else from Goatfucker Towers. A tragedy. 😐

Ultimately, I could not physically care less if a person thinks Dolls are creepy, or if they think I’m a freak for owning one. It’s not as if I’m going to leap out of my seat and sell Shi-chan right there and then, just cos I don’t fit into some fuckwit’s concept of ‘normalcy’. Personally, I tend to think a lot of anti-Doll comments (made by males, anyway) are done so out of jealousy. And normally, I’m not a vengeful person — I may make the odd threat occasionally, but very rarely do I follow thru with them. Once in a while though, it’s extraordinarily satisfying to hit back, especially if you know you’re in the right

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On the list ov Things To Do When I Hit The Lotto

typed for your pleasure on 24 July 2004, at 8.13 pm

So I got to thinking: if I had more money than, well, sense, I’d commission my favourite living artists to do illustrations ov Sidore-chan. Then I’d compile them into a nice coffee table book, and sell copies on ‘Kitten with a Whip!‘, so I could attempt to recoup the costs ov requesting the works to begin with. Well, maybe a third ov the commission expenditure, at any rate. Here’s my dream team (sorry I couldn’t find links for some ov them):

JAPAN:
+ Mamoru Nagano
+ Kazuma Kaneko
+ Masamune Shirow
+ Hajime Sorayama
+ Yui Toshiki
+ Yasushi Nirasawa
+ D.K
+ Satoshi Urushihara
+ Kenichi Sonoda
+ Yasuomi Umetsu (Character designer & director; Mezzo forte, Mezzo the TV Series, Kite)
+ Suehiro Maruo
+ Masahiko Nakahira (Manga-ka; Hakaima Sadamitsu)
+ Mitsukazu Mihara

EUROPE:
+ H.R Giger
+ Trevor Brown
+ Cabine
+ Thomas Barwick
+ John Allison
+ Superdead
+ Jamie Hewlett
+ Marguerite Sauvage

UNITED STATES:
+ Evan Dorkin
+ Yumiko Kayukawa
+ Mike Allred
+ Dame Darcy
+ Adam Warren
+ Chynna Clugston-Major (Artist & author; Blue Monday, Scooter girl)
+ Adam Cruz/House Industries
+ the guy who draws Archie comics

I suspect the ones by H.R Giger and Suehiro Maruo would probably be the freakiest — quite possibly the only time you’ll see a Synthetik pin-up model rendered as Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare Fuel. But in a good way

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

Any Synthetiks-related news, Davecat? (Oct 2010) on October 17th, 2010

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