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: ‘Calloway’ by the High Llamas

After being out and about amongst the crowds a couple of days ago and being innundated with horrible music and shopping drones on search-and-purchase-and-destroy missions, I have concluded that the only Christmas music worth listening to is the soundtrack to ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ by Vince Guaraldi; in particular, the song ‘Christmas time is here’. This is known as an irrefutable statement.

At this point, I’d also like to bring a riot of a post to your attention. Nicked from Penda’s Diner, who in turn obtained it from, err, someplace else. It’s a Festival of Theft Borrowing!

What is this Empire Coming to?

As soon as I find a link – I’ll post it.

What’s this empire coming to? Now they want us to stop greeting people with “Io Saturnalia!” “We have all these different cultures in Rome,” they tell us. “We shouldn’t offend anyone,” they tell us, “We’ve got to be inclusive.”

We’ve got the barbarians from the north with their tree decorations and their fire rituals. And the weirdos from Gaul, cutting mistletoe with a golden sickle. And the Mithraists, the Zoroastrians, the Isis cults, and, of course, those characters who hang out in the catacombs. “Hail, Winter!” we’re supposed to say. I ask you, what next: we lose the feast? We stop the Solstice parties? No more honoring Ops, goddess of abundance?

I was buying some greenery down by the Forum the other day, and there’s old Macrobius with some Visigoth chick, and she goes, “Gut Jule.” And I go, “Hey! In this country, we say, “Io, Saturnalia! Maybe you should go back to where you came from.” Then Macrobius goes, “She can’t, she’s a slave.”

Whatever.

At this time of year, the Visigoths sacrifice a pig and burn a special log that they dance around, instead of acting like normal people and going to the temple of Saturn.

I swear, I was at this party over at Septima Commodia’s house the other day. She always has a Saturnalia party. Anyway, she decorated the place with prickly green leaves. “It’s holly,” she said, “The latest fashion from Brittania. They all do it in Londinium.”

It gets worse.

She had this statue of some goddess from Ultima Thule or somewhere, name of Frigga, sitting right there on the dining room mensa. I mean, this is darned near blasphemous. I’d be scared about what the lares and penates would do if I put that thing in my house. But Septima Commodia just said, “Oh get over it! We’re cosmopolitan around here.” Cosmopolitan. That’s what they call it. Well by Jupiter, I live in Latium. I’m a Roman. And this empire was founded on the principle that the gods, our gods, must be honored at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way. None of this foreign heretical nonsense or these strange customs from Germania or Hibernia or Palestine. I say, “Io, Saturnalia!” and if you don’t like it, you can leave.

Finally, a non-sequitur excerpt from a conversation I had with Derek whilst out at a Burger King recently:
DAVECAT: ‘What the.. They’ve brought back Furby??’
DEREK: ‘Furby never went away.’

So let that be a lesson to you! Happy hols, everyone

Random similar posts, for more timewasting:

Moving, on a molecular level / Needs more cowbell on September 12th, 2007

Quarterly Report for Shareholders on March 30th, 2008

Sdtrk: ‘Two of hearts’ by Stacy Q

Today was Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Very odd. I think we had daylight for roughly two hours and eighteen seconds today; it was pretty astonishing. Apart from workin’, I spent most of the day burning countless .mp3s to Cds, which was something that really needed to be done..

And although I still have to purchase an unadorned metal pole of my own, Shi-chan and I would like to remind all and sundry that Festivus is on the 23rd. Remember: Festivus is not considered over until the head of the family has been pinned to the ground. I’m rather looking forward to that bit.

Happy holidays to the lot of you! Better post later soon, or something

Sdtrk: ‘The obsidian pyramid’ by Eric Zann

Okay, can I just point out how feckin’ hard it is to find information about the Andy Warhol Android? I mean, egad. I remember reading about him in People magazine back in the early Eighties; Andy was having an Android duplicate of himself made, initially for a stage show based on his book ‘THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol’, but Andy eventually pointed out that he wanted the Android to take his place during television shows and interviews, like a kagemusha. Which is a pretty damn good idea, when you think about it. Always an innovator, our Andy.
But yeah, since I was fascinated with Synthetiks back then, I recall cutting that article out of the magazine and saving it for years. Somehow or another, it disappeared, and now, I am sad. One of these days, I will actually make good on my promise to make my pilgrimage to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and I fully intend on grabbing the nearest staffer by their lapels and asking (loudly) as to where I could get information about the Warhol Android. Internet, you disappoint me.

So you like that Ricky Gervais, then? Of course you do! Then you need to partake in The Ricky Gervais Show, sponsored by the Guardian Unlimited website, and download yourself some episodes. It’s Ricky and Steve Merchant, mostly taking the piss out of their mate Karl, and discussing various things. Usually, it simply degenerates into taking the piss out of Karl, though. Lovely stuff..

Lastly, for all of you Zeta Gundam fanatics, someone has made a torrent of the subtitled Zeta Gundam first theatrical release from last year, ‘Heirs to the stars‘. Hit up your favourite anime torrent site provider and give their search engine a whirl for it. I’m bringing my bandwidth to an absolute crawl by getting a copy; why not you?

O, right, I knew I forgot something.

ANDY WARHOL ROBOT IN LIVERPOOL (from Warholstars)
The Andy Warhol robot is on display at the Tate Museum in Liverpool through May 2004 as part of the Mike Kelley: The Uncanny exhibition.

The robot was designed by Alvaro Villa shortly before Warhol’s death for use in a stage show titled Andy Warhol: A No Man Show based on Warhol’s books, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) and Exposures. The production was to be produced for Broadway by Lewis Allen of Annie fame, but the project was cancelled after Warhol’s death. (Mr. Allen passed away in December of last year).

Bob Colacello: “… there was a big project that Fred [Hughes] killed after Andy died. Lewis Allen, who was the producer of Annie and of Tru, the Truman Capote one-man show, had taken an option on the Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Exposures and had this wonderful idea to make the two books into something called Andy Warhol: A No Man Show. It was going to be a robot of Andy sitting on stage just gossiping and philosophizing based on the text of those two books. Peter Sellars was going to direct it. But the technology kept moving so quickly that every time Lew thought he had a robot, they’d find they could make an even more advanced robot, which would have eleven hand movements instead of three hand movements. And so he’d actually invest more money to get a better robot and then that would put the whole project back a year or two.

Andy loved this idea; he loved the fact that there was going to be this Andy Warhol robot that he could send on lecture tours. It could do talk shows for him. The idea was that the show, if it was successful in New York, could then also simultaneously be running in London, Los Angeles, Tokyo with cloned robots. And people would actually be able to ask questions of the robot, which would be programmed with a variety of answers. The whole thing was so Warholian and so perfect.

But when Andy died, Fred refused to renew the option. I owned fifty percent of Philosophy and Exposures, and Andy owned fifty percent after he died. In any case, the deal was killed. I think that Fred didn’t want this Warhol robot haunting his existence. It’s a shame. It really would have been the greatest thing that could have happened for Andy. It would have almost been like coming back from the dead. And he really loved the project. He sat for hours at some high-tech place in the San Fernando Valley where thy made a mold of his face and his hands… there’s a whole photo session of it.

Sorry the photo’s crap; it’s the only one I could find. Like I said: Internet, you have been a disappointment

Sdtrk: ‘Just like honey’ by The Jesus and Mary Chain

I’ve just recently discovered another tiny Euro car to obsess over for the next couple of months: the Peugeot 1007. Upon first glance, it seems pretty bog-standard, by contemporary tiny Euro car standards. However, the vehicle’s construction contains a crucial, innovative difference, as witnessed here:

The doors? They slide open. They slide. Open. They slide open! To me, that makes about as much sense as, I dunno, breathing. They slide open! That’s one of those ‘shit, why didn’t they think of that years ago?’ type of revolutionary ideas, really.

Also! Simon of ‘Undercover in Japan’ has a link to a high-larious documentary about sushi and sushi-ya etiquette. Won’t you take my hand, and join me in watching it?

Also! Go wish MontiLee a Happy 33rd birthday, you bastards. It’s not too late

Posted in General, Innovation | 6 comments »