Sdtrk: ‘The cold song’ by Klaus Nomi

It appears that HaloScan comments are now Gravatar-enabled. Huh.

I believe this calls for another microbutton!

Sdtrk: ‘Another way’ by Vitesse

This doesn’t exactly fall under my usual standard of 20th.cen Modern architecture, but this building continually fascinates the living hell out of me. This spooky titan is known as the Ryugyong Hotel, in Pyongyang, North Korea.

The Ryugyong Hotel is, in my opinion, the single most unsettling structure ever erected by the hand of man. It’s 1,082 feet tall, has 105 floors, and encloses 3.9 million square meters of floor space. And it is completely empty. It doesn’t even have windows.

The North Korean government began construction of the building in 1987 at an estimated cost of $750 million, or 2% of the country’s GDP. [..] Work was halted in 1992, and nobody knows exactly why.
from The Shape of Days

I’ll hazard a guess as to why work was halted, apart from the lack of funding and the dodgy concrete. Cos the building is gigantic, creepy, and evil. Would you want to spend your happy holiday in North Korea (yes yes, it’s a contradiction in terms) staying anywhere in that hotel? Seriously, how would they expect to attract paying tourists? I mean, being fair, there are a few Communist-inspired buildings that I like, just cos they’re so relentlessly sturdy and imposing, but jesus, Mordor isn’t as evil as this thing.

It’s funny; I’ve known about this place for a couple of months, so when I first saw it in the PS2 game Mercenaries, where it’s known as the Song Tower, I cackled with glee. It’s on the level where you find the Ace of Clubs. You can blow it up with a bunker buster bomb, and it is o so satisfying.
But hands down, the coolest thing about the Ryugyong Hotel is if you look on any contemporary map of North Korea, you won’t find it there, and tourguides patently refuse to talk about it. The building will probably never be completed, it’s too expensive to tear down, and pretty much all of North Korea denies that it exists. You stare, goggle-eyed, at pictures of it, it’s the tallest structure in the country, but according to the denizens who have to literally live under its shadow, it doesn’t exist. Heh. ‘What hotel? What sinister presence?’

*shudders*

EDIT (13 Jan 08): Links updated. Well, one of them

Sdtrk: ‘Meta abuse’ by Venetian snares with Speedranch

Having checked the stats out for ‘Shouting etc etc’ just a few minutes ago, I notice there’s a lot of people hitting this site. And most of them are either from foreign lands, or they’re catholics, or they’re conservatives. Not that there’s anything wrong from being from a foreign land, might I add. WTF, as the kids say??
I thought maybe these were all directed from BlogExplosion or Blog Catalog, but apparently not. According to BlogExplosion, I’ve had only eight visits via their directory, while Blog Catalog has garnered me four. And these people are just piling thru my door, without stopping to say Hi there, and idly grabbing fistfuls of snacks and just leaving. My car park off to the side of the InfoBahn has apparently become some sort of service drive.

That’s too many damn metaphors in a single paragraph. I think I’ll just stop here

Sdtrk: ‘The click and the fizz’ by the High Llamas

This post was going to be about another one of those crazy examples of Sixties architecture that make my pants a couple of sizes too small, and I managed to stumble across a site dealing with The Osaka World Expo 1970, where I was basically overwhelmed by too many examples of fab architecture. So, rather than attempt to pick one, I’ll just provide the link here.

the Toshiba IHI Pavilion

The unique building was designed to convey a poetic image on the theme “hope” giving the future the look of a forest.A 55 meter-tall symbol tower made of the same tetra-units was erected in front of the Pavilion. [..]

The Global Vision Theater seemed to tee breathing, with 369 lamps fixed to the tetra-units. The lighting display was repeated at intervals of 20 minutes.
taken from this site

Pretty much all of them are remarkable, but the ones sponsored by Japanese corporations are my favourites. You get all these lysergic structures that look like they belong on the set of Ultraman. Fecking wonderful.
This is what I’d be doing if I had a TARDIS — visiting all of the old World’s Fair Expositions. Yep, visiting expos, and hitting on Edie Sedgwick

(EDIT: since I just decided on the above title being a cohesive name for this topic series, if you somehow missed the other two, they’re right here)

American news sources are going out of their way to prove themselves to be reactionary idiots these days, but at least they’re passing the savings onto us.

Web Site Claims GI Captured in Iraq

Feb 1, 3:03 PM (ET)
By ROBERT H. REID

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The U.S. military said it was investigating, but the claim’s authenticity could not be immediately confirmed.

The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants’ statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back. The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless, and the photo’s authenticity could not be confirmed.

A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and behind him on the wall is a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet.”

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Marine Sgt. Salju K. Thomas, said he had no information on the claim but “we are currently looking into it.”

Take a good look at that soldier there, the one with the ‘stiff and expressionless’ face. Take a good look. Now, have a look at this.

Now go have a look at that linked article before it’s pulled from the Internet.
My christ. When you’re letting stuff like this slip through your verification nets, why even bother with retaining a verification staff? Why not just change your name from Associated Press to The Onion and be done with it?
*singing* Someone’s gonna get fiiired..

Posted in What the | 4 comments »