Sdtrk: ‘Steven Smith’ by the Organ

Here’s another example of one of those buildings that I’ve seen hundreds of times before, but I never really knew much about it: Marina City, located in Chicago.

Architect Bertrand Goldberg designed Marina City to be a “city within a city”. The apartment portion of the complex was completed in 1964. The two towers contained 896 units and a variety of amenities. [..] Amenities include the Marina Cleaners, Marina Food & Liquor, Crunch Fitness, 10 Pin Bowling, Bank One and several restaurants.

For my money, this is the way we should be living — cities that grow up as opposed to out. It’s pretty much self-contained! Any structure that contains living amenities as well as parking and shopping AND a bowling alley is beyond ace. Also, from what I understand, there’s a House of Blues in one of the towers.. which I find repellent, but apparently it used to be a theatre. Niiice.
Not only that, but the buildings themselves scream ‘retro Jetson-style living’, from their cylinders of concrete and steel, to the 19 lower floors used for car park purposes. But that’s to be expected from an architect that studied under my man Mies van der Rohe.

Should I suddenly decide to move to Chi-town instead, you’ll find me at those towers

Sdtrk: ‘An eye for optical theory’ by Michael Nyman

I’m back on the Internets! After browbeating two SBC Amerifuck tech ‘support’ monkeys, who I daresay were calling from India, we now have better speeds than last time. Going back and forth with some tosser named Sam, we assessed that the problem was their fault, not ours, and it’d be seen to before 6pm that Tuesday eve. So after still having hideous non-speeds at 11pm, I called a second time, this time speaking with a different churl, and telling him that nothing had improved. The connection speed was ramped up about twenty minutes after my call. Results!
Just so you have an idea of what I was dealing with, I took a screenshot of the speed our connection was at at its slowest point, after visiting the SBC Americunt speed test site. (It’s kinda helpful to know the URL if you happen to be cursed with their DSL service, so I’ve reproduced the link here.) Anyway, the screenshot is kinda dodgy, but you have to see it. Yeah. Now wouldn’t you agree that’s a reason to be angry?

On the lighter side of things, I have finally found the name of the style of shades/glasses that I love. If you’re a mate of mine that’s actually seen me in person on more than one occasion, you already know that I own four or five pairs of shades. All of them have the same frame, but they’re all slightly different — one is transparent with mirror lenses, one is black with blue mirror lenses, etc. I’ve always wanted to find more variations of those shades, and eventually buy a pair of (fake) glasses with those frames, as they’re the only kind that look good on my face, but I never knew what they were called. Well, now I know — they style is called the browline, and the models are called either the ronsir, or the clubman.

Classically ace! They’re fine frames, fine frames. Now I need to scour online stores and estate sales for those bad boys..

Gonna try to catch Death from above 1979 at the Lager house this Saturday. The more I hear them, the more I like them, even though the cover for their latest Cd kinda scares me

Sdtrk: none

Short and sweet: Both of the computers here are having difficulties getting a decent internet connection. Everything is moving very very slowly. I was online with a so-called SBC technical assistant for an hour last night, whereupon he had me go to their test page to assess how fast my connection was (or wasn’t). According to the test, my current speed is slower than dial-up.

Back later. Angry now. So there you have it

Sdtrk: ‘A watery death’ by Michael Nyman

Felt the need to post, for better or for worse. Instead of typing this lot out, I could be replying to Emails, or even getting back to the Doll Forum, which I’ve not been in for the past two weeks. What the hell am I doing??

+ Nice new interview with Scary go round‘s John Allison o’er at Thunder Chunky (Wasn’t Thunder Chunky a female wrestler from the 70s?)

+ Anyone who buys me a Nixie clock, or builds one to spec for me, will have me as a sex slave for a year. I recently learned what a Nixie clock is — they’re vacuum-tube-based clocks that were created before LEDs got a technological foothold — and after having seen some pictures, all I can say is that they’re beyond ace. I’m certain you’ll agree!
Hrrm. Should’ve saved that for a ‘This was the Future’ article..

+ Right, bollocks to the Nixie clock. Someone get one of those Actroid Gynoids from the Robot Expo curently taking place in Aichi, Japan. She’s so damn cute!

+ Jeff & I caught the Korean thriller ‘Oldboy‘ down at the Main art theatre this Friday past, as the two reviews I’d read showed it in an appealing light, but I’ll tell ya; the first hour, I was like, ‘I’m totally buying this on DVD when I get home,’ whereas the second hour I was like, ‘Errr — what??’
A drunken womanising salaryman spends his daughter’s birthday in jail overnight. When he gets released, he’s kidnapped and locked into a hotel room for 15 years. Then, he’s released from there, having been told that he’s been framed for his wife’s murder, and he has five days to find out who did it and why. I can’t really get into detail why the film let me down in the end, cos my explanation would be spoilerrific, but I’ll just say that if you can see it for free, do so. It looks beautiful, the couple of action sequences were feckin’ fantastic, and the story was compelling, but the resolution was really frustrating, plus it ran a bit too long towards the end. Like I said, see it for free. Then go out and buy a claw hammer and a squid

+ Go read the best thread ever: this is from some poker players’ forum, in the off-topic section, and it asks, ‘How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?‘ Not only is it the Textbook Definition of Funny, but it’s an entirely valid question

School is winding down, and I have to do one rather involved final thing for each class, which possibly explains my lack of focussed writing. Or focussed anything, really, as far as these past two weeks have been. Have I mentioned that I’ll be ridiculously ecstatic once I finish school? Not in the past five minutes, you say? Well then.
Right, I’m off to answer some Emails. Or hop back on the Forum. I’ll just flip a fecking coin

Sdtrk: ‘The garden is becoming a robe room’ by Michael Nyman

(yes, the timestamps have been swapped out with the above post..)
How many five year olds could I personally take on at once? I’d have to say, adhering to the rules established in the first post, that if I were thrown into that gym with only the clothes on my back and a protective cup, I could take out probably fifty of them before I became too exhausted..
If I was allowed the use of a single offensive article, I’d go for a seven-foot length of chain. Not like a heavy chain, but something like a dog lead, with that clip thing at the end — light, but damaging. Even if I couldn’t take them out on the first attack, it’d be more than enough to immobilise them, whereupon I’d just go back and finish them off later. Another post stipulated that if you were allowed a weapon, that the five year olds would be allowed that weapon as well. Since I doubt these kids would have enough coordination to use a whip properly, despite their one day of ‘training’, I went with the dog chain, as it’d be useful to me, but rather useless for them. Plus, when not in use, I figured I could wrap it around a fist for DOUBLE DAMAGE!!, or quickly wrap it around my waist and secure it with the clip.
So yeah, I’d say fifty, and with the whipchain, seventy. I’d better start training now!

Do feel free to give your own personal estimations of how many five-year olds you could take out! Anyone responding with anything disparaging will be openly mocked, by the way, just so you know.

And YES, I’m Emailing people. Don’t give me that look

Sdtrk: ‘Mother Nature’s rump’ by dj BC presents the Beastles

Blame Monti for this mania. 🙂 I’m letting you know right now; my answers are going to be really unimpressive, cos most of the books I own are either reference/non-fiction, art books, or graphic novels. Hrrm.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
The Bible. No-one burns bibles! Plus, the Irony Factor would go off the scale

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I always thought Mina Harker was a bit of nice. Rowr.

The last book you bought is:
World soccer yearbook 2002 – 2003

The last book you read:
Party of one: A loner’s manifesto, by Anneli Rufus. It’s a fine book, highly recommened for those of us who don’t want to be surrounded by our so-called ‘peers’ 24/7. I’d say it’s also recommended reading for people who think ‘loner = sociopath’, but the kind of individuals who think that would never read such a book

What are you currently reading?
Jeff lent me his copy of The Discontinuity guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping. It attempts to string together some sort of continuity to the majority of episodes in Doctor Who, as well as pointing out gaffes, flubbed lines, and heh, fashion mistakes. It’s especially ace, cos it brings back memories of episodes and aspects of the show that I haven’t seen in years (‘Holy crap, I had forgotten all about the Ice Warriors and the Draconians’)

Five books you would take to a desert island.
The Works of Wilde, the Complete stories of Lewis Carroll, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, Catcher in the rye, and Sex life of the foot and shoe

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Veach, cos I hear tell he likes the reading; Patrick, cos he should read more to unwind after assembling food; and Tomas, cos he really needs to do something constructive with his time

Sdtrk: ‘Me and my ding dong’ by Pankow

Good going, Blogger. Down for almost an entire day. Refuckingmarkable.

Anyway, here’s this thing:

My Mormon name is Darvell Friends Forsaken !
What’s yours?

Shi-chan’s is worse, if you can believe that. Hers is Andoorie Traudi Treasure Cocaine. *confused stare*
Thanx Veach, for Mormonising us! Now we must eschew all sinful things such as technology. Goody Andoorie will proceed to churn some butter, and I shall go raise a barn