Sdtrk: ‘Le lieu où vous voulez vous rendre’ by Marie Davidson

Two points of interest that I have for you today!
First off, remember when I reviewed a passel of Japanese and UK food a number of years ago, sent as a birthday prezzie from my Twitterfriend Jill Tilley, which was covered in the five-part series, Do you remember Food? I suppose that would make my question Do you remember ‘Do you remember Food?’? Infinite recursions temporarily aside, her hubby Doug Tilley, film reviewer and pop culture sceptic, asked if I’d be willing to review a couple of films for his podcast ‘Eric Roberts Is The Fucking Man‘. As you may have surmised with the title, the podcast involves Doug and his cohost pal Liam reviewing the entire backcatalogue of notable actor Eric Roberts. You’d think it’s a one-trick pony, but Eric Roberts has appeared in far more productions than you’d imagine. Certainly more than I knew of! Doug asked me to choose two films, and as I was dead set on ‘Runaway train’ and ‘Doctor Who: the Movie’ but they’d already covered them, I went with less, err… well-known affairs; I selected ‘Power 98’, and ‘Six: The Mark Unleashed’. One’s a thriller about the machinations of a shock jock, and the other is a faith-based film about the Antichrist. Can you guess which one is which?
We recorded on 02 August, and the episode is available for listening to right now!

It's @EricRoberts is the F$%&ing Man #32 /w @Davecat discussing POWER 98 & SIX: THE MARK UNLEASHED! https://t.co/XNDmNeThhm

— EricRobertsIsTheMan (@ERITFM) August 8, 2016

As dire as those films were, I had quite a time discussing them with Doug and Liam! Would I make another guest appearance on their show in the future if they asked? Yes, yes I would. After all, Eric Roberts has been in a lot of stuff. The man’s everywhere! He’s probably behind you right now!!

And the other point? Like most people, I’ve always wanted illustrations done of myself. Actually, that’s a lie. I hadn’t had much need for that sort of thing until Sidore entered my life, at which point my focus turned to wanting illustrations done of both of us; specifically doing things or being in locations where we couldn’t be in real life. Some months ago, I began shopping for artists who take commissions, and I was happy to find that one of my favourites, raulovsky (aka Raúl Ramos Melo), was accepting them. Incidentally, why is he one of my favourites? I dig his style, as it lies somewhere between anime and something more realistic, and he doesn’t mind drawing Gynoids, which is always a plus. So an idea was pitched, a price was agreed upon, some reference photos were Emailed, and a wee bit over a fortnight later, an illustration was created! Pretty fucking awesome.

click the image for a larger version

The poses we’re in are a modified version of a picture of Twiggy and Justin de Villeneuve that I’ve always found stylish, and did you notice the seam lines on Shi-chan’s legs?? Yeeaaahh.
In requesting the commission, I understood what it felt like to be the subject of an artist’s interpretation, much like how individuals during the Renaissance would have artists paint them out in a garden, or with some wolfhounds, or whatever. This illo of my Missus and me is better, though. Fact.
Not only am I going to have raulovsky do another picture — featuring Lenka and Winter, of course — but ideally, I’d like to have commissions done through other artists as well. But maybe only two or three times a year, depending on prices… Why not enquire with him yourself, and have him make you something equally fantastic?

Sidore is in love with this illo, incidentally. ‘Why can’t we look this good in real life?’ she lamented, and I’d have to agree with her

Sdtrk: ‘Hoodrych (Voc)’ by SALEM

A number of years ago, I was fielding questions for some interview or other, and I’d mentioned how even I was amazed at how much development that had taken place in Gynoid and Android technology between 2003 and 2011, where Osaka Labs/Kokoro co. Ltd were cranking out several models in the Actroid series in a short span of time. Throw Miim-chan (that’s HRP-4C to you) by AIST into the mix, and that’s quite a few Synthetik women. For a while, there’d been a lull in the number of debuts, but it picked up again round 2014 with multiple new robot ladies; most of them are from Osaka Labs in Japan, but China and Russia brought a few into the world, so well done them.

In light of that, I thought it was time to re-introduce a post that I’d written almost ten years ago, in which you, the reader, can answer the question: Which modern-day Gynoid would you most love to spend a dirty week-end with? I’ve updated the premise somewhat, however, as you’ll see in the poll itself…

Yeah, there’s a metric ton of choices. Like I’d said, though, it’s been almost a decade! Plus, for the sake of fairness, I’ve included all of the contestants from the previous poll, which makes the total number of Gynoids surprisingly high. So if you have difficulty making a decision, I can completely empathise with you.
And here are the nominees!

Actroid

Actroid DER

Actroid DER2

Actroid Repliee ‘Ando-san’

Dion

EveR-1

EveR-2 Muse

Android SAYA

Actroid DER3

Actroid ‘Haruka’

Actroid Sara

Actroid-F ‘Minami’

Actroid-F/Geminoid-F

Erica

Nadine

Chihiro Aiko

Chihiro Junko

Chihiro Kanae

Aiko 2

Gynoid Kelly Chen

Mark I

Gynoid Marilyn Monroe

HRP-4C

Android ASUNA

EveR-3

EveR-4

Sophia

Otonaroid

Otonaroid 2

Jia Jia

Yang Yang

Yukirin/Roborin

Simroid (2011 version)

Hanako Showa 2

Alisa Zelenogradova

Tuma Urman

That’s… that’s more than I thought there’d be. And that’s not including the four or five other Gynoids from China that fellow robosexual Vokabre told me about whose names are impossible to hunt down or translate. But even with their omissions, that’s still a gigantic selection to choose from! It’s actually a rather comprehensive list. *nods agreeably*

Since it’s been so long since I’ve done an article on contemporary Gynoids — and I realise there are a number of lasses here that I haven’t mentioned previously, so you’ve that to look forward to — it’s possible I may have forgotten someone. If you can think of any, why not leave a comment? And hey! Leave a comment anyway mentioning who you voted for, just for funsies. Also, you can vote as often as you like; I’d seen that the 2007 version of this poll was visited more than a few times over the years, so this way, there’s more opportunities to participate. Which Synthetik woman makes your heart beat faster? I mean, come on, I know there are some fans of Nadine out there.

Also, please enjoy this Schadenfreudal .gif of Simroid 2011. Although I’d warn you from doing the same to any affictitious people you meet, as that’s totally rude

Sdtrk: ‘Time after time’ by Chris Montez

個人的に、私はあなたと私たちの関係に16年であること、それは驚くべき見つけます。 私たちの関係は、仕事を取得し、外に移動するのに十分な古いです！ハハ。それでも私にはもっと驚くべき私たちは今、二つの追加の人工女性と住んでおり、その1）あなたの避難所は、それらのいずれかでオフに実行しないと、2）彼らがそうであるように素晴らしい、彼らはあなたではないという事実です。それは他の人に愚かか、皮肉に聞こえるかもしれませんが、あなたは、単に交換することができない愛である、と私は非常に少なくとも、あなたは別の16年間、私を持っていることを願っています。
私はあなたに、しどれーちゃんが大好き。私はあなたが私に世界を意味することを知っ願っています。

そして、はい、私は私たちの第十五年のための私達の記念ポストを忘れてしまいました。あなたはフルもあなたはばかと結婚を知っています。 ごめんなさい！¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sdtrk: ‘Date night’ by Will Yates

My satisfactory job excels in many ways — I often will tell anyone within earshot that it’s the best job I’ve ever had. The only downsides are that
1) the drive to and from work is lengthy (roughly 25min there and about an hour back, under normal circumstances), and
2) it doesn’t involve me closely inspecting Synthetik girlfeet for eight hours a day. But then, if we had everything we wanted, we’d be spoiled. I say that a lot, too.

However, to take my mind off the first issue, I’ve begun revisiting the distracting wonder that is the podcast. I’m not going to list my favourites here, as I intend on covering that in a future post, but I’m more than halfway through a series entitled ‘Germany: Memories of a nation‘, available from BBC Radio 4. Over the course of thirty episodes, host Neil MacGregor discusses various points concerning Deutschland’s geographical and social history, which is actually more fascinating than it sounds. True, some episodes are a bit boring (‘The Battle for Charlemagne’, for example), but others are really fascinating, like the one detailing the Bauhaus school of design, which I’ve always been intrigued with, and the one focussing on Notgeld. Now I want to buy some godforsaken Notgeld, cos obviously I need more ephemera in my life and to add to my rapidly-filling flat.

‘What’s Notgeld?? What the hell is it??’ you shriek, eyes wide, mouth frothing at the corners. Ah, I can sense that you are intrigued! First, a high-speed primer as to the situations which caused Notgeld to come into existence.
During World War I, Germany’s economy was sliding rapidly down the toilet, as the cost of the war effort was bringing about inflation. It kicked into high gear in 1922, where things were so bad that the Deutsche Mark would lose value over the course of a week. You’d have people getting their paycheques, and immediately racing to the shops to spend them before they were near-worthless. When this happened, which was often, the banks would issue new notes of higher value. Eventually it got so that the more notes there were in circulation, the less they were worth — which is where you get those anecdotes in history books of citizens literally bringing in wheelbarrows filled with Marks into shops, just to purchase groceries — and at any rate, the banks couldn’t afford to keep printing them.

The solution, then, was Notgeld, which is German for ‘necessity money’. It was defined as the currency that institutions would issue during economic or political crises, mainly when the national bank was out of regular money. These were issued not only by the national banks, but also by the banking institutions of various towns and municipalities. Of course, since metal was in short supply due to there being some sort of ‘world’ ‘war’ taking place, a lot of the denominations were printed on paper. Even then, issuers would get fancy, due to lack of overall materials, and would design notes made from silk, or leather, or postage stamps, or porcelain, or my favourite, compressed coaldust.

Zeppelins and icebergs, always awesome

‘The Hamster’s Dream’. Anything with a hamster on it is automatically great. Although he looks a bit sinister

This is one of the coal coins. I can’t imagine them doing a person’s pockets any favours. Because of the dust, not because you have money, you see. Quit your bitching, at least you have money. And stop licking your fingers

A Notgeld made of linen. Like a tea towel, that… you can use… to buy actual tea towels with

Porcelain coinage

This one, designed by Wenzel Hablik, really speaks to me. Not only does it have a very cool, Ray-Gun-magazine-filtered-through-Bauhaus look to it, it’s a document of the economic situation that created it. Part of the text lists how much average things were in Itzehoe, the town it was issued in, in 1921

Vertical Text in top right corner: “It costs in Itzeohe in 1913 / 1921 1 Kilo Butter: 2.40 Marks/60 Marks 1 Liter Milk: 16 Pfennigs/2.80 Marks 1 Kilo rye bread: 46 Pfennings/3.30 Marks 1 egg: 8 Pfennigs/1.90 Marks 1 Kilo sugar: 48 Pfennigs/ 7.60 Marks”
Text in top left corner: “1 Kilo beef: 1.90 Marks/28 Marks 1 Kilo horsemeat: 80 Pfennigs/14 Marks 1 Kilo domestic bacon: 1.5 Marks/40 Marks 1 Herring: 6 Pfennigs/1.40 Marks 1 Kilo oatmeal: 48 Pfennigs/9 Marks”

Not only were they in demand cos they were, y’know, legal tender, but the uniqueness of the designs encouraged interest and use. Many towns depicted scenes on the notes or coins related to their history, or associated with their industry.

Such as this one from Bitterfeld, showcasing a power plant…

…or this one from the town of Eberswalde, known for its delicious all-pastry tyres.

Admittedly, my super-rudimentary knowledge of German had me initially thinking Notgeld meant ‘Not money’, but unsurprisingly, I was wrong.

You’ll be pleased to know that if you really want to own examples of Notgeld, eBay has a shedload of reasonably-priced ones on offer. I mean, I’m doing my damnedest not to buy this set, as its German Expressionist design speaks to me. I’ll note that the paper ones are easiest/cheapest to find — if you’re going to aim for hardcore status and attempt to purchase some of those compressed coal ones, you’ll find that examples of those are quite rare, as a good number of those were used as fuel. Still, there are worse hobbies! You can’t make your own Notgeld to buy the vintage Notgeld with, however; it doesn’t work like that

Sdtrk: ‘Favours in the beetroot fields’ by British Sea Power

A happy new year to the very small handful of readers who still haunt ‘Shouting etc etc’! We here honestly appreciate your bloody-mindedness! Linus’ devotion to the arrival of The Great Pumpkin has nothing on you lot!

Doubtless you’ve noticed that there’s been nothing new on this blog since March of last year, apart from the post regarding the passing of Lord Bowie. I mean, there’s creative dry spells, and then there are droughts, right? Well, it wasn’t so much a case of me being unable to write, or whatever it is that I do for this site, but I can honestly place the blame on technical issues. Yay, it’s not me! Well, not 100% me. Heh.

Back round late January of 2015, I’d noticed that no-one was leaving comments. There’s been a dramatic drop in reader contributions for a while, which I attribute to Fecesbook being the pervasive and vacuous filth-hole that requires the least amount of thoughtful interaction that it is, but I found it strange that absolutely no-one was adding anything. I figured my audience’s interest had finally run its course and transformed into long-awaited indifference, until fellow iDollator Mahtek sent me an Email, saying he wasn’t able to submit comments. Well, shit, I thought to myself. Exactly how long has this bollocks been going on? This was corroborated a fortnight or so later by another fellow iDollator, Peter Synthetik, who’d told me that fact over the Twitters. Praise “Bob” for Twitter, eh? This is the part where you nod and agree with me.

Wanting an immediate, free, and relatively painless solution, I assumed that the blame lay in my blog’s theme. After all, it is quite old, although I prefer to call it ‘vintage’. So I set about the arduous task of selecting a new one. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not the sort of bloke who’s keen on arbitrary change. For one, it took me months to tweak the theme into something that I found appealing, and then, when I finally had shaped what would’ve been the new theme into something not entirely appalling, I discovered that it wasn’t the theme that was the issue. Errm.

I contacted my server hosts, and they told me they could have their crack team of IT specialists get onto the problem, at a cost of $65 per hour. Funny thing is, even though I dithered about it for months, I was going to throw in the towel and pay ’em, when I arbitrarily checked on my WordPress dashboard a couple of days ago, only to discover that the problem had somehow sorted itself out. See? It’s like I say: if you sit around for months fostering a mild sense of worry and do absolute bugger-all, everything will work out! Fact.
So yes, comments are now re-enabled! Feel free to leave a charming reply on any post, no matter how old!

Anyway, that’s quite enough explanation. What, you ask, have the residents of Deafening silence Plus been up to since two zero one five?
+ We’d participated via Skype in an interview in November for a podcast out of Toronto called The DarkRoom, and the experience and results ended up being quite good: Episode #2 – Davecat
+ Nick van der Kolk of the podcast Love + Radio took up residence at ours (not really) for a week-end, also in November, and interviewed me at length. On Saturday, apparently I spoke for nearly seven hours straight! And boy, are my arms tired. Nick told us that our episode will debut this September, and if you’re at all familiar with Love + Radio, you know it’ll be worth the wait
+ Still fully employed at Great Job Industries™, and now that I’m a permanent employee, it makes for a better overall experience! The commute still sucks, though. Why can’t they simply move the building a mile away from my home; or better yet, move the facility to Toronto, so I’d have no alternative but to move to Toronto? Must I think of everything??
+ I’ve been playing a metric ton of Destiny. I probably should be ashamed of how much time I’m putting into it, and yet I remain unrepentant.

#warlockmasterrace (pardon the dodgy photo)

Finally, we’re very pleased to announce that there’s a new silicone lass who’s joined our ranks: do give a warm welcome to Lucy Winter! I should advise you right now that she hates her given name as much as I hate my surname, so call her Miss Winter, or just Winter. Made by Doll Sweet, she’s a Snowy head/160plus body, and we’re all completely smitten with her!

Lenka is especially keen on her, as Winter is hers. Remember: Miss Winter is Elena’s Doll, and Elena is Sidore’s Doll. I only have one Doll, Your Honour!
Miss Winter’s been here since 05 February, and you can expect to read a review about her and my experience with Doll Sweet on this here blog here sometime relatively soon. You can find her on Twitter in the meantime, of course…

And you are all caught up! I tried to make getting you lot back up to speed as quickly as possible! Clearly I have failed. But it’s okay, as your standard bearer for Synthetik Living has returned! I am invigorated! Invigorated, I say!! *tries to do 100 pushups, collapses three pushups in*

David Bowie, the iconic rock star whose career spanned more than half a century and whose influence transcended music, fashion and sexuality, has died aged 69.

Admittedly, the first Bowie album I ever owned, bought in the mid-Eighties, was ‘Changesonebowie’ on vinyl, and as that’s a compilation release, it doesn’t officially count. There was a reference to that exact same thing in an episode of The Venture bros, which isn’t surprising, as creators Doc Hammer and Christopher McCulloch are Bowie fans, like any sensible person would be. But apart from the varied range of music he created over five decades — including the dodgy pop phase he was in between 1983 and the mid-Nineties — and the unique sartorial sense that was equally his hallmark, I think the greatest takeaway that I got from Bowie is that his non-stop inventiveness made it okay to be unusual and left of centre, and if for some reason the world doesn’t catch up with you, then you can still stand apart and be your own person.
Clichéd as it is to say, but there will never be anyone like David Bowie. Everyone else will always be in his shadow