Thursday, July 31, 2008

Doan harass me for not behavin' correkkt when I only wantta slide mah arm roun' yr neck

In other news, after spending months twatting on about mai new house, lo and behold I need a new house. I also need a new painting studio. These two things may be at the same property, or they could be at different but relatively adjacent locations. I'd like both to be in Newtown, but that's up for negotiation. If you're reading this and you've got a lead on a good studio, or a flat and/or a useful garage or a shed/sleep-out kinda thing PLEASE let me know. Ugh.. is any of this making sense? My heads in a bit of a spin...

Kode9 - Victims (feat. The Spaceape) (2.63 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)



... from Kode9 and the Spaceape's amazing Memories of the Future album.

Five broken hearts can't be wrong

Possible candidate for best Dinosaur Comics ever...




(Previous props...)

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Try to take Dawn Raid away from me and I'll show you the G in me!

Characteristic humourlessness from the anti-anti-terrorism raids lot:





You can distinguish this from the previously reported "non-tagger tagger" guy because that guy was funny.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Got your cue lines and a handful of ludes

Now that the Asian Haven in Millward Street is going to be diversifying into haircutting...

Asian Haven Asian Haven Asian Haven Asian Haven


I might pop in there for my next trim. I trust it'll cost a little less than their standard rates, too (30 Minutes : 100$, 1 Hour : 140$).

Stuff: Brothel may offer fringe benefits (ho ho ho)
Clients of a Newtown brothel could soon purchase extra services from its menu, with plans afoot for a hair salon to open in the bordello.....

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I formed my own society to crush the bear of fecundity

In news just to hand...



...three British Court of Appeal judges have ruled that manboobs (or "moobs") are not sexually alluring (story via Metrosexual).

The legal minds had to make the judgement after a man was convicted of voyeurism after filming another man's top half at a public swimming pool.


Ahhhh.. I think we know better, don't we dear readers.

Monday, July 21, 2008

And red mutant eyes gaze down on hunger city

There's been a run on:



Taggers in pink while cleaning up their work
Forcing taggers to wear pink vests as punishment reduces tagging, says Eastern Suburbs Community Constable Theo Gommans. But councillor Iona Pannett said the scheme was akin to Nazi Germany's persecution of gay men during World War II and would reinforce prejudice against gay and lesbian people.

Pink Vests for Taggers Divisive
The Wellington community police constable who is making taggers wear pink vests as punishment has prompted alarm from the youth group OUT THERE.

“Wearing pink tagger vests draws on homophobic fears of wearing pink, and the whole concept of embarrassing young people rather than strengthening them is appalling.” said Nathan Brown, National Coordinator of OUT THERE, a youth development organisation for non-heterosexual and transgender youth.


UPDATE
Stuff: Anti-tagging crusader-cop Theo Gommans nominates himself for Intellect of the Year 2008: Gommans said the culprit did not fit the usual tagger's profile. "I put money on the idiot who has done this is not a tagger. Taggers do it for their own fame; this guy is just a clown who wanted to be a smartarse."

Y'think? Cos, like, "Vest Wanted" is an awesome tag, tru dat 4 realz.

The perverse irony is that the culprit is surely now more famous than any tagger would ever hope to become.

Friday, July 04, 2008

It’s good to be an alien

Rudy Rucker has a blog!


Yep.. Rucker, mathematician and the greatest living Sci-Fi (science fiction/speculative fiction/cyber-punk) author (and 2nd greatest all-time behind Philip K Dick) has his own blog. It's a super-fun read.

Rucker is probably best-known for his -Ware tetralogy:

Cobb Anderson created the "boppers," sentient robots that overthrew their human overlords. But now Cobb is just an aging alcoholic waiting to die, and the big boppers are threatening to absorb all of the little boppers--and eventually every human--into a giant, melded consciousness. Some of the little boppers aren't too keen on the idea, and a full-scale robot revolt is underway on the moon (where the boppers live). Meanwhile, bopper Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by letting a big bopper slice up his brain and tape his "software." It seems like a good idea to Cobb.

"Delightfully irreverant. . . This is science fiction as it should be." (reviews via Amazon.com)



Humans created the sentient robot "boppers," but now it's the boppers who have started creating humans. Clones and DNA-splicing have spawned the meatbop, a human body infused with the software (the mind and personality) of a bopper. The meatbops are interested in propagating down on Earth, but that might not be so good for humanity (the boppers have a nasty habit of enslaving humans, actually). When a couple of (reasonably) innocent humans get tangled up in the bopper's machinations on the moon, it's time to drag out the stored mind of bopper-creator Cobb Anderson and see if he can help.

"A genius. . .A cult hero among discriminating cyberpunkers" (reviews via Amazon.com)



In Wetware the chip mold virus destroyed the sentient robots called boppers. But the virus itself has spawned a new life form called moldies. The moldies are beings made out of a sort of malleable plastic called imoplex. Humans and moldies live in an almost-amicable truce, but radicals (and not-so-radicals) on each side wouldn't hesitate to use--or destroy--those on the other. When a moldie called Monique becomes ensnared in a grand plot that seems to be either the work of anti-moldie humans or anti-human moldies, everyone becomes involved in an effort to either save or destroy the Earth.

In hip, staccato language, the master of cyberpunk (e.g., The Hacker and the Ants, Avon, 1994) merges California surfer culture with a tale of 21st-century artificial plastic and mold lifeforms. The intertwined lives of Heritagist fanatic anti-Moldies, the Moldies' inventors, human "cheeseballs" who have sex with Moldies, and isolationist Moldies on the Moon enliven this fast-paced tale of kidnapping and alien takeover. (reviews via Amazon.com)



Philip K. Dick Award-winner Rucker concludes his satirical SF "Ware" tetralogy with Phil Gottner's discovery that his father has apparently been swallowed whole by a "wowo," a multidimensional holographic toy. This is the first event in a series that will change his life, and Earth, forever. Phil breaks up with his girlfriend to follow exotic Moon-born Yoke Star-Mydol to Tonga, where she meets a group of aliensDMetamartians from MetamarsDliving deep underwater in the Tonga Trench. It turns out that Yoke's mother, Darla, and a woman named Tempest Plenty were also swallowed by a multidimensional creature on the Moon several months ago. The Metamartians explain that the hungry entity is really their god, Om, who reaches into three-dimensional space to capture humans for study. The gift of an "alla" from Om and the aliens allows Yoke to create anything she can visualize using "realware," based on the advanced science of direct matter control. Soon enough, the secret of the alla spreads to others on Earth and predictable problems ensue. Meanwhile, Phil is captured by Om and reunited with his father, as well as with Darla and Tempest Plenty, somewhere in the fourth dimension. Rucker's cheerful ingenuity with biotech gadgetry and applied mathematics is in direct contrast to the book's [endearingly] simplistic plot and resolution. (reviews via Amazon.com)



I love these books so much; I'll recommend them to anyone.

Also: Rudy Rucker's home page.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Eyes without a face update

Yesterday I posted about the face-less people:



Turns out it is a viral marketing campaign for a fucken car or something. Yawn. Like dlisted sez,
They're lucky that they haven't creeped up on the wrong crazy bitch who would take that faceless mask and shove it up their faceless ass.
Yerp.

Blues, hollers and hellos

Update on the painting (stink photo again, goddammit). It's called Never had a name. (I know this because I found this scrawled on the back of it in pencil.) I started it in 2002. It'll be good to get it finished and out of the way.

o o o

This is a track from an album by a band called Tinariwen. They're Touareg minstrels from the desert in North Africa. I'm in the middle of reviewing their most recent album Aman Iman (Water is Life) for Foxy Digitalis.
Tinariwen - Tourmast (3.04 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)



Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Steal a car and go to Las Vegas oh, the gigolo pool

Oh, creepy. People with no faces.



From dlisted (thanks to Kathy). Possibly something to do with Anonymous (I'm apathetic); possibly something to do with hating on Scientologists (now you're talking).

Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face (3.38 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)





You know, I REALLY don't remember that middle eight -- crafty Mr. Broad, huh. Or perhaps I just remember the single/radio edit too well. It's pretty awful either way and I'm glad when it finishes and gets back to the main song bit.

Who cares. Great tune. God bless Billy Idol -- at least he managed to do one thing right, once.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

I'm one of these monsters numb with grace

Yeah, whoops.. sorry about that. I've not been paying much attention to the blog for a few days; been spending a lot of mental energy on getting working on a new series of paintings.

To that end I've begun to finish-off a painting (left) which is a gift for a friend. The photo is a but washed-out and blurry sorry -- that's down to the poor light*. Also, don't worry -- I haven't gone mental. All that scratchy-scrawly stuff around the cactus is just under-painting. More on this one soon, I feel.

So to get underway on the new series I gotta clear the decks a bit. In addition to finishing this painting, I gotta:
  • Find my bloody gun stapler. I'm stumped by the disappearance of this -- I have all the staples, just not the stapler.
  • Remember who I lent my DVD of My Best Fiend to and get it back off them and watch it again to remind myself of some of the visual themes I wanted to develop but never went anywhere with or even jotted down or sketched last time I watched it.
*Note: I support the environmentally-concious rationale behind stopping the sale of incandescent bulbs, but it's going to suck for painting at night. Really, really suck.

Philip Guston would possibly agree:


Philip Guston Studio, 1969 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)


Philip Guston Bad Habits, 1970 (via National Gallery of Australia)


Philip Guston Painting, Smoking, Eating, 1973 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)


Philip Guston Pantheon, 1973 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)


Philip Guston Head and Bottle, 1975 (via Arthistoryarchive.com)


Philip Guston Story, 1978 (via Artnet.com)
All images are sourced from other sites; please click on the links to further investigate these valuable online resources.

Fuck he's good, aye?

Here's my contribution fwiw:


Stephen Clover Are You Digital?, 2003