Author Archives: zephyrin_xirdal

why the crash?

14

zeph’s pop culture quiz #10 Why did the jet crash?     Just leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the 'Leave a comment' at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it's the first time you post a comment, it will be held for moderation. But I am constantly checking, and once I've approved a comment, your next ones won't be held, but published immediately by the system.] UPDATE (11 January 2012): And I thought you all were sci-fi movie specialists ;-) … Continue reading →

hello matakichi

2

A picture book entitled Namennayo! (Don’t Mess Around with Me!) and commercial goods modeled on those in the book are caricatures of ↑bosozoku symbolism and display a crucial aspect of such symbols and the commercial exploitation of them. This work, which was published in 1981, and had a sales of about 335,000 copies by the summer of 1983, features a cat called ↑Matakichi. Throughout the book there are numerous pictures of cats who stand upright wearing human clothes. miniature props (auch as motorcycles, cars, and buildings) are also provided. The plot concerns Matakichi’s youthful experimentation with several expressive styles including … Continue reading →

distrust that particular flavor

Reply

The first anthology of essays by ↑William Gibson is out: ‘↑Distrust that particular flavor.’ GIBSON, WILLIAM FORD. 2012. Distrust that particular flavor. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. via ↑entry at ↑boingboing … Continue reading →

free pkd downloads

2

Not exactly new news, but the to my eye yet meager download numbers make spreading it compulsory: Project Gutenberg stores ↑eleven short stories by Philip K. Dick in multiple formats for free and legal download. Additionally ↑open culture links to free audio book versions [.mp3] of four of these stories, and to the 1994 TV-documentary ‘↑Philip K Dick: A Day in the Afterlife‘—go and watch … it features, among others, Terry Gilliam and Elvis Costello. via ↑entry at ↑kueperpunk—tnx! … Continue reading →

riding rockets

3

Tom Wolfe’s book on the history of the U.S. Space program reads like a novel, and the film has that same fictional quality. It covers the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager to the Mercury 7 astronauts, showing that no one had a clue how to run a space program or how to select people to be in it. Thrilling, funny, charming and electrifying all at once. Thus wrote ↑Tom Vogel at IMDb on the novel ‘↑The Right Stuff‘ (Wolfe 1979) and the ↑movie of the same name (Kaufman 1983). It couldn’t be summed up better, and I … Continue reading →

blade runner sketchbook

7

  Here are two sketches— from pages 32 and 35 in the sketchbook—for Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) apartment as seen in ‘↑Blade Runner‘ (Scott 1982). Note the distinctive relief ornamentation on the faces of the concrete cubes, inspired by the texture blocks designed and used by ↑Frank Lloyd Wright for ↵Ennis House:  SCOTT, RIDLEY. 1982. Blade runner [motion picture]. Burbank: Warner Brothers. SCROGGY, DAVID (ed.). 1982. Blade runner sketchbook. San Diego: Blue Dolphin. blade runner sketchbook from [HP] via Facebook—tnx! … Continue reading →

barefoot into cyberspace

Reply

↓Barefoot into Cyberspace is an inside account of radical hacker culture and the forces that shape it, told in the year WikiLeaks took subversive geek politics into the mainstream. Including some of the earliest on-record material with Julian Assange you are likely to read, Barefoot Into Cyberspace is the ultimate guided tour of the hopes and ideals that are increasingly shaping world events.     Beginning at the Chaos Communications Congress of December 2009, where WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg first presented their world-changing plans to a select audience of the planet’s most skilful and motivated hackers, Barefoot Into … Continue reading →

who is watching?

34

zeph’s pop culture quiz #9 Who is watching TV in this screencap? Of course there are points awarded already for recognizing what he is watching. But a full solution requires the name of the actor watching, and the title of the movie within which he is watching a movie.     Just leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a comment’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you post a comment, it will be held … Continue reading →

shell of ghosts

Reply

Here is a snippet from the recent ↑interview with William Gibson, which Bryan Alexander (who ↵pointed me to it) ↵liked especially: It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable. It would be harder to accurately imagine what New York City was like the day before the advent of broadcast television than to imagine what it will be like after life-size broadcast holography comes online. But actually the New York without the television is more mysterious, because we’ve … Continue reading →

sphere from above

Reply

what goes up must come down Do you remember ‘↑The Gods Must Be Crazy‘ (Uys 1980)? That old comedy movie telling the story of Xi, a Kalahari bushman, who undertakes an epic journey to bring an artefact which fell from the skies back to the gods? Well, in the midst of November this year it wasn’t a Coca-Cola bottle, but a metal sphere that fell from the skies over Namibia. On its impact the sphere, 35cm in diameter and about 6kg heavy, dug a crater about 30cm deep and 4m in diameter. Local authorities contacted NASA and ESA, asking for … Continue reading →