Good tight, sleep night

I’m sure there have been no end of articles and blog posts about ゼンタイ zentai: skin tight, faceless body suits. Originally they’re from Japan, of course, like many other cross-cultural mutations. The term is an abbreviation of 全身タイツ zenshin taitsu, “full body tights”. It’s also a safe bet that most of these articles fall into the categories of a) LOL weirdos b) LOL perverts or c) both of the aforementioned. Frankly, I would advise against uncontrolled internet searching on the subject unless you’re broad-minded because some of the people who are into it are absolute FREAKS and you might well see some obscure corners of the porn world that you’d really rather not. Also beware of YouTube’s “up next” autoplay…

Being an absolute freak is fine by me, actually (just wash your hands and probably have a shower too, before you do anything else) but perhaps especially for those who are creeped out by the whole thing, it’s worth watching the completely non-pervy and un-LOLZ-seeking Singaporean short film embedded here– Zentai Walk Documentation. Its participants, zentai-wearers all, have some very intelligent and insightful things to say about the suit’s erasure of racial and national signifiers, their reasons for enjoying zentai, the political and social implications of masks, and the paradoxical, simultaneous attention-seeking narcissism and humility or lack of ego that are required to step out in public wearing a peculiar costume. I have some experience of these issues as a performer, although fortunately for the public’s poor, blameless eyes I’ve never yet done any zentai.

The video relates to a zentai festival taking place in Singapore this April and May. This year’s public zentai walk takes place on the 23rd May. Check out the site for some more relatively wholesome information about zentai.

I was left with one burning question after watching the film, however. We see several of the people buying food, drink, or other items. So apart from the lady in the black suit and pink wig, who very sensibly has a backpack, where are all the others keeping their wallets and money?

On reflection it’s probably best not to think about it too much, unless you’re into that kind of thing.

Hello Cat-headed Person from Suburbs of London

Over the past few days many bloggers and even newspapers have gushed that Hello Kitty is apparently a “girl” and not a cat, although for no adequately explained reason she has a cat head. Maybe I’m sheltered, but I don’t know any girls who love to bake and have cat heads. She’s officially and canonically got no mouth, so why or perhaps more cogently how is she so enthusiastic about baked goods anyway?

What none of them have done is behave like a real journalist and really look into Hello Kitty’s background. And while we’re on the subject, newspapers and so-called professional journalists, WTF? This blog here is explicitly dedicated to silly stuff, and I don’t get paid for doing it. Hello Kitty possibly not being a cat isn’t current affairs or headline news by any stretch of the most overcaffeinated imagination. Nor is the Great British Bake Off. Stop looking at Facebook and do some proper journalism. There’s an army of raving barbarians who hate everybody that isn’t them, better funded and organised than some official armies, squatting on large parts of the Middle East and almost within spitting distance of Turkey. I mean the country called Turkey, although they’d probably also spit on your turkey dinner. A new Cold War or even a mini WWIII is bubbling under in Eastern Europe with Russia vigorously stirring the pot. We’ve probably already reached the point where it’s too late to do anything about global environmental collapse, for fuck’s sake. Leave the Hello Kitty stuff to the non-professionals.

(Digression over.)

1

The character’s corporate Sanrio biography page mind-bendingly mentions that she has a pet cat called Charmmy Kitty. Given that Kitty’s parents are George and Mary Kitty, how is Charmmy Kitty (who looks exactly like Hello Kitty except with a cat body) not related to them? Is she some kind of throwback relative, cruelly debased and treated like a pet? Call the RSPCA and child protection services, I think they’ll both be required. There is some precedent for this in the warped relationship between Goofy and Pluto. Both are apparently canines, but the latter behaves like a domestic dog and is treated as a pet (i.e. as a kind of property) while Goofy autonomously wears clothes, attends work, drives cars, and so forth. How did this situation come about, and why do all the other characters refuse to discuss or even acknowledge the issue?

2

Furthermore, “Hello” is evidently the first name of Miss Kitty rather than “Hello Kitty” being a grammatically questionable greeting.

3

Sanrio informs us that Hello Kitty is from “the suburbs of London, England.” Candidates include a few posh places like Richmond or Kingston Upon Thames, which is probably what they were thinking of, but also such delightfully kawaii locales as Barking, Dagenham and Ealing. In my own personal Hello Kitty mythos, though, I’m going to imagine Hello living in the suburban concrete shit bucket and leading democratically appointed crap town of Croyden. She regularly shops at Lidl. “THE FIRST CAPITAL CONNECT SERVICE TO. LONDON VICTORIA. IS. CANCELLED. DUE TO… DELAYS CAUSED BY AN EARLIER DELAYED TRAIN. WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE CAUSED.” Hello waits over an hour for the next train, drinking shit coffee. Even though she doesn’t have a mouth.

Hello Croyden.

4

From the Sanrio site I also discovered that you can quite easily become the proud owner of an @hellokitty.com email address if you’re very, very sick. Terrify AROUSE dates when you reply to their flattering messages– they can’t wait to see all the stuffed animals and dolls on top of your bed either! Impress the potential employer when you apply for that dream job! Prove it’s quite normal for a grown man or woman to have their email end with @hellokitty.com! Oh, the possibilities.

Milking 2013 posts one last time

Apart from my regulars and subscribers (hello, and thanks) most of this blog’s visitors in 2013 were a strange– and strangely consistent– rainbow of people from Reddit, Something Awful, Buzzfeed, Open Culture, Facebook and Twitter. It’s like the bridge of the Enterprise in here, or a Communist propaganda poster from the 1960s. I may cry.

As seen in the slideshow below, the top posts of the year were mainly to do with bumhole activities chez Joyce, Japanese women making arguably ill-advised forays into putting odd things in various orifices, weird old engravings, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, medieval moralising, gay animals, and squirrels on drugs. Just relax. All these things are normal, here. And if you ever meet me in real life, try not to be too scared. Honestly I don’t even know how somebody as incredibly square as I am ended up with a blog like this. Such is life, I have no complaints and every single sick one of you is very welcome. Keep it strange, you dirty freaks.

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The worst of Adoxoblog

HALLO, THERE! This is the 200th post on Adoxoblog. Choosing to celebrate that milestone with call backs to the ten least read articles on the site is not as perverse as it might seem. Many posts have tens of thousands of views– which I think is pretty good for a blog that isn’t really about anything in particular, never has cat GIFs on it and almost never mentions tits– but some pages have almost no views, and there are hundreds of other things to read here as well besides the greatest hits. So may I present to you the top ten least wanted on this blog in the hope that you’ll be encouraged to seek out some of Adoxoblog’s less frequented areas.

Mushuda I and Mushuda II. Almost no text here, which is probably why hardly anybody ever finds these pages. However, if you read this blog regularly then you are probably the sort of person who would enjoy seeing a bunch of Japanese furries laying seige to somebody’s house with insecticide packages and a turquoise bear marrying a doll who is also obsessed with insecticide. MUSHADA MUSHADA MUSHUDA.

Signals for passing pilots. Just in case you ever need to say NO to an aircraft.

Smells Like Papal Spirits. Pope Leo XIII was crunk.

Beautiful Spam III: “This is the carrot on a stick”. Buy stem cells off the internet! What could possibly go wrong?

Cook me Amadeus. Boys: identify nine ovens and win yourself a record player. I know, it’s almost too exciting to contemplate.

Visit Edinburgh: “A downright necrological purgatory.” I used to live there. In Edinburgh, not Purgatory. If you’ve ever been to Waverley Station you’ll know exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson was talking about.

The Devilphone. Actual villagers with real pitchforks.

HALLO, THERE! the robot, answering your vital questions about Walschaerts’ valve gears.

Yeah that’s the perfect roll roll roll perfect roll Product horror. “These poor models are clearly at the very nadir of their careers and we should pity them for having to feign ecstatic delirium at the prospect of their mouths (and at about 00:50… eyes) being stuffed with gelatinous tubes of randomness.”

Lazy Halloween blog 2013

It’s Samhain, so let’s throw some more Edward Woodward on the bonfire and look at some old horror and occult stuff from this blog’s archives. Highlights include:

Mr Shape and Mr Pipes are keeping an eye on your children

“It [Ghostwatch] was deemed particularly irresponsible not just for descending abruptly into a sadistic cavalcade of suburban child abuse and injury in its final act, but even more so for starting with a perfect simulation of a BBC factual OB’s usual jovial and bourgeois tone.”

What more recommendation do you need? Bonus: Sarah Greene’s lengthy, deadpan discussion of the “glory hole”. I have an appointment with Mr Pipes this evening and I shall be watching Ghostwatch on DVD, oh yes.

“In the plane, you died, do you remember that?” Occult voices.

“The medium Leslie Flint– who insisted upon conducting his seances in the dark for reasons I cannot possibly imagine– turns Oscar Wilde into a harrumphing, evasive old bore who’s clearly playing for time. Good practice, though: Flint recycled this voice and persona when he did Winston Churchill. He also does a totally absurd spirit-drag take on Charlotte Brontë that makes her sound like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Bambi. Oh well, at least he didn’t at any point exclaim ‘… a HANDBAG?!’”

The New Mother … and a “Wonderful Creeping Baby”. Some dreadful automata.

“Call me square if you like, but when somebody is flirting with me I prefer that their skin is on and they have their limbs and head attached to their body. Again, imagine this life-sized, walking and talking and trying to flirt with you. Even after she’s been dismantled.”

Spending all my time… forever… and ever… and EVER

Perky J-pop child-women + György Ligeti = Horror.

“The scarily wholesome autotuned J-pop robo-idoru appear to have been locked in a room where they amuse themselves with OCD hand rituals and by complacently shattering ornaments with telekinesis, like chirpy Harajuku versions of Sadako from the Ringu series.”

Hyaku-monogatari and Kuchisake Onna

Japanese oral horror traditions, from the Edo period to the modern urban present. No, not that type of oral. I know this is the blog that’s infamous for hosting James Joyce’s lengthy missives to his wife’s brown eye, but do try to drag your mind out of the gutter.

Commercial interlude II

Career Suicide: Ten Years as a Free Range Artist

Uncanny Valley: Collected short stories

I’ve just rationalised (in most cases reducing) the prices of my books and ebooks so they’re consistent across like formats. Since I’m based in Britain and price things in pounds the prices may still translate into odd amounts in foreign currency, but they will at least now translate oddly and consistently.

Career Suicide is my memoir of working as an artist and film maker for most of my adult life, while experiencing almost every misfortune except popularity. I’ve been told it’s funny, a good read and it contains valuable insights on the art world’s foibles and failings. And slightly less valuable insights into my own. My adventures in gonzo art criticism continue at my other blog, of the same name.

Uncanny Valley collects my published short stories from various anthologies and magazines circa 1996-2006: among other things, a magic talking dog castrates the Estuary Gaffer Tape Rapist with his teeth, a robot maid trades housework for sabotage, and the last living intellectual escapes from his cage at the zoo and goes on a rampage of contemplation…

Buy Career Suicide or Uncanny Valley here.

Yeah that’s the perfect roll roll roll perfect roll

Let’s reluctantly step away for a moment from the lovely gay animals of Gay Animal Fortnight, and take a look at one of the most wretchedly un-fun depictions of human beings supposedly having fun that I’ve had the misfortune to witness for quite some time. Can you make it through all seventy two seconds of this without frantically denuding your head of all sensory organs using any available implement?

This is the kitchen of the Overlook Hotel, where you’ll roll the perfect roll for ever, and ever… and ever. Either that or they’re all so manic because the sushi is laced with PCP. Shortly after the scenes shown here they all shaved their own faces off with potato peelers and then rolled themselves in the perfect roll and ate each other.

These poor models are clearly at the very nadir of their careers and we should pity them for having to feign ecstatic delirium at the prospect of their mouths (and at about 00:50… eyes) being stuffed with gelatinous tubes of randomness, but clearly there’s something gravely wrong with every single one of the demented and deluded minds who must have signed off on this monstrosity in the process of it being pitched, commissioned, produced, filmed, edited and distributed.

Even by the execrable standards of German advertising, this is the worst piece of German advertising I’ve ever seen. It makes American infomercials like Head On (apply directly to the forehead) or Japan’s brainwashing chewing gum mantras seem like Citizen Kane.

Top Youtube comments, and quite rightly so:

1. Do they actually pay an advertising agency to create such crap or are these the employees running around with a camera acting all silly?

2. This commercial make me want to commit suicide.

The firehose

Twitter calls its unmediated stream of all the millions of tweets “the firehose”, and my new page at the stupidly named but engaging and useful RebelMouse fits that description with its dynamic, auto-updating page of interesting stuff culled from posts at my two blogs and on the aforementioned Twitter. It’s still in beta and I don’t even do Instagram or the other networks it can link to but there’s already a veritable torrent of links, images and revivals of old posts there. Stand still and cover your vitals or you might do yourself an injury.

https://www.rebelmouse.com/AlistairGentry

Commercial interlude

Career Suicide: Ten Years as a Free Range Artist

Uncanny Valley: Collected short stories

Normal nonsense will be resumed shortly, and if you’re on the front page you can scroll down to see the newest posts as normal. In common with most bloggers I do this in my free time with no great expectations because I enjoy it and because I relish the knowledge that thousands of people share my interest in the things that I post, and probably also because I’m a bit of an attention whore. As many of you probably do, I use an ad blocker and I tend to switch right off when people try to sell me stuff or talk to me about my responsibilities, so I understand that some of you might not want to hear this little lecture from me.

Also in common with most bloggers I have to make a living and I rarely make any money from blogging, although in my case one of my day jobs is also writing so sometimes I do get paid tiny amounts for blogging elsewhere. But the fact remains that there’s no such thing as free; everything you get on the internet cost somebody something, at some time. I know very well from the last hellish eighteen months I’ve just battled through that times are hard, but hard times for most of us make it more important– not less– that we should all try to support people whose work we like, whether it’s paying for a download or CD of a band we like, donating to the programmer of the app we use all the time, helping out with somebody’s Kickstarter project, or– yes– by purchasing a book by a writer whose work we appreciate.

Know what I mean?

Career Suicide is my memoir of working as an artist and film maker for most of my adult life, while experiencing almost every misfortune except popularity. I’ve been told it’s funny, a good read and it contains valuable insights on the art world’s foibles and failings. And slightly less valuable insights into my own. My adventures in gonzo art criticism continue at my other blog, of the same name.

Uncanny Valley collects my published short stories from various anthologies and magazines circa 1996-2006: among other things, a magic talking dog castrates the Estuary Gaffer Tape Rapist with his teeth, a robot maid trades housework for sabotage, and the last living intellectual escapes from his cage at the zoo and goes on a rampage of contemplation…

They’re not expensive, they’re professionally designed and copy edited so they look a hundred times better than your average self published bunch of shit, and they’re available in various print and electronic formats. Even the Apple Store, although they had a bit of a wobble at first because they interpreted mention of a rapist getting his nuts bitten off as “erotica.” Really, Apple? Really? This blog isn’t stopping, I’m not on strike, the books sell OK already and I’ll still love you even if you don’t buy something after I’ve blatantly whored myself out like this.

But please do buy something, if you can afford it, and do the same for other people whose work you regularly enjoy and follow. Me love you long time if you do.

Buy Career Suicide or Uncanny Valley here.

Gentry magazine

Hello. I was just wondering if you have an early 21st century Japanese magazine named after you? No? How unfortunate. How frightfully dreary your life must be.

I’m pretty sure it’s defunct now. It was a sort of middle aged executive menswear magazine; dressing like Pierce Brosnan is among the suggestions in this copy. There’s also a worringly fulsome appreciation of The Duke of Windsor, fraternising with Nazis and all.

PS: I was once stopped on the street in Harajuku by some kind of Tokyo fashionista and told that I had “mature Europe style”. Er… thanks?