baby art blog

if we have just a week of nice weather in the uk it’s called “a heatwave” - here in tokyo i’m melting - for over two months it hasn’t dropped below 90 at all, not once, whatsoever (and bear in mind it actually feels 10 degrees hotter because of the inhumanly high humidity) - usually there’s a few days respite each summer when i can venture out from beneath the safety of the “aircon” and my supply of ice lollies - but this year it’s been unrelenting hell - i’m being bloody cremated!

in theory, it should start getting cooler this month…?

should i buy one? - altho few books i buy are out in kindle format, it does seem to me a neat device for reading scanlations - depending on how traumatic it is transferring files…?

yeah, volume one of the complete richard allen was much enjoyed - definitely something i’ll want to re-read - “skinhead” pretty predictably the best of the stories in that collection - “suedehead” is played more for laughs as young joe hawkins tries to upgrade himself, become a city gent and mix with the posh - and all plausibility is out the window by “skinhead escapes” as joe is more motivated by money than “aggros” and leaves a trail of dead coppers - altho clearly written fast with no checking back for errors the writing is actually decent - part of the joy of these books is quickly learning that every character introduced is going to be used - even old friends (especially old friends!) - every female character is going to be raped …and going to enjoy it! (best thing that ever happened to them!!) - and every male character is going to be booted in the testicles (joe included) - richard allen quite obviously has a fetishistic thing for this - such general degeneracy would barely be publishable today?

wanted and happily found a cheap “new” (unread) copy of volume two, featuring female protagonists (to add to my growing mound of reading matter) - in introductions to this trio of stories mr allen addresses the moral panic caused by his works - among other reasoning he counters by pointing out their historic value, perhaps more perspicaciously than he really realised at the time? - and, in any case, “no one is twisting your arm to buy this book”

batman : arkham asylum

average, nothing more - didn’t float my boat - i really don’t like stealth games (i’ve finally learnt?!) - harley quinn kept me going and i reached the final joker showdown but there i threw in the towel - it had all become too tiresome - i’m no anal trophies/achievements whore - and doubt i missed out on any more harley quinn panty-shots in the closing cinematics

. . .

yay for summer special downloadable xboxlive games (while the inhuman humidity is prohibiting my trips to the akiba import game shops) - three titles appealed to me:

i) limbo

all arkham asylum’s studious endeavors to be dark and twisted are effortlessly surpassed by this little gem - a kinda video game equivalent of eraserhead? (with deference to a “100 uses for a dead cat” book?!) - an obscure left to right lemming march thru a world of hostile hindrances - in a delightfully original “ombres chinoises” style - loved it

ii) castlevania : harmony of despair

kinda fun i guess, while it lasted, which wasn’t very long - “owned” by the second boss which is impossible (or merely extremely annoying) in single player - and for multiplayer i get: “piss off, you ain’t authorised for this mode”, or some such nice friendly helpful message - i’ve tried re-downloading and playing on different accounts but no dice - so the game is steaming poo poo imo

iii) lara croft and the guardian of light

i expected this to suck terribly - i couldn’t have been more terribly wrong

singularity

wah!, another faulty game? - in the first few minutes your way is blocked by a board nailed across a door and a tutorial message comes up: “press R2 to melee attack enemies and objects” - but pressing R2 did nothing - i pressed everything else, searched the menus for reconfiguring the buttons (not possible), reconnected the controller, restarted a new game etc etc but no joy - on the net i found a few more people hitting the same bug, but no answers - so i contacted “support” - and their nice friendly helpful response in total was: “we do not supply game hints” - pardon? - like i’m having difficulties pressing an R2 button?! - patronising pricks! - contacting “support” (for anything), almost without exception, i’ve always found to be an exasperating and unpleasant experience and rarely resolves the matter - their number one rule is to never ever admit to a fault with their product - the customer is always wrong - so they ignore your actual problem and fob you off with the nearest compatible “answer” from their list of pre-written terse responses - no matter how insulting and irrelevant it might be - grrr, rant, fume - anyway, i fiddled about more and the issue finally resolved (itself?) by simply removing and reinserting the disc - such un-endearing teething problems kinda underscore what we have here is a (glitchy) low budget b-rank game - derivative and generic - and cheesy which is actually the best thing about it

i stumbled upon this cleverly subtle image a little while ago - of course the actual book has the mouth in it’s correct orientation, so my first thought was that someone had simply rotated the pic 90 degrees as a subversive joke - but i noticed there’s more of the lips shown so whoever did it must have had access to the original photo - and then investigating more i found an interview with the designer in which he said that this was actually the original intended cover! - initially approved but then the publishers got cold feet - what a shame!

just mention this as someone i know has set up an amazon associates store titled fresh petals which i figure may be of interest to baby art visitors and worth plugging - it features a fastidiously select list of books, dvds and photobooks that have a focus on little girls

another usa vs uk crime book post - in the blue corner we have an undersized hippie loony spouting “i am you - you are me” mumbo jumbo (and STILL spouting exactly the same crap 40 years later on his twitter today) - the brain-fried kiddies interpret this as deeply profound genius and (fail to) rip out unborn babies and squish eyeballs on walls in honour of helter skelter (brit pop song and amusement park ride) which they are unable to even spell - and in the red corner we have the gullible girlfriend of an officeboy invoice clerk, ian, possessed of a more realistic latent deeply profound genius

i devour all the books i can get my hands on re these two cases - or at least i used to a couple of decades ago - i’ve grown up a bit since? - the last couple of manson books i bought (”taming the beast” and the squeaky fromme book) i never finished reading - “the shadow over santa susana”, however, looks like it’s being appraised by mansonphiles (if only because it’s written by a fellow crackpot?) and proposed as the most definitive book on the case (besides bugliosi’s “helter skelter”) - likewise “one of your own” very highly regarded and proposed as the most definitive book on that case (besides “beyond belief”) so i feel obliged to investigate - altho i’m more eagerly awaiting the ian brady “conversations” book due out next year

btw - there is a revised/updated version of this “shadow” book - which, altho a third of the number of pages, i presume contains more? - so, despite the doubtless cheap crappy quality creation press are renowned for, probably a better proposition for one’s $? - especially as it probably also takes up less cubic centimeters (precious for space-conscious bookworms like me) - but i had to take what i can get out here : /

a couple of “a novel”s on the “vintage crime / black lizard” imprint - the david peace one looks quite promising - more seventies uk nostalgia, ho hum - it’s the first of a quartet of books based on the yorkshire ripper - plus much police corruption - tho this first one more to do with little girls going missing

the vachss book bought last month in fact - did i enjoy it? - haha, i’ve read worse i suppose - it’s competent and very readable but ultimately shallow as “a novel” - it gives the impression of being fast-paded (3 page chapters) but little really happens - the characters are all laughably exaggerated and clichéd: cardboard cutouts - basically it’s comicbook superhero stuff rather than “gritty realism” - the hard as nails anti-hero very obviously (and obnoxiously) a fantasised portrayal of vachss himself - yeah, i have a problem with vachss! - in fact i have problems understanding any child abuse caped crusaders who are so sickened by it yet devote their whole lives to wallowing in it - his thing with rottweilers and pit bulls also questionable - how much difference is there between training a dog to kill and “grooming” a child? - tho of course vachss is training such volatile animals to comfort abused children(!) - precious few details on the actual specifics of that - i s’pose the mutts just trained not to bite the little traumatised kids heads off?! (google “rottweiler mauls baby” for a dose of gritty realism)

miss li’l sticky kiss’s evil scheme to surreptitiously take over the world with an army of copies of herself - above is li’l miss mia (all 145cm of her) - love the buttons! - below is li’l miss shavonne - she’s threatening more (a new pic each month)

related posts:
strange little girl i
strange little girl ii
not forgetting among others…