Mother, I am in love with a robot.
No, she isn’t going to like that.
Mother, I am in love.
Are you, darling?
Oh yes, mother, yes I am. His hair is auburn, and his eyes are very large. Like amber. And his skin is silver.
Silence.
Mother, I’m in love.
With whom, dear?
His name is Silver.
How metallic.
Yes, It stands for Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Mother…
Thus opens Tanith Lee’s 1981 future inter-being romance, The Silver Metal Lover, a heart-wrenching exploration of romance, tech and yes, love.
It tells the story of Jane, plain by the standards of her future oligarchic city-state (a combination of Privatopia and Somatopia) and firmly under the thumb of her powerful and rich mother. Seethingly comfortable with her existence, she meets Silver, an entertainment robot, playing guitar and singing in the plaza. She’s embarrassed. Then angry. Then hopelessly in love. Before long she’s thrown her old life to the winds.
Short by the standards of most science fiction, with terrifyingly real characters, it packs a punch that’s not to be underestimated. When the The Silver Metal Lover is called a tearjerker, it’s the blunt truth.
Folks, this post is to let you know that Issue 02 is finally shipping out this December 31st. We apologize for the waiting time. Per the tracking number we received from FedEx, the boxes were supposed to be with us last Friday, the day that our “Issue 02 is finally here!” post went live. However, FedEx only delivered the boxes at the end of the day today. There is no good explanation on the FedEx end other than “it was the holidays and things got delayed.” Next time, we’ll know better than to put up a magazine for sale the day after Christmas! But we finally have the boxes, and we’re shipping everyone’s order ASAP. We’ll be mailing them in the order in which they were received, and we’ll try to get through them all tomorrow. Sorry again, and thank you for patience. We promise, Issue 02 will be worth the wait.
Also, we just got a box of mint-condition Issue 01’s. Not the NSWF limited edition version version – that one is gone, gone, gone. This is the “mom and pop” version, the one that was previously only sold in stores. We are offering this version of Issue 01 for a discount to those who order it together with the new Issue 02.
If you ordered Issue 02 already, you may still be able to add Issue 01 to your order for just $9.99 if you email our Shipping Mistress, Gretta, within the next 12 hours. She will let you know whether or not your package has been shipped yet, or if it’s still possible to add the extra magazine. For those of you who haven’t ordered yet:
Veteran mashup architect DJ Earworm deserves a friggin’ Grammy for this one:
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Via Ponnie, thanks.
Sublime, poetic, and menacing in equal measure, “United State of Pop” is the most beautifully presented –not to mention addictive– musical riff off MTV monoculture I’ve heard since Plunderphonics. As the friend who showed me this puts it:
This video is an example of what’s being called the “legofication” of pop music…[songs] so generic and standardized in [their] structure (not to mention pop videos in their imagery) that all the parts are interchangeable. DJ Earworm mashes up the top 25 on the billboard charts for 2008 to illustrate this point.
Go to djearworm.com to download the audio, and click below to see the full tracklist.
“I got hair on my chest. I look good without a shirt.” – Tom Waits
I had this ridiculously hot friend in high school who looked like a punk rock, flannel-clad version of Fabio. Big, built, rustic, hairy, unrepentant manbro. He’d come swaggering into 2nd period economics class reeking of Pabst and cigarettes, start an argument with the teacher over the ethics of business regulation or the Coase theorem (did I mention he was brilliant to boot?) and all the weird girls would just swoon.
“Goin’ Out West” – Tom Waits
This guy regularly favored me with bonecrushing hugs that blotted out the sun. As I recall, even freshly showered, he had a musky, vaguely goat-like odor. Being slammed face-first into his armpit should’ve been off-putting, but somehow wasn’t. In fact, I think I must have imprinted on the gent and his scent, because all these years later, there’s still a very special place in my crotch heart for brawny, unshaven, man-stinky lumberjack types with big hands and lantern jaws.
“Lumberjack” – Jackyl
This testosterone-injected morningwood edition of BTC goes out to all of the big, built, rustic, hairy, unrepentant manbros of the world… and the loincloth-sniffing perverts who love them.
Click below for more Beorn porn (and please do add your own in comments)!
2009 is almost here. It’s resolution time. We here at Coilhouse Magazine & Blog resolve to keep working our pert little patooties off to keep this train chugging rapidly along. We’d like to ask you to consider making a CH-related New Year’s resolution of your own: pick up a beautiful, fresh-off-the-plane copy of Issue 02 today, tomorrow, or in early Aught-Nine.
The first difference you’ll notice between Issue 01 and Issue 02 is the design. To replace Cecilia, who returned to Italy upon completing design of Issue 01, we invited the talented Courtney Riot to join our crew. Courtney’s adventurous design sensibilities leave their mark on every page, giving each article a voice completely of its own. To further enhance the tactile goodness, starting with this issue, all issues of Coilhouse will have rounded corners. Yum!
The 96-page Issue 02 kicks off with an illustrated history of cyborg hands by David Forbes in our first section, INFORM. Then there’s an extended remix of the Mark Mothersbaugh interview we posted earlier this year, followed by “Oases Between the Freeways,” a love letter to the magical and secret places of Angel City, complete with a colorful Zo-illustrated fold-out map. Joshua Ellis makes a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the atomic bomb. A Coilhouse-exclusive photoshoot takes Margaret Cho and Selene Luna to a desert, a vintage hotel and magical theme park, where Margaret steals a horse from a carousel. In the section INSPIRE, we interview and showcase artists Madeline von Foerster, Stephane Halleux and Stephen Kasner. In the photography/fashion department, slick irodu perfection by Gustavo Lopez Manas and Kate O’Brien’s vintage portraits of women, followed by an escapade through the trials and tribulations of vintage clothing with some familiar faces. In our last section, INFECT, we catch up with Mondo 2000 creator R. U. Sirius and comics creator Andy Ristaino. In Issue 02’s edition of Print to Fit, our regular paper doll column featuring a rotating set of guest artists, Molly Crabapple brings sexy back with a set of Rococo-inspired paper dolls – in full color.
Just a quick goodbye air kiss to glamourpuss Eartha Kitt, who passed away today at the age of 81. It’s nice to picture her sitting on some sparkling, inter-dimensional yacht this evening, having scintillating conversation over moon martinis with Harold Pinter. Bye bye, beautiful. You always were my favorite Catwoman.
Here’s Kitt’s decidedly materialistic rendition of “Santa Baby” to send us off to dreamland. Mmrrrrrowl.
This catalogue photo was buried deep in the Artifice Clothing website, but I found it so arresting that I had to share. There’s something both calming and surreal about it. Between the lack of eyebrows, the plastic-looking skin, the serenely knowing expression and the pointy, B-movie-villain-looking hood, this picture tells a story, despite the complete lack of background and props.
Good fetish clothing/photography has always been 90% about the imagination and maybe 10% about sex, to me. For that reason, I’ve found most fetish fashion to be disappointingly banal in recent years. Barring a few notable exceptions, most designers are too busy cranking out the same tired pin-up trappings to make any effort at reinvention. And even if the outfit’s shapes in this photo aren’t necessarily new, there’s something refreshing about it. It’s the kind of photo that can inspire a filmmaker, a painter, a science fiction writer: is she a diver in Offworld Olympics, getting ready to execute a perfect octuple jump?
Every holiday has its series of rituals and Christmas is no exception. Whether you’re with family, friends or drinking alone, these two informative videos from Rare Exports will reveal a new facet of Father Christmas that’s sure to make you reconsider everything you know about him.
You’ve probably been told to think about the hard work that went into putting that dinner on the table, but have you ever considered Santa’s origins? After watching the videos below you’ll never take another “Ho!” for granted. You’ll walk away with a deep sense of appreciation for the secret workings behind that jolly visage. A grim, NSFW Christmas tale for the ages awaits beyond the jump!
Behold! Your first peek at the cover of Coilhouse, Issue 02. Click here for a larger version, shot by staff photographer Allan Amato. Mark your calendars for this Friday, December 26th; that’s when the magazine goes on sale on this site.
As guessed by reader Thews in a recent comment, our Issue 02 cover features the strong, seductive, smoldering Selene Luna, a 3″10 comedienne/performer who first took the world by storm as part of Velvet Hammer, the troupe that helped bring about the neo-burlesque revival. Selene writes and performs her own material onstage; one of her most notorious and confrontational burlesque acts has Selene rolling onstage in a vintage baby pram and emerging in stockings and garters, a lit cigar between her teeth. In regards to the performance, Selene Luna recently told Ministry Burlesque:
I was inspired by silent movies. I was doing a lot of research for my one-woman show focusing on the history of little people in show biz. During the silent movie era little people were employed in films a lot more than they are now because you could be more politically incorrect. In some films they’d have a little person dressed as a baby portraying a burglar or jewel thief in a wacky Keystone Cop type of thing. The ongoing theme in these movies, which were cranked out like crazy, was that a little person would team up with an average size lady, they’d pretend he was her baby and he’d be smoking a cigar. Those bits cracked me up. So that burlesque number was my play on that. I come out of the carriage with the cigar. I really wanted to tap into that aesthetic. It’s my tribute to little people’s contribution to films.
For Issue 02, Selene granted us an in-person interview that was powerful, vulnerable and humbling. She discussed her immigration experience, family, friendships, collaborations and future plans.
Beyond our cover ladies, Margaret and Selene, lies a glorious treasure trove of juicy content yet to be divulged! Issue 02 contains art, fashion, technology, music, history, geography and more. Make sure you’re here on Friday for the full reveal!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Argh, I know, I’m really late with this one. Slept ’til noon, then had to hop on a train. Fuggit. Let’s consider it a special midnight BTC edition for folks who are working the graveyard shift or traveling/packing/wrapping for the holidays and in need a pick-me-up of the non-denominational, demonic variety, shall we?
Hellhounds are mythical demon dogs from HELL. (Say it wiff meh… HEEEAAGGHHHHHLLLLLLL.)
Video by Brian Boyce, who also made this and lots of other brilliant crap.
Hellhounds carry themselves in an aggressive or baleful manner. They may have glowing red eyes, supernatural abilities, or even the giftof humanspeech. They’re associated with fire (say it wiff meh… FIIIGHHYAAAAAHHHHHH) and endowed with flaming fiery blowtorchy powers or/or appearances. Hellhounds are often designated guardians to the entrance to the world of the dead. Or, in this case, designated guardians of the filthy, dog-hair-encrusted couch you slept on all night after passing out in a puddle of regurgitated egg nog.
(Oh, wait, sorry, that was me. I’d better go wash my hair now.)
EDITOR’S NOTE PART DEUX, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: Hmm. Just noticed that Better Than Coffee is a bit pooch–obsessed lately. Apologies to all (especially Warren, who loathes dogs even more than I loathe Anne Geddes photos). Just to make sure I get it all out of my system, I’m including twenty-five clips of dogs eating peanut butter after the jump.
