World Spectacle

Another One For All You Misogynist Sexually-Repressed Geeks Out There March 31, 2003

Like super hero comics?

Go look at Women in Refrigerators, a small but slightly disturbing site which simply gives you a list of what happens to female characters in American comics. When put as baldly as this, comfortable reading it isn’t.

This War Has Been Brought To You By… March 31, 2003

British TV broadcast some film last week of US soldiers with humanitarian aid outside of a hospital, accompanied by a few dozen crates of Diet Coke™. Every single bottle had its logo facing the camera.

You want to know why the campaign in Iraq isn’t going as well as they wanted? It’s cos Iraqis don’t stop for commercial breaks.

That, and the fact that you’re supposed to aim your guns at Saddam’s forces, and NOT THE BRITISH: WE’RE ON YOUR SIDE.

One for the Domme’s Christmas List… March 29, 2003

Miss Monica was amused and perhaps a little too pleased by the invention of MyDuckie, the vibrating rubber duckie.

Words fail me. They really do.

Exhuming McCarthy March 29, 2003

None of my business really, being a Brit and all, but I was recently in conversation with an American who mentioned something called the Patriot Act.

I inquired as to what it was, and was directed to the website of the American Civil Liberties Union, where they keep a summary of it and other related US Government acts.

Should you be worried?

It’s Official! March 28, 2003

OK. It isn’t really, but this sums up the Bush-Rumsfeld attitude for pretty much nine-tenths of the world’s population.

Hurray for the Man. March 27, 2003

Today’s Scary-Go-Round: one for the secret agents and accountants among us, I think.

They Only Want You When You’re Seventeen March 26, 2003

Ladytron: When you’re twenty-one, you’re no fun.

The next generation is upon us, and they are the Millennials.

Interestingly, they’re apparently the first generation to substantially differ in attitude on different sides of the Atlantic for some time. US Millennials are apparently highly civic-minded, and willing to serve their country. On the contrary: British Millennials are the most hedonistic and self-absorbed generation we have ever seen. Ennui and simple lotus-eater pleasure seeking are the order of the day; already Generation Xers are getting frustrated and shocked by the attitudes of the kids of today.

The best way to get the idea of a zeitgeist is generally through indie music. While chart pop music gives you an indication of what people like, the indie music of an era gives you an idea of what people are like. So in the 80s, we had the desperate working-class angst of the Smiths and, later on, the shambolic, hedonistic Madchester Sound, while in the 90s we had American Generation X demigods Nirvana, and, shortly after, Blur and Oasis, who reflected the lairy we-can-do-anything-cos-we’re-British Britpop mentality.

The current indie band du jour – in Britain, anyway – are chilly retrofuturistique androids Ladytron, the only winners from the short-lived dead-in-the-water-before-it-got-anywhere genre we called electroclash.

Ladytron’s small, elegantly designed site includes downloadable versions of their last two singles: the ice-cold cautionary tale Seventeen, whose robotically clear vocal line repeats the same four lines over and over and freezes the blood, revels in the sheer emptiness of it all; meanwhile the most recent single, Blue Jeans treads pretty much the same ground, albeit with a stomping, defiant teen anthem of a tune. They’re both excellent pieces of music, but it’s Blue Jeans that wins for me, being much easier to listen to on repeated occasions.

While Electroclash as a genre originated in new York, it seems strange that the only successful proponents of it are British (they’re from Liverpool), but no surprise that they are as far as I know mainly successful over here, given that they’re so much more in tune with what’s going on with the kids. As it were.

Having said that, they’ve been touring the States, so you never know – they might strike lucky.

Only Slightly Creepy March 24, 2003

Miss Monica was fascinated to discover the existence of RealDolls, which are, I understand, incredibly realistic rubber sex dolls with real moving joints and genitalia and everything. And no, we are not linking the RealDolls website. As we have said before, you’re perfectly capable of using Google.

What do you get the Socially Inadequate Geek Who Has Everything? A girl who won’t talk back. Miss Monica finds this fascinating. I, on the other hand, find it a little creepy. Imagine keeping what amounts to an artificial corpse in a cupboard, and using it to…

Well. The charms of Madame Palm and Her Five Fingers of Delight have never seemed more moral, quite frankly. And far less expensive.

For all us rural Brits out there, there’s something out there for the inhabitants of Norfolk, Wales and the South West, too…

Miss Monica Blue Pencils the Secretary of War March 23, 2003

Shock and …?

[US War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s] doctrine of “shock and awe” is based on a book by military strategist Harlan Ullman, who is admired by both … Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Mr Ullman wrote that the use of air power to achieve “nearly incomprehensible levels of mass destruction” could achieve “an overwhelming level of shock and awe against an adversary on an immediate basis to paralyse its will to resist”… Mr Ullman argues that with modern precision weapons, a “non-nuclear equivalent” of Hiroshima could be created.

W/C, Mr. Rumsfeld. Awe implies a Godly power. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and do not attribute carpet-bombing to God. Some more fitting choices for naming your theory might be:

Shock and -> dread, terror, agony, horror, death, calamity, anguish, torment, mutilation, torture, dismemberment, affliction, misery, abomination, suffering, or the word “extreme” coupled with fear, dismay, distress, or demoralization.

In any combination.

We Like Progress. Progress is Good. March 23, 2003

You may have noticed a little link has appeared beneath every entry, which allows you to comment directly on every one of our posts.

Never let it be said that Miss Monica never gives you anything.

Many thanks to Chris T from the Wibsite for his help in setting this up.