NRA: Fear In A Flack Jacket

 
In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the NRA suggested that armed guards should be posted at all schools. This week, they’ve pressed that assertion with claims that President Obama is elitist because his kids have armed protection, but he opposes the right of everyone else to do the same.

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HMV: Thanks For The Memories

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HMV Cheltenham. Without you, I’m nothing.

Call me a child of narrow horizons if you will, but when I was growing up one of my dreams was to work in a record shop. I spent my teenage years playing music, talking about it, buying it and stroking its packaging, so it was fairly obvious that music retail would be a natural fit for me.

It was, but not for the reasons that I imagined. I’m not generally prone to bouts of nostalgia, but news that HMV has gone into administration this morning has made me go all mournful for a period of employment that was supposed to be incidental but actually shaped my life.

I didn’t know that at the time, of course. But then, I was mostly drunk.

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Julie Burchill: Dispatches From The Feminist Frontline

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You know what, Julie? I’m not sure that helped. But cheers anyway.

Never let it be said that age is dulling Julie Burchill’s appetite for a scrap.

Her good friend Suzanne Moore came under sustained fire from the Twitter community last week after including the line  “We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual,in a piece about female anger for the New Statesman.

Burchill, whose own career is based on an outstanding natural ability to piss off even those who admire and generally agree with her contentious opinions, did not hesitate when she saw her buddy copping heat. Hurling her truncheon to the ground, she clambered up the rickety ladder and emerged triumphant from the feminist trenches, naked and bloodied, yelling about how ‘we’ (female working class journos) are “damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs,” into No Man’s Land until the Observer’s Reader’s Editor could get a decent grip on her ankles and yank her back in.

This response is now the subject of an investigation, but it’s safe to say Suzanne Moore’s contribution to this increasingly fraught debate will, in time, become little more than a footnote.

Mission accomplished, methinks.

Celebrity Big Brother: A Lesson In Regression

According to a report in the British Medical Journal, people with mental health issues in medieval England were cared for by the Crown, who worked in conjunction with the local community while “the best interests of the subject remained a prime concern“.

In 2013, we either ignore them completely, or if something really bad happens, we place them in a high pressure environment with desperate strangers whose best interests are served by manipulating imposed situations. When we’re done laughing, crowds gather to boo them when they are released.

I’m going to Skype Charles Darwin. Somewhere along the line we’ve  managed to completely balls up this evolution business.

CES 2013: The Future’s So Bright, I’m Very Afraid

Views From The Consumer Electronics Show

Hiding behind an iPad and a pair of 3D specs won’t save you. The robots of the future can smell your fear. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

I’ve just spent the last half an hour browsing photos of the tech innovations on display at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show.

Remember that Friends episode where Chandler expresses his fear of growing old and being alone, apart from his crazy and a large collection of snakes? That’s going to be me, only I’ll be surrounded by a shit load of electronic devices I can’t operate that will gradually learn to communicate with one another, form an alliance and plot my untimely demise.

Don’t believe me? Walk this way.

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FEMEN: Location, Location, Location

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Image via femen.org

FEMEN have stormed a shopping mall in Brazil where a glass structure holding Big Brother contestants is currently being housed. According to a Brazilian news site,  it was an attempt to protest against the “social alienation caused by the program“.

Isn’t cultural difference a wonderful thing? In Brazil, this a protest. In the UK, it would have been described as an audition.

JW Anderson: Living The Dream

J.W. Anderson: Catwalk - London Collections: MEN AW13

Images: Stuart Wilson/Getty Images, facebook.

The biggest kick is seeing a girl or a guy on the street in your design.
That’s what really excites me.

JW Anderson, Evening Standard, 6th December 2012

543176_10151636441529569_2109068912_nHe’s not wrong, y’know. I’ve thought long and hard, and I’ve yet to come up with a sight on my local High Street likely to provoke more excitement than Anderson’s imaginative visions of the modern male.

What it must be to set personal goals and achieve them. Sigh.

The Viewer: Borgen. Birgitte Under Fire

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Birgitte Nyborg. Camo chic. Image via linktv.org.

The Viewer has developed an unhealthy fascination with Birgitte Nyborg. She believes that, like Birgitte, she is essentially a good hearted person who, through the machinations of others, is perpetually criticised and wilfully misunderstood for simply trying to do the right thing by everyone.

For anyone preparing to accept this idea without question, I feel it’s only fair to inform you that only one of our glamorous, intellectually driven, emotionally sensitive protagonists is currently confined to a flame retardant basement with restraints on the walls and yogurt stains all over the TV.

It’s not Birgitte.

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The Sun: A Message To You

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The Sun newspaper’s open letter to Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in a Buenos Aires newspaper, ‘warning’ her against making territorial claims over the Falkland Islands. Image via thepoliticalidealist.

Dear The Sun,

You know that embarrassing and disturbingly inappropriate uncle who occasionally turns up to weddings in a flash new suit? The one who gets horribly pissed and starts grinding away on some hapless, unsuspecting female, showering her with spittle as he bangs on about what a mover and shaker he was in the 80’s, getting louder and louder until the bouncers politely ask him to leave, at which point he throws a punch, falls to the ground and is carried out?

That’s you. Please stop.

Kind regards,

Us. Great Britain.