A Russian Perspective

I've been trying to think of suitably insightful things to smother lovingly on my little blog, when today after browsing the Russian news site Pravda, I came across something I feel is so fantastically written it deserves to be reproduced in full. It sort of, matches the 'style' of this blag. Anyway, Mr Timothy Bancroft-Hinchley (who sounds very much like a man from Surrey) writes for the Russian publication, and has produced this literary masterpiece. I hope none of you are Tea Party members:

Spankin' Sarah Palin: A clown short of a circus

I have already called Sarah Palin a pith-headed bimbo from the back of beyond, in this column. I shall now go one step further. By attacking the democratically elected President of the United States of America at a sensitive time in her country's history, she shows the tact of a boorish drunkard bawling obscenities at a funeral.

If Sarah Palin is not some kind of a massive political joke in the USA, wheeled out to liven up the political scene from time to time with nonsensical and pastiche (one hopes) displays of sheer and utter ignorance, then it is worrying. It is even more so if anyone other than a manic depressive suffering from a chronic lack of lithium takes this...female...seriously.

Hockey Mum Sarah ex-Governess of Alaska is famous for her shrill shrieking style, displaying a pitifully shallow persona which one hopes is stage-managed to give the rest of the world a good chuckle at the Americans' ability and unique quality to make fun of themselves, a real-life female version of Homer Simpson-cum-Belching Barney at Mo's, giving us ever-more hilarious soundbites as she sets herself up as the dumbest woman on Earth.

Just occasionally, one encounters a bar-room idiot whose party piece is belching loudly before falling backwards off his stool, bouncing off the floor on his backside with a background provided by guffaws of laughter, yet who winks knowingly as he is carried out with his feet scraping along the ground and says "Don't worry son, most of it is an act".

The act. It reminds one of Marilyn Monroe putting on the act of the dumb blonde. But an act it was, a character projected by a shrewd, intelligent and charismatic woman with the ability to invent a persona. Sarah Palin, however, is the real-life thing. And it is becoming patently obvious that it isn't an act.

Sarah Palin, the one famous for ludicrous statements such as "I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree"; she is after all someone who "must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life", Sarah "We're all Arizonans now" Palin, cracking down on immigrants when the US of A is after all a country formed by...whom?

And now she turns not only against the fibre and backbone of her country, but against its democratically-elected President, accusing him of being incompetent for not stopping Wikileaks. Where was she and where was her GOP before and during the 9/11 attacks? She accuses President Obama of not taking "steps" to assure the leaks were not published. What "steps"?

Sinister Sarah Palin then goes on to insinuate that she is an advocate of cyber terrorism, questioning "Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to dismantle WikiLeaks?" Surely a more sensible question would have been why the material for the leaks was provided in the first place...and this has nothing to do with President Obama, but indeed speaks volumes about the State apparatus itself which goes beyond party politics. Her question also speaks volumes about her own inability to perform logical and strategic thinking.

President Obama after all knows the difference between North and South Korea, he knows that Hawaii is the largest US island and not Kodiak and he does not use the expression "refudiate".

If anything is a threat to the national security of the United States of America, it is this screaming, unrefined oaf with as much class as a searing release of flatulence followed by hysterical giggling at a state banquet. Is this what the people of the USA deserve?

To attack the President of the country at a time when the USA needs to close ranks and stand together to consolidate the enormous strides his intelligent and respectful approach has achieved in building bridges, when her party's period in government bombed them, Spankin' Sarah Palin comes across as a pitifully inadequate anachronism from the times of the Far West.

The United States of America has evolved. She has not.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Hideous outfit? That'll be all your money please.

So I was sitting here, on teh interwebz, minding my own business and considering how my experiment to see if a human can subsist entirely on ice-cream was going, when suddenly! Good god! Holy Blood Pressure Batman! I realised I could be shooting my word-bullets at blogger.com in a far more productive (?) use of wasted time. I also feel I owe some repentance for not having posted since forever, but I am doing this degree thing, and occasionally we get (totally unreasonably) asked to do some actual work, and exams etc etc. I've already written a sternly worded email to some MP or other about how I feel and I'm certain the entire existing academic system will bend to my finally-honed student opinion.

I'm in the extraordinarily fortunate position of having come into possession (at no cost to myself) of a catalogue. I think it's a catalogue anyway, it pitches itself as a "Summer Term Handbook".

Well anyway it has clothes in it, and prices, and is adorned with that brand name associated with every floppy haired public school ponce in Britain. It is, of course, a Jack Wills catalogue.

Or to give it the full title, Jack Wills University Outfitters Fabulously British Summer Term Handbook (I shit you not).

Or to give it its proper title, The Jack Wills Guide on How To Dress Like a Dickhole for Lots of Money.

I think my expectations of such a document were understandably low when I picked it up, but my GOD does it exceed all of them. I can't believe society tolerates people buying this kind of garish, hideous, clashing, overpriced turd instead of throwing them into a hideous lime-green polka dot insane asylum. Some of the skirts in this book look as though a square of fabric had dolly-mixture shat onto it and a few buttons attached. The models are so ridiculously overdressed they might've been shot with a wardrobe cannon, and the jumpers would make the most knit-happy Grandmother fall on her needles in shame. But the worst, the absolute WORST thing is the prices.

I will probably at some point put some pictures up from the catalogue to illustrate the insanely entertaining hobby of filling in the gap where the photographer cut the head off the model in the photo. For the meantime, I'll pick a few prime examples where I swear some joker buggered around with the printing and added some extra zeroes onto the prices.

Because the Jack Wills website was coded by an overkeen programmer who's just discovered Flash, it's sort of hard to put pictures up.... at any rate, imagine if you will a flowery, mid-thigh length dress with a bow on the front (strapless, if you really care). I guess a large number of asian orphans died making it because it's a staggering £300. THREE HUNDRED. You could buy a car for that. Or maybe (if you're of the feminine persuasion) a really fancy ball gown, but this is a bloody silly frock thing. You'd look classier in a tutu.

There's a jumper here, which is the kind of thing your dear, old, senile granny might give you for Christmas and which you'd lovingly bury deep in your wardrobe and hope never to see again. Mr Wills, however, thinks you'd pay £100 of your hard earned money for the privilege of dressing up like a tosser. There are far cheaper ways of destroying your social life and damaging everybody's eyesight. These two items (one, two), for example.

I can't possibly continue this to the end, but it goes on. There are bikinis made from dental floss for £50, socks for over £20, stupid camp-looking shirts that would make Boy George hack up blood for £35, and it's a good job it's clearly divided into men and women's clothes because, like emos, you can't tell by looking at them. There's a target market here which looks like people who hate owning money and don't have any mirrors. If you're one of those weird people who values currency you'd rightly laugh in the face of anyone cretinous enough to think this sort of stuff makes you look anything more than a pastel-shaded douchebag.

I think the people who see genuine attraction in this stuff probably get their well-off noses stuck in the front fifty pages for a good few hours and have lost all mental faculties by the time they begin to order things. This is because the first portion of this catalogue/well-photographed-freakshow is dedicated to basically soft-porn. Sure there's a couple of photos of people just wearing the clothes and looking like run-of-the-mill retards, but there's also a good number dedicated to barely (or not) concealed female toplessness, females cuddling, females in not-enough-clothes frolicking etc etc etc. Playboy probably ask them for ideas. Surely there's a time and a place for that sort of thing? I guess the lonelier guys out there might resort to a clothes catalogue for self gratification if it came to it but the whole affair looks awkward and pointless, like a hippo pole-dancing.

There's a lot more to be said for this frankly hilarious (and troubling) collection of pages which I might share in good time, but for now just remember that if you're ever tempted by this sort of thing there are perfectly decent, and cheap, plastic bags available in all manner of colours for you to poke your limbs and torso through.

And at the end of it, people will still be able to tell what sex you are.

-Neop