born on a space shuttle

I am phoning this in, rather. Everything is in crappy blue biro, the title is repeated three times for no apparent reason, and I seem to have dispensed with anything resembling a plot. OK, we have ‘five sixteen-year-old girls, one from each continent’. So far, so BBC Three documentary. But there doesn’t appear to be anything to connect them other than the fact that they are all sixteen-year-old girls.

I kind of love that ‘Californian’ is equivalent to ‘African’? Um, hello, neither of these are actual nationalities. And I suspect that Maria Luisa is actually Colombian, unless she was born on a space shuttle.

I feel that having a character born on a space shuttle would have made this substantially more interesting.

Let us review. Naturally our representatives from South America, Asia and Africa live doomed lives of poverty and unrelenting misery. They are either knocked up, ‘coping’ with repressive regimes (it is so hard to be sixteen and not able to vote! oh, wait…) or homeless. Meanwhile, our girls in Europe and North America seem to be doing… not very much, to be honest. Poor Veronique hasn’t even been given a dilemma, while Lullaby (LULLABY) seems destined for an endless round of pointless plastic surgery.

(Your ‘first nose job’ should really be your last, if your surgeon knows what they are doing. Noses are not breasts. Glad we got that cleared up.)

There are times when I think these things were less a spontaneous overflow of my creative mind than a desperate attempt to avoid doing my maths homework.

19 July 2011 0

revolutions are not an everyday event

(No, I didn’t suddenly develop a tremor, my biro was running out)

So yeah, fall of the Iron Curtain! It’s 1989! I’m twelve! I can’t draw hands!

I will say, even now, that as names of fictional eastern European countries go, ‘Barillia’ beats Enid Blyton’s ‘Baronia’ to which it is closely related. And that as made-up eastern European names go, ‘Romilla’ could be worse.

I love that Paul is ‘promising’ and ‘talented’, because recognising that Barillia might not be a Marxist utopia of happy smiling peasants is obviously really hard, especially with all these people wandering around in Dickensian rags covered in bruises and weird haematomas (what is that on Romilla’s foot? and that blonde woman who is presumably her mother has, like, a snake issuing from her mouth, it is freaky).

He tricks his way into the workhouse! He rescues a hot skinny blonde chick! He becomes a fugitive! He becomes a revolutionary! Whatever would ‘bleak Barillia’ have done without the hunky Western guy to help them out?

OK, so the ‘winds of change’ are operating independently of him (bonus points for Scorpions reference! also bonus points for totally subconscious Sydney Carton quote) and Romilla does help him out a bit with the whole revolution thing, maybe by acting as an interpreter. Or possibly Paul is so super that he picked up the language in a week. Or (more likely, this) everyone just speaks English.

I cannot end this piece without pointing at the bloke in the hat. And the bob. And the purple bowtie. And the mad eyebrows. And the moustache which entirely conceals his mouth (how is that even possible?) He is clearly EVIL and quite possibly a dictator of some sort, but how for the love of god is he getting anyone to take him seriously in that hat? Does he just shoot everyone who laughs at it? Or is he cultivating an image as a murderous yet lovable buffoon so the West will sell him arms? (Oops, sorry, wrong batch of revolutions)

7 March 2011 0

warm rain in february

I am thinking it must be 1992 and Labour have just contrived to lose another general election? and I am therefore extremely jaded and think we are going to be stuck with the Tories for ever and ever and ever? Let us go through our random selection of girls from all social strata and look at what 2010 actually did hold for them:

Polly was evidently going to screw up whatever exams had replaced A-levels over a boy, and watch her father lose his seat. It seems to me more likely that she got her three A’s, went up to Oxford to do PPE, and is currently planning on being President of the Oxford Union in 2012. I also suspect her hair is longer and less mad, and that she wears more eyeliner.

Jade posts shit on deviantart and protests about tuition fees. She voted Lib Dem and is really disappointed in Nick Clegg. She does not sign her name with a frog because, let’s face it, that’s just odd.

Chelsea so does not want to work in a bank. She doesn’t wear massive bows in her hair either.

Kylie may have been destined at birth to be punished for her poor and promiscuous ways by contracting HIV from the random bisexual guy (Yes. Really. If you think that’s bad, wait till I post Daisy Chain) but… come on, no way that girl is straight. Also, ‘new caring moral values’? HAHAHAHA.

Naz doesn’t really wear her hair in that weird flicky Bree Van Der Camp style as the sheer amount of product required would be way outside a student budget. Also, she doesn’t consider herself British because… I don’t know, why ever would she not consider herself British?

For the record, the rain in February 2010 was not warm, climate change having progressed at a slower rate than anticipated. February would be a stupid month to hold an election anyway, primarily on account of the not-warm rain.

1 March 2011 0

ack

Um, I went to a school that was 95% white so I should probably have a cookie for realising black people exist? No? You mean ‘black girl gets a boyfriend’ doesn’t constitute a plot? Even if I have given her an appropriately ‘black-sounding’ made-up name based upon my studies of the Rikki Lake show?

I think this is possibly the worst title ever invented. I might be able to understand it if the girl actually had an afro, but even then it would be the worst title ever invented. And naturally she has to be ‘sassy’. Head, meet desk. I have a feeling you are going to become close friends.

(I don’t really know why the picture has been done separately and stuck on with sellotape. Clearly I have sniffed all the glue.)

‘Fizzy, frizzy and dizzy’?! [bangs head against desk repeatedly].

OK, words are failing me here. Sparky innocent girl torn between the twin evils of OMG RASCISM! and ‘political correctness’ because she happens to have a boyfriend the same colour as her? No wonder ‘poor Lesondra’ might ask what the big deal is. The only lessons I can draw from this are a) if you are a teenaged white girl at a school that is 95% white, you should keep the hell away from writing about race because you are going to get it horribly, offensively wrong, and b) if you have a teenaged white daughter at a school that is 95% white, do not, under any circumstances, allow her to watch repeats of nineties-era American talk shows.

17 February 2011 0