Gentlemen’s footwear – what everyone’s hurling this winter in Iraq
About time I jumped on the bandwagon and wrote about what everyone else did about three days; shoes. Cutting. Edge.
If anyone missed it, the outgoing president of america recieved two leaving presents from an Iraqui journalist in a press conference. His shoes. At speed.
This should probably be an AVI, but it's just nice to see it looping.
Although accounts vary as to the actual course of events:
…although this might be an example of american news dumbing down content. (It’s not, unless Jen from NoNewbs.com works for CNN.)
The White House Publicist Massive has been emphatic to say that it would be a mistake to take one disgruntled reporter’s footwear as representative of the whole country’s feeling. Also note, although Bush has publically stated he was never, never scared and doesn’t want to press charges, they’ve certainly not been putting enough effort into getting the reporter released to avoid him getting the gruntle kicked further out of him by guards whilst in custody. Protests have grown both in Iraq and America at his detainment and subsequent prosecution, and I hear, brilliantly, that piles of shoes are growing on the White House lawn. For anyone who’s not within chucking distance, I expect they’re accepting postal contributions.
It’s not the first time shoes featured in the war on terrOr. In fact, the Iraquis seem to be obsessed with them. Remember when Saddam was toppled, a video was shown of dozens of people whacking his statue with the soles of their shoes. This was cited as proof that all the iraqui people wanted Saddam out, since it was okay to assume they were representative of the whole population because….erm.
Not to mention the attempted shoe bomber who was caught in late 2001 sneaking through an airport with a bomb in his shoe – which, since it failed, was instantly reclassified from “escaped tragedy” to “bloody hilarious”. I can only guess that this was an attempt to slap hundreds of people at once with the sole of his shoe. And a burning aeroplane.
Gone the way of the Mammoth
I don’t understand why there seems to be a massive movement to save Woolworths. “Because it’s a british institution”, seems to be the canned response, seemingly missing the point that it’s actually just a shop that doesn’t have anyone buying things in it. I know it’s hard to watch the demolition of the store in whose cafe you used to drink coffee with your nan when the government’s swooping in to bail out the banks that chucked her out of her bungalow, but we need to think of the shop assistants here. What you’re proposing is a future in which these people are doomed to stand around wearing aprons in a shop devoid of customers, as people hurry past the window on their way home, to do their christmas shopping on Amazon. Exactly what are we proposing to do to save a shop that doesn’t sell enough shit? I’ve certainly not heard anyone promise to buy more expensive stuff in Woolworths as opposed to online.
Fuck Woolies. It’s just another mammoth chain store that never made it big enough to make people hate it for swallowing their high street. Worry about the tiny, individual shops that are being driven out of business by the unholy megalithic trinity of Ebay, Amazon and… er, I don’t know, snorg tees? It just feels like there should be three. The fact is if you want there to be real, actual shops in the world, you’re going to have to buy things from them. Doing your shopping at Tesco or Walmart all year doesn’t guarantee there’ll be anwhere niche, individual or interesting left when you decide you want them.
This year I bought about 33% of my shopping in actual shops before giving up and buying the rest on Amazon. So just so y’know, none of this shit is coming from a high horse. It’s perfectly acceptable hypocrisy.
