The Weekly Hat – Number One
Good afternoon.
Now that we appear to have launched the Behatted webcomic to a small but dedicated audience of about twenty to thirty people (tell your friends!), I thought I’d try and build something down here in the lesser-seen underside of the page, aside from lo-content promotional whiffle. So this is The Weekly Hat, a low-budget, somewhat anglo-centric blog-ramble-magazine (Can I coin the term “blogazine”? ….. No, apparently it’s already on Urban Dictionary, so I can’t…) about whatever the hell has been going on, filtered through whatever lens is required to make it interesting to me, and by extension, to you. (Or so I hope to God…)
In our first thrilling issue…
- Main feature: The collapse of the British government… Is there any real alternative?
- Our Fictional Guest Columnist is Swine Flu, meditating on the fleeting nature of modern celebrity.
- I care even if you don’t! New Brendan Benson album!
- Media And Stuff: New series of House! New Batman! I couldn’t afford to go the cinema this week!
- Behatted Photo Of The Week: The most self-explanatory regular feature name since “Have the glaciers melted yet?”, written by a car exhaust pipe.
- Next week: Usually with topical writing, it’s hard to predict what’ll be in the next issue, but we laugh in the face of conventional “wisdom”.
Main feature:
Oh my god! The sky government is falling!
If you’ve seen a newspaper this week, glanced at a news-related website, or read a tedious events-obsessed blog such as this one, it can’t have escaped your brain-radar that the British Prime Minister is having a bit of a rough week of it. Ministers have been quitting, elections have not been going his way and he and his people have been photoshopped on to all sorts of unflattering backgrounds on the covers of various tabloid newspapers. (The Thunderbirds one was my personal favourite.) And, since there’s nothing the general public love more than standing around remarking about how long it’ll be before something bad happens, this has meant a ridiculous quantity of column inches have been filled with crazed speculation about how much longer it’ll be before he’s unemployed.
So I won’t be joining in with that. Besides, I think it’s sweet that poor Gordon has finally gotten to be PM, and speculating about his dismissal just seems mean. It’ll happen if it happens. However, some of the more psychotic wings of the press have been declaring that all this kerfuffle will not merely precipitate the end of Labour’s time in government but The Fall Of Our Democratic System Itself. This is obviously the ramblings and ravings of the sensationalist, the stupid and the self-interested, but I thought it’d at least kill a few more paragraphs to look at what exactly the alternatives are to Dear Old Gordon and the out-dated, voting-obsessed electoral democracy thing that he leads.
Communism: Well, why not? Labour are meant to be a left wing party, surely they would rather we bring in Communism than let David Cameron come to power? Surely? It sounds like a good deal to me, and I don’t even support Labour. And, you know, the British people en masse are meant to be good at sharing, so it makes perfect sense that we should share everything, and then queue for it. I’m told that we already have socialised medicine, so all we need to do now is socialise all other national institutions.
Which means we re-privatise the railways (yes!), stop any private companies competing with the Royal Mail (result!), remove all television channels except for the BBC (let’s face it, who would care?) and close all restaurants to allow mass feeding from a centrally-operated kitchen, or “trough”. (Um… no?)
Now all we need is to stop a single strong-willed individual from taking over the system and abusing it to obtain personal power and commit acts of genocide against their unfavoured groups (chavs?), which nearly always happens in Communist systems, and we’re fine. I actually believe that this is a better idea than you’d think.
Fascist dictatorship: I have to admit, it’s not the usual approach to decide the installation of a fascist dictatorship, and then wander off to find a dictator for this purpose. Usually these things spring up around a single guiding individual, kinda the other way round. But I think this may be the problem inherent in most of the previous dictatorships, namely that we approve these people, allow them to rise to power and oppress us, and then discover that they harbour a hidden urge to expand their territory, exterminate an unfriendly race and generally conquer all of Metropolis.
So, what we have to do instead is carefully audition our fascist candidates, through a careful and methodical screening process to weed out any tendencies towards over-reaching , genocide and other common-sense no-nos. In fact, merely proving the existence of common sense would be a good starting point. I read in the new issue of Wired that it’s possible to test for honesty with brain scans, so maybe we should start there.
A foolish, unstable individual might suggest that we allow the public to vote for their favourite dictator or something like that, but firstly, that undermines the very principles on which fascism is built, and secondly that would send us rocketing back into the hellish underworld of democracy. Like, duh. Keep up.
Conservatives: Since they are the theoretical second choice to run the country, I suppose I should give them a chance. Or at least, that’s what I thought, before I stumbled across their official party Twitter account, and found it to contain a few statements that made me think them arrogant and worryingly obsessed with obtaining power. Such as this one. And this one. And this one. And this one. And this one. And this one, which makes them sound like they want to dominate the entire planet as part of their intergalactic empire.
Reality television: It’s come to my attention this week that talent contests and Big Brother-esque telephone elimination, after all, seem to be the ways most people prefer to run… pretty much anything. After all, this week saw Gordon Brown put his considerable political troubles aside to contact Simon Cowell and enquire about the status of Susan Boyle. Not to mention, the European elections took place on Thursday, and had to compete rather hard for media attention with the debut of a new Big Brother series. Especially impressive considering that Big Brother isn’t even that popular anymore.
So, I’m thinking a big budget spectacle for all government initiatives to perform, with a public vote afterwards? I’d like to moot a precondition that Simon Cowell is not allowed to enter the fascist dictatorship auditions that I outlined earlier, though. Firstly, because the very idea is unspeakably horrifying, and secondly because he comes eerily close to running the country already, and previous holders of the position are ineligible.
Today’s Fictional Guest Columnist:
Swine Flu – “Whatever happened to my fifteen minutes of fame?”
Hello? Is anyone listening? I’m still out there, you know? I’m in your country, giving you pig diseases. My map on the BBC site is still updated regularly.
But somewhere along the line, some time before my body count hit triple digits, people stopped caring. I ceased to be the fearsome spectre, haunting mankind to their graves, and became some kind of… background noise. Suddenly, the suffering of a few politicians and the inevitable (yet still amusing) nervous breakdown of Susan Boyle is more important than the outbreak of a potential pandemic of piggy sniffles, spreading from Mexico across the planet.
How did this happen? When did it all go wrong? Why don’t people give even the smallest fraction of a toss anymore? Perhaps they noticed that, even though the number of infected keeps going up and up and up, they simply are not dying? I can’t even get onto the front page of the Fox News website anymore, and they scare-monger all day and night long as if it’s going out of fashion. (Which, I suppose, it is. At least where I’m concerned. Dammit.)
Yeah, so most of my victims are still alive! So none of them are kicking the bucket except for the very young, very old or already sickly! Just wait until I get loose in a hospital, retirement home or dubious orphanage! I had a song written about me by The Streets, you know! I’ll show you all! I’ll be back!
I care even if you don’t!
New Brendan Benson album announced!
Yes, a short semi-regular feature, entirely devoted to proclaiming the stuff that I love, but you may not. (Yet.) If you aren’t interested in discovering the guitar-pop loveliness of Brendan Benson, then screw you. Feel free to pop off to the next feature. But for those of you with taste, we can report, via NME, that Mister Benson has a new album, his fourth, coming out on August 24th, called “My Old, Familiar Friend”, after a long spell of time working with Jack White in the Raconteurs.
And, although I enjoy the Raconteurs’ music, I think Benson’s solo stuff is approximately thirteen times better, so this is very good news. Two of his three previous albums are available on the handy free music-streaming service Spotify, for those who have access to it. It’s great. Very sweet, very simple. Annoyingly, his best album (the awesome Lapalco) isn’t there, but it’s worth paying money for. Alternative To Love was pretty good too.
Anyway, you’ll probably hear more about this oncoming musical juggernaut in these pages once the date draws closer. I cannot wait.
Media and stuff
Short and sweet…
- The new, fifth season of US sarcasm-promoting medical series House debuted last weekend on Sky1, a mere month after it finished on US screens, and several months after it would have started on Channel Five, had they not heartlessly ditched it for The (inferior) Mentalist. A lot of UK fans probably turned to illegal downloading a while back, and those that hadn’t yet probably did after realising that they needed to get Sky1 in order to view the new series.
Whoops. Never mind. The good news is, it seems to be just what we’re used to from House, with a slight edge of depression as an unavoidable result of the miserable events of the previous season finale. I’m excited, if not exactly cheered. If nothing else, the writers have shown an admirable desire to do random, unpredictable things to shake up their formula in the last season, so hopefully we’ll see some crazy stuff going down in the next 22 episodes. Rock. - This week in comics, after the obviously-fake death of Bruce Wayne a few months ago, Dick Grayson (the artist formerly known as Robin) takes over as Batman. Which normally would be another manufactured superhero non-event warranting no mention, but the actual comic (Batman & Robin #1, story by Grant Morrison and drawings by Frank Quitely) is really very good. Pretty, clear, solid art by Quitely, and a straight-forward, concise intro to the new dynamic duo by Morrison, not to mention a villain that’s about as disturbing as they can get away with in a comic book that should allegedly be kid-friendly. Well worth buying if you have any interest in superhero comics, and Batman especially.
- A very, very, very late report to say that if you haven’t seen In The Loop, the not-that-recently-released movie satirising UK/US political relations, you really should. It’s a masterful piece of work, smooth with some hilarious moments. Technically, it spins off from the TV series The Thick Of It, but don’t let unfamiliarity with that be a reason not to see this. It’s ridiculously accessible, to the point where they’ve changed the names of all the characters and ditched all the previous story to make sure there’s a fresh start here. You may still be able to catch it at cinemas, but if not, this will be a good DVD.
Behatted photo of the week!
This week’s photo features Gordon Brown (human) and Jo (hat), not to mention H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan!
If you like this feature, then please please email me and explain why. Note that just because it is “photo of the week”, that does not mean it was taken this week. Just that I behatted it this week.
The Small Print: Photo yoinked from World Economic Forum on Flickr and used under a Creative Commons Licence, oh yeah.
Next week (probably):
- Gordon Brown announces that his final act of PM will be to end democratic government and replace it with a fascist dictatorship, dictator to be chosen in a talent contest judged by Simon Cowell.
- David Cameron is removed from said contest at an early stage due to not having the necessary ‘X-Factor’ to inspire the cult of the personality that such dictators require.
- Swine flu makes a devastating comeback by suddenly devastating a whole hospital full of sick people, but still fails to get much coverage due to the above events.
- Big Brother comes to a quick end when ratings finally hit zero, and a little-known failsafe activates, causing Davina to explode in a ball of fire and take the entire house with her.
- Somewhere in Scotland, a new glacier finally begins to form, and is used as a downhill ice-skating rink, leading to the creation of new and very dangerous sports.
(If any of the above actually happen, you guys totally have to send me money.)
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