A number of private comments received about this blog have particularly encouraged my attempts to explore connections between popular culture and fetish culture in Fetish Dayz. Several people have gone even further and said they don’t think I should restrict myself to kinky subject matter. Why not, it has been suggested, broaden the blog’s scope to include things in the news that I consider perverse, not just those that are more obviously perverted?
Well I don’t want to dilute the focus of Fetish Dayz by making it into too general a blog. But I must admit there are always some things in the news in any given week that are so bizarre or ridiculous or laughable or infuriating that I find myself itching to say something about them. So I’m going to allow myself the luxury of a little spot where I can do just that. I’m tagging it The Week In Perversity and here are three perverse nuggets to kick off with…
POT TO CALL KETTLE BLACK Ryanair, the low-cost, no-frills airline, is to sue the British Government for £3 million compensation for the disruption caused to its business by ‘ridiculous ’ extra airport security measures implemented since the alleged airline bomb plot was exposed here. If this were any other airline complaining about its passengers being caused stress and inconvenience, I’d have some sympathy. But Ryanair? This is one of those cases where, if it ever got to court, you’d really want both sides to lose.
NO SMOKE WITHOUT IRE Britain’s broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has demanded that all smoking scenes should be cut from the Tom And Jerry cartoons screened by children’s satellite channel Boomerang. I am no fan of smoking, but I am no fan of f**king about with a historical institution like Tom And Jerry on some completely daft politically (in)correct pretext either. Ofcom apparently came to the conclusion that the cartoons had to be censored to protect children after a viewer complained about one episode in which Tom tries to impress a female cat by lighting up. Let’s just rewind that a bit… a viewer complained. One viewer. One. So presumably it would equally take only one of us to complain that we’d prefer the cartoons kept intact for Ofcom to reverse its decision? No, thought not.
COME TO MUMMY Not content with bringing into the world another child that she can practise her parenting skills on, Britney Spears is reported to be planning on being buried with her pet dog. When I first read this story, I thought, well, sounds OK to me, as long as we don’t have to wait for her to die first. But it seems I was being premature. What she actually wants is for her dog to be buried with her when she dies, in the tradition of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Which presumably means: if Britney pops her clogs, the dog — who by the way is called Lucky — gets it in the neck. Lucky, if you’re reading this, maybe you should be thinking about a change of name. The one you’ve got at the moment could turn out to be singularly inappropriate.
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