Wednesday Wednesday! The Great X-Factor Homage Mystery

It's that time of year again. Time for Simon Cowell to smugly smirk his way to the bank and Louis Walsh to piss and bitch and threaten to quit, and he really means it this time.

But despite my best attempts to avoid this wretched festival of auto-tune and humiliation, certain tidbits seem to seep through into my daily intake every fucking year. And what's really piqued my interest this time around is the naming of one of the girl groups.

This group of dowdy young things, pictured above, go by the name of Belle Amie.

Belle Amie, Bell Amee, Bellamy.

Yes these girls have obviously been so affected by someone by the name of Bellamy, they thought to name their desperate stab at fleeting fame after them. But who is this influential figure, this totem of virtue and inspiration that has so impressed themselves upon these impressionable young ladies? Well, I have a few theories.

1) Craig Bellamy
This no-necked Welsh footballer with his simian brow seems like an odd choice for some sweet young poplets to name themselves after. Famed for his bad boy attitude and assaulting a team-mate with a golf club, this is maybe an outside shot.

2)Matt Bellamy
One of the nice guys of rock and roll, the front-man of Muse seems like another odd choice. With his falsetto voice and indulgent guitar riffs he is, at least, one step closer to the girls' choice of career, but they don't seem as concerned with such weighty themes as the apocalypse and desperation in the face of seeming unimportance as he is.

3)David Bellamy

Noted environmental activist and television personality David Bellamy was one of the first people to raise concerns over man's impact on nature. With his television appearances and books such as 1989's 'The Greenhouse Effect' he voiced his concerns to the British public. He also voiced an advert for Ribena. Maybe the girls are big blackcurrant fans?


So there we have it. After an extensive bout of research, I am no closer to finding out the truth in this elusive mystery. Are these four girls, chasing the dreams of fame and fortune like so many before them, Welsh football fans? Or do they secretly hold dreams of becoming the next stadium rock sensation? Or do they simply really love juice?

Wednesday Wednesday! Someone Seems to Have Missed the Point

But It's certainly not these ladies.

No, It's actually a group of Cheerleaders from a Connecticut high school, who have recently complained to their local school board because their cheerleading uniforms are too revealing.

One of them confronted the board with this question;

“I am embarrassed to stand up here dressed like this. Is this really how you want Bridgeport to be represented?”

So let's take a moment to mull this over, because she's hit them with a real puzzler. Do you want your town represented by a bunch of attractive, athletic and enthusiastic girls wearing slutty outfits?

Coming from a town that proudly displays the slogan 'A Nice Place to Shop' (which wasn't even true when it was originally proposed), I can say that the answer to that question is a definite fucking yes.

(As an aside, Naas is actually the name of the Celtic Goddess of Dreams, and the town is named after her because it is, according to legend, the site of her grave. So perhaps a more appropriate slogan for the town is 'Welcome to Naas; Where Dreams Go To Die')

Riding a segway to Heaven

In case you didn't know the millionaire owner of the company that makes Segways, Jimi Heselden, died on Sunday by driving off a cliff in England. Now this got me thinking about about Gob from Arrested Development (above), which in turn lead me to look for an update on the Arrested Development movie, which according to IMDB has 12,000 in-production titles. Now tell me that wasn't a good segue [pron. seg-way] get it?

Lieb' vaterland magst ruhig sein! (Dear Fatherland be at peace)

According to the Telegraph World War 1 ends this Sunday when Germany will pay its final repatriation payment of £59.5 million this Sunday. This must be a huge relief for the 4 veterans of the War who are still alive (the total number of participating personnel of the war was 65,038,810). Finally all this mucky business can be put behind us and the Treaty of Versailles will be resolved amicably, well except for that small hiccup with the Nazis and all.

In case you didn't notice this was just a thinly veiled excuse to use the above picture and my personal favourite, the below picture. Hoorah for xenophobic early nineteenth century cartoons.

Wednesday Wednesday! American Conservatives Clutching At Straws

The 99 is a comic book written by Naif al-Mutawa, designed to present Muslim children with the kind of archetypal heroes that have inspired American and European children for decades, teaching them concepts of justice, morality and social responsibility. It features a mostly Islamic cast of superheroes fighting for peace in the Middle East.

It's also going to be one of the front running shows on The Hub, a new digital kids TV network launching later this year. Which, of course, has sparked controversy with many Americans, including Adrian Morgan of the organisation Family Security Matters, a right wing group who tend to get worked up every time the words 'Muslim' and 'America' are mentioned within 500 words of each other.

These patriotic souls with nothing-but-the-sanctity-of-the-American-Way at heart fear that, instead of promoting tolerance and awareness of the wider world, this show will serve to indoctrinate American youths into... well, shit, I dunno.

The headline of the article is

Meet the Muslim Superheroes who are Ready to Indoctrinate American Kids

but then the author doesn't really seem to be able to pin-point what the fuck they're being indoctrinated into. He goes on to quote al-Mutawa's story about wanting to create a show that promoted closer relations between Islamic and Western people after overhearing anti-western sentiments at a mosque.

He also says that in comic book form this whole thing wasn't so bad, because people choose to read comics, or not.

But on TV, goddamn it, that's just not the case. The TV is the omnipresent dictatorial presence in the corner of the room, and once you enter that room, well, you're gonna sit down, shut up, and do whatever it says.

Wednesday Wednesday! The Japanese are Awesome.

Dr. Hideto Tomabechi is a Japanese scientist who has harnessed the power of sound in an effort to beat one of the great challenges of the 21st century; How many ways can we find to make boobs bigger?

Because surgery, hormone treatments, excercises and specific diets just weren't enough for this man, he set about developing a subliminal ringtone that will stimulate certain biological imperatives in a woman, causing her boobs to swell. It's even been featured on the Discovery Channel, and we all know that their science is always sound.

But this man is not just a pioneer in the art of making boobs bigger, no, he's also responsible for the research that was used to de-program brain-washed members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, who were responsible for the 1995 Tokyo Subway sarin gas attacks.

Japan is responsible for many of the best things in the world, Godzilla, robots, Mario, Hot Japanese Girls, and now, pioneering, multitasking super scientists.

bad rpg!!