Onanova

17 August 2000
Let all that do ill take this precedent, Dan may his fate foresee but not prevent.

Did you hear about the corduroy pillows?
They're making headlines.

Yes, it's a crappy joke. It's a joke of such transcendent poverty that I knew something was up. Jokes like that don't just happen. Somebody does them to people, and does them for a reason.

But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back to the beginning. Weave a circle round me twice, for I have returned from the mountain with the secret of Ananova.

Ananova, the virtual newsreader. The poster child for posthumanity. Ananova comprises a tremendously complex metaphor for speech - the intonation, the muscles, the bare-faced cheek, the lip and the tip of the tongue. Beyond flexion and inflexion, she also confirms something which, deep down, even the most fanatical New Playstatesmen must have known. Lara Croft is a bit of a heifer.

Strange to apply such terms to the daughters of pixels, but work with me here. This is taking me away from a valuable exercise in town planning - a public amenity in the bombed-out library where elderly men can suckle piglets at the groin or nipple. It could change the face of the High Street, so listen up. And look grateful, dammit.

Ananova's site has a "your requests" section where you can e-mail in little statements for her to speak. Anyone want to consider the psychology of a man (and it will be a man) who sends e-mail to an imaginary girl in the hope of having it read back to him? The one-sided nature of male desire expressed without intimacy in a closed loop. The joke that began this disquisition was one such e-mail.

A brief apostrophe. Have you seen Soylent Green? I don't want to ruin the ending for you (it's made from people), but, in short, it takes place in an overpopulated, post-ecocaust world where nobody sees Charlton Heston and Edward G Robinson sharing a flat as just a tad strange. It begins with the Heston working his thighs on an exercycle to provide electricity for the aforementioned. You know - pedal, pedal, pedal, lightbulb comes on.

So. Edward G Robinson and a crappy joke delivered by our very own Ananova, green-haired vocal glove-puppet at the tree of knowledge. And somehow the vital connection is made.

Ananova and Lara are two points along a line of largely female synthespianism; see also Joanna Dark, the sexy one in "Reboot" et hoc genus omne.

Unlike tedious, wasteful real girls, these bitmap sisters waste not a single pixel. Legs are long and breasts perky because, if legs are not long nor breasts perky, there is no purpose to them, barring the irrelevances of locomotion and babyfeeding. Lengthy immersion in water does nothing to affect already molecule-hugging clothing. Best of all, the real polygon kids have. No. Genitalia. Whatsoever. Not even a suggestion or implication of the curious, unreconstructable odours, the fluid discharge, the peculiar incrinkling and solid exhalation of the flesh.

Take away these scary things, the existence or at least the implication of which is sadly present in conventional pornography, and you have the ultimate object of desire for those who, in a world where we are all geeks, are still noticeably geeks. Add Lara's inability to hold a non-linear conversation, and you're talking marriage material.

Now, the geek is a much underrated source of energy. They sweat too much, and at least some of that vile off-milk stench must come from natural gas. They twitch constantly, hurling kinetic and chemical energy out into the upper air. Picture one masturbating frantically on an almost perpetual basis, only demanding enough power to keep a vacuum tube flickering, and you create the ecologist's dream. A turbine converting natural, renewable energy into electrical power, with an efficiency of over 100%. Keep them fed and watered, and the fierce chemical furnace of social exclusion will keep pumping out megaergs until an early death from a curious combination of starvation and obesity. Like the Matrix, only covered in cum.

Sadly, there is one serpent in this 3DFX Garden of Eden. No functional moving parts means no functional parts to move you. Scan as many Nude Raider sites as you will, but you know that the ur-breasts are, ultimately, pointless. Literally. How, in the end, do the Venus on a halfshell-shocked masses get their robojollies?

Did you hear about the corduroy pillows? They're making headlines.

That's a media file, so you can stop it, cut it, paste it, move it around. Make Ananova, within reason, do just what you want her to.

Pause for a second.

Yes, you and the file. Say the joke to yourself, very slowly. See how many times during its course your lips form a full, round

oh god

pouting circle, a soft, welcoming

dirty newsreader dirty corduroy dirty

ring of flesh. Feel your tongue gently pressing

Anananananananananovvvvvvva

against the roof of your mouth. Just

255! 255! 255!
 

imagine.

Mind you, it all depends on how easily you're pleased. But, as Confucius says, those with Satan's sasparilla pooling in their lap should throw stones sparingly and with a gentle underarm motion.