The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'tunbridge wells'
2005/5/1
The election campaign season is approaching its climax, and everybody who wants people to vote one way or another is coming out and trying to get their message across. And that includes those of all levels of enlightenment and/or insanity.
Your Humble Narrator recently found in his North London letterbox a flyer/screed from some outfit calling themselves the "Rainbow Connection Movement", led by someone called "Rainbow George" (or possibly the "Rainbow Georges"; the grammar suggests a plural). The screed in question is a sheet of folded newsprint, printed on both sides, and dense with information; from a first glance, it gives off a psychoceramic vibe: the dense packing of all it aims to say, the use of neologisms (i.e., "preferendum", "City Zen", "W.I.S.E."), and the subtly schizoid quality that the profusion of fonts, clip-art effects, random words/slogans and nonsequiturish chains of ideas peppered throughout gives it. The introduction (or perhaps "Rainbow George's Address") reads:
Thanks to the futuristic, mystically directed Rainbow Connection Movement, and the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket that represents it in this election, the people of Cardiff and Belfast as well as many in London but sadly not in Edinburgh, will have the opportunity to come together to transform their cities into model 21st century leisure oriented ones.
But wait, that's not all...
Wonder cities, free of party politics, governed by their own citizens with at least three of them competing to stage the 2016 Olympic games.The sheet is meant to be a survey of sorts of which policies from all parties the voter agrees with. Well, all the major parties, the Greens and UK Independence Party, and a handful of policies from the "Vote For Yourself Dream Ticket". These include things like a "Rainbow Jubilee", where all debts are cancelled, replacing money with an electronic currency whose details are unknown, save that it will be called "The Wonder", and an "Emerald Rainbow Islands Republic uniting the British and Irish peoples", as well as the abovementioned leisure-oriented cities.
The address one is meant to send the filled-in form to is of some outfit named Hydatum, in Tunbridge Wells (also home to disgruntled newspaper letter writers and people in superhero costumes).
2003/5/27
Remember the Tunbridge Wells costumed crimefighter? Well, it turns out that was all a hoax. Well, there was a chap in an brown-and-orange superhero costume (a local hairstylist named Matt Lees), but the bits about him rescuing townsfolk in trouble were made up, mailed into newspaper letter pages (where else?) by Lees and two of his friends.
Mr Shaw, a designer in a publishing company, said: "This 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' thing is such a cliche. We decided to see how far we could push it, to write the funniest letters we could."
There was only one thing for it. Mr Lees made a costume that fitted the "witness" descriptions. "The O on the chest was supposed to be a zero, because it was nothing all along," he said.
(via NWD)
2003/5/14
More details on the Tunbridge Wells costumed crimefighter, whose lightning appearances have been striking terror into the hearts of louts and delinquents across the Kent town:
Mr Shaw said he would like his work contacts to know that he is, as far as he is aware, of sound mind, and he doesn't drink at lunchtime. "You're looking for a tall guy," he said, "with a brown cape, brown mask, brown boots and a big orange suit with a brown 'O' symbol on the front."
"O"? Perhaps it stands for "Outraged" or something?
"Well, it is that sort of town. There are quite a few eccentrics. There's one bloke who wanders round in a bra singing, and another who goes about in full German uniform shouting 'I'm a naughty boy'. But I can't say I've seen this caped crusader."
2003/5/6
The quiet Kent town of Tunbridge Wells, best known as the traditional home of conservatively-inclined newspaper letter writers, now has its own costumed crimefighter. (via NWD)