The Sanrio empire is built around the creation of characters and their subsequent licencing. This represents merchandising in its purest and most distilled form: tie-ins without anything to tie to, spin-offs that revolve around nothing.  You don’t buy Sanrio because of a movie or a TV show. You buy it, just because it is. And the jewel in their crown is the god-empress of cute known, for reasons lost in the mists of the 70’s, as Hello Kitty.

Kitty herself is trapped in the same kind of ageless, immortal timewarp as Barbie, locked forever in her early school years, along with twin sister Mimi and an assortment of marketable friends. But all this has been built up slowly over the years; her first appearance, on a purse, was anonymous. The name and background came later; nowadays, any true fan will reel off vital statistics such as her weight (“the same as three apples”), birthday (November 1st) and home – suburban London, albeit clearly a version of suburbia created by someone from third-hand accounts, and shaky on the basic concepts.

Kitty’s popularity is hard to explain; from a design point of view, she has an elegant simplicity of form, consisting of a few lines which even the artistically untalented like me can appreciate. Her character represents a purity and goodness of spirit whose appeal is reverberating around the world with increasing volume. Initially concentrated in the Far East, Sanrio has since spread to America, and there are even London pockets, in Hamley’s, Harrods and Selfridge’s.

Napalm Kitty – a haiku by Patrick Phipps

Napalm burns brightly
As Hello Kitty calls in
Another air strike

Sure, there’s a certain sarcasm in the way Hello Kitty has been co-opted by people like rockslut (and some say husband-killer) Courtney Love. But the beauty of Hello Kitty is that it makes no difference; she rises above it all, completely unbothered, regardless of any riot grrrrrl (and whatever happened to them?) following. You can dress your Hello Kitty soft toy in pink PVC, and pierce its most intimate regions, yet Kitty remains immune; you might as well try to appropriate the Moon for ironic purposes.

The breadth of what’s on offer is frightening, both in regular style and “special editions”, such as Angel Kitty, exclusively available in the West. Though Hello Kitty with wings and a halo does not really bear close examination – kinda implies that she is <sniff> dead…

The bible of all such things are the multiple volumes of the ‘Kitty Goods’ catalogue, an essential, largely incomprehensible (being in Japanese) guide to the Kittyverse. But what matters is not the text, it’s the pictures. It is hardly any exaggeration to say that you could outfit your entire life with Kittymabilia, from the slippers you put on in the morning, to the toothpaste you use last thing at night. 

Perhaps the supreme icon of this Kitty-culture is the toaster – and not just a toaster, badged with a Sanrio logo. The machine’s Kittiness is inherent in its very essence – in what can only be termed a stroke of genius, it singes a picture of the mouthless deity herself onto the side of each slice. This is what six thousand years of civilization since the Sumerian era have been building towards.

The Top 10 of Kittymabilia

1. Toaster
2. Daihatsu Mira (from 794,000 yen)
3. Inflatable armchair
4. Mobile phone
5. Bodyboard
6. Rubber gloves
7. Coffee grinder
8. Mermaid
9. Moped
10. Game Boy

One of the above may be found in TC Towers, but I’m not saying which! Reports of a Hello Kitty vibrator are so far unconfirmed…

And now, those Japanese who grew up with Hello Kitty are having children of their own; hence the appearance of Hello Kitty Babies, to ensnare a future generation of Sanrioites. This seems to be working: Sanrio have stood up to the Asian economic crash robustly (sales actually went up 5% last year, to a disturbing 150 billion yen – that’s 750 million pounds, which is an awful lot of moist towelettes), possibly because Hello Kitty and her pals represent a safe haven from all that nasty unpleasantness.

For a few, however, it’s less a haven than a way of life. When the Japanese decide to do something, it’s usually with maximum dedication & effort, regardless of whether that something is pro-wrestling, war-crimes, economic expansion or, as in this case, acquiring industrial volumes of kawai – the Japanese term for cute. Some Sanrio fans therefore go for it bigtime, and the catalogue reveals rooms which contain so much HK that they would seem to be in danger of collapsing in on themselves into some sort of cheerful, pinkish singularity. Now, that’s really scary…

*Thanks to Jonathan C for (unwittingly!) supplying the title of this article…

“Where your ultimate fantasies come true” – Advertising slogan
“Hardly…”

I am sitting here at my terminal, still wondering what in the world happened to me for the last three hours. I feel almost as if I was abducted by aliens, and have only just returned with vague memories that are slowly coming to the surface. Anyway, I must reflect on this with only a few of my closest friends, and you, my dear readers, are my most intimate. All I wanted was something very special for my sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. Something really memorable that would happen maybe once in his life (unless he wants a slow, horrible death) and with my blessing. Here is the scenario I envisaged.

We walk in and are escorted to a large room, beautifully furnished with great big, cushiony couches and a very comfortable recliner. There is incredible music playing. Two gorgeous women walk in, arm in arm, looking uncannily like…well, in TC terms, say Denise Richards and Nastassja Kinski. They walk towards me and take me by the hand, leaving him sitting back on the recliner. Slowly they begin to disrobe each other and start teasing me to join them. I am coy and just watch. Then they come over and start to disrobe me, very slowly, deliberately trying to entice me to join in their fun as he watches, grinning from ear to ear. I can see the bulge in his crotch as he watches them undress me down to my own skimpy lingerie. Then they escort me back to the recliner, and I sit, preferably behind him, and can touch him as he continues to watch the girls seduce each other, etc.

Is that so difficult? Naturally it sounds really good. So I started making phone calls: I made an appointment, but tried to wrangle as much information as I could by telephone. From what I gathered (each place had basically the same policies), you can have whatever fantasy you desire, with as many girls as you want – and they can’t discuss this any further on the phone. But the manager will be happy to discuss it with you in person as well as giving you the opportunity to pick out the girls you want.

Most of the girls I spoke to were very nice, yet for some reason had the same look, like deer caught in headlights. Though my first thought on entering was simply that I had gone blind: I walked into a tiny, tiny little reception area, painted black from floor to ceiling, and when the outside door closed, it was utterly dark. On the other side another door opened and a women peeked out (“deer caught in headlights”) asking if she could help me. I explained I wanted to set something up and was escorted to a waiting room, half the size of the reception area; when I sat down, I noticed that the opening door would hit my knees… Ok. No problem. I was told I had to speak to the senior girl in charge. A “manager” was introduced to me. She was wearing a lovely black glitter evening gown, showing off her petite body – but I couldn’t help notice her white sport socks and surgical boot on her left foot. My, how erotic.

I looked past that, and went into the details of my fantasy. She stared at me and asked if I wanted an application (“deer caught in headlights”). I told her I didn’t want a job, I wanted a Valentine’s fantasy for my sweetheart. She gave me a gift certificate. I gave it back. I asked if there was someone else I could talk to and she escorted me to a large living area with four other girls who also, for whatever reasons unknown to me, all had that look on their faces. I tried again to explain what I wanted and was immediately told I had to pay for the room, and dances were $40 each. I tried to explain the details of the fantasy I wanted and was gazed at blankly by all of them. I say again, “deer caught in headlights”.

They told me if I wanted to discuss these details, I had to pay the manager $20, I suppose to make sure I wasn’t trying to entrap her for prostitution. I paid Ms. Surgical Boot and went to one of the rooms where these ultimate fantasies come true. The room was actually very spacious, and furnished with a large, cushiony couch and a long recliner. Subdued lighting enhanced the effect. So we sat down to discuss the details of my fantasy. “Now”, I thought, “down to business”.

She told me there were levels she needed to discuss with me. Level I is a dance for 15 minutes that was seductive. If there were two girls dancing, there would be absolutely no touching, girls to client or client to girls, and absolutely no touching by the girls of each other’s erogenous zones. This cost between $40-60 per girl. Level II involved the girls dancing and using a vibrator. This lasts 30 minutes. The only difference between Levels II and I was the vibrator. And the toy will be used on themselves, not each other or the client, etc. This costs between $75-100 per girl. Level III is called “The Works” and lasts 45 minutes. Everything is used: whipped cream, ice, honey, syrup, vibrators, fruit. Proximity of dancer(s) to client is very, very, very close but there is still absolutely no touching between client, dancers or anyone. NO ONE TOUCHES ANYONE. Understand? $300 per girl.

Let me get this straight. I sit here. You dance with each other kind of seductively. You will not touch me. I will not touch you. You will not touch each other. I pay you six hundred American dollars, while you watch me. From what I understand, we can get totally naked and do the dirty deed or anything else we fancy to each other. We can masturbate all over the furniture if we want to, the whole time. [And to think I actually sat on that furniture. I still get shivers thinking about it. I took my clothes off the moment I got in the house and burned them] For this privilege we pay each girl $300 each. Excuse me, do I have the words “Dumb Fuck” written across my forehead? Or is the Marriott up the street only $99 for the whole night: we can get naked, do whatever we want to each other, for as long as we want, with touching galore, get a pizza afterwards, and still save ourselves five hundred bucks?

Of course, they wouldn’t let me leave without looking at the Wall of Photos and choosing the two girls I wanted for my fantasy. None even came close, but I started to make choices trying to find Denise Richards and Nastassja Kinski. When I pointed at some of the photos, they either didn’t work there anymore, didn’t look like that anymore, don’t wear that kind of make-up anymore, don’t wear make-up at all anymore, or don’t have their hair that colour anymore.

Well, sweetheart of mine, my love, my life, he that I would do most anything for. This is not going to happen. There is a thin line between fantasy and sleaze and this town has not been able to separate it just yet. I don’t know what I thought I was going to encounter. Perhaps a very classy establishment that caters to the whims of its clients. Gosh…what a thought. I would pay $600 if there was a remote resemblance to elegance at all, if the women showed some spark of intelligence (or even just real beauty), if the places didn’t look like Pepe’s House of Horrors, located in the middle of a demilitarized zone. And for the money they are commanding, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to have high expectations. After all, I’m not asking for sex from them, only to have a little bit of my ultimate fantasy come true, in a stylish, erotic manner that my partner and I can enjoy in a relaxing atmosphere.

So, Jasmine, Michelle, Nikki, Sunni, Carmen, Jenny, and all the other dancers, you were all very friendly and I appreciate the thought. But no thanks. I think I’ll just try harder to make his fantasies come true using my own talents.

So, what did you do on St. Valentine’s Day? Candle-lit dinner? Romantic movie? Moonlit stroll? Me, I lost my virginity.

I should perhaps mention that we’re not talking sexual virginity here, but something which I’ve guarded far more preciously, for nigh on twice as long – my firearm virginity. In my 33rd year, I’d not as much as touched a gun, let alone shot one; in a curiously contrary and peculiarly British way, this was a perverse badge of honour: we don’t need guns in this country, thank you.

My abstemiousness came to an end at Shooter’s World in Phoenix, Arizona, a gun shop and shooting range to which I was taken on February 14th. The trip was a surprise – this was no bad thing, as if I’d known about it, I’d have probably have turned up in a long, black trench-coat, sunglasses and chewing on a match-stick, rather than jeans and a TC-shirt. I’d also have been a bundle of nerves; again, a British upbringing tends to teach you that guns of any sort are a Very Bad Thing, to be feared and avoided.

I met my teacher for the session, Bill, and gingerly carried the weapons through to the range: a pair of 9mm handguns, a Beretta and a Glock. [Did toy briefly with the idea of asking if they had a Walther PPK, but decided that would simply be sad] Having learned of my complete innocence with regard to practical weaponry, Bill opted to start from absolutely first principles i.e. the pointy bit is the muzzle. This was perhaps a little excessive, given my solid theoretical background, admittedly derived largely from John Woo films, but was probably for the best to prevent Stan Bowles-style accidents [This reference will make sense to readers who remember the TV show ‘Superstars’, and an unfortunate incident where Stan managed to blow a hole in a table during the shooting competition].

We started with a single bullet (unleashing a full clip from each hand while diving in slow-motion through the air must be on the Advanced course), and the target was set at a distance which an unbiased observer might well have described as somewhere between “pathetic” and “laughable” – you could probably have spat with a good chance of hitting the bulls-eye. It was, however, quite enough for me to deal with, as I tried to take in everything Bill told me: stance, grip, concentration, breathing, oh, and pulling the trigger. Or rather, take up the slack, feel the resistance, continue to tighten until…

Fuck!

Firstly, the protective gear proved its worth: even through the ear-plugs, it was fabulously loud, no doubt partly due to the enclosed space; if ‘The Killer’ was anywhere near accurate, Chow Yun Fat would be saying “Pardon?” rather a lot. On the other hand, the flames from the end of the barrel explained how Sally Yeh got blinded, and the purpose of the goggles became clear as the ejected casing ricocheted around the stall from which I’d fired. Happily, the target had a neat little circle, fractionally right of centre. Bill made encouragingly approving noises, which was very kind of him, given I could have leant forward with a pencil and done something similar.

Further rounds followed, and bigger clips. Loading was the trickiest thing about the whole event; fearful the cartridges would go off in my fingers I handled them like egg-shells,. And with two round surfaces to push against each other, I never got the clip more than about half full. Meanwhile, we’d also graduated from bulls-eyes to a target looking…well, let’s be honest, human-shaped. Bill gradually moved it back until I was finally reduced to squinting somewhere down the range towards a distant blur. To my surprise, I still hit it. Well, most of the time. [“That’s not a larch…” © Monty Python Inc.]

My TC-shirt depicted (surprise, surprise) a woman holding a gun, specifically a Hechler and Koch MP5K – Bill asked if I fancied a few rounds with the very same model. If you’d asked me before, I’d have been only vaguely interested; now I was up for flame-throwers, rocket-launchers and low-yield battlefield nukes. I have to say the H&K was perhaps not quite what America’s founding fathers had in mind when they wrote about “the right to bear arms”, or else they’d have put “the right to bear really cool, scary-looking arms”. For if one bullet is loud, flashy and impressive, the ability to rip off an entire magazine with a single pull of the trigger is god-like. I did have trouble literally coming to grips with the gun, however; while using a handgun was fairly intuitive, the correct stance and grasp for the full automatic seemed forced and unnatural, like a golf swing. You have to hold the weapon almost in the centre of your chest to balance the recoil, with your head tucked down in an odd position. Even so, my bursts had a distinct tendency to drift quickly left and up, each successive bullet throwing my aim further off. Still, it was a fitting climax to a memorable hour, and I left clutching a handful of spent shells and some severely bullet-riddled targets, now proudly attached to a door here in TCHQ.

My opinion on guns has perhaps softened now I’ve experienced how much fun they are. I do remain unsure about gun ownership: not for responsible people like you or me (well, you anyway) but no-one has yet worked out how to keep them out of the hands of idiots. And there are an awful lot of those out there – ­never forget that half the population are below average intelligence. Unfortunately, in a democracy, “being an idiot” is not deemed sufficient legal authority for prohibition. How you work round this has baffled greater minds than mine.

“Did you get a hard-on?” asked Chris as we left. No, I didn’t – but now I certainly understand better why some people do.

Thanks go to Chris for setting it all up, and to Bill Garcia for his immovable patience in the face of my irresistible ignorance, even when I tried to jam the magazine into his beloved H&K the wrong way round: “bullets first” was his helpful tip…

Shooter’s World is at 3828 N.28th Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85017. Tel (602) 266-0170

Peter J. Evans, Croydon – “Many thanks for the copy of TC20/21. I’m amazed that my subscription has expired, but then again the days have started blurring alarmingly into one another recently. Do you have any plans for 1997?

Anyway, here’s ten quid which, even accounting for postage and packing, should see me sticking with Trash City for the next six years or so (now there’s a scary thought). I’m sending you a note rather than a cheque because right now my bank account is the physical embodiment of quantum theory – I can never be exactly sure of what’s going on there, and actually observing it can send the whole thing into a kind of fractal Hell. To simulate this, roll 1D6 on the ‘Pete opens a bank statement’ table:

• 1          Sink back into chair and sigh with relief
• 2-3       Swallow loudly and start snivelling
• 4-6       Laugh hollowly a la Eddie Hitler in that episode of Bottom when they were stuck on a ferris wheel (‘Things are looking bleak’).”

Disturbingly, I rolled a 7 – quite remarkable on a six-sided dice…

Geoff Barker, Sheffield – “About Diana – I can’t understand why anyone, given a choice of who would you rather give a damn good tw***ing? would choose old horseface Camilla rather than young, pretty desirable Diana. Most blokes think with their dicks. I know I do…

Can anyone tell me why is it that on TV “lesbians” are all attractive women/girls (for example, Beth & Margaret from Brookside, and Zoe Tate from Emmerdale) yet in real life they’re all butch types, more reminiscent of the Viz character Millie Tant? Signing the letter as my sister-in-law (a card-carrying dyke), I did send off for a copy of Blaster on Her Hip an SF/Fantasy ‘zine for “women who like women”, but was well disappointed. Where was all the totty?”

A subject that I feel deserves further study. Where did I put that copy of ‘Wild Things’?

Claire Blamey, Great Yarmouth – “I am now the proud owner of a computer. It was a freebie – I have been involved in a ‘mentoring’ thing with a chap from BT (don’t ask). I called him Polyester Ken (not to his face of course) because his name was Kenneth and he looked exactly like Ken of Ken-and-Barbie. He is the perfect example of all that is wrong with capitalism. Don’t get me wrong, he is a nice bloke, but for someone in a very high position in the company, with the attendant salary and 50 weeks holiday a year, he was thick as two short planks. He could just about write (block capitals in a sort of studied 10 year old way) and had absolutely no interest in anything apart from his boat (yes, a yacht, no less). No qualifications, left school at 15, and is now in charge of the hiring and firing of telephone field engineers in an area that extends from Northampton to Hampshire. Scary.

Anyway, BT in the usual foresighted and we-don’t-waste-any-of-our-shareholders’-money way had discovered that all the computers they had bought in the last three years for their call centres (thousands of them) were not Y2K compatible (see – I even know the lingo now). So the whole lot of them were basically chucked out – except this one which Polyester went and fetched from Bristol for me in his car and brought it up here (which was very nice of him). It’s only basic, but it’s got a colour monitor, etc., and I got our computer chappie at work to load Windows 95 on it, so it’ll do for me. It hasn’t got any Internet connections which I don’t want, as if I had it I know I would be stuck on it all day and turn into some sort of biotech interface thingy with no life (or at least less than at present – which come to think of it would be no life anyway). So now the letters I used to scribble in 5 minutes take me five times as long to do – isn’t technology wonderful?

{The Jill Dando murder] …when they had the reconstructions of the bloke who ran through Bishops Park, and went over the railings by the river, that was just about the spot where Gregory Peck has his meeting with Patrick Troughton in The Omen”

An appropriately millennial note on which to finish this last letter column before we hit 2000…

J.B.S.Haldane once said, “I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.” I don’t think he was talking specifically about pornography, but on occasion, I come across (as it were) a publication which defies belief. ‘Jail Babes’ is from the delightfully twisted mind of Larry Flynt’s Hustler Publications, a man whose stable of smut documents the warped and perverse state of the American nation as it careers towards the third millennium. Even by his standards, though, this is strange stuff, playing like a combination of ‘True Crime Illustrated’, ‘Bizarre’ and ‘Razzle’, bringing together jail-house confessions, factual pieces on misdeeds and their perpetrators (with some gruesome crime-scene and autopsy photos), and pictorials of women who are allegedly either ex-cons, or even more implausibly, have been let out on work furlough for the day in order to take part in the photo-shoot.

Of course, the important word here is “allegedly” and, as with anything to do with the porn industry, you’re well advised to take the whole shebang with a pinch of salt, not least the lurid and florid text which accompanies the pictures. However, it’s readily apparent that most of the models are not going to be getting calls from Hugh Hefner in the near future, the quality ranging from not-too-bad, down to the skanky ho level. It’s probably the latter who are the more interesting, from a veracity point of view, as well as the photographic: you’re a million miles from soft-focus, air-brushed cheerleaders here and the words, with their tales of abuse and felonies, become disturbingly plausible.

Flynt is, however, a hard-nosed businessman and wouldn’t have published the mag if there wasn’t an audience for it. “Bad Girls” exert a particular fascination on most men, though most would stop short a little way before convicted criminals. Not all though: the appeal of convicted killers is well known, and there exist Internet sites, such as www.prisonbabes.com (and its male equivalent, www.prisonpals.org) devoted to putting those on the outside in touch with those inside. The appeal of that does escape me – I’ve had my share of psychos already – though I suppose you will always know where your woman is… But the disturbing thing is that while the Prison Babes site goes into great detail about the dames, it notably omits to mention why they are behind bars, a somewhat pertinent fact, I’d have said.

That is probably going a bit further down the road than ‘Jail Babes’, which allows you the chance to examine them up-close and personal, without the risk of a fork in the eyeball. And if you’re going to leave pornography lying casually on the coffee-table in your lounge, then better get in a few copies, ‘cos you’ll probably find this magazine will mysteriously evaporate whenever friends call round…

Single issues are $6.99, annual subs to the UK  are $39.95. Visa and Mastercard accepted – preferably your own…

Jail Babes,
PO Box 5743,
Beverley Hills
CA 90209-9909
USA