Ugh wash my ears out with bleach

As part of an ongoing clear out I'm listening to those things that I picked up over the years and not listened to. This time up it's Flip Flop, listened to Friday night and this morning.

It made me want to change my name. Not my real name of course, which is never mentioned in this blog, but my pen name.

Flip flop is written by my former acquaintance Jonathan Morris (Erasure's webmaster, not the bloke out of Bread or Animal Magic).

The story comes on two linked CDs which the author claims can be listened to in any order. What this ultimately meant to me is the story is unresolved. It's a clever concept let down by some dodgy dialogue, performed by dodgier actors, and underlined with some dodgier political satire. Imagine force feeding someone the more factually inaccurate "the immigrants are out to get us" stories from the Mail and the Express, and depriving them of all other information and this is the sort of science fiction you'd get. The villains are a race of aliens posing as asylum seekers who take over through a sick person's version of political correctness.

Or maybe he was just doing a very clumsy satire at the expense of the sort of person who says things like "they're trying to ban Christmas" or "it's one rule for them and one rule for us". After all the things are no better when the aliens are defeated than when they take over. However if the story is anti-bigot, it is done very badly and is open to misinterpretation.