(Untitled)

[theflyingsquirl]

Another long day on the campaign trail--they have made it all the way to Atlanta, and while Queenie is off getting her nails done, the Squirrel had decided to catch up on some reading

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[darkcitytuner]

They don't have tabloids in the City. Mostly because the Strangers made sure no one kept their memories long enough to gossip.

So we hope that John can be excused for staring a bit at the covers while they're being read.

[theflyingsquirl]

They're the usual sort of tabloids, with lurid headlines proclaiming the latest scandals. Hollywood affairs and breakups, celebrity drug addictions and stints in rehab, and (in the copy of Politics Now! that he is currently reading) all sorts of mayhem on the campaign trail, just like the celebrity gossip only more extreme.

"...god," he mutters. "Not the naked pictures again."

[darkcitytuner]

With the mishmash of mid-30's through early 50's sensibilities programmed into him, John is understandably shocked at the nature of the claims just on the front cover.

"They let you read that out in the open?" he splutters.

[theflyingsquirl]

"Oh, yeah," he says, glancing up. "Why wouldn't they? In a lot of places they look at you funny if you've got something more 'serious' to read. I wouldn't take a proper book out in public--what would people think?"

[darkcitytuner]

John looks up, startled. He hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud.

"Because it's obscene? This woman is in her underwear!"

[theflyingsquirl]

"That's not her underwear," he says with a chuckle. "That is a United States Senator in eveningwear at a charity gala. Her actual underwear covers a lot less--you can see it on page ten. But I can see why you'd think that's underwear. I actually saw her that night. It was... different."

[darkcitytuner]

He desperately wishes he could remember if that sort of thing was natural to him as well before coming to the City. But he's never been able to recover a single original memory, no matter how much he's tried.

"And that's... normal... for you?"

[theflyingsquirl]

"Not all of our leaders dress like that," he says. "But it's an election year, and you get votes any way you can. People used to be a lot more traditional, more respectable, but now we've got television, and that's all gone."

[darkcitytuner]

"What's television?"

[theflyingsquirl]

"You don't have it?" he asks, surprised, though he knows he shouldn't be.

"It's a... it's a box, with a screen on it, and pictures and sound are sent to it. So you can watch shows, stories, sports, news, anything you can think of. It brings people together, when they're all in their own homes watching the same thing at the same time; it keeps 'em apart, when they'd rather stay home and watch television than go out and talk to real people. It's great, it's awful, it's everywhere."

[darkcitytuner]

"So it's... radio, but with pictures, too?" he asks, trying to get it straight in his mind.

[theflyingsquirl]

"Pretty much, yeah," he nods. "Even more addictive, even more dangerous, because pictures make it seem more real. I used to be on it, I know how it goes."