Ganguro Madness
Zack: Bake Heather Locklear at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, season with camera phone to taste, and serve with bracelets and flowers as a garnish. Supposedly this is one of the most famous ganguro "stars", which I guess is like being the most prominent medical oddity in a 19th century textbook about inverted skin.
Dr. Thorpe: You know, there's always that wistful feeling when you look at 19th century medical oddities textbooks, because nutrition, pre-natal care and medical science have advanced to the point where you don't get too many real freaks. But really, are we any better off? The freaks of today are no less horrifying, but that horror is compounded by the fact that they do it intentionally.
Zack: When advances in medical science result in a lack of freaks mad fashion science picks up the slack.
Dr. Thorpe: If she had been born like that, we'd be saying "that poor orange woman" and we wouldn't have the heart to make jokes about her on the internet.
Zack: But then she had to go and spend three hours in front of the mirror making sure her pink pumpkin eye-liner was perfectly symmetrical.
Dr. Thorpe: When she's 50, she's going to look like a skeleton in a cheap leather jacket. They're going to put her on the cover of Grateful Dead reissues.
Zack: I get the impression from this picture that it was taken surreptitiously by some sort of government agency. She has spotted the photographer and is calling it in to the ganguro network. "Fresh meat for the vats, fresh lotion for the skins."
Zack: The guy runs and thinks he's safe, but he gets this sinking feeling in his guts and looks up. One of them is on the ceiling and her tanned boneless arms whip down and pull him screaming to his doom.
Zack: The smell of his blood attracts more and in mere moments his exsanguinated corpse is being dragged down to the pumps inside a floral-print tarp.
Zack: Pull back and we see his headset and camera lying on the ground. The headset crackles. "Katsugi, come in. Katsugi, do you read me? Katsugiiiiii!"
Zack: The Manatca Operations East loses another good man.
Dr. Thorpe: His coffin is draped in the plaid he loved so well.
Zack: They give his knot-widow the Manataca belt buckle of Honor.
