retail ultraviolence

Oi. A retail outlet called Clockwork Orange, based in Ireland, was ransacked by mad shoppers in an overnight sale. The deal: one could purchase items like £300 leather belts for 5 quid, or some nonsense. People tore mannequins apart to get to the duds. Because really, "it's not just about fashion, it's about the life you lead, what you do and how you do it. It's about style," or so goes the shop's motto.

You can't but love such consumerist trash philosophy. Yet it certainly seems to be working. Lead on, lemmings! Burgess writes in his intro to Clockwork Orange (reprint 1986): "...by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange -- meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with color and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State."