Flashing red lights are this season's most fashionably hip accessory, or is this trend just another Mega City fad?


Phone Vandalism Epidemic
Up 50% from previous years


By City Desk
    Phone vandalism throughout the city has surged to levels half again as much as in previous years.
     Regional Bell officials are at a loss to explain the reason for the upsurge, although speculation abounds. Theories include a protest reaction to rising calling rates, economic stress causing outbursts of anarchy, and, - most conspiratorial - an effort to force people to purchase mobile phones, and drive up sales for telecom providers.
     City officials have responded with surveillance spot checks and a rotation of spy cams trained on oft-afflicted phones. So far no vandals have been caught.
    Damage is often sophisticated, involving electronic hacking rather than obvious physical vandalism. Police say this lends credit to the

theory the damage represents an organized effort, rather than a trend of random acts.
   Citizens are urged to report damage immediately, noting time and who may be around. Experts say the vandals may linger to observe the frustration they cause, much like arsonists often inhabit the crowd around the fire they've set.
   "This is more serious than you know," offered one young woman who gave her name only as Azure, one of numerous person-on-the-street interviews Sentinel Staff conducted. "People depend on these phones to get home. It can be very dangerous to be prevented from going home. To both mind and to body."
    "I got my cell phone," said William Eastland, a human
 
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Light-Emitting Diodes as Fashion Statement: Digital and Proud Of It

By SENTINEL STAFF

    You see them all over the city: electronic accessories, and sometimes clothing, with small, red telltale lights. They're on PDAs. On cellphones. On laptops, MP3 players, radios, eyeglasses,belts.
     At night, our streets swarm with crimson fireflies.
    "It's caught on with the button-down crowd," City fashion fashion website webmistress Melanie Vranakalovich said. "It's unusual, since the club scene is usually the origin of new fashion trends, such as the leather duster/fedora craze that's still going strong. But the red lights have bypassed the usual hipster contingent completely."
    Charcoal-suited businessmen favor the look, often with the slightly cool touch of dark glasses, worn even during the day. We asked two such men, who declined to identify themselves, about the red-LED accessories. "The better to see you with," said one. "Now go back to your dreamy little life, citizen, and stay warm," said the other.
    Cryptic is the new repartee style, we guess.
    Club denizens take a different view. They view the red-LED types ("LEDdites," they are sometimes called, or "LED agents") with wariness. One muscled hipster, who goes by the handle ToughLucky, put it bluntly: "we're expected to get along, but those are bad dudes. Stay out of their way. They're hard enough to handle even with the latest downloads. You blue - " (he hesitated, here) "You civilians don't stand a chance. Say, do you ever feel all this is some kind of lie?"
   This last is an expression of another popular trend in the city: a quasi-religious movement which maintains reality is an illusion, and promotes worship of - or, as adherents are quick to qualify - gratitude to "the One ."

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Andres Bonifacieao

    First, a favor. I don't usually do the society beat, but I do have this valuable front-page real-estate, so Polly over in the Style section asked me to help with a little mystery.
     Seems the sultry trophy wife of a very prominent businessman - I needn't mention names, here, mon cher - was captured photographically kissing a mystery man wearing a very convenient hat.
     We've got the pic, but no name, nor even a face. And boy, would we like it. In fact, we're offering a very generous reward for the first one who'll cough up, verifiably, who got this enviable smooch.

Who is this Mystery Smoocher?


    Not that I'd like to be that guy, tomorrow.
    So, on to my real topic: I'm sitting at the bar, trading the latest with Wally. He's pretty cynical, and describes this trend for hipazoids wearing black latex everything as "hydrophobia squeakalotus." And yeah, I guess some of it creaks and squeaks a lot.
    Still, I don't complain about the noise when an aerobics-toned goddess in a painted-on backless halter sits

down next to me and waves off Wally. She doesn't need a drink. She wants to talk to me.
     I'm all ears. And eyes. She starts this rap about how don't I feel like something's wrong about all this? And at first I'm thinking, sure, graft in this city is as common as discarded Latte cup tops, and there oughtta be a better way.
     Then she does something that makes my heart sink. My heart and other physiological items. She pulls out a couple of pills. If I take the blue one, I'll forget all about her and go back to my normal life. If the Red one, I'll learn some painful truths and be set free.
     Now these words, along with her look - not a heavy dominatrix vibe, but she isn't exactly wearing Laura Ashley, either - make me wonder if this was code for some subculture or another. Painful truths. Set free. Uh huh. I start to think nothing was going to happen here unless I make a trip to the ATM first. And maybe it's too weird, anyway.

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