notes for monitorface 2
‘Oiiii, WANKER!!’
from over the road a group of hooded children screamed venomously at him.
At the back of his mind he desperately wished to project an image of a skinhead, spider web tattoo engraved across his grotesquely violent face, lips pursed, with his two front teeth jutting between his creased lips, thrusting a thick middle finger viciously into the air. He knew better, his mother had warned him to avoid confrontation, his bulbed glass visage was too fragile. He thumbed the small chip in the glass of his cheek, a reminder of how easily he could be damaged. He hung his heavy head, pulling it down into his collar, trying to hide himself away like a turtle retreating into his shell.
‘Don’t listen to them’ A gentle voice said, he slowly levered his face up to see the owner of the voice, a young woman, her oatmeal hair cascading across the heavy, square, black frames of her spectacles. ‘Don’t listen to them, they’re scared of what they don’t understand’.
Monitorface slowly tilted his screen, he had never seen anyone quite like this before. The frames of her glasses seemed to echo the shape of his head, he could see his own reflection within her bottle thick lenses, she wore a faded ‘ET phone home’ t-shirt, black drainpipes and a battered pair of airwalk trainers, she was beautiful.
His face stalled, momentarily image-less, a thick white line flickered across the centre of his screen as if in freeze frame. He felt awkward, flashes of static dancing and flickering, he hoped he didn’t accidentally broadcast anything obscene, or a garish like a bold red love-heart. Searching his database he hastily settled on the Andrex puppy gaily tossing bog roll along a laminate floor. She giggled, pushing her frames up past the bridge of her nose with her grubby index finger.
My name’s Megan, but they call me videogirl, i’m pleased to meet you.
Monitorface looked over the road, the hooded kids had long lost interest, their attention turned to a hugely fat man on a segway.
He proudly displayed his name, this he had cultivated over a number of years, a vintage Amstrad moulded VDU for the first syllable, for the second a comic pictogram showing mount rushmore and cliff richard with a red cross over his face. He had grown tired of showing a TV set followed by a happy emoticon, his name was not ‘screensmile’ or ‘telvisionhappy’, he had worked on this introduction and had defined it to the point where….. ‘Monitorface!’ she giggled excitedly, in return he beamed an image of a broadly smiling cartoon character, Mr Happy.
