Pac-Man,bow,Apple,chest,six pack,nail,tornado,Mickey Mouse,Youtube,lightning,traffic light,waterfall,McDonalds,Donald Trump,Patrick,stop sign,Superman,tooth,sunflower,keyboard,island,Pikachu,Harry Potter,Nintendo Switch,Facebook,eyebrow,Peppa Pig,SpongeBob,Creeper,octopus,church,Eiffel tower,tongue,snowflake,fish,Twitter,pan,Jesus Christ,butt cheeks,jail,Pepsi,hospital,pregnant,thunderstorm,smile,skull,flower,palm tree,Angry Birds,America,lips,cloud,compass,mustache,Captain America,pimple,Easter Bunny,chicken,Elmo,watch,prison,skeleton,arrow,volcano,Minion,school,tie,lighthouse,fountain,Cookie Monster,Iron Man,Santa,blood,river,bar,Mount Everest,chest hair,Gumball,north,water,cactus,treehouse,bridge,short,thumb,beach,mountain,Nike,flag,Paris,eyelash,Shrek,brain,iceberg,fingernail,playground,ice cream,Google,dead,knife,spoon,unibrow,Spiderman,black,graveyard,elbow,golden egg,yellow,Germany,Adidas,nose hair,Deadpool,Homer Simpson,Bart Simpson,rainbow,ruler,building,raindrop,storm,coffee shop,windmill,fidget spinner,yo-yo,ice,legs,tent,mouth,ocean,Fanta,homeless,tablet,muscle,Pinocchio,tear,nose,snow,nostrils,Olaf,belly button,Lion King,car wash,Egypt,Statue of Liberty,Hello Kitty,pinky,Winnie the Pooh,guitar,Hulk,Grinch,Nutella,cold,flagpole,Canada,rainforest,blue,rose,tree,hot,mailbox,Nemo,crab,knee,doghouse,Chrome,cotton candy,Barack Obama,hot chocolate,Michael Jackson,map,Samsung,shoulder,Microsoft,parking,forest,full moon,cherry blossom,apple seed,Donald Duck,leaf,bat,earwax,Italy,finger,seed,lilypad,brush,record,wrist,thunder,gummy,Kirby,fire hydrant,overweight,hot dog,house,fork,pink,Sonic,street,Nasa,arm,fast,tunnel,full,library,pet shop,Yoshi,Russia,drum kit,Android,Finn and Jake,price tag,Tooth Fairy,bus stop,rain,heart,face,tower,bank,cheeks,Batman,speaker,Thor,skinny,electric guitar,belly,cute,ice cream truck,bubble gum,top hat,Pink Panther,hand,bald,freckles,clover,armpit,Japan,thin,traffic,spaghetti,Phineas and Ferb,broken heart,fingertip,funny,poisonous,Wonder Woman,Squidward,Mark Zuckerberg,twig,red,China,dream,Dora,daisy,France,Discord,toenail,positive,forehead,earthquake,iron,Zeus,Mercedes,Big Ben,supermarket,Bugs Bunny,Yin and Yang,drink,rock,drum,piano,white,bench,fall,royal,seashell,Audi,stomach,aquarium,Bitcoin,volleyball,marshmallow,Cat Woman,underground,Green Lantern,bottle flip,toothbrush,globe,sand,zoo,west,puddle,lobster,North Korea,Luigi,bamboo,Great Wall,Kim Jong-un,bad,credit card,swimming pool,Wolverine,head,hair,Yoda,Elsa,turkey,heel,maracas,clean,droplet,cinema,poor,stamp,Africa,whistle,Teletubby,wind,Aladdin,tissue box,fire truck,Usain Bolt,water gun,farm,iPad,well,warm,booger,WhatsApp,Skype,landscape,pine cone,Mexico,slow,organ,fish bowl,teddy bear,John Cena,Frankenstein,tennis racket,gummy bear,Mount Rushmore,swing,Mario,lake,point,vein,cave,smell,chin,desert,scary,Dracula,airport,kiwi,seaweed,incognito,Pluto,statue,hairy,strawberry,low,invisible,blindfold,tuna,controller,Paypal,King Kong,neck,lung,weather,Xbox,tiny,icicle,flashlight,scissors,emoji,strong,saliva,firefighter,salmon,basketball,spring,Tarzan,red carpet,drain,coral reef,nose ring,caterpillar,Wall-e,seat belt,polar bear,Scooby Doo,wave,sea,grass,pancake,park,lipstick,pickaxe,east,grenade,village,Flash,throat,dizzy,Asia,petal,Gru,country,spaceship,restaurant,copy,skin,glue stick,Garfield,equator,blizzard,golden apple,Robin Hood,fast food,barbed wire,Bill Gates,Tower of Pisa,neighborhood,lightsaber,video game,high heels,dirty,flamethrower,pencil sharpener,hill,old,flute,cheek,violin,fireball,spine,bathtub,cell phone,breath,open,Australia,toothpaste,Tails,skyscraper,cowbell,rib,ceiling fan,Eminem,Jimmy Neutron,photo frame,barn,sandstorm,Jackie Chan,Abraham Lincoln,T-rex,pot of gold,KFC,shell,poison,acne,avocado,study,bandana,England,Medusa,scar,Skittles,Pokemon,branch,Dumbo,factory,Hollywood,deep,knuckle,popular,piggy bank,Las Vegas,microphone,Tower Bridge,butterfly,slide,hut,shovel,hamburger,shop,fort,Ikea,planet,border,panda,highway,swamp,tropical,lightbulb,Kermit,headphones,jungle,Reddit,young,trumpet,cheeseburger,gas mask,apartment,manhole,nutcracker,Antarctica,mansion,bunk bed,sunglasses,spray paint,Jack-o-lantern,saltwater,tank,cliff,campfire,palm,pumpkin,elephant,banjo,nature,alley,fireproof,earbuds,crossbow,Elon Musk,quicksand,Playstation,Hawaii,good,corn dog,Gandalf,dock,magic wand,field,Solar System,photograph,ukulele,James Bond,The Beatles,Katy Perry,pirate ship,Poseidon,Netherlands,photographer,Lego,hourglass,glass,path,hotel,ramp,dandelion,Brazil,coral,cigarette,messy,Dexter,valley,parachute,wine glass,matchbox,Morgan Freeman,black hole,midnight,astronaut,paper bag,sand castle,forest fire,hot sauce,social media,William Shakespeare,trash can,fire alarm,lawn mower,nail polish,Band-Aid,Star Wars,clothes hanger,toe,mud,coconut,jaw,bomb,south,firework,sailboat,loading,iPhone,toothpick,BMW,ketchup,fossil,explosion,Finn,Einstein,infinite,dictionary,Photoshop,trombone,clarinet,rubber,saxophone,helicopter,temperature,bus driver,cello,London,newspaper,blackberry,shopping cart,Florida,Daffy Duck,mayonnaise,gummy worm,flying pig,underweight,Crash Bandicoot,bungee jumping,kindergarten,umbrella,hammer,night,laser,glove,square,Morty,firehouse,dynamite,chainsaw,melon,waist,Chewbacca,kidney,stoned,Rick,ticket,skateboard,microwave,television,soil,exam,cocktail,India,Colosseum,missile,hilarious,Popeye,nuke,silo,chemical,museum,Vault boy,adorable,fast forward,firecracker,grandmother,Porky Pig,roadblock,continent,wrinkle,shaving cream,Northern Lights,tug,London Eye,Israel,shipwreck,xylophone,motorcycle,diamond,root,coffee,princess,Oreo,goldfish,wizard,chocolate,garbage,ladybug,shotgun,kazoo,Minecraft,video,message,lily,fisherman,cucumber,password,western,ambulance,doorknob,glowstick,makeup,barbecue,jazz,hedgehog,bark,tombstone,coast,pitchfork,Christmas,opera,office,insect,hunger,download,hairbrush,blueberry,cookie jar,canyon,Happy Meal,high five,fern,quarter,peninsula,imagination,microscope,table tennis,whisper,fly swatter,pencil case,harmonica,Family Guy,New Zealand,apple pie,warehouse,cookie,USB,jellyfish,bubble,battery,fireman,pizza,angry,taco,harp,alcohol,pound,bedtime,megaphone,husband,oval,rail,stab,dwarf,milkshake,witch,bakery,president,weak,second,sushi,mall,complete,hip hop,slippery,horizon,prawn,plumber,blowfish,Madagascar,Europe,bazooka,pogo stick,Terminator,Hercules,notification,snowball fight,high score,Kung Fu,Lady Gaga,geography,sledgehammer,bear trap,sky,cheese,vine,clown,catfish,snowman,bowl,waffle,vegetable,hook,shadow,dinosaur,lane,dance,scarf,cabin,Tweety,bookshelf,swordfish,skyline,base,straw,biscuit,Greece,bleach,pepper,reflection,universe,skateboarder,triplets,gold chain,electric car,policeman,electricity,mother,Bambi,croissant,Ireland,sandbox,stadium,depressed,Johnny Bravo,silverware,raspberry,dandruff,Scotland,comic book,cylinder,Milky Way,taxi driver,magic trick,sunrise,popcorn,eat,cola,cake,pond,mushroom,rocket,surfboard,baby,cape,glasses,sunburn,chef,gate,charger,crack,mohawk,triangle,carpet,dessert,taser,afro,cobra,ringtone,cockroach,levitate,mailman,rockstar,lyrics,grumpy,stand,Norway,binoculars,nightclub,puppet,novel,injection,thief,pray,chandelier,exercise,lava lamp,lap,massage,thermometer,golf cart,postcard,bell pepper,bed bug,paintball,Notch,yogurt,graffiti,burglar,butler,seafood,Sydney Opera House,Susan Wojcicki,parents,bed sheet,Leonardo da Vinci,intersection,palace,shrub,lumberjack,relationship,observatory,junk food,eye,log,dice,bicycle,pineapple,camera,circle,lemonade,soda,comb,cube,Doritos,love,table,honey,lighter,broccoli,fireplace,drive,Titanic,backpack,emerald,giraffe,world,internet,kitten,volume,Spain,daughter,armor,noob,rectangle,driver,raccoon,bacon,lady,bull,camping,poppy,snowball,farmer,lasso,breakfast,oxygen,milkman,caveman,laboratory,bandage,neighbor,Cupid,Sudoku,wedding,seagull,spatula,atom,dew,fortress,vegetarian,ivy,snowboard,conversation,treasure,chopsticks,garlic,vacuum,swimsuit,divorce,advertisement,vuvuzela,Mr Bean,Fred Flintstone,pet food,upgrade,voodoo,punishment,Charlie Chaplin,Rome,graduation,beatbox,communism,yeti,ear,dots,octagon,kite,lion,winner,muffin,cupcake,unicorn,smoke,lime,monster,Mars,moss,summer,lollipop,coffin,paint,lottery,wife,pirate,sandwich,lantern,seahorse,Cuba,archer,sweat,deodorant,plank,Steam,birthday,submarine,zombie,casino,gas,stove,helmet,mosquito,ponytail,corpse,subway,spy,jump rope,baguette,grin,centipede,gorilla,website,text,workplace,bookmark,anglerfish,wireless,Zorro,sports,abstract,detective,Amsterdam,elevator,chimney,reindeer,Singapore,perfume,soldier,bodyguard,magnifier,freezer,radiation,assassin,yawn,backbone,disaster,giant,pillow fight,grasshopper,Vin Diesel,geyser,burrito,celebrity,Lasagna,Pumba,karaoke,hypnotize,platypus,Leonardo DiCaprio,bird bath,battleship,back pain,rapper,werewolf,Black Friday,cathedral,Sherlock Holmes,ABBA,hard hat,sword,mirror,toilet,eggplant,jelly,hero,starfish,bread,snail,person,plunger,computer,nosebleed,goat,joker,sponge,mop,owl,beef,portal,genie,crocodile,murderer,magic,pine,winter,robber,pepperoni,shoebox,fog,screen,son,folder,mask,Goofy,Mercury,zipline,wall,dragonfly,zipper,meatball,slingshot,Pringles,circus,mammoth,nugget,mousetrap,recycling,revolver,champion,zigzag,meat,drought,vodka,notepad,porcupine,tuba,hacker,broomstick,kitchen,cheesecake,satellite,JayZ,squirrel,leprechaun,jello,gangster,raincoat,eyeshadow,shopping,gardener,scythe,portrait,jackhammer,allergy,honeycomb,headache,Miniclip,Mona Lisa,cheetah,virtual reality,virus,Argentina,blanket,military,headband,superpower,language,handshake,reptile,thirst,fake teeth,duct tape,macaroni,color-blind,comfortable,Robbie Rotten,coast guard,cab driver,pistachio,Angelina Jolie,autograph,sea lion,Morse code,clickbait,star,girl,lemon,alarm,shoe,soap,button,kiss,grave,telephone,fridge,katana,switch,eraser,signature,pasta,flamingo,crayon,puzzle,hard,juice,socks,crystal,telescope,galaxy,squid,tattoo,bowling,lamb,silver,lid,taxi,basket,step,stapler,pigeon,zoom,teacher,holiday,score,Tetris,frame,garden,stage,unicycle,cream,sombrero,error,battle,starfruit,hamster,chalk,spiral,bounce,hairspray,lizard,victory,balance,hexagon,Ferrari,MTV,network,weapon,fist fight,vault,mattress,viola,birch,stereo,Jenga,plug,chihuahua,plow,pavement,wart,ribbon,otter,magazine,Bomberman,vaccine,elder,Romania,champagne,semicircle,Suez Canal,Mr Meeseeks,villain,inside,spade,gravedigger,Bruce Lee,gentle,stingray,can opener,funeral,jet ski,wheelbarrow,thug,undo,fabulous,space suit,cappuccino,Minotaur,skydiving,cheerleader,Stone Age,Chinatown,razorblade,crawl space,cauldron,trick shot,Steve Jobs,audience,time machine,sewing machine,face paint,truck driver,x-ray,fly,salt,spider,boy,dollar,turtle,book,chain,dolphin,sing,milk,wing,pencil,snake,scream,toast,vomit,salad,radio,potion,dominoes,balloon,monkey,trophy,feather,leash,loser,bite,notebook,happy,Mummy,sneeze,koala,tired,sick,pipe,jalapeno,diaper,deer,priest,youtuber,boomerang,pro,ruby,hop,hopscotch,barcode,vote,wrench,tissue,doll,clownfish,halo,Monday,tentacle,grid,Uranus,oil,scarecrow,tarantula,germ,glow,haircut,Vatican,tape,judge,cell,diagonal,science,mustard,fur,janitor,ballerina,pike,nun,chime,tuxedo,Cerberus,panpipes,surface,coal,knot,willow,pajamas,fizz,student,eclipse,asteroid,Portugal,pigsty,brand,crowbar,chimpanzee,Chuck Norris,raft,carnival,treadmill,professor,tricycle,apocalypse,vitamin,orchestra,groom,cringe,knight,litter box,macho,brownie,hummingbird,Hula Hoop,motorbike,type,catapult,take off,wake up,concert,floppy disk,BMX,bulldozer,manicure,brainwash,William Wallace,guinea pig,motherboard,wheel,brick,egg,lava,queen,gold,God,ladder,coin,laptop,toaster,butter,bag,doctor,sit,tennis,half,Bible,noodle,golf,eagle,cash,vampire,sweater,father,remote,safe,jeans,darts,graph,nothing,dagger,stone,wig,cupboard,minute,match,slime,garage,tomb,soup,bathroom,llama,shampoo,swan,frown,toolbox,jacket,adult,crate,quill,spin,waiter,mint,kangaroo,captain,loot,maid,shoelace,luggage,cage,bagpipes,loaf,aircraft,shelf,safari,afterlife,napkin,steam,coach,slope,marigold,Mozart,bumper,Asterix,vanilla,papaya,ostrich,failure,scoop,tangerine,firefly,centaur,harbor,uniform,Beethoven,Intel,moth,Spartacus,fluid,acid,sparkles,talent show,ski jump,polo,ravioli,delivery,woodpecker,logo,Stegosaurus,diss track,Darwin Watterson,filmmaker,silence,dashboard,echo,windshield,Home Alone,tablecloth,backflip,headboard,licorice,sunshade,Picasso,airbag,water cycle,meatloaf,insomnia,broom,whale,pie,demon,bed,braces,fence,orange,sleep,gift,Popsicle,spear,zebra,Saturn,maze,chess,wire,angel,skates,pyramid,shower,claw,hell,goal,bottle,dress,walk,AC/DC,tampon,goatee,prince,flask,cut,cord,roof,movie,ash,tiger,player,magician,wool,saddle,cowboy,derp,suitcase,sugar,nest,anchor,onion,magma,limbo,collar,mole,bingo,walnut,wealth,security,leader,melt,Gandhi,arch,toy,turd,scientist,hippo,glue,kneel,orbit,below,totem,health,towel,diet,crow,addiction,minigolf,clay,boar,navy,butcher,trigger,referee,bruise,translate,yearbook,confused,engine,poke,wreath,omelet,gravity,bride,godfather,flu,accordion,engineer,cocoon,minivan,bean bag,antivirus,billiards,rake,cement,cauliflower,espresso,violence,blender,chew,bartender,witness,hobbit,corkscrew,chameleon,cymbal,Excalibur,grapefruit,action,outside,guillotine,timpani,frostbite,leave,Mont Blanc,palette,electrician,fitness trainer,journalist,fashion designer,bucket,penguin,sheep,torch,robot,peanut,UFO,belt,Earth,magnet,dragon,soccer,desk,search,seal,scribble,gender,food,anvil,crust,bean,hockey,pot,pretzel,needle,blimp,plate,drool,frog,basement,idea,bracelet,cork,sauce,gang,sprinkler,shout,morning,poodle,karate,bagel,wolf,sausage,heat,wasp,calendar,tadpole,religion,hose,sleeve,acorn,sting,market,marble,comet,pain,cloth,drawer,orca,hurdle,pinball,narwhal,pollution,metal,race,end,razor,dollhouse,distance,prism,pub,lotion,vanish,vulture,beanie,burp,periscope,cousin,customer,label,mold,kebab,beaver,spark,meme,pudding,almond,mafia,gasp,nightmare,mermaid,season,gasoline,evening,eel,cast,hive,beetle,diploma,jeep,bulge,wrestler,Anubis,mascot,spinach,hieroglyph,anaconda,handicap,walrus,blacksmith,robin,reception,invasion,fencing,sphinx,evolution,brunette,traveler,jaguar,diagram,hovercraft,parade,dome,credit,tow truck,shallow,vlogger,veterinarian,furniture,commercial,cyborg,scent,defense,accident,marathon,demonstration,NASCAR,Velociraptor,pharmacist,Xerox,gentleman,dough,rhinoceros,air conditioner,poop,clock,carrot,cherry,candle,boots,target,wine,die,moon,airplane,think,pause,pill,pocket,Easter,horse,child,lamp,pillow,yolk,potato,pickle,nurse,ham,ninja,screw,board,pin,lettuce,console,climb,goose,bill,tortoise,sink,ski,glitter,miner,parrot,clap,spit,wiggle,peacock,roll,ballet,ceiling,celebrate,blind,yacht,addition,flock,powder,paddle,harpoon,kraken,baboon,antenna,classroom,bronze,writer,Obelix,touch,sensei,rest,puma,dent,shake,goblin,laundry,cloak,detonate,Neptune,cotton,generator,canary,horsewhip,racecar,Croatia,tip,cardboard,commander,seasick,anthill,vinegar,hippie,dentist,animation,Slinky,wallpaper,pendulum,vertical,chestplate,anime,beanstalk,survivor,florist,faucet,spore,risk,wonderland,wrestling,hazelnut,cushion,W-LAN,mayor,community,raisin,udder,oyster,sew,hazard,curry,pastry,mime,victim,mechanic,hibernate,bouncer,Iron Giant,floodlight,pear,sad,paw,space,bullet,
skribbl.io,shirt,cow,worm,king,tea,truck,pants,hashtag,DNA,bird,Monster,beer,curtain,tire,nachos,bear,cricket,teapot,nerd,deaf,fruit,meteorite,rice,sniper,sale,gnome,shock,shape,alligator,meal,nickel,party,hurt,Segway,Mr. Bean,banker,cartoon,double,hammock,juggle,pope,leak,room,throne,hoof,radar,wound,luck,swag,panther,flush,Venus,disease,fortune,porch,machine,pilot,copper,mantis,keg,biology,wax,gloss,leech,sculpture,pelican,trapdoor,plague,quilt,yardstick,lounge,teaspoon,broadcast,uncle,comedian,mannequin,peasant,streamer,oar,drama,cornfield,carnivore,wingnut,vent,cabinet,vacation,applause,vision,radish,picnic,Skrillex,jester,preach,armadillo,hyena,librarian,interview,sauna,surgeon,dishrag,manatee,symphony,queue,industry,Atlantis,excavator,canister,model,flight attendant,ghost,pig,key,banana,tomato,axe,line,present,duck,alien,peas,gem,web,grapes,corn,can,fairy,camel,paper,beak,corner,penny,dig,link,donkey,fox,rug,drip,hunter,horn,purse,gumball,pony,musket,flea,kettle,rooster,balcony,seesaw,stork,dinner,greed,bait,duel,trap,heist,origami,skunk,coaster,leather,socket,fireside,cannon,ram,filter,alpaca,Zelda,condiment,server,antelope,emu,chestnut,dalmatian,swarm,sloth,reality,Darwin,torpedo,toucan,pedal,tabletop,frosting,bellow,vortex,bayonet,margarine,orchid,beet,journey,slam,marmalade,employer,stylus,spoiler,repeat,tiramisu,cuckoo,collapse,eskimo,assault,orangutan,wrapping,albatross,mothball,evaporate,turnip,puffin,reeds,receptionist,impact,dispenser,nutshell,procrastination,architect,programmer,bricklayer,boat,bell,ring,fries,money,chair,door,bee,tail,ball,mouse,rat,window,peace,nut,blush,page,toad,hug,ace,tractor,peach,whisk,hen,day,shy,lawyer,rewind,tripod,trailer,hermit,welder,festival,punk,handle,protest,lens,attic,foil,promotion,work,limousine,patriot,badger,studio,athlete,quokka,trend,pinwheel,gravel,fabric,lemur,provoke,rune,display,nail file,embers,asymmetry,actor,carpenter,aristocrat,Zuma,chinchilla,archaeologist,apple,hat,sun,box,cat,cup,train,bunny,sound,run,barrel,barber,grill,read,family,moose,boil,printer,poster,sledge,nutmeg,heading,cruise,pillar,retail,monk,spool,catalog,scuba,anteater,pensioner,coyote,vise,bobsled,purity,tailor,meerkat,weasel,invention,lynx,kendama,zeppelin,patient,gladiator,slump,Capricorn,baklava,prune,stress,crucible,hitchhiker,election,caviar,marmot,hair roller,pistol,cone,ant,lock,hanger,cap,Mr. Meeseeks,comedy,coat,tourist,tickle,facade,shrew,diva,patio,apricot,spelunker,parakeet,barbarian,tumor,figurine,desperate,landlord,bus,mug,dog,shark,abyss,betray
RR link Previous chapter (RETRO COSMOS)
#2 - THE TWISTED HEIST
A star had just gone out in the distance, sending its entire system, planets and moons, into oblivion. So, what was a simple life compared to a sun? Did the human existence that earthlings highly cherished in the past deserve so much fuss?
I would say no, of course, because I’m a cat. Our condition to us felines will never have to pale in front of a shiny astronomical object. Mine specifically, don’t you think?
Oswald Avery was merely a Homo sapiens. A retired buccaneer, fermenting his adulterated wine on the carcass of a drifting supercargo; all under the remodeled features of a former Galactic Trade Company’s pilot. Alas, regardless of the genetic disguise, the FID rarely lied. It hadn’t fooled us and the masks had fallen off. Just like him.
I’m such a poet.
Anyway… Avery had had a long life of crimes and adventures. He was full of energy in his youth. And as in the universe, nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed, this energy was reincarnated in a nice amount in our bank account once the old picaroon flatlined.
“We finally got it! And it was a traditional Martian contract. Payable remotely, on condition that the FID is validated. How about that?”
“God… Lee … you’re talking to yourself and it’s only 8 a.m.,” Ali grunted behind me.
My couch potato of an associate had her head still stuck in the cereal box she was nibbling before falling asleep binge-watching Captain Caveman on ABC.
“To begin with, it’s 8 p.m., Martian Time. And we do have a positive balance in our bank account for the first time in months! Do you know what that means, partner?”
“Shopping, bitches!” she shouted as she hurled herself into the void, gliding to the bathroom in the weightlessness.
With the cardboard box on the top of her head, this sugar bishop was swimming after the remnant cereals that floated on her path like Ms. Pac-Man.
“Hell! Have I just opened Pandora’s box?”
The liner Danaë and its forty-eight post-nuclear Baltimore-XVIII heavy reactors made its annual cruise from Lunapolis to the suburbs of Ceres, in the belt. Its figurehead with the effigy of the Greek princess was a two hundred meters long, green ceramic statue. The size of the ship exceeded some inhabited asteroids’ diameter so it possessed its own substantial gravitational field.
“It’s quite a symbol of the decline of humanity,” I said to Ali, pointing with my chin at this unique work of art.
“Why?” my partner asked without caring whatsoever. “Spill the beans, Plato.”
The Kitty had obtained permission to dock and began its approach. I concluded then:
“Humanity no longer erects great and beautiful things without turning them into a shopping mall.”
The gold and ivory Danaë was one of the most luxurious epicenters of human decadence in the system; comprising hotels, casinos, megastores and amusement parks spread over a dozen centrifugal rings. There was something for everyone’s wallet, ready to be emptied, whether one was welcomed at the port or had joined during the crossing.
And to my great regret, the cape of the Danaë was just passing by us that week.
“I believe we should keep our savings for the maintenance of the Swallow. The dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree. Some parts need to be changed…”
“You’re such a bore with your adult talks,” my partner said as she left the fitting room of a luxury chain overlooking the main deck. “What do you think of that? Sexy as fuck, right?”
Her camisole didn’t hide a single inch square of flesh and I subtly pointed it out to her:
“It’s a bit of a back-alley Sally.”
I took a blow on the nose which, this time, was amply justified.
“There’s nothing chicer than Borderline. You don’t know anything about fashion. It’s crazy!”
She was furious. It was entertaining. But she was right. The human female fads were way over my head and I wasn’t a good adviser. Mostly because I didn’t care. At all.
Fortunately, the upscale shopping mall where we were staying had provided us with a free assistant who was even more servile than a decerebrate canine. As usual, the robot carrier that accompanied us did the job by flattering her with its unbearable honeyed tone:
“I find you charming, Madame. Here we have the latest fashionable lingerie on Mars. It’s an ephemeral collection that appears to have been specially made to mold your discreet curves, which seem to have been sculpted by the seraphim.”
Ali gave me a satisfied look that I pretended to ignore. Then she backtracked into the fitting room to put her black suit and pink jacket back on.
I took the opportunity to climb on the shoulders of this silly robot, servant of our servants and last link in this hierarchy whose origins go back to Ancient Egypt.
“One more move like this and I’ll turn you into a gum dispenser.”
The automaton apologized before my partner’s head emerged from behind the silk curtains which were far too fragrant for my taste.
“I just checked; it’s too expensive anyway. I ain’t buying it,” she announced. “Can you order a taxicab to take us to the hotels’ ring? You’d be a sweetheart.”
Happy to leave this irascible human with her robotic slave, I proceeded to the nearest service terminal. By the time I requested a vehicle, a flying cigarette dispenser could light me a Lucky.
“It’s forbidden to smoke in our store, Monsieur.”
The customer attaché, in his blue silk suit with elephant legs, had appeared out of nowhere. Yet, with such a shiny tie, this punk should have dazzled me from the Kuiper belt.
“Please be kind and get me a Pepper Coke instead of ruining my eyesight…” I grumbled in response.
I was in an awful mood. I definitely hated shopping. And people. Yet the pedestrian avenues of the Danaë had a very exceptional population density. Perms were making a strong comeback, as were neon tattoos and overly open flowered shirts. Under the false UVA/B sun, it was a true dance of flesh, steel and plastic bodies with assumed nudity. Implants and surgery erased the hazards of the genetic lottery for better or worse. It was so superficial. So futile. So human.
“Hello, handsome!” Ali cried out, a large smile across her face. “Lee? You didn’t tell me you knew Christophe Lambert! You know I'm a huge Highlander fan!”
My partner had just joined me, arms loaded with bags massive enough to live in it, start a family and park my chromic Pontiac Firebird. All were filled with C$400 t-shirts and sneakers that she didn’t need and would only put on once.
“No smell. Hologram,” I conclude by throwing my cigarette butt through the smiling ghost.
“Shame!” Ali sighed.
She then looked at her terminal, and continued:
“Do you think I have time to grab a watch module? There are sales in the Japanese aisle! I saw some GD-8 that would go well with my new Game Pocket! This boat is fucking rad!”
Ali could not stop humming Who wants to live forever. I had to rub my temples to avoid a migraine before the arrival of our taxicab five minutes later.
These were miniature limousines with double fake leather benches, facing each other at the back. There was a minibar with expensive multicolored drinks and sugar-soaked snacks, the sapiens’ primary source of calories and high Gs space travel drug. For the sensitive, the smart-fridge provided diet sodas with aspartame, but no one took it. Finally, there were free Gauloise cigarettes next to the ashtray on the armrest. And even Tylenol!
“What a time to be alive!”
Right after leaving the fashion district, a soft voice of a young woman, who appeared to us through the armored porthole separating her from her customers, finally emerged from the cockpit:
“Good evening! I’m Miss Meera. At your service. Hotel de Saint-Malo, correct?”
I nodded. She smiled at us. She was beautiful with her incredibly dark night metal skin that contrasted strongly with her silvery-white hair. She also had charming ivory eyes with absolutely no reflection. They were a mesmerizing void of light.
In fact, it was so rare to deal with a real person, and not an AI, that we engaged rapidly in a lovely and honest discussion with Meera. We were mostly talking about life on the Danaë. As she stated, the rules on board were very strict, even military. All was done to make sure that the customer had the most pleasant time at the expense of everything else. Finally, according to her, her condition wasn’t the most to be pitied in the cosmos. And she was fully satisfied with this precarious semi-nomadic existence.
“And what about you? Are you here on vacation or in transit for work?” she eventually asked. “What do you do for a living?”
Should we have told her that we were executing infamous people so Ali would collect expensive t-shirts and I could fulfill my nicotine addiction?
“Don’t get me wrong but I saw that you had a gun. Are you in the police… or are you pirates?”
It wasn’t the first time someone asked us this question. Although weapons were allowed on most ships and stations, it wasn’t wise to display them unless you were looking for trouble. Unfortunately, hiding such a large caliber under such a tight vest was a Herculean task.
“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone”, simply quoted Ali, her forehead against the window covered with scented stickers.
Meera laughed before continuing:
“Very well, Al Capone. I understand that you’re not the type to let yourself be taken advantage of.”
The taxicab entered the central expressway after the water park then suddenly swerved violently to the left.
“What is going on?” I gasped.
After crushing the safety railing, we fell from one rotating bridge to the other in a frantic cavalcade. Judging by Meera’s swear words, this ride wasn’t part of the show.
Avoiding the stalls of an art market and a group of children coming out of an arcade, the driver finally managed to recover in extremis. It was about time, because within seconds we were passing through the transparent protective wall of the hotels’ deck.
“A thousand apologies! Another one of those mor… clients from the Middle System who doesn’t know how to use a rental car,” she shouted through the window. “Are you guys hurt?”
“No, thanks to you,” I replied, my tail spiked over my head, taped to Ali’s neck now decorated with bloody scratches.
Although my human forehead now had a bump on it the size of a golf ball, it was true that Meera had just saved our lives. This young girl had unsuspected driving talents despite taxicabs’ lack of handling. She didn’t belong here, playing the steward in a yellow circus uniform. This woman should have been a fighter pilot; or a NASCAR driver on Canyon Creek.
“In any case, here you’re almost in front of your hotel,” she replied. “You don’t have to pay anything, and I apologize again for the scare.”
From the outside, the taxicab now looked like a can of nutrigel after going through a crusher. Yet, it still worked. May God Darwin bless Venusian steel.
After thanking her, we wished Meera a good day. But the cockpit window suddenly went down on the passenger side. The smile of the driver had faded. She had tears at the corner of her white eyes.
“Wait!” she asked. “This weapon… do you really know how to use it?”
So, life on the Danaë wasn’t so sweet. As Meera explained to us in a secluded alleyway, a trio of criminals had come to threaten her a few days earlier, after finding she was a bodacious driver. They were preparing a heist in one of the flying city’s fifty casinos. The young woman was now ready to pay the price to settle the case.
“What is your opinion about this whole situation?” I asked Ali, once in our room, a small yet cozy suite whose glass walls overlooked the vacuum of space.
My human had applied a brownish ointment on her hump, which disappeared soon after, leaving only a slight pinkish hematoma.
“Meera said she would provide us with more details tomorrow. However, if she ponies up the cash, I don’t see why we would refuse. We ain’t mercs but these three guys must have a bounty on their heads. Let’s do our job, right?
“Indeed…”
All we had to do was wait for more instructions. Fortunately, it had been months since we had been able to take days off except on miserable gas stations full of drug addicts, implants scavengers and prostitutes.
After another morning of shopping, Ali went to the thalassotherapy center of the neighboring hotel. Her main occupation? Overeating sushi made by 3D nutrigel printing while getting massages.
Alas, I didn’t have the time to bask under the false sun of the lakeside resort and get my belly stroked. As a good captain, I had to go to the maintenance to fix the numerous damages of the Kitty. As always, the bill would be higher than expected.
Everything was orchestrated so that we would never hold a positive balance in this corrupted system. We had to chain contract after contract.
But Meera’s gig didn’t sound right. There was something I didn’t like and I couldn’t catch it yet. All my cat sensors were in the red. Unfortunately, the bounty hunter’s ones only saw the green of the bills.
Don’t judge me.
The young taxicab driver had finally contacted Ali again by holoconference in the early afternoon, shortly before I joined her at the exit of the tanning booths. Or as I called them: human toasters.
“Have you finished roasting like a Thanksgiving turkey?” I asked her as she plunged into the icy water of the adjacent basin, under the lustful gaze of a group of cadets from the Marine Academy.
“Meera will pick us up with a new taxicab in the hotel parking lot,” she whispered once back to me. “Alongside her, we will meet two of the criminals at the burglary location, shortly before midnight.”
“Go on.”
“We take care of these guys and we catch up with the last one: the band leader, in the storage cavities of the hangar reserved for the ship’s logistics. Below the last rotating ring.”
In Eve’s costume, Ali came out of the basin, not without deliberately drenching me. The water had a nasty chemical taste from being filtered day after day.
“Do you have any intelligence on these jokers?” I insisted while lighting a cigarette.
“The Broadway Gang. Three brothers. C$45,000 for the trio. We will also be able to recover at least C$10,000 of Techno-federal tax on their ship depending on its condition. Easy cash with the dollar credits that Meera promises us…”
Now sitting on the ledge, my partner splashed her feet to demonstrate her eagerness to head back swimming.
“Excellent! This will pay for the maintenance and allow us to save some money on our way to the belt.”
“Can I go now?” she asked, sliding back into the water.
“You may,” I had concluded before seeing her leave for her absurd wanderings that would fill her afternoon.
I myself was very busy making eyes at the wealthy guests of the hotel restaurant to glean a few pieces of Peking duck or juicy crabs. They were real farm animals from Mars. Not nutrigel. It was worth abandoning a little dignity aside.
With a full belly, I finally joined Ali in the middle of the evening. Arriving in the corridor of our suite, I crossed the group of cadets noticed near the swimming pool. They seemed tired but blissfully smiling as they just discovered the nirvana. And I knew why…
“Ali? Are you ready?” I said as I walked through the half-open bedroom door.
Her dressing gown had been thrown on the floor. Her gun and badge were resting on the bedside table against a giant bottle of Koala Springs soda and a pyramid of little Yoyo Mints.
To be honest, I expected a bigger mess.
“Gimme five minutes,” she replied while in the shower.
An hour later, we met Meera in the staff parking lot behind the recycling stations. Without further discussion, we joined the expressway in the taxicab. Between two noisy info-ads, the radio played Sweet Transvestite then the rest of the mythical Rocky Horror soundtrack.
“I wonder what Tim Curry’s up to these days,” asked Ali while browsing the intraweb on her implant.
“Being legendary as usual,” I answered.
Afterwards, the casino was in sight. But once on the forecourt illuminated by the gold and silver bulbs, we heard gunshots and screams. My partner and I quickly realized that this was a violent robbery rather than a modest heist.
“What the fuck, Meera?” Ali asked, turning to the porthole that separated us from the cockpit.
There was a hint of irritation in her voice.
Meera remained mute, her hands on the wheel and her gaze forward. In the rear-view mirror the young woman looked panicked.
The right door of the vehicle suddenly opened and two men sat down in front of us. They were wearing theater masks: the first was Melpomene, the sad grimace of tragedy; the second, Thalia, the twisted smile of comedy. Each brigand carried a huge metal block under his arm; drawers that were sure to be full of cash. On the other hand, they held their still smoking ZeG-4 machine guns even more firmly.
When they saw us, they both gasped, in unison:
“What the fuck, Meera?”
One… two. One… two.
Four holes in their faded tuxedo. Four bullets as big as a cat’s eye that silenced them forever, before slowly repainting the bench in red.
“What the fuck was that? You killed them!” Meera shouted this time, as she started the electric engine. “You had tasers at your disposal, you psychos!”
She had finally turned around. Her voice was quivering. She was no longer panicked, but angry.
The tasers must have slipped between the seats because I hadn’t seen them. My partner raised her eyebrows and it made me realize that their use had never been in mind.
“We’re bounty hunters, not 9 to 5 social workers!” continued Ali. “Now, you gotta motor, otherwise the cops will shoot our ass on the spot before we could even meet the third dude!”
Meera put her foot on the pedal and one could almost hear the noise of the thrusters melting the white asphalt.
“I can perceive the sirens, Ali,” I concluded before Meera entered the ring's external road reserved for logistic transport.
We then had the shortest car chase we had taken part in. The Danaë security forces may not have had the best elements in the system, but Meera’s talents didn’t give them a chance. We had crossed half a dozen rotative bridges to the rhythm of Take on Me, zigzagging between expressways and maintenance tunnels to arrive before the song ended at the deserted logistics hangar.
It was similar to a huge supermarket with honeycombed shelves. Each of these garages, dimly illuminated by red LEDs, housed a delivery or transport vessel. There was the most impressive fleet I had ever seen.
In one of the first level’s cells stood, between a set of clamps, a Swift-0 scout, from Peugeot Corp, with wings spread. The Swifts were small and very high-end single-seaters. They could be modified to integrate weapons systems, but their primary characteristics were velocity and evasion.
Leaning on the flank of the mono-turbine, the last of the three criminals, a tall blond man with a “Chevy Chase” prominent chin was looking down on the approaching taxicab.
“Were they planning to escape on that ship? The three of them?” I remarked when the vehicle stopped a few meters from the small vessel.
But Meera ignored me.
“Hand me the money, I’m going out. That was the agreement.”
The porthole opened at its base, allowing us to pass the steel cash drawers. Once the taxicab’s ignition was turned off, only their holographic numbers glowed in the dark.
“It’s all over if his cronies don’t stick their noses out of the car,” Ali replied, finally giving the second drawer away. “He’s going to figure out that it went south. He will kill you!”
Outside, the man was getting impatient. Blinded by the taxicab’s headlights, he came closer before exclaiming:
“Zéphyr, are you there? Where are my brothers? Security is closing all the departure modules. We will be stuck here, for fuck’s sake!”
He now had a gun in his hand. A machine gun identical to those of his companions currently bathed in their blood, nailed to the seats.
“Zéphyr? Wait… I know that name!” I meowed to myself.
The doors and portholes of the taxicab were locked. Ali and I were now stuck in the back with the two flatlined and most wanted criminals on the ship.
“Sorry guys, but I’ll handle the rest.”
Miss Meera, alias Zéphyr, smiled at us through the armored glass just before leaving the cockpit by the driver’s door.
“What a fucking piece of shit… Lee? Do you have a plan? I think the windows are bulletproof. I don’t feel like testing. Especially if it’s bouncing around with us inside, we will be turned into ground beef!”
“Did you forget who I am, my dear?”
I was already crawling under the seat, between a pair of Méduse shoes and half nibbled fried rat wings. It was time to demonstrate all my infiltration skills learned from Ninja Gaiden. Unfortunately, both the crab and the duck slowed me down and my belly remained for a few seconds stuck under the driver’s seat with my head on the brake pedal. How outrageous!
From the porthole, I saw Ali watching what was happening in front of us, near the ship. Our eyes met for a brief moment and I could read on her lips: “diet kibble”.
“Better off dead!” I shouted.
My paw reached the bottom of the dashboard, activating the mechanical opening of doors and windows. And, accidentally, the loudest horn in this dimension.
“My bad!”
My sapiens immediately jumped outside, pointing her gun to Zéphyr. Surprised by the thunderous din, her target pivoted towards us, uncovered, turning her back to the human with the magnificent chin and his ZeG-4 who yelled:
“What in the whole universe is that? Wait! I know her! Did you bring us bounty hunters? You were clearly planning to double-cross us!”
The man shouted and his gun produced a rain of bullets. It first hit the windshield of the taxicab, passing through the conductor compartment where I was. The rounds bent the windscreen, but it held. This wasn’t, however, the case for the hood, protecting the engine and the reservoir full of coolant, which ended up covering the seat and my face.
Fortunately, the sticky alcohol allowed me to escape from this trap and jump out of the vehicle through the window I had previously opened. But, once again, a fire ring enveloped the ZeG-4’s cannon.
“This is how I die…” I meowed, eyes closed.
I was violently tackled and hit the ground. Zéphyr had saved me at the last moment, just before bullets obliterated the front of the taxicab.
Other projectiles ricocheted off the metal money drawers on the floor and got lost in the ceiling, activating the fire sprinklers. This incident triggered a silent light alarm throughout the hangar while the mobster prepared a new salvo.
“Don’t hurt my pilot, you narbo!” roared my partner.
Ali, this time taken as a target, retaliated. She fired a single shot towards the rascal with a formidable precision. No one knew how to handle such a heavy gun as she did. She was my human. She was the best in her field: murder.
And I taught her everything. Almost.
The leader of the robbers tried to reload the magazine of his weapon, unaware that his heart had been punctured a few seconds before. Adrenaline was doing its job. But the blood loss caused by the explosion of the aorta at its base, near the ventricles, gradually stopped him in his gesture. His pressure dropped and the bloodstream no longer reached the brain sufficiently. He was already in a coma when his shoulders touched the ground. He was luckier than the average Joe and died a few seconds later.
“Is everything all right?”
My voice was trembling, still in shock from this disaster. I was wet and frozen.
Zéphyr got up with difficulty. Next to us, one of the metal drawers was opened, revealing a bunch of green bills and a much stranger booty: an eight-inch gold diskette with suspicious Chinese symbols.
Well… I couldn’t read them but Chinese symbols on stuff are always suspect, aren’t they?
But there were more important matters. Because my partner, on the other hand, stayed on the ground. Blood was dripping from her black suit and mixed with the clear firefighting fluid that was falling like an endless rain.
I tried to talk to her again but my voice was lost in a groan.
“Why are you whining, you big baby? It’s just blood.”
With her nose in a puddle, my sapiens smiled at me. Her left hand was compressing her abdomen. The bullet had passed through the external oblique muscle, far from the stomach.
It wasn’t that bad after all but she had scared me. And that deserved a scratch on the wrist that made her scream:
“What the fuck?”
“And the medical expenses? Have you thought about medical expenses? We don’t have insurance!”
“God, Uncle Scrooge! I hate you!”
“We won’t be able to fix the Kitty with your heroic outbursts!” I fulminated to mask my joy of seeing her in one piece.
“I will kill you, Muppet! I almost died! I don’t give a fuck about your rusty trash can which flies like a brick!”
It was true that we hadn’t had a fight for a long time.
“Guys…” intervened Zéphyr.
“What?”
Ali and I had spoken together.
“These three ruffians had planned to steal the diskette drive from me once I got back. I needed a hand, so… thank you… I guess.”
“You’re welcome,” my human answered dryly while sitting.
Although Zéphyr saved me, I didn’t share the same kindness:
“Wait, we’re not letting him go! Do you know who he is?”
Zéphyr. Prince of thieves. And yes, he wasn’t much of a princess either. Just an androgynous cyborg. A breakout king wanted throughout the entire system for his affiliation with the Data Brokers’ Guild. With an incredible bounty of C$800,000, she or he… whatever… was the knight of the brokers’ chessboard.
“I think we’ve had enough for today,” Ali said. “Unless you hope to go after him with these big fat guts of yours.”
“By the 79 moons of Jupiter, you shall pay for this, woman!” I meowed, angry.
My ears were backwards and my hairs were spiky. But soaking wet, it just made Ali and Zéphyr laugh.
Disgrace!
“He’s so cute when he’s furious,” he joked.
Now on his knees, the night-skinned androgynous was blotting Ali’s wound with a torn piece of fabric from his driver’s uniform.
“But more seriously, I need to go. With the bounty, you’ll be able to repair your vessel. As for the hospital fees, I will contact a good friend who will take care of you for free. She’s the ship’s chief medical officer.”
“Thank you,” I simply replied as he helped my partner get back on her feet.
“It’s the least I can do. I wasn’t interested in money. More important information is contained in this,” he said as he was picking up the floppy disk.
This golden diskette must have been worth a lot of cash for Zéphyr to play a taxicab driver to ensure coverage. I had perceived that something was fishy!
Then, halfway to his Swift-0, Zéphyr stopped. I witnessed his hesitation.
“There was nothing personal, you know. We’re all just trying to make our way. The best we can…”
And he ultimately left before adding:
“Maybe we’ll see each other again! You seem like fun.”
Before fleeing away, Zéphyr abandoned one of the boxes near the criminal’s corpse. Thus, he validated the theory of a robbery that had gone wrong. When the security arrived a few minutes later, we were the heroes of the day. And with a little bribe, nobody cared about Zéphyr’s missing ship.
This whole story surely left us a bitter taste. A feeling of defeat and humiliation that the swimming pool under the synthetic sun couldn’t make disappear even a week after.
“He undoubtedly played us as we were rookies, with his little face of a young innocent girl in distress,” I said to Ali right after the end of the daily Brett Maverick.
This old show was dispensed on a couple of giant screens suspended by drones.
Until now, Ali had remained silent on her deckchair; with a brick of sour juice stuck between her breasts and a pair of straws between her teeth. Only inaudible grunts emanated from her mouth since the departure of the sexually unclassifiable mugger.
“I wonder what information this fucking cyber-Tootsie could have been looking for in that casino,” my human mumbled as she squeaked her rainbow flip-flops.
“Admit that it’s not really that question that puts you in such a state…” I answered, now well installed on my motorized buoy that I had gotten as a gift in a diet kibbles package.
“You bet! I will have a nasty tan mark on my stomach with these bandages!” she exploded, spitting out her plastic straws with infinite curls.
My float slipped towards the ledge as a robot came to bring us our next glucose overdose.
Ali finally added:
“I swear that if we run into him again, I’ll smack his fucking angel face.”
Back to business! submitted by
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“I can't believe this is my eighth studio album and I know I keep telling you that it is my most personal record yet, but its true and I'm really proud of that”
This
quote from
The Legendary Miss Britney Spears would most likely haunt her for the rest of the career, especially because it came in the eve of the release of her infamous 2013 album
Britney Jean, whose title anticipated a rare introspective look into a star with over a decade on the spotlight (most of the times for the wrong reasons)… also, it came right after her previous album, 2011’s
Femme Fatale, became her first full-length effort without any songwriting input from the Princess of Pop, although a Japanese bonus track features a co-writing credit from her.
Of course
Britney Jean deserves most of the criticism it receives and yet, it also deserves way more than just being outright ignored even by most of Britney’s diehard fans:
Britney Jean is more than just
Work Bitch and 13 b-sides, is more than Brit’s most dated-on-arrival release… Britney Jean is a case study of what was pop in its time, what changed and why it stopped being as popular as it once was….
POP BEFORE BRITNEY JEAN
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Early 00s pop music was being left aside by the general public during the heydays of gangsta rap, Timbaland/Pharrell-infused R&B and rock/nu-metal… at least until around the period between 2007 and 2009, the start of the Golden Era for
popheads: The anthemic choruses, the prominent synths, the light and care-free nature of the lyrics, everything was there to pump you up and make you dance… however everything would change in 2013, when streaming was finally introduced to the Billboard formula. After the satirical K-pop track
Gangnam Style by Psy took the world by storm, it was noticed how in the United States the song was blocked from the top spot by the inconsequential
One More Night by Maroon 5, even if
Style had the lead in sales for most of the 12 weeks it stayed at the Top 10 (as you might have guessed, radio had something to do with that), pushing Billboard to update their methodology and
add streaming to the mix.
The first song that benefited from the change in the tracking methodology would prophetize what would come next for the charts in general:
Harlem Shake, a nearly-instrumental meme song debuted at the top spot and stayed there for 6 weeks total. Another novelty song, Ylvis’
The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?) would visit the Top 10 later in the year based on virality alone.
Although rap, indie music and more traditional pop music found their way during this year, the presence of outliers like Lorde’s
Royals, genre-defying tracks like Avicii’s
Wake Me Up! (a country/folk tinted EDM anthem) and Florida Georgia Lane’s
Cruise (considered the grandfather of the bro-country genre, made popular on pop radio thanks to a tackled-on rap feature by Nelly), and the aforementioned viral hits not only showed that general audiences were craving something new, but their success would pave the way for a big change in pop music.
BRITNEY BEFORE BRITNEY JEAN
"Sometimes you don't need to use words to go through what you need to go through, sometimes it's an emotion you need to feel when you dance, that you need to touch. And the only thing that can touch it is when you move a certain way."
Britney Spears on the For The Record documentary, one of the rare glimpses she gave us on her life before Britney Jean
Britney, of course, was partially a pioneer and a tail-rider of the maximalistic electro sound of the era,
as proven by the influence and cult following of what most people consider her magnum opus, or at least her more direct and honest album, 2007’s
Blackout, which is ironic considering that Britney only has two writing credits in the whole project and how even The Unstoppable Danja
called it ‘impersonal’.
After
Blackout, Britney would continue to ride the same sonic palette with her follow-up, 2008’s
Circus and then move onto
Femme Fatale, which, in spite of its “forward-thinking” nature (
as described by the label-appointed producer and current persona non grata Dr. Luke) and slick production, it was heavily criticized for its anonymity and lack of input of the singer in the record, which led to Britney to defend herself stating, rightfully, that she had
nothing to prove.
THE MAKING OF A PERSONAL ALBUM
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The mastermind behind
Britney Jean was none other than hitmaker will.i.am, whose involvement on the record came as a surprise to no one given how they have collaborated twice at that point and get along really well (you can read more about it
in this post I made a couple of months ago), however, the Black Eyed Peas frontman doesn’t deserves all of the credit for the record as Britney herself decided that she would be more involved and had a pivotal role into the making of this record.
Although
the early stages of the album
pointed towards a more hip-hop release, will.i.am’s involvement and her chemistry with Britney put her forward into the recording and making of the album.
Realizing that she wanted a more straightforward release that wasn’t as bouncy and genre-hopping as her predecessors, Britney
searched with will.i.am a series of collaborators that could help her bring her ideas to life, as she didn’t wanted to sing impersonal songs that her team just happened to receive; this, unfortunately, ruled out the involvement of the Saint Patron of pop production Max Martin, although it relegated Dr. Luke to a sole bonus track so that’s a win in my book.
Britney Jean is her only release in which she’s credited as a co-writer in each track, including bonus tracks… her closest before that was
In The Zone in which 9 of the 14 (including bonus) tracks sported a Britney co-write.
THE PERKS OF BEING A PERSONAL ALBUM
I have been through a lot in the past few years and it has really inspired me to dig deeper and write songs that I think everyone can relate to […] I want to show you the different sides of Britney Spears.
I am a performer.
I am a Mom.
I am funny.
I am your friend!
I am Britney Jean.
Britney Jean Spears
Britney has never been the kind of performer that would pour her soul into her lyrics, and even have occasionally distanced her private life from her lyrics (she famously rejected the Timberlake-bashing
Sweet Dreams My LA Ex, later given to ex-S Club 7 member Rachel Stevens as her debut single), although in the few glimpses we have gotten from her real persona (the stunning
Everytime and the dubious
My Baby for example) have always leaved her fans with the idea of her getting more involved with the subject matter of the tracks… I mean, the exploration of fame in tracks like
Circus and
Piece of Me are great, but what about explorations of who is Britney?
Britney Jean is her first album released in her 30s, and after finally deciding to get this involved in the songwriting department 15 years into her singing career was no fluke: chalk it up to coincidence, to the fact that it was long due given her background (Britney had lived A LOT of unwanted stuff during her career, married twice, had two kids, survived the most public mental breakdown unimaginable and more while being one of the most successful female performers currently working… also, that year she had ended her engagement with her manager Jason Trawick) or to misogyny (if you wanna go there) but female singers seems to go personal and/or mature in their 30s, with some popular examples including Madonna’s
Like A Prayer (described by her as being "
about my mother, my father, and bonds with my family"), Mariah Carey’s post-divorce genre-bender
Butterfly (if her birth year is believed to be 1969), Beyoncé’s whole post-Matthew Knowles era (
4 was released three months before she turned 30), Nicki Minaj’s back-to-my-roots release
The Pinkprint and Katy Perry’s purposeful woke pop release
Witness (Katy, I love you but 💀) among others.
Another thing to consider is that doing “personal” songs have always being interpreted as tracks with stripped-away or piano-driven arrangement, something that Britney, who had sung about being on the club or having sex (or even both on the same track) so many times it kinda become her trademark, is not something she’s might get allowed to do, especially when the current-at-the-time pop scene and Britney’s then-current sound were a far cry from the kind of sound these “confessional” tell-all songs normally have.
#BritneyPleaseSavePopMusic
(this was a real hashtag that was worldwide trending topic on Twitter in September 2013) With the anticipation of what a Britney-fied personal record would sound like, anticipation was in an all-time high among fans… so it was natural that her most introspective record would be anchored with an EDM song called
Work Bitch. In Britney’s defense, will.i.am pointed out
almost immediately how the braggadocio track didn’t represented the album but it was rather about Britney Spears herself.
Promoted with what was heavily
rumored to be a 6.5-million-dollars budgeted video which was
supposedly heavily sanitized from its originally sexed-up original version (more on that later), the video itself represented most of the promotion the whole album received, as the album’s second and final single (
Perfume) was left to rot in negligence after the album’s release.
Outside of a couple of TV appearances (not performances, just interviews), including one to promote her then-upcoming “2-year” Las Vegas residency Britney Spears: Piece of Me, and an E! documentary about the making-of the album and said residency, no actual promotion took place for Britney Jean, which led to the inevitable.
BRITNEY UNLEASHES HER MOST “PERSONAL” ALBUM
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Britney Jean was unleashed to the world on December 3rd of 2013, one day after the Princess’ birthday, and was a big commercial disappointment,
debuting at number 4 on Billboard with sales of 107,000 copies (a little bit more than a third of the sales of
Femme Fatale), even lower than those of her debut album
…Baby One More Time; 3 years after its release,
BJ had sold less in the United States than
FF in its opening week, although it was
eventually certified Gold by the RIAA… this February. Internationally, the release didn’t fare any better and debuted at record-low positions for her releases in most international markets, including missing the Top 30 in the UK.
As most of you already know, reviews we’re nasty all around, the worst of Britney’s career. Because of the
somewhat mean content of some of those reviews, I would instead resume what are the biggest perks critics had with the release:
- The album’s production (carried mostly by will.i.am protégé Anthony Preston, who hasn’t done anything ever since) was considered monotone, repetitive, dated, backward-thinking, overproduced and by-the-numbers. The album, full, on EDM beats and synthesizers, doesn’t really have that much of a breathing spot as there’s not that much of musical variety.
- Lyrically, the album was considered a disappointment considered its nature as a “personal album”, with the lyricism being considered somewhat superficial given the self-titled naming and Britney’s hype surrounding the content itself.
- Vocally, Britney Jean was ripped apart by critics and even some listeners. When the opening track’s autotune-less “warm up” vocal sessions leaked in 2014, critics complained about Britney’s (lack of) vocal talent and added fuel to the debate about wherever she’s actually talented at all, accusations that the song producer William Orbit dismissed.
SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE, MISS BRITNEY SPEARS
After one of the songs leaked ahead of the album’s release,
there were accusations that backing vocalist Myah Marie (who had appeared on Brit’s previous two albums) was the lead singer not only on said leaked track but also in a large portion of the album (
this is what she sounds like), accusations that Marie
herself denied as well as Britney’s reps.
Her representatives claimed that Marie wasn’t involved in neither
Perfume nor
Passenger, the tracks that were
the source of most of the controversy, and ultimately she wasn’t credited in none of those songs, although she’s credited as a (not background) vocalist in several of the other tracks of the album (mostly the Preston-produced songs as
Work Bitch,
Tik Tik Boom,
Til It's Gone,
Chillin' With You and
Now That I Found You), including
Alien (in which she’s not credited), who
had a vocal steam leak in 2014 which showcases how uncanny is Myah’s
impression of Britney is. A credited background singer is Sia in her co-composed single
Perfume, which was the source of a weird misstep when Britney was caught lip-syncing to a version of the song with
Sia’s vocals forefront in the mix.
A lot has been said about how
Britney’s signature singing ‘baby’ voice is not her real one, how do
they compare and
how much damage has done to Brit’s current vocal chops, and even though she
can still sing wherever she wants to, it’s quite obvious that she’s not that comfortable with it and, as such, she prefers to enhance her voice with the use of technology and some studio trickery… also, she might have gotten used to it considering how effortless and vivid were her earlier performances…
here’s I’m A Slave 4 U at the 2001 VMAs just because how iconic it is.
BRITNEY JEAN… BY BRITNEY JEAN SPEARS
"People can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your truth.
The question is: Can you handle mine?"
Britney Spears in a song that’s not from this album and not originally from her
Described by critics as “
a concept album about the loneliness of pop life”,
Britney Jean actually open with quite a promise with
Alien, a mid-tempo, melancholic, airy, ethereal dance pop opener that works as a more teenage-sounding version of
Ray of Light, which is not surprising considering the involvement of said album’s mastermind (the aforementioned William Orbit) and that sonically picks-up where
FF closer
Criminal left off, but lyrically is quite different, as it portrays Britney having an intimate and personal realization that she, after years of tumultuous and erratic events, has lost grip of who she was and how she felt like an extraterrestrial in her own world; however she realizes that she’s not longer alone as she looks at the glow in the stars as a light to guide her home away from her insecurities of the past, and to feel safe and finally finding comfort in her true skin, as the chorus repeats the catchphrase ‘
not alone’ “
until it is pitchshifted up like a departing space ship”
Originally intended to include Gaga in the song (and also
supposed to be released as a single, which unfortunately didn’t happened),
Alien was considered the conceptual and musical highlight of the project by critics, and is easily the most personal, vulnerable and my personal highlight of the project… which made everything that came afterward a hard pill to swallow. Before that, I can’t help to mention THE GLITCH (
2:14 in the song), which was
apparently, as everything wrong with music of the period, will.i.am’s fault.
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Work Bitch (alternatively known in censored form as
Work Work, or in the explicit version as
Bitch Bitch) is a hard hitting EDM smasher and heavy mood-whiplash, which was definitely
not co-written by Sebastian Ingrosso, in which Britney gently asks us (over a basic club beat which grows more overloaded as the song moves forward) is we want a hot body, an European luxury car (either a
Bugatti, a
Maserati or a
Lambo skirrt skirrt skirrt) or to sip martinis while partying in a big mansion in France, only to disappoint us by calling us bitches and telling us to better work as if we were supermodels and
she was RuPaul.
WB is, if
you wanna practice some mental gymnastics, more ‘personal’ than its given credit for, as Britney details how much benefits she gets from hustling all these years, and inviting us to dance with that smashing wall-of-sound-laden beat that drowns most of the track. Way more forward-thinking and exciting that everything that comes after it,
WB has become somewhat of a new classic for the Princess of Pop, and is pretty much deserved of said designation.
Perfume, co-written by Sia, is another album highlight (
actually Britney’s favorite from the album) and one of the finest ballads of Brit’s late-catalogue. Written about her ex-fiancé Jason Trawick, the song deals with Britney’s insecurity about a current relationship, with Britney singing with some of her strongest vocals in years about how she believes that her partner is cheating on her and how she puts on her perfume in order to mark her territory. Released with a tie-in with her perfume Fantasy, the song kinda flopped worldwide and halted all of the promotion of the album, however it still remains (alongside the rawer
Dreaming Mix, included as a bonus track) as one of the most interesting songs in 2010s Britney catalogue.
The music video, directed by known troll and middling talented videomaker Joseph Khan, has an unreleased director’s cut in which the straightforward concept of a cheating partner
is changed to that of Britney playing the Angelina Jolie role in a gone-wrong version of
Mr. and Mrs. Smith sans the boyfriend who is also an assassin.
It Should Be Easy finds Britney’s voice drown in both the auto-tune setting used by Kanye for the
Runaway coda and the vocals of guest-star will.i.am in the chorus, all while produceco-writer David Guetta rehashes Swedish House Mafia (which originally broke up the same year in which
BJ was released). The song, about Britney imagining a bright-normal-future with a man who had stolen her heart, stating that love “
shouldn't be complicated”. Although I like this song, and her team obviously likes it to as it commissioned remixes to be serviced to clubs, it signals when things start to go somewhat downhill.
Tik Tik Boom, the T.I.-assisted fifth track, was always dubbed as a potential third single (remixes were commissioned but nothing official ever came up), and it’s not hard to see why: as one of her rare collaborations with a rapper, the static-y, dance-floor ready production presents Britney teasing a male partner with a night of… well… tik tik boom… that means sex, doing so while serving some circa-2001 sexy vocals as T.I. raps about treating her like an animal up to the point that PETA (
which hates Britney) should be called in response. It’s fast, it’s straightforward and yet, it’s kinda forgettable and also very disappointing coming from or Princess Urbanney.
Guetta comes back with
Body Ache, another outdated EDM bop in which Brit (accompanied by vocoder and several dozens of vocal distortion treatments) sings about the kind of ‘I wanna dance so hard it gonna turn you on’ anthem which Miss Spears can do on her sleep, with a backtrack that sounds straight out of the EDM will.i.am was doing with the Peas during the Beginning/E.N.D. era. Also it ends in a somewhat anticlimactic way.
Personal Britney makes a return with this track that wouldn’t be too out of place in
FF: The Guetta co-written
Til It’s Gone, in which Brit realizes that, after losing the love of her life (Trawick), her life would never be the same, or how “
you never know what you got 'til it's gone”. Coming some two years to late sonically, in terms of lyrics the track it’s another story, as some interesting imagery pops here and there and it’s nice to leave the dance floor behind, especially when talking about a woman who (at least in the previous albums) rarely shut up about them.
Katy Perry arrives on the record but not as a feature, but as a writer, in the Diplo-produced, Sia-co-written and
Prism outtake
Passenger, in which some interesting EDM beats moves out of the way after the opening (they come back, don’t worry) to reveal a refreshing and very welcome electropop rock song with some great Britney vocals about letting someone to guide her after she’s willing to let herself be his ‘passenger’. Great lyrics, daring production, good vocal performance… it’s not hard to see why critics loved this track so much, and it’s a shame it gets buried among so much underwhelming stuff.
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Chillin’ with You, the album’s most infamous moment, finds Britney dueting with her sister, ex-Nickelodeon star and attempted country singer Zoey Meredith Brooks, about hanging out together and drinking wine (Brit likes red, Chase Matthews' ex likes white wine) while, as the southern white suburban moms they are, they feel they have nothing else to worry about. Although the lyrics are… well… cute, and the subject matter is decidedly novel by Britney’s standards, the mixture of country and EDM doesn’t mash as well as the producers might had expected… also, the fact that their vocals were so obviously recorded in different sessions (as showed by the kind of chemistry you only see
in cheesy 70s movies starring John Travolta and Lily Tomlin) makes the whole ordeal so surreal.
The album closer in the standard edition is
Don’t Cry, a FUCK YOU MR. TRAWICK song in which Britney reassures his man that it’s not worthy to cry as their relationship was always directed to end no matter what they do, and how she’s gonna go to not see him all tear eyed. The bouncy but subdued dubstep back track by pop goblin and producer will.i.am enhances what is arguably Britney’s best vocals in the whole album and some really nice lyrics which still doesn’t work as an album closer.
Sia comes back in the first bonus track of the deluxe edition,
Brightest Morning Star, and she brings with her current pop Pariah (that would be Dr. Luke, but he’s only in this track) to the mix, on a
track about God (or
maybe about her kids, according to Dr. Puke), or at least one that implies to be one; in Sia’s words: ‘
Britney was extremely sweet. She came in with the title ‘Brightest Morning Star’ and told me that’s how Jesus found his way. She wanted to write a kind of gospel song that wasn’t ramming it down your throat’. Despite the good intentions,
BGS is no
Jesus Walks and it gets short in the musical department, with a surprisingly weak instrumental which doesn’t do any good service to the song.
Britney continues her religious quest with
Hold on Tight, a mid-tempo ballad that in which Miss Spears details how God comes into her dreams (or it might be an
Incubus?) showing her the path to righteousness, even when the road is not as friendly with her, and… to be honest, this is my least favorite song on the album, it’s just so forgettable even if it’s quite refreshing in the context of
BJ.
To end the evening, Britney continues her unintentional audition to become a gospel singer with
Now That I Found You, a shameless EDM track (with early-10s euphoric drop and everything) about how incomplete she was until she found Him (to be honest, this could also be another love song, but after two bonus tracks about God it’s easy to see where she was pointing towards with the vague lyrics) and how everything is better now. Unlike the forgettable predecessors,
NTIFY is fun (dated? Sure… but also fun), it’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s happy, and one of my favorite songs on the record… even if co-writer Guetta basically ripped off his own hit
Without You from 3 years before.
u/radiofan15’s UNWANTED OPINION ABOUT BRITNEY JEAN
Britney Jean is not an autobiography, it’s not a tell-all gossip-venting machine, it’s a clean, overproduced product of misdirection and lack of focus… and yet it’s actually fascinating in several ways: it’s arguably the greatest resume you would find of how pop music sounded in between 2008 and 2013, it’s a great bridge between the impersonal heavily-polished
Femme Fatale and the serviceable and engaging
Glory, which saw Britney leading the way on how everything would sound from the start.
It’s quite ironic how the album’s naming (taking a cue from Janet Jackson’s
Damita Jo, her actual middle name) plays against it, as self-titled releases (unless they are debut albums) are associated with being in control of your output or reinventions (pop examples includes
Paramore as their first release as a trio,
Beyoncé to fit the minimalistic sounds and Janet Jackson’s
janet. to showcase independence from the Jackson family) and unless you’re Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel or Weezer, the idea of having a second eponymous release usually means that audiences should expect to experience the performer in a never-seen before way. 2001’s
Britney was the album that give a meaning to the phrase “
I’m not that innocent” spurred in her previous effort, with lyrics talking about womanhood and sexuality being complemented with R&B vibes and rock/hip-hop elements.
Britney Jean, when compared to
Femme Fatale, is way behind the difference between
Britney and
Oops!... I Did It Again, which in retrospective is even worse as the relative freshness and reinvention of
Glory leaves the ‘openness’ and ‘variety’ of
BJ in shambles.
One of the album’s biggest mistakes is in its sequencing: the first three tracks are the obvious highlights, the next three are basically DOA EDM songs, the next four are the most “adventurous” musically speaking and the bonus tracks are all about God. Taking out some of the ‘pure club’ anthems could theoretically create an album more deserving of its ‘personal’ label, going full Spinal Tap and amp up the production values to do something crazier might have given us something that was at least digestible in a single listening.
The album, as it is, is not perfect, but it’s far from the dumpster fire more people called it, including some of the most interesting Britney songwriting in years (or even her career) and some tracks that are already started to show signs of cult classic. The only positive thing most people seems to agree with is how short it is: with the alternative mix of
Perfume included,
BJ is ‘only’ 50 minutes long (the standard edition is just 36 minutes long), which is something most performers (even today) seems to struggle with.
Also, she didn’t came to play games with the art cover and aesthetics this era, the album cover and the booklet is her most gorgeous to date, with the former having her most flattering front picture of any of her albums and the neon typography creating a very pleasing contrast with her elegant black-and-white imagery (in the deluxe edition) or the elegantly, milky pastel coloring of the standard edition.
THERE CAN BE 100 LISTENERS IN THE ROOM AND 99 LEAVE BUT ONE... - BRITNEY JEAN THE DAY IT DEBUTED
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Britney and her team gave up quite easily on
Britney Jean and, honestly, they shouldn’t be blamed: the offer to have a Vegas Residency with
a salary of $15 million dollars per year seems like the kind of offer a pop star and mother of two with enough money already for several timelines would accept, with the album itself being more of an afterthought.
Britney was originally slated to remain on the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino for two years but ultimately extended her run for another two years, before finally touring overseas (without an album attached to the performances) during 2017 and 2018.
Because of the lack of promotion,
Britney Jean underperformed when compared to Miss Spears’ previous releases, with estimated worldwide sales (as of April 2018) being close to 1.3 million copies, less than a third of
Femme Fatale’s sales.
Truth be told,
BJ flopped hard… HOWEVER, not everything would have turned out that terrible (not even in a million years it would have sold as much a
FF but at least the downfall could have been smaller) with some actual promotion and interest from Brit herself.
SOME REACHING… I MEAN… THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BRITNEY JEAN
BJ is, in my opinion, a compilation of the era, the resume of “in the previous episode of” that you get on serialized TV shows, a farewell to the bombastic era of synth-heavy EDM club anthems with gratuitous drops and interchangeable lyrics. During the genre’s opus, some performers tried to bend this sound (and their equivalents) to their benefit, either mixing it with their style or playing with the boundaries of the sound: it could be a Taylor Swift doing a
We Are Never Getting Back Together to get a broad crossover hit, a Lady Gaga mixing multiple genres to create a sonically complex pastiche called
Born This Way, or even straight-up jumping almost seamlessly from rap/R&B to club bangers like Nicki Minaj did in
Roman Reloaded. Britney in
Britney Jean did almost the opposite of that.
Britney Jean is, in some ways, a time capsule of the era in its rawest and purest form (some might differ and replace those buzzwords with generic and bland), with the average user being able to trace mostly any track to a style, influence, sub-genre or even performer. Listening to
BJ is like watching a 70s movie in VHS in an old, square TV, basically an
unintentional period piece that reflects the volatile, bombastic and extravagant style of those golden years of 2008-2013, which, within the mindset of
Britney Jean sounds kinda tired and bland, surprising no one when that branch of pop went back into obscurity and irrelevance almost as fast as grunge music did when Kurt Cobain died.
Britney Jean came up in a time of transition of popular music, with streaming showing the kind of power it had on the charts and more subdued, minimalistic music taking the world by storm. Popular music, as you might already noticed, evolved into a slower, more melodic, calculated, numb, almost anticlimatic entity which was more fitting with our current social and political climate. To
paraphrase Todd in the Shadows: 2013 had a hit literally called
Happy and 2018 had both a hit called
SAD! and another called
Happier with a video about a dog that dies.
In terms of Britneyology (both the study of Britney Spears and the religion dedicated to her persona),
BJ is also a glimpse into Britney the full-fledged artist. Britney has never been the kind of performer that gets heavily involved into her music, with Britney’s role being generally limited to the choice of songs, sequencing, development of sounds and themes with her assigned team of writers and producers, and performing of course; sometimes Britney gets involved into the heavier portions of her music (the classic
Everytime is a great example of it) but most of the time she remains quite anonymous, with her voice and choice being overwritten by the men on charge, something that became quite apparent during and after the Dark Ages (2004-2008) with the cancelling of the legendary
Original Doll, her lack of songwriting credits in both Blackout and Circus, and her much-criticized anonymity in
Femme Fatale.
BJ was Britney deciding who does want to work with, what does she wants to sing and even how to equilibrate her musical and visual persona. Britney has always being in control of how is she portrayed on official media, most famously rejecting an animated concept for the video of …Baby One More Time in favor of a Lolita-inspired take on catholic school girls, and then the slow process from jailbait to grownup woman. During the post-production of the Work Bitch video,
she clashed with director Ben Mor over the kind of content the video should show, as she was a mother in her 30s now instead of an unreachable male gaze fantasy.
With
BJ, the Legendary Miss Britney Spears showed us how much she has changed since that controversial 2003/2004 period (the last time she was that involved with an album) in which she received the Kiss of Death from Madonna, suffered her infamous accident and, of course, married twice in a calendar year. This new Britney was a much-different person, and her voice deserved to be heard, and even if the results weren’t the greatest, it was a step into the right director for Britney to get what she always wanted: being a full-fledged artist capable of taking her own decisions and learning from her mistakes.
POP AFTER BRITNEY JEAN
https://preview.redd.it/382f3hucce221.png?width=1500&format=png&auto=webp&s=b270179e2de3c085b7dd38ea838588f2f45d9e4b Coincidentally in 2014 most of the ambassadors of the dominant pop sound of the early 10s were either taking a musical break, flopping or changing lanes, so that year paved the way for the transition of what do we define as popular music, with the winners of the evolution race being trap (Fetty Wap’s
Trap Queen), meme music from awful people (Bobby Shmurda’s
Hot Nathans) or untalented losers (T-Wayne’s
Nasty Freestyle, Silentó’s
Watch Me), trop pop (OMI’s
Cheerleader, Justin Bieber’s entire
Purpose era) or whatever outlier track dared to pass through those filters.
What happened afterwards is a horror story most of
popheads tells in fire camps a la Are You Afraid of the Dark?
BRITNEY AFTER BRITNEY JEAN
Glory , the follow-up
Britney Jean, received very positives reviews and was considered a strong return-to-form for Britney, and even if it wasn’t as successful as her label might have wanted, the truth is that, at the end of the day, whatever Britney decides to do next (and considering the direction she seems to be taking) it can be as underwhelming as
Britney Jean.
https://preview.redd.it/t7rph8g4ce221.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b8d0a459f5caed0d41c087c7658cce2e79f2210 Princess offers two different types of credits: Future Cruise Credits (FCC) and onboard credits (OBC). It’s important to understand the differences between the two, as they can be applied to different items. Secondly, purchased casino credits, the last time I did so far in advance, are posted as credits to your room account, accessed by making a room charge in the casino either at a slot machine or at a table game. This means you are held to the room charge limits: $3,000/day and $21,000/cruise. This last time was on Coral Princess, April 2016. Other's have reported that on other ships even after ... 1) Sign in to Princess.com 2) Click on "Future Cruise Credits" 3) Click on Onboard Credits. 4) If there's an offer of casino cash available to you, you'll see it here When booking, I simply tell my TA that I have some casino cash available and give him the "credit ID number" (blacked out far left) Available from your smart device and select portals all over the ship. View download instructions for Android devices. By clicking the above links, you are now leaving the Princess Cruises website and navigating to a 3rd party website that is not owned, operated, or controlled by Princess Cruises or any of its affiliates. I might be wrong, but this was my thinking on my last Princess cruise. I too struggled with trying to understand the relative difference between buying OBC or casino credits. I wound up buying casino credits. I figured if I wanted money for other onboard purchases I could just cash in chips for money. Worked out fine. Qualified UrComped VIPs receive Comped (FREE) and heavily discounted trips on Princess Cruises around the world! The smallest casino in the Princess Cruises fleet is Crown Princess with 163 slot machines and 10 table games. Onboard credit (OBC) is basically free money that you get to spend during the course of your cruise vacation. And, given the fact we all like free money, it’s worth taking a little time to ...
