The Speeches of Biche's

Bollocks, Tears and Gold...

2010-04-29T21:44:00.007Z

This song, nay, Hurts in general, have completely mixed up my feeble little mind. On one hand, Blood, Tears and Gold is an absolutely cracking song - talky bits followed by singy bits, the repetition of 'baby' and even little bit angsty bits perfect for a karaoke booth clenched fist emphasis. Hurts are pretty cool too - they look like Bros suffering the effects of a massive come-down, possibly after being cryogenically frozen for twenty years and their clothes herald a brand new era of hipster attire; a boon for maufacturers of Brycleem and Claire's Accessories earrings.

So what is the problem? I hear you cry. Well, it's all gubbins really, isn't it?

' It's twenty seconds since I left you/And I remember why I never looked back' - Well that's not exactly hard is it? Apart for instances of epilepsy or severe violent blackouts, it's pretty hard to forget what you were doing twenty seconds ago. I was debating whether to italicise some text. I write slowly.

'I never let you down baby baby /I never let you down baby baby /And it won't get any better, blood tears and gold' - What is better than not letting someone down? Not letting them down and giving them a tic tac as you do so?

Now I have no problem with gubbins per se, indeed some of my favourite songs feature gratuitous use of the word 'baby' and/or make very little sense but come on Hurts, the po faces? The arty black and white shots of a woman shaving her leg that I assume is some intense symbolism but just makes me shudder and remember Bic-related injuries of yore? Blah. The song itself is about as profound as Lady Bunny hosting a symposium on the latest trends in glitter eyeshadow, so why not just be bait about it? You can still sing about sad things. Take Alcazar, for example, and their ten year old dancefloor classic 'Crying at the Discotheque' (curse you, embedding disabled by request)

Lets compare.
Raw emotion. Eyes are the windows to the soul, so it makes far more sense to stare cross-eyed into the light as this intesifies their emo beam. Highlighting them further with a massive pair of Primark sunglasses is optional.

What is more powerful? An eagle walking like an Egyptian, or a leg? One screams 'tribute to the lost kingdoms of yore, the power of nature and the might of the Bangles' the other 'Gilette'.

You can frown or play a gutiar at an odd angle to convey intesity. But then again, you can do a dance routine while clad in tin foil and flanked by a host of weird animal hybrids. You tell me what is more intense, being trapped in a room with two blokes in a sulk, or being trapped in a room with a load of terrible genetic experiments gone wrong and a man wearing silver kneepads who keeps trying to bump his cock against you. Exactly.

The Cross-Chart of Awful Facebook Fanpages

2010-03-25T23:08:00.009Z

Gawker wrote this great article yesterday called ' The Eight Types of People to Unfollow on Twitter or Defriend on Facebook'. Whilst I totally agree with them about Twitter, I'm dead against de-friending people on Facebook. Completely block their access, sure. Hide all their fucking 'Today God Wants You to Know' and 'Bejewelled' updates, but deleting only limits your own source of information and endless amusement.

I love that I can basically work out the torrid life story of one psychopath I used to know about four years ago through her 'TMI is putting it lightly' status updates and 'cryptic' photo comments. I live to find out what utterly ridiculous fanpage another friend has joined each day. In fact, it was this latter 'friend' who inspired me to make this cross-chart of psycho fan pages. All real, all grammatical errors intact and all including at least one of my friends amongst their membership. Oh, and most have over 20,000 members. It's like that realisation that even when you're brazic and eating toast for dinner, you're still wealthier than 97% of the people on this planet. Only with brains.

Click on chart to read it more clearly.

April is Such A Cheery Month

2010-03-25T09:57:00.002Z

Props to the people behind 'Genocide Prevention and Awareness Month' . They may lack a catchy roll-off-the-tounge name, but at least they don't conjour up a world where Fred West is Santa Claus and children skip around a maypole made from barbed wire charged with live electricity.

Thou Shalt Always Kill (De La Version) Lyrics - Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip feat. Plug One

2010-03-23T22:10:00.007Z

I bloody love 'Thou Shalt Always Kill' by Scroobius Pip, so when I heard the new De La Soul remix on 6Music today, product of the Smash Hits generation that I am, I tried to find the new lyrics online. Naewhere tae by found.

Therefore I have just wasted a good half hour of my life, writing them down for you, dear reader (and my god do my poor finger joints now hurt). There are a couple of bits I couldn't catch, but I guess if you wait a couple of months it will be on one of those psycho spammy websites where you get the chance to download a ringtone/virus and flashing bejewelled Dan Le Sac with your lyrics.

If you haven't heard the song, here is the video. It's great.

Thou shalt not assume that because I'm a Leo I will act real proud.
Thou shalt not type 'lol' unless you're really laughing out loud.
Thou shalt not ???? verve on your voice so you can say 'thou shalt not'.
Thou shalt not think everyone with a beard is a terrorist.
Thou shalt not think that having a blog makes you a journalist.
Thou shalt not lie to anyone under the age of six, unless it's concerning major holidays.
When someone dies thou shalt no longer be under obligation to cry saying 'he'll be missed' knowing good and well that he was an asshole.
Thou shalt not take the names of Paul Newman, Jimmy Stewart, James Dean, Humprey Bogart, Groucho Marx, Geroge Carlin or Midge Hedberg in vain.
Thou shalt choose a political party based on their policies, as opposed to just going with who your family's always supported; they are not a football team.
Yo and you should not be mad, that everywhere you go, outside your pad, smells like cigarettes because no one can smoke inside now.
Thou shalt not upload half naked pictures to an folder called 'Me and my Bitches' then get upset and get in stitches when you get more ???????
Thou shalt not read NME.
Thou shalt not rush to buy the next Ipod.
Thou shalt not buy Coca-cola products, thou shalt not buy Nestle products.
Thou shalt not rush home to watch X Factor.
Thou shalt not rush De La Soul into making his next album... yo lemme do it again, let me do that one again.
Thou shalt not put musicians or recording artists onto ridiculous pedistals no matter how brave they are, or were.
The Beatles? Just a band
Led Zepplin? Just a band
The Beach Boys? Just a band
The Sex Pistols? Just a band
The Beastie Boys? Just a band
A Tribe Called Quest? Just a band
Organised Confusion? Just a band
De La Soul? Just a band
Foals? Just a band
The Ting Tings? Just a band
The Streets? Just a band
Kid Carpet? Just a band
Radiohead? Just a band
Bloc Party? Just a band
The Arctic Monkeys? Just a band
Next big thing? Just a band
Thou shalt not refer to any of my peeps as 'people', if that word 'people' is following after the world 'you' and be spoken by someone not of colour.
Thou shalt not point out to me how stupid it is to call myself a 'person of colour' but then get mad if someone not of colour calls me a 'coloured person'.
Thou shalt not fuck with my children.
Thou shalt not fuck with my money.
Thou shalt not convince me that Dr Phil is better than Dr J.
Thou shalt not think that Tina Turner can't shake her ass harder than Beyonce.
Thou shalt be aware that there are no longer any musical genres - they're all just different dress codes and different fashion styles.
Punk is now just a style
New Rave? Just a style
Emo? Just a style
...aah forget it I ain't getting into that again.
Thou shalt not scream if you wanna go faster.
Thou shalt not move to the sound of the wickedness.
Thou shalt not make some noise for Detroit.
When I say hey thou shalt not say ho.
When I say hip thou shalt not say hop.
When I say he say she say we say make some noise....kill me
Thou shalt not look in the mirror while you're crying, your eyes already know.
In this world of many distractions thou shalt not lose focus.
Thou must stay on track.
Thou shalt always...thou shalt always.... killllllllll.

Fitness DVDs, Shame and the Many Faces of Davina McCall

2010-03-22T20:00:00.015Z

It has so far eluded me, in my twenty-five years on this earth, to discover a way to do strenuous exercise without looking like a massive, utter, twat.

I tried running around the streets, but could never quite get the balance right between 'speeding so fast that no one has the time to recognise you before hyperventilating behind a privet hedge' and 'jogging at a normal pace with a loftier-than-thou expression of vague detachment as you go absolutely nowhere'

Gyms are expensive, whirring sweatboxes full of blase thin girls touching their toes, glistening ripped men honking by the weights and sweaty people grimly staring into space as they trot on the cardio machines. They are also so incredibly boring that I can't go on a treadmill without wondering WHAT THE HELL I AM DOING WITH MY LIFE and thinking of all the energy that is being wasted by the crowds of runners going nowhere. Oh, and I go bright red and get sweat patches in unfortunate places.

I think I first tried an exercise DVD around the time that Eric Pryds did that 'Call on Me' video, or more specifically, when Ministry of Sound did a rip-off exercise DVD. As a not terribly co-ordinated person with a tendency to catch sight of myself in reflective objects, even with the Flatmate out and the curtains shut, the awareness of myself, flobbing around in a weak, wobbly imitation of the lyrca leotard clad thrusting models on the telly, mixed with the occasional glimpse of a flailing bodypart was such that I almost had an out-of-body experience and floated above myself in a spirit of intense mortification.

Enter Davina.

Can't quite remember why I tried to dip my toe into the waters of galumphing around my living room again, possibly it was back in January when the snow was somewhat biblical and the thought of going to the gym and undressing in public was about as appealing as playing pinata with a bag of sick. Anyway, I thought I would try Davina 'I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SHOUTING' McCall a go, as she's always full of terrifying optimism and is a bit goofy. And I couldn't think of anyone else. So I borrowed her first attempt to crack the fitness market - 'The Power of 3'

Wow.

This is Davina and her two trainers, Jackie and Mark. Jackie appears to be a Boreham Wood housewife who would kickbox you into next Wednesday if you gave her dimante handbag the slide eye. Mark is a huge lunk with a hearing aid who would look terrifying in a dark alleyway, but I suspect has a mind full of unicorns, kittens and rainbows. More on that later.

'Chooooon!' Davina says this a lot, usually just as another repetitive, generic dance song starts. Admittedly, later DVDs feature proper songs by real artists such as Run DMC, but this first DVD sounds like it was written by the people who score Masterchef. Still, it is a better soundtrack than Lady Isabella Harvey (borrowed off friend, see I have been getting a bit obsessed of late), who squats and thrusts to what only can be described as Hot Chip after the advent of a lobotomy, done with a spoon. I also love how Jackie looks like the long suffering mother of a toddler in this shot.

Although this is the face most of us would make if, after a long period of chastity, we accidentally walked over a powerful fountain, this is how Davina skips.

Many, well, all the people I have spoken to who 'do Davina' (it's like a semi secret society of shamefaced 20-something women) are convinced Mark and Davina got it going owwwrn. However, as you can tell a) from Davina's distain when he didn't know what Tai Chi is and b) this look, that says 'I want to wear your sportsbra and run around in a brown wig' as much as it says 'phwooooar', this is a complete untruth.

At this point Davina realised she had forgotten to feed her nest of baby McCallchicks and hurridly regurgitates a worm.

'Choooooooooon!'
'Tee hee hee! Raindrops and snowflakes and patta-cake patta-cake!'

See, now this is the crux of why Davina is great. If you forget that Davina isn't blonde, wearing ironically large, steamed up glasses or a strange shade of puce, this could be like looking in a mirror.

Although a gesture like this is a terrible insult in some lesser-known Eastern European country, this would be Davina congratulating you for not crashing through into the flat downstairs with your elephantine clumping. At first I found this praise rather reassuring, as yes dammit, this is hard work. Oh. Except it ain't. Well, not after you've done the routine a couple of times and realise that for all her groaning and grimacing, Davina is finding this workout only fractionally less difficult than passing wind.

The powers that be, for some reason, decided that in future Davina DVDs it would be best if she didn't mug like a Spitting Image puppet, holler random phrases or flirt outrageously with a beefcake infront of his menopausal wife. I's a lot poorer for it! Still, Davina cannot be totally repressed and manages to throw in some super patronising 'pixie claps' at the end of the workout.

Intermission

2009-05-31T15:46:00.002Z

Oh dear, you will note I have not posted much of late. Work has been pretty busy and this has inevitably lead to me coming home pooped and wanting to do little more than sit slack jawed with my brain in the 'off' position, in front of some programme where they waste a huge steaming piles of food in an attempt to shame some fatty into losing weight.

Apologies.

In the meantime, as I have been SOB-ing now for about two years, why not check out some of my fabulous archives for a wide variety of witty-if-sub-par articles on things as diverse as

* Accidentally offensive junk mail

* My Alma Mater's hacked Wikipedia entry

* "I do not like Sarah Palin as her name is a combination of Pain and L which sounds like hell"

* A vitriolic rant against purveyors of pastel casual wear

* How to bury a hamster in a gardenless flat. A user's guide.

* Piss off the one you love with a teacoster

* It's safe to say you will never need to go to Colindale after reading this. (Unless you have an infection)

* The Great Pelican Conspiracy of 2008 part one and two

Enjoy bitches! I'll be back before you knows it! x

My First Dictionary

2009-04-24T11:35:00.004Z

...is a brilliant little blog. It's greatness is it's simplicity, so rather than ramble on about it at length, here is a couple of extracts plus a link. www.myfirstdictionary.blogspot.com. DO IT

p.s the blogger who made this also has another blog called Musty Moments, which I have added to the ole HOT LINKZZZ and would recommend a gander at.

Baby fashion tips

2009-04-19T18:38:00.005Z

Now I am not an expert on children, in fact, show me a child over the age of 9 months and ask me to guess it's age and even with leeway of a year either side I will probably still get the answer wrong. One thing I do know however, is that babies up to that point where they get all chubby and smiley (four months? six months?) all look like pissed off tiny pensioners.

Henceforth, if you have a baby, it might not be the best idea to dress it in tiny old lady clothes, for, as Kanye West would say, THATS SOME BENJAMIN BUTTONS SHIT RIGHT THERE.

Incidentally, do you remember that episode of the Simpsons where they take Maggie to daycare, and when they pick her up they are faced with a terrifying room full of staring babies, silent except for the noise of sucking dummys?

I went out to lunch with my friends and their two babies on Friday, and we chose to go to Giraffe, as it was a family friendly place (knoweldge gleaned from three years ago when I attempted to light a fag and was promptly kicked out. This was pre smoking ban so they were clearly nazis. 'Family orientated' nazis.). And how. Earlier in the day I had been plunged into Blursville, as the optician who a week previously given me a glorious exciting new world of details and colours via the introduction of contact lenses, cruelly took them away again as in my excitement I had worn them for far far too long and 'damaged a few cells'. So anyway, I enter Giraffe, and after stumbling slapstick style over about ten Buggaboos (prams, to those without children) parked by the doorway, I gazed around squintingly for my friends. All around me, like bobbing bouys in a sea of blur were these pink round wobbling blobs. Babies. Lots of 'em. Utterly terrifying. And noisy.

I would recommend a lunchtime trip to Giraffe for any girl feeling a bit broody. By 'eck, it will make you want to nip next door to Boots to stock up on propolactics sharpish!

Unfortunate photo juxtapositions part 2,334,553

2009-04-19T14:49:00.003Z

I have to say I don't really get the furore over Susan Whatserface from Britain's Got Talent. So she is ugly but a good singer, and because she is ugly no one thought she would be a good singer so when it was revealed she was a good singer everyone was ZOMG!!!UGLEEZ CAN SING!1!!

And then everyone rejoiced and cried with happiness because this ugly woman who can sing has been rescued from her hideously obscure ugly little life in some hideously obscure ugly little Scottish village and is now FAMUS and SAVED and on OPRAH!1!!

Even my brother, who refuses to enter Topman, pay for magazines and walks out the room at the very mention of BGT or X Factor, admitted the other day that he had watched Susan on Youtube and 'It was, like, the most beautiful heart wrenching singing I have ever seen'. The pussyo.

Whilst it is nice that a woman is going to make a lot of money from her singing talent, the whole episode really just serves to highlight the widespread and ikky views of the general public - ugly people are useless and you can only find redemption and happiness through fame. Nice. Then again, I guess it also shows the power of a good ole showtune, and that is never a bad thing..

*gets off soapbox, digs out DVD of Rent*

THX 1138 to Hemen for this one...

2009-04-11T16:30:00.003Z

This is the front cover for the DVD of George Lucas's debut film THX 1138, a science fiction about a underground dystopian world where drugged up drones lead lives devoid of emotion or feeling.

My friend Hemen works in HMV, a partially underground dystopian CD and DVD shop, where he helps drugged up drones find discs to stick on the goggleboxes so they have something to stare at whilst they eat their Chinese takeaway later.

THX 1138 is currently on sale for £2.99.

*Man wanders up to Hemen, holding aforementioned bargain of a DVD purchase*
"Oh right, what's this about then?"
*He flips the dvd over to skim the back, which aside from the blurb also displays a large film still of a drone getting violently beaten up by a group of police androids*
"Jade Goody?"
"Errrrm. No, not really. Not at all actually."
"Oh."
*Visibly disappointed, the man wanders off*

A Russian tale of caution, overheard on the Victoria Line this morning...

2009-03-13T12:06:00.004Z

*Two Russian women get on the tube at Highbury and Islington. I can't actually see them as I am squashed up against some man with a giant rucksack he has refused to take off, but I can hear them clearly, not least because one is basically shouting in my ear*

"My friend, she keep snake. Big snake, Anaconda you know? They sqeeze, not poison but verrry big. She keep in her flat and one day notice that snake is being verrry friendly. It come sit with her on sofa, sleep with her at night and so. Now she think this is most unusual, she play with snake often, but it never so friendly."

"That is verrry odd for snake. Snakes not friendly often"

"Yes. So she go to vet and say. Vet goes 'oh no! You must not return home! Snake is not friendly, it is measuring you so's it can work out how it will eat you best. Get rid!"

"Noo!"

"Yes! Get rid! You see snake is like Dmitri. He being friend to you now, so he can make you trust, then he will come in night and kill you."

конец (end)

Spoon Rage

2009-03-12T19:51:00.007Z

And now for a matter of massive significance that will make you question how you see the world and everything in it. The economy? The war in Iraq? No, I'm talking about the free spoons you get from Marks and Spencer's foodhall.

As a central London dwelling deskbitch I often get my lunch from what my dear Mum called 'Marks and Sparks', and this usually involves some spoonable item. We do have kitchens at work so I could plausibly pick up a spoon on my way back in, but this would involve at least a three minute detour, which takes away from precious gorgeing time, and frankly, I get the rage when someone obstructs my path down Carnaby Street to try and flog me a charity subscription or ask where Oxford Street is, let alone any greater hinderance to face/sandwich interface. God knows how people go to the gym or shop on their lunchbreaks...

Well anyway, this terrible unrepentant greed coupled with the fact that I love a freebee, even if it is a small, black and made of plastic, means I inevitably end up picking up a M&S spoon.

So what's the beef? WELL. For some reason, these little spoons have been designed so they are slim and disproportionately deep for such a narrow spoonhead. What this means is that unless one is blessed with Angelina Jolie type lips, (and let's face it, my mouth is more like a letterbox made of flesh) you can't get all the stuff off the food with one mouthful.
This results in having to turn the spoon over to lick it, which can look inappropriately sensual if eating chocolate mousse, and disproportionately retarded if eating pomegranite (as it requires more of a flipping motion).

Usually I have the latter, which comes as no great surprise to my workmates, used as they are to see me doing things like falling off my chair or lying on the floor with my arse in the air taking photographs of tiny bottles of shampoo for powerpoint presentations.
Today, I had the mousse, and honestly, I think I might have to steal spoons from Pret a Manger on the way back in future as I turned into some terrible Nigella Lawson/Winnie the Pooh hibrid, 50% sexy, 50% a bear of little brain, 100% wrong.

I saw this clever little item, which got me thinking about how much you can do with a single lump of plastic, if you have half a brain. This is a toothbrush which has a dented back, so once you have brushed you can flip it over and redirect the tap waterflow so it becomes an easily drinkable fountain. It's not earth shattering, but it's simple, it's clever and it works. That's two points up on the M&S spoon anyway..

Ask Propecia Anything

2009-03-04T16:09:00.004Z

I've been emailing this to various people at work and stuff, and as it has been a while and I haven't quite worked up the energy to do a proper post, I'll just stick it here for the meantime.

Note: Watch with headphones on.

The Twitter Fallout

2009-02-26T16:59:00.005Z

I admit I was getting a bit hooked on tweeting - well, any excuse for me to piffle more rubbish out into the tinternet and avoid my head imploding under the weight of a life that involves sorting out meetings, watching Masterchef and very little else...

What I never realised however, is that merrily microblogging away meant that you leave a very obvious googletrail of witter behind you. I was idly googling myself - an activity I do every so often in boredom and preparation for my inevitable life as a fantastically well known and admired sort - and I'm now popping up all over google like a battered plastic gonk from a whack-a-mole arcade game!

Although it is now easier to find out my identity than it is to buy an artisan bread in Muswell Hill, I am still going to attempt to keep some veil of anonymity and blank out my non biche identity.

As you will note, if you click and zoom in on the above picture, this twitter problem is two fold. Not only am I exposed for all to see, I am exposed with the phrase 'so painful I considered leaving it jammed up there'.
For those glorious souls who possess an inquisitive nature and click the link, they will readily see I am in fact writing about the incident when I got my entire fringe caught up in a hairbrush and panicked. For those who don't, I quite frankly just sound like a minger.

Japanese meme (NSFW if you work isn't keen on epilepsy inducing shots of male buttocks)

2009-02-25T13:59:00.006Z

Oh poo, since I wrote the title, the best example of this bizarreness which included the flashing bumcheeks has been taken offline. Ho hum, such is life..

I found this brilliant article on Gawker today. In a nutshell, the collected works of gay pornstar Billy Herrington have become massive internet hits in Japan, ten odd years after their release. Being massive internet hits, they have been mashed up in various bizarre forms, and this being Japan these are very odd indeed, generally including rhythms beaten out on arsecheeks, baby's faces covering genitals and lots of grunting. Well, watch for yourself really...

Why have they become hits? Quite simply the English for 'You got me mad now', when growled by a beefcake in an echoey locker room sounds a lot like 'You are not distorted' in Japanese and 'Like embarrasing me, huh?' becomes 'You are sloppy recently' respectively. Oh, and it's like, two dudes wrestling and that is huhuhuhuh so gay.

Can someone with more accomplished (a.k.a any) video skills see what happens if we overlay Japanese tenticle porn with Something Kinda Ooh by Girls Aloud? Oh, but cover all the rude bits with photos of Matt Lucas' head? Then speed the whole thing up so it looks like people having a fit in a fishmongers to the sound of chipmunks singing? Internizze hizzle right there yo.

Westfield - Shopper, you are terminated

2009-02-21T16:42:00.017Z

Boredom, curiosity and an ovewhelming urge to spend money lead to me visiting Westfield, the new juggernaut of a shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush today.

And absolutely huge it is indeed -and inside so white and curved that it is near impossible to get your bearings, find a start/end point or work out where any specific shop might be. I had to make do with wandering around in a daze like Will Smith in that bit of Men in Black where the doors open to reveal an extraterrestrial society getting about its daily business (but without the ensuing comedic high jinx).
Obviously there were no aliens, but nor were there that many earthlings at Westfield - I was there at 11am on a Saturday morning and there was probably a Monday evening 5.30pm amount of shoppers. This only added to the sense of surrealism as I pootled about, lamely trying to find Topshop but not wanting to queue at a cuboid touchscreen map, as they all seemed to be commandeered by the scant few other shoppers, eyes agog, trying to work out where the deuce Boots is (somewhere near the floating Nandos I think) or where in this dazzling ark of consumerism one might find a ginger beer (okay, just me on that one. The answer is 'nowhere' btw)

Maybe it was the emptiness, maybe it was because I was reading Revolutionary Road on the tube journey there, but I found the whole desperate 'this is the future!' great white massiveness of the place really oppressive - it's like Logan's Run before the running bit or The Island before the 'oh shit we're clones' bit.... something in the milk ain't clean, in other words. At one point I even found myself idly eyeing up the height of the glass rails, and wondering what they would do if I - okay, well, someone else - threw themselves off and landed splat on the white marble of the lower floor in protest. Believe me, it takes a lot for me to think such insubordinent things, I'm the biggest most superficial capitalista I know, but Westfield made me want to go and join an ashram in India, wear tie die gypsy skirts and brush my teeth with a stick.

That said, I wasn't completely impervious to the many, many shops, and I'd be buggered if I went all that way and didn't get anything, so I got this:

Fitting in quite well with the whole 'pointlessly futuristic' flex of this post, it is Mood Swing lipgloss: Our supernatural formulation starts off crystal clear and blossoms into countless shades of pink, depending on your emotional state - Oh goodo, that sounds plausible. Maybe Too Faced have discovered a formulation that will successfully do away with a hundred odd years of psychoanalysis, and who would have thought it would be strawberry scented too?

So what is my 'emotional state'? (apart from 'woman who has just discovered she has taken a photo of herself that includes a slight bogey up the nose')

Hmm according to them I am having 'dirty thoughts'.

Little do they know this is far from the truth, as I am in fact wondering if I have time to do my hand-washing before I go out this evening and if it is weird to have felafels for both lunch and dinner.

So yes, Westfield... it's definitely worth a look, but more so you can work out your exit strategies for when the thought police come knocking, or to have some life-changing revelation about the shallowness of your existence. Not if you want a ginger beer, that's for sure.

p.s If anyone wants to hire me as a hand model, do drop me an email...

p.p.s Let's update that emotional status to 'woman who is now questioning her photography skills after taking a second pic with the most embarrassing item in her living room in the background.' Look yeah, I won it on a grabber in Southend, and it's not exactly easy to dispose of a giant teddybear without feeling a bit cruel and wasteful.

What we have learnt from 'He's Just Not That Into You'

2009-02-18T22:26:00.010Z

*If you force someone to marry you, they will have an affair and hide their smoking from you, but if you don't force someone to marry you, you will split up, get back together after a few months of ritual humiliation on your part and living on a boat on his part, and he will compromise all his values and marry you anyway.

*Baltimore is nothing like the Wire. There are still corners, but they are clean and empty. Front steps are street kid free and lead to frosted glass doors, not crack dens. Everyone has exposed brickwork and distressed leather furniture and every house overlooks the Domino Sugar factory. It's also a yuppie's dream, as it appears you can afford a massive warehouse loft to yourself simply by managing a bar, or doing some vague office job where you actually spend all day squealing and jumping up and down or running out at a moment's notice to catch your hubby cheating.

*Jennifer Aniston has a head like a sweet potato**.

*If you a sexually liberated feisty young woman who knows what she wants (read: slut) you will end up sad and alone (even if you are Scarlett Johanssen) but if you are a kooky fuckup with no social skills who acts like a twelve year old, you will meet the man of your dreams because 'at least you try'

*If you are Jennifer Connolly you must be asking yourself why on earth you are in this film.

*If you are gay, you will flock around Drew Barrymore like squawking seagulls ready at any moment to drop a dead fish of sassy relationship advice into her lap. You will also be well schooled in rolling your eyes, clicking your fingers and generally binding the different storylines together in various tenuous ways. You will dress like the last ten years never happened (see right)

*The best place to tell your wife you cheated on her is the flooring aisle of Homebase. This section was also good ammunition for the argument I had with my brother that you really can't tell the difference between laminate and real wood flooring.

*The mirror in your house is not for checking your hair, it is for Seeing Into Your Soul. Every so often you will look in it with a faraway gaze, then either sigh wistfully or smash it into lots of pieces. If the latter, you will then get a new mirror, symbolically put it on the wall of your new batchelorette pad and repeat.

*Scarlett Johnanssen truly has a fantastic figure. Dodgy hair extensions not so much.

*You will leave the cinema uneasy at a film that on one hand shows some quite obvious truths about relationships (if he doesn't call... if she doesn't sleep with you... if he doesn't want to marry you etc etc) but on the other hand ties up all the ends nicely and 'happily ever after' under the weak justification that these women are 'the exceptions to the rule'. Unless you are the slut. (see above)

*Wood Green is the BEST place to see any film of even slight comedic merit. Honestly, the cinema was half full but it was still like sitting in a Ricki Lake audience when some fat woman just stripped down to her red polyester neglegee- the whooping! The laughing! The genuine gasps of shock at coming-a-mile-off revelations! I swear I even heard a 'go girl!' at one point. There was also one man with a really distinctive loud laugh, which is just great, because you end up laughing at their laugh rather than the lame pratfall that happened onscreen.

Update: Rather good article in the Guardian about this twatfest of a film and why romcoms in general are vile

**I know, I know it's all anti-woman to say so, but she is getting to the age where you can't get away with superlong romcom facial closeups when you are projected sixty foot high onto a screen. It's harsh, but it's just not that nice to look at. See Sarah Jessica Parker in SATC. That said, it's not everyone, the rest of the SATC 'girls' and Drew Barrymore did not offend the eyeballs so. Maybe 'a face for television' is the kindest way to say it.

How to Hypnotise a Woman (NSFW if you can bare to watch it all the way through)

2009-02-14T20:58:00.008Z

I defy you to find one woman this could possibly, ever, ever, work on, those having undergone frontal lobotomies or aged under eight excluded. That said, Brenda's sheer gullability and the toys on her bed suggest that actually both these things might be the case...

Honestly, it's more like an episode of The Red Shoe Diaries than a self help video and was clearly made for men by men who clearly haven't spent much time in the company of those who are not men.

Note to self: If any therapist ever utters the word 'horny' run for the fucking hills!

A heartwarming image for a cold Wednesday evening

2009-02-11T21:56:00.004Z

Here is P Diddy treading in a poo.

This is why you are fat.

2009-02-09T20:45:00.002Z

A great, self explanatory website, with the best use of a full stop I have seen in a while.

On one hand, you will never want to consume bacon (in all it's many, many forms, from taco shell to mayonnaise flavouring) ever again, on the other it makes you question The Truth.
We're told that even minor things like M&S sandwiches and tiramisu are superbad for us, and yet people actually eat the things on this site and don't explode into Mr Creosotesque fireballs of lard, or simply drop dead of a coronary angina within a day.

Yeah, they are fatties though.

Nothing is new...or sexy

2009-02-09T20:04:00.004Z

I expect by now you've seen Morrissey's new 'gasp omg contravorsial' CD sleeve (Dlisted and Ich Luge Bullets have shrieked about it at length) It's here anyway in all it's pallid fleshy glory:

Ha, let us blight the memory of your favourite songs as they will now forever be associated with some hairless pale blokes from the pub stand around nonchalently listening to Morrisey play 'pat a cake' on his head.

Well anyway, vaguely offputting it is. New, contravorsial or different it aint. Get ready for a second scar on your retinas...

Yup, Cosmopolitan, glossy mag for slags (or for those stuck at train stations when WH Smiths has run out of Marie Claire) has had celebrity male centerfolds for years, including this incredibly...honest? one of Radio 1 or 5 or whatever DJ Colin Murray* from a couple of years ago.

One can only assume (or rather would like to assume as it is tres amusent) that Moz is a Cosmo Girl

*I don't get it. If you were of a slightly mouse-like persuasion, why would you agree to have your DJ partner (with her incredible invisible legs and torso) hold a CD over your bits in a delicate pinching fashion one would usually use when trying to pick up a teeny tiny jellybean off a desk? No amount of 'it's THIS big' hand gestures from you is going to offset that.

Don't say I don't do nothing for yous..

2009-02-06T23:33:00.002Z

Bored with bad phone photos of creepy dolls? Tired of amusing websites and wondering what Hatchet Face out of Cry Baby looks like now?

Why not click the cornify button, handily located above PeeWee's head to the right of the screen?

Joy!

Scary dolls of Wood Green - an occasional series

2009-01-31T15:44:00.005Z

Aah the Letchy Unsavoury Loves Arse limited edition vinyl doll... a faithful rendition of the sort of gay alcoholic tramp that occasionally frequents Soho Square - hawaiian shirt? Check. Face distorted and battered through years of alcohol abuse? Check. Fist clenched ready to off any young twinks who spurn his advances? Check. Cock hanging out of star spangled pantaloons...

The Anne Geddes Collection* - bean filled representations that prove once and for all that bestiality is wrong. What better way to educate your child of this irrefutable fact than to buy them a stillborn human-animal hybrid in a box?

The ratbaby is admittedly quite appropriate for Wood Green, situated in the borough of Haringey, best known for A Life of Grime and the Baby P scandal....

*I love that being a 'collection' it means that somewhere, someone has got a whole shelf of dead animalbabies lovingly displayed. It must look like aftermath of some hideous genetic experiment or possibly a nuclear explosion in the nursery of Fuckedupland.

Rampantly Popularist Interlude

2009-01-29T16:48:00.002Z

Look, look there is a tube map. Lovely. This is an unashamed attempt by me to get more people to this site, even if it's only because they are google imaging 'tube map' or some such.

Oh yeah, and you can now follow me on twitter, should you be wondering whether I have actually died or fallen off the earth this time, or if work is just a little bit busy and I can't think of anything funny to write.

I bang the worst dudes

2009-01-25T22:34:00.005Z

Well, not me. *cough* *shuffle*

This is a rather amusing-if-possibly fake website where women can upload pictures of their awful lays and basically explain to the world why it was a matter of the earth needing to swallow them up rather than moving, as such.

On one hand, it's a funny read. On the other you kind of think that if this was a website about women, then everyone would be up in arms. Poor men, no one stands up for them.

www.sorrymom.tumblr.com

"What fresh hell is this?"

2009-01-25T19:04:00.006Z

...were apparently John Waters' words while making Cry Baby, which was beset by disaster after disaster, from torrential rain to one of the main actors, pornstar Traci Lords, being caught up in a massive scandal when it was revealed she had been underage for basically all her porn career.

Being fidgetty of nature I can't watch a film without simeoultaneously googling it, and one thing I was curious about was what Kim 'Hatchet Face' McGuire looked like without all her makeup. And then whether she was dead or not, as one of the only pictures of her on the net is from www.findadeath.com. (She aint, the guy who runs the site got a fan pic of her and anecdotally linked it into a different actor's obituary, unfortunately with the tag 'www.findadeath.com' stamped right across it, so has inadvertantly sparked off an urban myth that she has died. Well, I assume it is an urban myth, there is no other evidence of her death online)

As Hatchet Face in Cry Baby

With Johnny Depp back in t'day at some sort of premiere I would imagine

Screenshot from 'It Came From Baltimore' the bonus documentary on the DVD which could have saved me a lot of googling.

Other interesting point of note is that when Traci was facing arrest, to make her feel better, the cast and crew all admitted what they had been arrested for in the past. ("Grand Theft Auto!" "White Slavery!" and "Kidnapping! But not really I swear!" were apparently among them, which doesn't seem that comforting to be honest) The young and slightly naive Amy Locane, feeling left out because she hadn't ever been put in the clink, turns to Patti Hearst, (in a cameo role as Traci Lord's mother) and asks 'but you haven't ever been arrested, have you?'

Pretty much sums up East London...

2009-01-20T20:14:00.003Z

'If you're not from Hackney stop begging and go back to your own ends. We have no use for you'

'Yes you do, you could mug us or something'

History NOW

2009-01-20T09:39:00.003Z

Happy Inaugeration bitches...

Can I get a reeeewiiind?

2009-01-19T23:37:00.004Z

I've just redone my old post on Paris is Burning.

I think you should read.

Noble Hound

2009-01-19T22:42:00.001Z

just because...

Quit yo snarking..

2009-01-18T22:24:00.004Z

I saw this video on a website, where is was (quite rightly) being merrily derided for being one of the shittest music videos ever. Honestly, watch it through, it's bloody terrible.. BUT I have not been able to get the song out my head all week.

Edit: If you watch this video on Youtube it has funny comments that pop up, but it doesn't seem to work when you embed it.

It's quite an interesting story really, Jan Terri worked as a limousine driver to fund recording her music (hence the rather ubiquitous use of the limo in the video) and made a load of terrible cheapo videos to promote them, which she would give out to the snarky media types she chauffered around. These little videos, which featured the Cabbage Patch-esque Terri wandering around bleak cityscapes like a little be-leathered baked potato, were dubbed from VHS to VHS (remember life before DVDs and Youtube?) and passed around media agencies until Ms Terri was something of a cult hit in such circles.

Then one day Marilyn Manson saw them, met Terri, and was so impressed by her sincerity that he hired her to play at his party and even open a show for him. Well, that's what Wikipedia says, I'd like to think that he was genuinely impressed and he wasn't just laughing at her some more, but in any case, she got another album and a greater cult following out of it, so I guess everybody sort of won.

Anyway I genuinely really like it, it's a good little new wave pop song, okay so not exactly in tune and bloody rough around the edges, but a catchy little song indeed.

I also think Jan deserves props for her sheer perseverence and chuzpah to keep doing what she loved, and not letting her looks, her lack of dollar or, let's face it, her slight trouble holding a note, hold her back.

Life

2009-01-15T10:40:00.004Z

It's pretty rare that I read an article that makes me go 'yeeah!' in a inspired fist pump of agreement usually only employed by sports fans and winners of minor rounds of reality shows. This one by Sam Leith in the Guardian today, and his thoughts on working in an open plan office made me do just that. The affection, the bitching, the community...

.. the sad fact that 'you have nothing to lose except your life'

*sigh*

This is my real desk btw. But a while ago, I have added to the gonks since then.

Tom Cruise is a twat part 1,2339492048757

2009-01-11T19:26:00.006Z

‘I grew up wanting to kill Hitler,’ Cruise says of his suitability for the part. (in Valkyere)

‘As a kid I would run around with a pretend gun playing games, acting out the war films we watched on TV. It was like, “Who is going to be the Nazi?” And it was never me. I always wanted to be the one who was going to get them.

Oh rightio, that would make me a shoo-in for George Bush Snr in the upcoming dramatisation of the Gulf War, which as a child I would occasionally attempt to re-enact with my brother.*

And oddly enough, as I was the older bossy one, I was always 'the Americans' while he was left being Saddam Hussein and lying dead on the floor in about five minutes. It's a bit of a stretch to say that 'I grew up wanting to kill Saddam Hussein', though. (The Chuckle Brothers on the other hand...)

I wonder what happened to the kids Tom used to play with who were all 'ooh! Ooh! Can I be the Nazis? Pleeeease?'?*Have I mentioned this already in this blog? I have the sinking feeling I might have done... Father in foreign news? Advance knowledge of world affairs but obviously not so much that I knew about the UN coalition? Well anyway, there you go, it's a nice little story anyhoo...

All that is wrong in the world today...

2009-01-10T11:08:00.004Z

Intern plan to ease graduate woes

Students who are unable to secure jobs after leaving university may be offered paid internships for three months.

Well, not that bit, that bit is a good idea... the justification however:

Mr Denham told the paper: "At the end, they will be more employable, and some of them will get jobs. Employers won't want to let good people go.

"These are the children of the baby-boomers. They will be a very big group. What do we do with them? We can't just leave people to fend for themselves."

Err what? You would think we were a bunch of little fluffy baby chicks, not grown up people who are perfectly capable of work and independent thinking and stuff and ting like that.

The problem is that a load of us are lazy fucks who expect things to be handed to us on a plate and have never worked before university because our parents gave us free money, so have a non existence Curriculum Vitae, and yet believe we should walk straight into jobs editing Vogue or some other such shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit and freak out at the prospect of earning peanuts or working hard doing menial boring tasks on the road to getting there.

Get back to making the tea, bitches. If you're good, you'll get there one day.

Looks like a case for Detective Barnaby!

2009-01-09T15:08:00.005Z

In the midst of a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza and an ecenomic recession in the UK, the Guardian comes over all Midsomer Murders.

Oh, and this is quite funny too but I nicked it off YepYep.

The Rock-afire Explosion - My New Favourite Band

2009-01-02T23:10:00.006Z

..well, that and the creepiest thing I have seen all year. This might seem a rather glib thing to say on January 2nd, but I happen to be watching a tv show which compiles all the most popular Youtube clips of 2008. So actually I've already seen a pelican eat a pigeon and a dog having a wank. So there.

Aaanyway, from what I can gleam from Youtube and Wikipedia, the Rock-afire Explosion were an animatronic robot band (oh but of course!) that they had installed in lots of Shobiz Pizza Places across the US of A. I feel this demostrates both how seriously Americans take their pizza consumption experience, and how much damn space there is, that they could have a full sized robot band in every joint. And both these things make me jealous.

But yeah, now someone has funked up childhood nightmares, got robots to sing rude songs and put it on Youtube and of course the result is fabulous! There is quite a good Shakira one too you should check out as it includes cheeky inter-puppet banter.

Some places in America still have grimy fluff and latex covered robots to jerk around while you eat and haunt your dreams while you sleep, although with a new rubbish and more basic lineup. This is apparently because of process known as 'concept unification ' which is a typically bullshit marketing phrase if ever I heard one, but thankfully one that has a hideous mid 90's video to go with it, which basically seeks to justify why a giant jerky Italian Chef isn't a weird choice of robot to put the kids at ease as they descend into obesity.

You might notice how I now am just linking things, rather than do my usual 'see it HERE'. Think of it as a supremely minor resolution for 2009. Aim small kids, avoid disappointment

The Henrietta Barnett School for Girls, Wizards.

2008-12-21T10:31:00.007Z

Yes, I was one. (not that I really shout it from the rooftops unless trying to win an argument with someone usually of a male, middle age and patronising persuasion). Unsurprisingly some of my friends are ones too. Yesterday, my friend Ms G commented that whilst bored at work, she had googled our old alma mater and was confused because on Wikipedia under 'famous alummni' it included someone we vaguely knew as 'groupie extrordinare'.

Today, while bored at home - well, watching Hollyoaks omnibus but whatevs - I did the same, and this is what I found... (click to make bigger):
Yes, that's right, Ms G, graduate of 'one of the top academic schools in the country' noticed Robin Driscoll, but failed to see that "The school uses a system much like that in operation at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where only the smartest can see the school buildings. This is why some candidates cannot find the school when arriving for entrance examinations."

I do like the basically accurate zing 'The school was judged by The Times newspaper to rank 1st and 2nd best achieving state school according to GCSE^[3] and A Level^[4] results, respectively (thanks to a combination of the girls' natural intelligence and intensive tuition to make up for lack of teaching)' but I feel I must state that this was Nothing To Do With Me as I would have done it a lot better.

Bizarre Bus Adverts We Have Seen

2008-12-18T20:06:00.005Z

But what does it mean? Will you having a smear somehow save the life of this be-goatied Adonis? Perhaps the message is that transgender women should be aware! You too can get cervical cancer even if you have cut off your boobs and developed a taste for green woolly jumpers! Maybe they think young liberated women will only look at an advert if it has a fit man slapped all over it...

Or are they just implying that fit men from Southern Europe are Chalmydia Marys who will ply you with ouzo and let you run your fingers through their gleaming locks before having their wicked way, leaving you alone the next day with a hangover, V05 under your nails and a minor-yet-bad-if-left-untreated STI ?

It is most perplexing, but I take comfort in the thought that a 'Joey from Friends' storyline has become a reality.

Scoop! Exclusive! Etc!

2008-12-17T09:50:00.000Z

The BBC news website this morning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7786462.stm

SOB post from September:

http://speechesofbiches.blogspot.com/2008/09/as-de-menesez-inquiry-rumbles-on.html

Wow, I almost feel like a proper journalist and everything.

Person of the Day - My Friend Bee

2008-12-01T22:12:00.006Z

The News Feed on Facebook is a nice-if-inane way to drip away your time - oh look! Dave Roberts is tired! There is a whole album of group photos of Lorraine Smith and some other people I don't know looking pissed and pulling the same two faces! Blah and Blah are attending PUT A CANDLE IN UR WIDOW 4 BABY P ad nausum.

Well anyway, occasionally you get a little semi private gem from someone's life that makes you snort in laughter and then have to pretend you sneezed instead because you're meant to be fannying around with that spreadsheet:

That this girl is a potential paramore, only makes it all the better!

The Yoof of Today

2008-11-27T22:26:00.003Z

Call me naive and not 'down with the kids', but I thought eight year olds daydreamed about Bratz, the Jonas Brothers and gummy hairbands, not obese hippos sensually wallowing in chocolate to the dulcet tones of Terrence Trent D'Arby.

I'm surprised the Daily Mail hasn't got hold of this one yet...

2008-11-23T19:15:00.003Z

Gordon Brown is starring in a film made by lefty euro foreigners!!1! As a terrorist!!!!!1!1! A GERMAN terrorist!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!1!!!!!1

Even tho it aint him it lookz liek him n dat is sik enuff. I fink e shud resine now.

*..or maybe they have, lord knows I don't want to sully my internet search history and check.

Amazon Have Got Me Sussed

2008-11-10T14:10:00.004Z

Following on from their previous recommendation, which made me out to be a bit of a psycho nut, this presumerbly narrows my profile down to 'psycho Shepherd nut'. Once again, I am slightly peeved that they decline to recommend things similar to the obscure documentaries or interesting novels I usually buy, but instead focus on one dvd I bought my gran for Christmas two years ago.

Kerry Katona - Let's remember the good times, eh?

2008-10-27T22:44:00.006Z

One for the family album:

"Chipppth!"
Just bizarre:

High Wycombe - Where 'It' certainly is at

2008-10-27T22:13:00.007Z

From the town's (population 92,300 located west-north-west of London...whatever the hell that means) Wikipedia entry:

"The university students union has seen many celebrities from The Killers, to several Big Brother stars to Vernon Kaye and former England Volleyball player Paul Galbraith.

The pub the White Horse appeared on 'Britain's toughest pubs'. They include free strip shows during the day. There is also a nightclub called the Blue Room in the suburb of Hazlemere."

I know, I know, THE Paul Galbraith, the man, the myth the legend...well certainly the myth, as although I have found him mentioned on at least three sites about High Wycombe, he does not appear to exist anywhere else (unless he also moonlights as a Scottish classical guitarist of some repute). Please attempt to prove me wrong, to think I am the only person who has ever wasted their life typing 'Paul Galbraith volleyball england' into Google is eminently depressing.

Well in any case his sexily elusive celebrity status still shits all over 'Mornonic Ken doll with Extra chewing gums for teefs' Vernon Kay and 'I look like Biche's friend Ben but, like, retarded' Brandon Flowers.

Incidentally, here is the Mayor of High Wycombe. Sexy beehatch has my haircut and taste for delicate refined jewellery.

Lotto Madness!

2008-09-27T17:13:00.003Z

The jackpot yesterday was £100,000,000. Needless to say I did not win, but I've decided not to give up hope. Maybe one day I will be as goddamn lucky as Mrs S...

Incidentally, I saw this on the website last night, and it still has the same exciting news now.

Wheres My Bees at?

2008-09-24T17:49:00.004Z

This video is just brilliant - not only does it neatly tie in to an earlier post of mine where I wax (arf!) lyrical about the Blind Melon video featuring a Beegirl, but it highlights a very serious issue, namely that the bees of the world are mysteriously dying out. As someone who has been known to eat honey at every meal (on toast, in yoghurt, with brie in sandwiches, in tea yadda yadda) this concerns me, but as I also simply love saying 'bee', the prospect of never likening oneself to a 'squashed bee' or a 'bumbling old bee' or a 'dozy fat bee in a jar' is simply devistating.

The word 'bee' exudes fuzzy joviality and bumbling joy, it should not be associated with death and (some would have you believe) the destruction of the planet!

As the De Menezes Inquiry rumbles on, now with added 'Fuck You'!

2008-09-24T16:22:00.006Z

I really hope this is real and not a photoshop, because if it is, it's just about the best thing* ever.

UPDATE

I thought this pic was so brilliant I sent it to the equally brilliant Copyranter blog. It was posted on Animal NY along with this additional pic I took, to prove the caption was true:

Someone put this comment:

Why didn't they use the same poster image when they chopped those pictures?

Not only do they make themselves look stupid, they've made you look like a bit of an idiot too for falling for it.

Very bad taste. :(

Posted by John October 2, 2008 4:26 AM

Naturally, being the massive pedant that I am, this massively pissed me off. Yes okay, I should have corrected Copyranter when he accreditted the first pic to me (I never said I took it) and I should have noticed that the poster at Finsbury Park is in a different format but STILL.

So I took action.

Firstly, I wasted an entire lunchtime travelling down to Stockwell to look for the poster. Typically, it is no longer there, but I did speak to a man putting up new posters who confirmed that the poster had been up, but then got all afraid and aggressive when I asked him if I could film him saying so. (Shocking, I know... thank god I'm blonde and act like a moron. If I was Muslim I would be f**ked)

Anyway, so being me I wrote a pedantically moronic comment in response, whilst still realising I did not quite have enough ammo for a full FUCK YOU. Until this morning, when sadly gazing out the window of the tube in a small gap framed by some guy's armpit and a goth's wet hair, I saw something that made me audibly go 'yesssssssss' into the sodden dyed black locks.

So this evening, whilst being very aware that I was once again acting in a vaguely suspiscious manner - but trying to allay my fears by reasoning that no one would mistake someone carrying a cartoon themed umbrella and listening to Britney Spears as a terrorist - I got off a stop early, fannied around and managed to take these beauties:

And, to show the angle on the origional pic is possible:

John? FUCK YOU.

Incidentally, you might see that someone has drawn a speech bubble coming out of Pacino's mouth. It says 'These guys are so old'. Jokes!

Yours,
A. Pedant

*'best' in it's awestriking bumclenching awfulness

Conning the Conners

2008-09-20T17:04:00.007Z

I do not like con artists. Aside from the obvious fact that 'The Real Hustle' takes up far too much BBC3 airtime, the whole tricky dicky element irks me - if you're going to be a tea leaf you might as well take MIA's stance and '*click, lock* take ya money' and not fanny around like a street magician.

Anyway, I was just chatting with my friend Ms W, who, dispite being an intern, sleeping in her clothes on people's sofas, living off a diet of fags, Red Bull and mini picnic eggs, is for some reason still called a 'glamourous blonde', and she had this tale of urban trickery to tell:

"So I was like queuing up to buy a can of coke for my breakfast and just after I put my PIN in the machine the guy behind me starts tapping me on the shoulder. I had my ipod on high and obviously wasn't really with it, but then I see he's pointing to a five pound note on the floor to my left. It's not mine, but because he obviously thinks it is, I think 'sod it' and reach over to grab it. When I turn back my card had been stolen from the machine! The guy must have got my PIN over my shoulder and then deliberately distracted me so he could nick my card!"

Me - "That's terrible!"

"Ha, not at ALL! I have LITERALLY no money in my bank and wasn't even sure if the can of coke would go through, so I just went 'sweet!' bought a twenty pack of fags, got a free can of coke and went to work feeling incredibly happy."

And the moral of that story, dear tea leafs, is do not attempt to scam glamourous blondes... or at least not ones who are attempting to buy a can of coke on a card at 8am with eyes the size of saucers and Chromeo blaring out their headphones at inhumanly loud levels. Not because these people are clearly wonderful (although they are - unless you late for work and stuck in the queue behind them) but because they are clearly skint as hell and you would literally be better off stealing candy from a baby.

Baiting the 'Conservative Mothers Against Sarah Palin' Facebook Group

2008-09-11T21:17:00.006Z

Because it's as easy peasy lemon squeezy and I like my friends on Facebook telling me I'm funny, like..

Mind you, given the actual true viewpoints of real, living, voting people out there it is also massively depressing.

Dragon's Den = Social Suicide

2008-09-11T19:49:00.006Z

A couple of anecdotes for you:

A few months ago, in Subway on Berwick Street.
Man in queue in front of me attempting to pay for a £1.99 sub with a credit card gestures to poster on the wall with his gold American Express.
'Oh look, the Reggae Reggae sauce sub!'

Bangladeshi cashier who clearly speaks as much English as his co-worker who is currently drenching my sub in Mayonnaise despite my request and hand gestures to the contrary
'.' (dull eyed stare)

'You know? Reggae Reggae sauce? The guy was on Dragon's Den!'

'.'
*background noise of me swearing under my breath at the prospect of a 3,000 calorie sub but being too polite to actually complain*

'Dragons Den! On BBC1! The guy sang a little song and they gave him money? Dragon's Den? Yes? Oh.'

He glances around: first to the still blank faced cashier who is now proferring a receipt, then to the equally blank faced condiment-mad co-worker. His eyes finally settle on the glowering girl holding a dripping bundle of greasy bread behind him, before he stalks out, head down.

A few weeks ago, a hairdressers in Crouch End.
An awkward fifteen year old girl whose job consists of pushing hair around the floor, making hair tea and answering the phone with a superfast esturary mutter is nonchalently swinging on the reception chair.

Jabbing at the mouse of the computer and staring intently at the monitor screen - 'thatallbe*outrageous sum of money* plez'

'Oh cool.'
I hand over my card.

*awkward silence punctuated only by more mouse jabs*

'Oh look, those are those hairbrushes they had on Dragons Den!'
I gesture to a pyramid of spikey brushes balancing procariously close to her flinching mouse arm.

'Huh?'
she looks up at me with half shut eyes and a half open gob displaying her half chewed gum.

'You know? It's like a magic brush that gets rid of tangles? They didn't invest but it looks like he has done quite well for himself.'

'AahdunnerrIdahntwatchit. Canyerputyerpennumberrinyeah?'

'What really? You don't watch Dragon's Den? Not ever'

'Nah.'

'You know what it is, right?'

'Yeh.'

'Oh.'
Another awkward pause until I take back my card and slink off into the day with my poofy blowdryed mushroom hair.

Is this just a terrible co-incidence? Why not try slotting 'that awful band called ham or spam or something' or 'that cap to stop you putting diesel into a unleaded car' into polite conversation with a service level stranger and find out!

Guardian Jobs - Something for Everyone

2008-09-08T09:46:00.003Z

Not so much 'Daddy or chips?' as 'sitting in an over air conditioned open plan new build in a Humber retail park...

Incidentally, possible kudos to the Granuaid (although I have a feeling it may have been accidental) for giving an aesexual man in a story about having a happy sexless marraige the pseudonymmed surname 'Cox'.

Lightening the Mood with Urinary Tract Infections

2008-08-27T19:02:00.006Z

I'm bored and a bit sad, so am going to liveblog 'Embarrassing Illnesses' to make myself feel better.

Although one of my best friends is moving abroad, I have a fat arse and am squandering my precious holiday sitting alone on the sofa (last two fact quite probably related) at least I am not Christian Jessen, Channel 4's very own Clap Doctor.
Cripes! 20.05 and we're already getting closeups of him fingering some teenager's spotty penis.

Pop quiz! If someone said you could be famous and on telly, but only if you checked people for STD's and so would be irrecoverably linked in the public's mind with, well, pubis, would you do it?

Good news. The teenager does not have gonorrhea.

A group of BMX-ers are now having their sperm counted. Obviously smoking 20 a day will make you less fertile, but wanking a lot? I'm sure that's something they tell you in Catholic school. I'm not sure I would want to be told I was firing duds on tv. This programme is not so much 'airing your dirty knickers in public' as literally 'flashing your flaps on the box'. Maybe that's just how the 21st Century rolls.

Oh MAN, how can they get away with showing a 50 year old woman's leaky vag before 9pm watershed? Ha, watershed! Weak bladder! My incontinence fuelled humour knows no bounds.

A woman has lipo on her aesymmetrical breasts, so now she just has equally horrible saggy tits.

One of the BMX-ers has a low sperm count. We are not told which one it is, but the numerous camera pans gives us a pretty good idea.

FIN.

Pop Fact! - When not fingering diseased genitals, Dr Jessen is an 'accomplished oboist'. He also rides horses. Here is a photo of him looking smug because he has finished a sudoku.

Abercrombie and Fuck You

2008-08-27T13:04:00.008Z

When I heard that Abercrombie and Fitch had opened a store in London, I put it in the same 'huh' news catagory as 'the A1 past Hanger Lane is a bit sluggish today' and Jessica's status is '...' according to Facebook.

I vaguely knew A&F to be a Gap-ish like clothes shop in America that people seem to love, even though as far as I could work out it sold either bland as fuck clothes or highly branded bland as fuck clothes.

Yesterday however, I happened to be in the area, so decided to visit the London A&F store. Within two seconds of entering it shot up from being a thing I had sort-of-heard-of-kind-of to being my official Worst Shop in London and Possibly Ever. - a title snatched away from Halfords in Friern Barnet Retail Park with considerable aplomb.

Where to start? Oh, well as you enter, you can queue to have your photo taken with a shirtless male hunk and keep the polaroid to show all your friends back home. Why? So you can tell them you shagged him? So they can be impressed that you stood next to someone with a six pack? Because some of his fitness might rub off on you and make you look less like a fat tourist in a straining pair of chinos and sweat drenched 'I heart London t-shirt'? *shudder*

This isn't apparently just a random act of whoring: A&F is known for it's good looking staff and presumerbly being pimped out to hormonal girls is part of the job description. I did wonder about this alleged hiring policy, as it appeared to be very much in action in the London shop and surely smacks of discrimination if true. Is anyone who reads this really fat/hairy/muslim/tattooed/all of the above? Please apply and let me know how you get on.

Anyway, inside. You know what I hate more than bland as fuck branded clothing in a million different pastel colours? I hate being lost in dark crowded nightclubs while shit trance music thumps so loud I can't hear my own angry thoughts.
Random? No, no, no, THIS is Abercrombie and Fitch, London. Confusing, as A&F is what one is supposed to wear to a chase a labrador across a beach in the Hamptons with your wholesome looking boyfriend, so the Ministry of Sound get up is beyond infuriating.
They even have two of their Stepford employees dancing on a balcony as if to say 'Hey, this is really fun! I always like to rave it up in the middle of the day wearing stonewashed bootleg jeans and a cornflower blue vest top!'.

It's a wonder the staff get time to actually fold jeans in between being groped and pretending to be 'aving it large', but I gather it's actually an honour to work in A&F as it means you are 'fit'. Fit and presumerbly also as thick as two short planks to allow yourself to be exploited in such a manner for £6.50 an hour.

Shops like A&F with concieted good looking staff (Urban Outfitters is another prime example) also irk me, as until a few years ago, I would be seriously intimidated about going in them, actually being worried about what the staff would think of me. Fortunately, now I am not just confident enough in myself to know I am as 'fit' as them, I also don't fold t shirts for living and could buy that whole pile of muthafuckin' folded Micky Mouse stencilled abomonations if I wanted to.

edit: Ooh I just found THIS article by someone at the Daily Mail *hock, spit* who went undercover at A&F. He said what I said but in a more boring way.

edit: while looking for a suitable image for this entry, I came across their website description - 'The highest quality, All-American lifestyle clothing for aspirational men and women'.
I think I just vommed in my mouth and waged war on the West.

Sartorial 100m Hurdles

2008-08-27T08:58:00.005Z

Oh God how I wish I had thought of this...

Vice style 'Do's and Don't' from the Olympic opening ceremony.

It fair made me snort into my cornflakes.

Incidentally, I'm off work this week, hence the prolific blogging; it also means I am sampling the 'wonder' that is daytime TV for the first time in about a year. How vile is Jeremy Kyle? Really, who the hell is this perma-angry man who shouts over undereducated poor people as they attempt to defend their poxy lives on national television? I can't believe I ironically dug him at Uni, he is the 21st Century version of the Witchfinder General.

next week on SOB, Biche wonders why aeroplane food tastes so bad, comments that Gordon Brown is a big boring and cocks her hammer in the direction of more sealife held in wooden containers

Thoughts on Kate Moss's New Perfume Ad

2008-08-26T16:56:00.005Z

The bottle looks a bit like a giant butt plug, which is unfortunate, given it's location and Kate's posture.

Kate Moss has been interrupted midway through farting a plume of smoke and isn't pleased about it.

Isn't there some phrase about 'shooting smoke up your arse'?

Is this what 'embracing the night' looks like? I would say this is what 'embracing the staircase after drunkenly tripping over your own feet in Mo*vida' looks like

Velvet Hour sounds like a cheap range of chocolates from the 1980's.

Or some niche evening show at the Four Floors of Whores.

Who the hell would buy this perfume anyway? Even impressionable young women who worship la Moss would know that she wouldn't wear something you could buy in Superdrug next to Charli, Angel and Stunning by Katie Price.

I like her hair.

Out In De Streets Dey Call it Muuuurdah

2008-08-25T21:37:00.007Z

Aah so I have just returned from the chicken bone strewn circle of hell also known as the Notting Hill Carnival.

I suppose it was okaaay, I mean, I used to think I was the whitest girl alive and so looked about as 'in place' at Carnival as Cher would on a pilgramage to Mecca, but that was before I went to Carnival with A and E who take being 'whitey' to a loud shrieky level not seen since Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance. (or maybe those Step Up films but I haven't seen them) But Y to the T anyway.

Although I drew the line at drinking rose from a cup and bogling to reggae in the middle of Porterbello Road with several other rah-sterfarian* friends of A, after a while (and several drinks) it felt less like a poultry stinking pressure cooker of barely repressed anarchy and violence and more like a noisy dirty festival in the middle of London.

After a while (and some more drinks) we had a dance and a drum n bass stage, which is where I got a pondering on precisely how bizarre drum n bass dancing is. I mean, I think I have thought this before - and by thought I mean druggily ranted at someone in the toilet queue at Fabric - but never have I put finger to keyboard about it.

But yeah, so for one, dancing to DnB you basically dance by yourself. This in itself is quite weird if you think of the great grand history of Dance, which is basically an inclusive group activity. But in DnB you barely touch, unless your gun fingers (pow! pow!) accidentally go on the opposite trajectory as the person next to you's eyeball socket.

Secondly, you don't really move from the same spot. Unless you are a bit of a fancy dick with your leg work or are off your face and flail about like a psychotic spider, you generally bop about from foot to foot as if you are standing on rather hot sand.

Thirdly, one of the most common moves is to slump your shoulders forwards and sway from either them if you are male, or from your waist if you are female. This is not terrible attractive, again, unusual for a Dance, traditionally a roundabout way of attracting people.

Remember those plastic anthropomorphic flowers you could buy that danced when you played them music? I imagine from the stage we must have all looked like that, albeit bedecked in Jamaica whistles, soaked in Red Stripe and with poor posture.

But anyway, Carnival. It's over for another year and maybe in 2009, unlike the last two years, I won't be saddled with a friend who is all 'omg but I've never beeeeen and you have to go to Carnivaaaaal'.

Honestly, I'm such a whore for London knowledge based flattery - tell me you've never been to Brick Lane and we'll be sitting there having overpriced shitty curry made with 40% water injected chicken breast before you can say 'oh cool was this like, where that book was set?'

*rah like 'awful privately educated braying Henrys and Camillas who gad about Carnival in their multicoloured Ray Bans going 'oh yah, I rahly love that Leathal Bizzle, his shit is like, totally street? yeah?' I just thought of that phrase and although it undoubtly exists already, I am quite proud of myself.

Photo of the Day - Dare ye Undertake this Epic Quest?

2008-08-11T21:54:00.004Z

Many a valiant hero has fallen and great warriors lost their lives...by bumping into their reflection in the hall of mirrors in Longleat Safari Park. Other baser mortals such as myself just wasted a lot of time preening and seeing what the back of their heads looked like after two hours looking at monkeys in the pouring rain.

Hello? Remember Me?

2008-08-11T21:09:00.005Z

Tsk, this 'real job' malarkay really gets in the way of posting silly pictures and generally being interesting and creative.
Honestly, if you bumped into me today I would probably regail you with fascinating anecdotes about 'this client meeting I had to set up for Mel with like two hours notice *outraged look*, but like, then Rich had a clash with the HPI debrief *exaggerated wince* so I had to beg to Lou...'

Yeah, I'm a boring git.

BUT, it won't be forever I swear...an excess of holiday and a lack of friends with funds mean I will probably spend a jolly week in the luxury holiday chalet otherwise known as 'my flat with in-date food in the fridge', so then I will blog, oh god I will blog!

In the meantime, my good friend who I have never actually met, Dom, has started a new blog - Ich Luge Bullets - so go read that, or check out onedatatime.com or fourfour - the blogs by Rich and Tracie who do Pot Psychology on Jezebel.com. Honestly, I'm such a geek, I have huge 'friend crushes' on them - I haven't wished some perfect strangers were my friends more since I first watched Wayne's World...
I guess the only redeeming features this time are that a) they are real people and b) it won't result in me wearing baseball caps, tucking my hair behind my ears and going 'shhhha!'. That shit really does not fly when you are a 10 year old girl who lives in North London. Even if you do have the same hair.

p.s How shit is Mike Myers these days? Shhhhhha!

The Saga of the Clap Clinic

2008-07-14T18:45:00.005Z

There are lots of reports these days that old people are foregoing knitting in favour of a good hard unprotected rut with other similary saggy skinned biddies. (well, unless you are Ronnie Wood)

When I was at the Clap Clinic today (there ain't no shame, regardless of how you may feel when asked to describe your discharge and you turn into a twittering idiot who goes 'ohmywellisupposeitsabitlikeummmmohwelltheotherweekarentwehavinglovelyweatherthesedays?' much to the chagrin of the long suffering doctor) the only reading material in the waiting room was a copy of SAGA magazine. From December 2007.

And a fascinating read it was too!

But yeah, this would suggest that the oldies do grace Clap Clinics with their presence, although possibly they are so engrossed in readers' photos of snowmen from years gone by (my favourite: This is the snowman we built outside Hounslow Police Station in 1978. Back when we could see to the prisoners how we liked without letting the 'PC brigade' get involved. Pardon the pun!) that they don't hear the doctors call them in, and after a satisfying read, toddle on home again, still riddled with STD 's and without their free bag of condoms and lube.

Incidentally, I do now feel compelled to tell you all, dear readers, that I do not have any diseases, but I did accidentally pee on my hand while taking a urine sample, so I would still give me a wide berth.

Dearly Departed, Now with Omega 3

2008-07-14T18:15:00.003Z

It it with a bit of melancholy I bring you the news that my hamster, Bobo, has died. To be fair, he never fully recovered from the ceiling falling in on him, despite the Flatmate heroically lunging into the dust filled void where my livingroom used to be at 4am to save him while I, dear reader, stood in the doorway flapping my arms about and shrieking about my laptop.

Well anyway, last Saturday I kept checking on him, by the Frasier where Niles agrees to pretend to be still married happily to Mel his breathing was shallow and by the time Frasier hires a butler to try and get on the Opera Society board, he was cold.

I was a bit sad, but what was weighing more heavily on my mind was how one goes about respectfully disposing of a beloved pet in a flat with no garden. After several lame attempts to dig up the mostly concrete front garden with a spoon, a plan B was needed, as Bobo was quite a hefty ham, and I didn't want a reputation as the mad lady who mysteriously dug lots of little holes in the front garden with a bit of cutlery.

Luckily, I had recently finished a tub of Flora, and even more luckily, I have been thoroughly conditioned by the Flatmate to wash out every sodding bit of packaging, right down to petit filous tubs for recycling. So in an act of (in my own head) massive bravery, I gingerly scooped up the dead Bo and plonked him in and put the lid on. Then sat there looking at it for a bit.

Anyway, several bizarre txts later (heya, how are you? Long time no see! Could I possibly bury something in your garden?) Rhi came to the rescue, and Bobo was interred, or more accurately squashed by a large lump of clay as I attempted to bury him with my eyes shut.

RIP Bobo, Feb 2006 - June 2008

Announcement: Greek Tragedy!

2008-06-16T20:14:00.004Z

No doubt you have all been worried witless by the fact that I have not blogged in a couple of weeks. I am now able to reassure you, dear reader, that I am in fact not dead but merely back from a week in Greece, which was preceeded by the ceiling falling in at home and crushing my poor laptop to a pulp.

So here I sit, with a brand new laptop balanced on mosquito bitten knees (good ole insurance payout and beachside dwelling respectively) and once I have got my shiz together - ie caught up at work and finally cleaned the layer of plaster dirt off all my wordly possessions - I will be back on form. I swear.

In the meantime, go read a book or something.

Won't Somebody Think of the Children?

2008-06-01T19:08:00.001Z

Possibly the creepiest Wikipedia entry I have found to date*

* I was looking up the Todd Solondz film 'Happiness' yeah?

'OMG look at her SHOES!!!11!1!!!!'

2008-05-30T23:24:00.005Z

Who would have thought that Kristin Davis would be the best thing about any film, let alone the SATC? Her comic mugging was about the only redeeming feature in this predictable cheesefest of an extended advert.

I did like SATC on tv, I went to the cinema with my brain firmly switched to standby and my cynicism (oooh! I'm SUCH a Miranda) tucked away safely in my back pocket, but even then it would take a very simple woman indeed to be moved by this souless schtick.

SATC had genuinely moving episodes, you felt for the characters, they seemed real. On the big screen it is not just their fabulous wardrobes which are larger than life...they have all become such parodies of themselves, we feel nothing for them. At one point when Carrie is emotionally devistated (no, not saying why) and slowly takes off her sunglasses for the first time to see her sorrowful reflection in the mirror, a member of the audience with cynical volume muttered 'wow.' There was a pause and the whole cinema errupted into laughter.

Oh god and don't get me started on Jennifer Hudson, a woman apparently only cast for her ability to bring some good ole token sass to proceedings. I mean, she can act most of the others off the screen, but given that her dialogue mainly consists of 'uuuh huh girlfriend', and hideously twee one liners, they might as well have saved themselves the money and brought in some bit character from Keenan and Kel. I mean honestly, who says 'I came to New York to find love'? Emotional men. Lesbians. Not smart women in a town where they outnumber men 2:1.

But yeah, the clothes are fabulous, the shoes are fabulous, the locations are fabulous... but then they always were. But the series had more, it had (a rather ditzy, materialistic, bittersweet) soul.

In summary: The SATC Movie.. it's like meeting up with your old best friend from school and finding out you have absolutely nothing in common. But that they do have nice shoes.

Edit: The best review of the film I have read, on Jezebel.com, a site any woman with a semblance of a brain should waste some of her daily time on.

The Official SOB Guide to... Scones.

2008-05-30T17:18:00.007Z

Scons, scowns, scooons, for some reason (probably because I'm consciously trying to get fit for a beach holiday so the bitch in me is subconsciously ruining all my efforts) has been consuming loads of them of late. Cream teas to be precise, and for those of you who aren't middle aged or massive losers like moi, a 'cream tea' consists of scones served with clotted cream and jam. Oh, and tea. But mainly cream.
In order to turn this losery negative into a hip ironic positive, here is the official SOB guide to Cream Teas

John Lewis - setting the standard for teas what are creamy, this was a perfectly nice scone, with a perfectly nice amount of cream and jam. The only downside were the cups, those little squat inflight meal ones you can barely fit a finger through the handle of, which made me feel like a big obese giant who should be eating air and carrots, not creamy buttery biscuitcakes.

Kew Gardens - massive scone the size of a child's head. A bit stale as it had been left out all day, but quite good value for money if you are after a full stomach and an excuse not to poo for two days. Normally okay amounts of cream and jam were just not adequate on this floury beast.

Liberty's - two warm scones with a delicious buttery texture eventually rolled up about half an hour after the tea. Marks subtracted for lateness, the frankly ludicrous £10.75 price tag and the fact that had I not nicked someone else's cream I would have gone wanting. *cough* greedy mare *cough*

The Frances Hotel, Bath - £7 odd quid for one average sized scone and an unrequested bit of lemon drizzle cake. The cream was plentiful, but not a clotted as in some places. One pot between five also lead to a secret battle of wills and nerves, of hearts and minds, of greed and stomachs. It would be fair to say R and I won that one. Marks added for the lemon cake and swiftly deducted again, as I felt compelled to eat the soggy citrussy bugger to get my money's worth.

Hopefully not to be continued...

The Narcasstic Praise Hounds of Love are Calling

2008-05-28T12:54:00.004Z

This is a rather long INFURIATING report about 'Millenials' or work shy young shits like my good self (and you if you were born between 1980 and 1995). I defy you not to throw your iphone through the lcd screen of your laptop after watching about five minutes of this utter claptrap.
Yeah times have changed Grandpa, young people no longer want to wear suits and trilbys or 'punch a timecard'. If you keep slapping your secretary on the arse, chances are she will quit and sue you, not giggle and fetch you another martini.
The point about more young people living at home is also a bit rich, as had the 'Babyboomers' not fucked up the US banks and stock market, then more Millenials could afford to move out and not live with their darling parents who have apparently raised them too well, being that we weren't all shoved down coal mines at 14, constantly critisized and told to work all the hours God sends.

Then again, maybe it's not just a biased ill researched piece of utter trash masquerading as news. Perhaps it is reverse psychology to stir us - admittedly more apathetic - young folk into action. Don't know about you, but I sure as hell want to go out and beat some 'Boomers right now.

For the Bain Marie of my Life

2008-05-27T20:42:00.007Z

You might remember my earlier post, about the frankly fantastic Doreen personalised tea coaster I found in Weston Super Mare.

Well, as I found out at Longleat Safari Park, it is not just Doreens the world over who have been faintly insulted via the medium of small bits of cork you put on the table to stop stains. Observe:

This range of coasters truly are designed for passive agressive husbands to bring back for their wives after a stolen weekend with the secretary in some seedy location.

Possible future gems:

Maud from the Italian meaning 'ugly'. She is nice and cheerful. She is friendly and fun.

June from the Sanskrit for 'frigid'. She is proper and just. She is a good mother.

Eileen from the Norse meaning 'stupid twat'. She is lovely and forgiving. And makes nice food.

Madge Vadge!

2008-05-27T15:10:00.005Z

From Racked.com, this poor Warner Bros prole turned up to her office one morning to discover she now works in one of the most overexposed, hard working Vajayays in pop.

And it also happens to be an incredibly tenuous excuse for me to post this clip of the Day Today (see last 2 seconds of clip)

(rather hefty) Eurovision Blog 2008!

2008-05-24T19:00:00.009Z

8.00 - 'You know Sex and the City is on at ten' says R. I hope this does not set the tone for the evening.

'...FOUR episodes back to back!'

Even worse, I have forgotten my glasses so will have to rely slightly on R to work out what the hell is going on.

8.01 - A 'Harry Potter gone wrong' lesbian [edit: kudos to Ginger for that one] and another dressed in loo roll kick off the show. Some very impressively dressed dancers placicate R and she skips off to get wine, admitting that 'it is a bit shit to sit watching Eurovision drinking tea'

ROMANIA - The black, the white and the dull. 'It's like Celene Dion and Peeboo Bryson' says R in a cultural reference that leaves me stumped. Even a key change can't change this emotive mess.

UK - Oh wow it's like D Reem or.... 'Hot Chocolate' never happened. I point out that R is only saying this because both Andy and Errol are somewhat of a type. Well anyway, it's very mid 90's disco, from the music to the stage, which looks like the woman from Deelite's dress. Go Andy!

ALBANIA - Another ballad is leaving us somewhat stumped. Where are the dancing smurfs, fake blood and funkysexydiscobeats? I try and blag to R that I knew all along that Belgrade is a city in Serbia and not a country in it's own right.

GERMANY - They have ripped the beat from What You Waiting For? by Gwen Stefani, but frankly it's not a ballad so I am inclined to be forgiving. The four girls also look like trannies wrapped in curtains which is slightly amusing.

8.24 - Terry is wittering on like a man who hit the Baileys at about 4pm. Can you get drunk on Baileys? Discuss.

ARMENIA - I once used to fancy someone from Armenia. True story. The Armenian entry is a sophisticated mix of lyrical mastery and musical complexity. Not true story. 'Instead of wanting me, you should be reaching me, come on Kelle, Kelle, Kelle' (repeat 10x) and some pan pipes if we insist on being factual.

BOSNIA - This is more like it! Four brides, two grown people dressed as children and washing line of knickers as a prop. Mental song but we get distracted as I realise the childwoman looks a leeetle bit like my flatmate and then R asks me why Bosnia is called BosniaandHerzogovina and I don't have a clue even though my Dad worked in foreign news and spent six months in Bosnia back when shiz was going down.

Oh bugger, it appears I have missed some gems from the Englishly challenged host while musing on the past. 'Belgrade is captial of world tonite!' is the gist of it

ISRAEL - It sounds very...Israeli. I thought Dana International wrote this, so am expecting some sort of kitschness but it's just ballad so far. Ooh a troupe of street gays have tromped on stage. Oh, but only to sing back up. And to do some lame hopping on the spot. Huh.

Terry Wogan tells us to press the red button for some reason and R willingly obliges. The screen goes blue and I shriek.

FINLAND - Never one to give up a winning formula, Pantera-lite have taken to the stage. HOOO HAAA! (the chorus I think) R comments that all rock men have really crap long hair: 'I mean, if you're going to have long tresses at least get some Frizz Eze'. It's pretty loud and epic, but we are distracted by the cat chasing its tail out on the patio.

CROATIA - Here come the Men in Hats/Middle aged fat benders/Here come the Men in Hats/They won't let you remember. And I thought I would never be able to describe Croatians through the medium of a Will Smith parody. This is a proud day for me. For some inexplicable reason R declares this her favourite.

POLAND - The Polish entry looks like Aishlyne from Big Brother crossed with an easter egg. 'She's singing in English but I still don't know what she's saying' R comes out with one of the most common comments on Eurovision. 'It raises your pocket' 'You found my heart and I'm milking a swollen kite' is what I make out.

ICELAND - Techno techno techno! Iceland also sticks with its not quite so winning formula of gay trance. 'THIS IS MY LIFE!' Oh god it's absolutely brilliant, it's been on for thirty seconds and we can already sing along. Even the cat swinging from the patio umbrella cannot distract from this superpop euro anthem. I imagine it will get quite high votes from the UK.

TURKEY - They have instuments so are working on a slight Finland flex, but are more like Placebo, if Placebo sang in Turkish and had a lead singer that resembled Sylar from Heroes. It's passionate songs like this that almost wish I knew what on earth they were banging on about.

PORTUGAL - R is loving Terry Wogan, aside from red button bidding she just chuckled aloud at his quip about the - shall we say rotund? - Portugese entry. I'm finding he's a bit rambly this year but eh, I haven't had as much wine as R yet.

Oh, the Portugese entry is blah.

LATVIA - Pirates! Techno beats! People who don't seem to quite know the English lyrics they are singing. Actually most of this song goes 'Hi hi ho hi hi hey, we're hoisting the flag to be free....' so I guess it doesn't really matter. 'Does Latvia even have a coastline?' R quibbles, but then joins in merrily with the chorus.

SWEDEN - 'I think she's a drag queen' 'nah she sounds female' 'no look at her leg muscles. Women don't have legs like that.... oh wait, maybe she is female' This is the inane conversation that accompanies this rather inane song which is apparently a favourite. She does look hella creepy in the facial area, that much is true.

9.10 - Oh god now I actually chuckled at Wogan. No, I snorted, even worse. R is trilling 'All Night Long' by Lionel Richie. It would appear the wine has gone headwards.

DENMARK - Denmark entry thinks he's quite cool, and actually, with his flatcap, braces and funky tattoo, I guess he is a bit more 'street' that some, but he's still singing 'if you life like a sad song maybe, you should try to celebrate it/ All night long!'

R astutely points out the whole song is a mix of Lionel and that 'Celebrate good times c'mon! ' 70's funk hell of a track. So not cool in the slightest.

GEORGIA - This woman had better be blind as there is no excuse for wearing Jewish Mum sunglasses onstage. Mind you, broken corneas would explain her 'portly edward scissorhands' outfit.

9.16 - R has tottered off to make noodles and even I am getting a tad bored and wonder how many more there are to come. There had better be some crazy shit going down next.

UKRAINE - It's pretty good, but another case of foxy sequinned lady flanked by dancing men in black make it a bit forgettable dispite the good hook. She sings about her heart being 'burning' though, which makes me think of Rennies.

9.26 - The Eurovision trophy looks like a glass sweetcorn cob.

FRANCE - Sebastian Teller. I've heard of him! All the backing singers have beards and it has an amazing 70's aesthetic which... ' looks a bit cool for Eurovision' R neatly sums it up as she potters back in with her noodles.

AZERBAIJAHN - 'NOT in Europe!' shrieks R and I have taken a dislike as I have no idea how to spell Azerbi...etc. Oh, but they do have a castrato angel and some madass Goths, so very much Fit In. Huh the goth has now done a superfast costume change and is now an angel too. 'You like this?' R is incredulous. '..he sings very high' is my lame justification, but I fear they may have my vote.

GREECE - It follows the formula as the Ukraine. But not as good. 'Why do people think that is a sexy dance?' asks R, in the face of multiple pelvic spasms.

SPAIN - The irony that has finally spread through France has not quite reached Spain it would seem...it's reasonably funny and has robot dancing, a plastic guitar and the words 'cheeki cheeki'. Maybe it's just too late in the show. An hour ago I would have been all over this shit. People are booing though! That's a bit harsh. It kicked Greece's sorry thrusting arse.

SERBIA - boring.

RUSSIA - 'I be standing straw like a tree of wee' Oh dear, working out the lyrics never gets old. Neither does dressing in white, wearing bead chokers and clenching your fists apparently. Oh but the man who looks like a bank manager enterprative dancing/twatting around like a flailing idiot raises the game. And the fit fist clencher just tore his shirt off, which is nice.

NORWAY - FINAL SONG! Oh good o, I am a bit hungry. Hope this post isn't too long and rambling. I'll add in pics and edit and stuff when I get back to work on Tues. 'You might be saying ooooh! I don't wanna be lonely' trills the Norwegian Mariah Carey. 'Yes.' says R with suprising sincereity.

Right, time for a break. Oh no, they've brought on 'Serbian Basketball Legend' Vlad Devotch. Now break.

UPDATE: So Russia won, the UK did pretty crap and now everyone will hark on about political voting, eastern europe blah blah blah. Snore. Maybe if the UK actually entered something we do comparatively well - like R&B pop - and didn't just do either anthems or kitsch, and maybe if anyone in the UK gave two shits about Eurovision BEFORE the results were in, then we would do well.

Announcement: Blogging Eurovision 2008

2008-05-23T13:05:00.005Z

The laughter, the tears, the smurfs: yup, that's right! Following on from my vaguely popular liveblogs of the Brit Awards, tomorrow evening I shall be blogging Eurovision*! Admittedly not all of it, one condition for me having company whilst doing so is that we don't have to watch the intermniable scoring, but for the performances themselves I shall be on the frontline, valiantly watching 40 odd songs about 'sexi babi's and 'luff eternal' so you don't have to! But you should anyway because it's bloody brilliant....

..occasionally literally.

*Not totally 'live' it has to be said. Tune in from about 11pm to see my report on the whole glorious shebang

Korea Koolness

2008-05-22T13:32:00.005Z

Remember when I previously blogged about these people who had turned kids doodles into real professional cartoons?

Well Korea (yes the WHOLE country) has gone one better and turned kids drawings into real life. Supacool! (click pix to see bigger)

Biche's Book of the Day

2008-05-21T14:36:00.005Z

.. no, not really. When I stumbled across this I had to pick mine to remember who Lesley Brain was. Thank god for Amazon and their insightful balanced reviewers:

"This is an account of Lesley's time in the Big Brother house last summer and the road that took her there. (Lesley is the grandmother and WI member who calmed down with a strawberry.)
There are lots of laugh-out-loud momentsbut also some sharp insights into the BB experience, including the audition process and what it was like to live with the other contestants (who can forget Ziggy, Chanelle, or Charley?).
Throughout, Lesley draws parallels with the original world of Big Brother in Orwell's "1984". My only complaint is that the 168 pages seemed to fly by, which left this reader wanting a little more. However, the stories are very well told and hopefully we will see a lot more from Lesley in future. Overall, a must read for fans of the show, and plenty for others to enjoy too. "

Well thank YOU, Claire Horton from Surrey. And here I was thinking it was a shameless cash-in from a Big Brother quitter, hypocritically criticising all the other fame hungry wannabees who dared to stick to their guns. And what is she doing on the front cover? Joyfully shelling a pistachio? Reading the smallest joke book in the world? Tearing a tiny person limb from limb in glee?

Much as I like to get on my high horse and ride around dusty Amazon planes, herding reviwers and shouting YEEHAH (oh and I DO) my bookcase is not entirely worthy and Big Brother free...

Look right, my mum had just popped into Waterstones to use the loo and he was there doing a signing and no one was there and she felt sorry for him, yeah?*

But yes, that does mean I not only own a copy but a SIGNED copy.
Why I should just retire now, I'm made.

Edit: I love how it looks like Nick is looking up at Lesley going 'mmm maybe she will drop the pistachio shell my way so I can suck it for sustinence'

*trufax

Indulge Me...

2008-05-20T14:30:00.009Z

Massive geek that I am, I have been attending a night class in Creative Writing. Whilst things have not gone quite as hoped (that everyone would fall to their knees and proclaim me one of the greatest undiscovered writers of the 21st Century), the teacher is nice, and it's not ALL middle aged women. That said, regardless of age most of them are complete dullards - albeit accomplished ones who seem to have unending ways to describe clouds and skies and trees and shit* . It is good to have an ego kicking reminder that I am utterly crap at spelling and grammar - lord know I forget, being my own editor, publisher and worst enemy - but the public lesson infront of the Weatherfolk is a bit galling.

For example, it took me two days to write the below poem. And, after reading it out to a class of twenty odd people, about a minute to realise that I have a very weak grasp on the concept of syllables.

The Demise of Commerce (and abuse of 9 syllable lines)
by Biche.

Dusty glued plants in a strip lit mall
Scents thick and sweet creep from the Food Hall
Smooth blue cream towers of china rise
Flapping scarlet sale signs sieze the eyes
Shop owners haggle, scowling, degraded
Carved dragons loom large, claws chipped and faded
Gold plastic glints, yet bright in the gloom
But darkness and still come first of June
Oriental City turns into a tomb.

Quite.

*not literally shit

All Types of Amazing

2008-05-18T19:47:00.003Z

spotted in Weston Super Mare

Colindale - A Photo Essay.

2008-05-18T14:47:00.014Z

As Oriental City is closing it's doors for good on 1st June 2008, R, the Bruv and I decided to make one last pilgimage to the citadel of all that is cheap and tacky and Chinese. Unfortunately due to a mix up we didn't have a car, so had to journey on public transport. This neccesitated a short walk through Colindale, a place so bleak I was moved to take a lot of photos on my phone, then faff around town for ages today trying to find a cable so I could share them all with you, dear reader.
The waiting room for the local cab office...

In fact, alfresco seating is very much derigur in Colindale it would seem.

This house has ideas above it's station. Colindalia? Nope, sorry love, you still live in an area which sounds like something you wash peas in.

Still, they have their pride in these parts. Don't want no foreign bins coming over here, nicking our rubbish... (kudos to the Bruv for that one)

The window of a long closed Bookies. I like how there is a bit of the base relief missing, like once someone lost a load of money and punched the wall in sheer RAGE. Colindale is kind of emotionless these days.

Yet another example of al fresco seating, this time outside Dixy Chicken. It's hard to show the true surrealist nature of this bench, but it was built either by someone with a Dali fixation or a spirit level that was out by about 45 degrees.

The sad fact is that when Oriental City closes, this will be Colindale's claim to fame. The Bruv was sent here after he trod on a dog in Thailand ('It was a black dog sleeping in the middle of a dark road. Really he was asking for it') It's proximity to Dixy Chicken is a bit worrying.

Obama says 'Happy Weekend Bitches'

2008-05-16T15:49:00.004Z

I feels ya man...

In other news I am occasionally blogging, in heavily edited form (at least until I work out how to spell and use words of a non expletive variety) at http://www.themake.co.uk/. Check it yo, or Obama will cry.

Lucy Pinder Harry Potter Sex Adios Beijing Olympics iphone GTA4 etc

2008-05-14T16:03:00.005Z

What compells people to visit SOB rather than the billions of other sites on the net? Why did YOU come here? According to Google Analytics, people came here after searching for

Slimatea - my accidental misspelling of 'Slimmertea' had rather depressingly brought nigh on 50 people to this site in the last year. Most stayed for less than a second, but given that the post in question involved a story about me and accidental laxative abuse, I'm not too sad.

Robyn Foster and Max Gogarty - Hmm proves that being topical and not talking about music videos from the early 90's does occasionally pay off.

Robert Worely Dorian Corey - literally no idea who they are. Guess I was drunk that day. Ah yes! Upon reflection that was the story about the Drag Queen from Paris is Burning. Check that out actually, tis quite interesting.

Lorne Spicer tits - a rare breed of bird saught out by 4 people over the last year.

Other searches:

* Horrific Painting * Mark Owen Wandsworth * Vegan Prawns * Cider Vinegar Penis * Speeches about Chicken * Vogueing Competitions * Bridget Jones "wetting herself" * "Only a tiny skirt" * "Pick My Fingers" * "Sushi Fingers" wet * Boss Eyes * Lolyoaks * Love Corruption*

Well that's me summed up then!

Who Needs Kievs?

2008-05-14T10:30:00.004Z

I wasn't going to bother commenting on this, but then the editors obviously noticed and moved the two features apart on the homepage. Thankfully they kept true to Granuaid form and didn't correct the archive...

Americana, Bees, Chris Cornell

2008-05-13T17:58:00.004Z

While noodling around the internet (trying to work out whether I had accidentally plagurized the bee baby from the header of my page in a t shirt design)I rediscovered Blind Melon. My Dad had the album and I clearly remember him likening me to the similarly aged Bee Girl. This was unintentionally hurtful, as although he thought she was hilarious and enchantingly cute, she was also quite obviously as similarly rotund and ungainly to his own little progeny.

Anyway, the video is below, but further than a little weight related nostalgic moment, it made me pine for early 90's americana in general. It was around that time that I first discovered music, and MTV, thanks to visiting my Dad's work and raiding his CD's (new format sent him a little bonkers, hence all the popular hits of the day) and I remember thinking that music videos were possibly the coolest things ever.

Things were simpler back then, people smiled, there were no stylists (it would seem), the colours were brighter and it was fine to dance around like complete idiots, as aptly demonstrated by REM:

Barring the fact that such videos mean there are photos of me in existence where I am wearing John Lennon sunglasses and a backwards flatcap, I think it's a shame that things inevitably progressed as they have. These days (and I am aware that I sound about fifty right now) music videos are unbiquitous and for the most part, identikit. Most involve dead eyed models in thongs gyrating around in some conveluted choreography or acting like pieces of meat over a disco beat. No wonder little girls are growing up fast and getting complexes about their appearance! Even the Bee Girl, my own little eight year old doppleganger, finds happiness at the end of 4 minutes and 50 seconds, in a wonderful garden where people accept her for who she is. How many happy fat girls do you see in music videos these days?

Anyway, I couldn't finish this post without embedding the video that kind of sums up my whole MTV worship era. Moody dudes on a hillside, the most advanced camera trickery of the day, wind machines and warped-yet-slightly cliche imagery to stimulate impressionable young minds. Utterly creepy and fantastic.

Even though this vid (along with the dancing chicken in the Peter Gabriel video) totally scared the shit out of me out at the time, I'd let my daughter watch them over Pussycat Dolls any day of the week.

Alfred Hitchcock Was Onto Something...

2008-05-13T11:30:00.005Z

... following on from Sunday's post it appears my fears were not ill founded.

London Lite 12th May 2008

'a pelican gives a friendly welcome'?? I think you will find he is hanging out with his crew on a park bench, probably menacing passersby with squalks, mock fights and annoying ringtones. This newspaper clipping last night confirms my wost fears that the ASBO Pelicans have indeed invaded and are now causing mild peril up and down the land.

Should I be found dead in a mangled feathery heap tomorrow, I suggest you check their mobiles, as they will have doubtlessly taken me out in a happy wing slapping incident.

Marauding Young Seabirds

2008-05-11T21:34:00.008Z

See items 2 and 4 from the BBC's top news stories. Either it is a very slow day or the pelicans have finally hit puberty and have started to hang around in gangs, causing trouble. Why by tomorrow they might be throwing chips at Grannies down the arcade..

Edit: They are now the top two items of news! The Burmese Government and the murderer of that 16 year old boy WILL be happy..

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Hmmmmm

2008-05-11T20:09:00.007Z

Childhood film nostalgia is a funny thing. I'm currently sitting here with my brother, watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, one of our all time favorite films from the days of yore. We both remembered exactly what would happen when: 'Oh yeah then they go off the cliff in a dinghy' 'He drives because he has boxes stuck to his shoes' etc, what we both didn't realise is *ahem* quite how racist it is..

Now I know Indian cuisine is a tad different to chips and peas, but monkey brains, beetles and snakes? What region is that from? And who knew Indians in turbans (Sikhs?) who worship Shiva (Hindus?) also spend their time sacrificing humans by tearing out their still beating hearts?

Then again maybe we're just being unduly sensitive and PC because our uncle is Indian, and although he covers everything in chilli sauce and is want to make horrible phlegmy noises in the bathroom, I have yet to see him drink from a skull or attempt to extract my brother's still beating heart when he forgets to flush the loo.

It is still a great action film though, brain and social consciense set far aside... much better than the Goonies, which everyone else in the world ever watched as a bairn, but is curiously absent from my and my brother's collective memory. Either some awful psychological event happened to us that afternoon, or our parents had the taste to not expose us to a load of shrieking yank brats looking for treasure. Hmmm that said, it's kind of hard to take a moral high ground when we gobbled up images of colonial India which would make Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai etc's heads spin. Although Harrison Ford was very fit back then and there is only one shrieking stereotyped child...

Edit: My brother would like to make it clear that he has never forgotten to flush the toilet ever. Even though hardly anyone who reads this blog knows who he is, and a quick straw poll of those who do suggests that even though he never forgets to flush the loo, he certainly looks like someone who might. Conclusion: Brother of Biche needs to stop lacing his trainers with string and buy a jacket that doesn't have 'anti capitalista' glued to the back with PVA glue.

Dragonball Squee

2008-05-08T15:39:00.007Z

Why yes, your eyes do not deceive you, it is indeed a statue of an ejeculating Manga boy, looking eerily like something out of Dragonball Z if the programme included the cumshots that go with the characters dubious 'gnerrrrrrrrrrrr!' 'urrrrrrhg!' noises they spend half each episode making.

Is it art? Is it one of those things you can buy in Akihabra for about £3? Is it every parent's worst nightmare?

These are all vaguely relevant questions. But more to the point, how much would you pay for it?

How about £2,000,000?

No Joke or a Lie

RAMBOOOOOOOOOO

2008-05-08T11:22:00.002Z

Interesting fact: Steven Berkoff only took the role in Rambo II because when his agent told him about it over the phone he misheard and thought it was a biography of the 19th Century poet.

Crap Graffitti 4 Evah

2008-05-07T14:03:00.002Z

I do love it, it's so pathetically British it makes me proud.

Holy Screensplits Batman!

2008-05-05T19:58:00.003Z

Ooh I've been looking for an excuse to post something about the new Batman film for a while now... they have been doing some amazing viral work for it, which is hugely elaborate and most pointless as the film is clearly going to be huger than huge and would have been before poor Heath popped it anyway...

But I digress, the official trailer for the Dark Knight came out late last week, but after only about 24 hours the obsessive viral addicts already noticed that it seemed slightly familiar... them clever marketing people have done it again!

The film above splits the screen between the new trailer and the original 1989 Batman trailer. Observe. Genius.

Amusing Headlines

2008-05-05T13:05:00.005Z

Giant Bee Attacks Three - my brother told me this 1.25 inch terror. I guess it is from some local Nottingham rag. If anyone now nicks this headline as a band name I WILL expect royalties.

Mile High Mandy got Randy on Brandy - my personal favorite, it was from the Sun when some woman shagged a stranger on a BA flight.

'118 Wife' to Run Marathon - This exclusive from the Hornsey Journal revealed that the wife of one of the men in the 118 advert was running the London Marathon. She confirmed that although he was supporting her, he was not going to turn up in costume to do so.

Between a Rock and a Beard Face - apparently the Sun's take on the Northern Rock Crisis, when Brandson was considering buying it.

Wham Bam Flash in the Pan - George Michael gets arrested for exposing his bits in a public loo

Chuck a Khan - Hugh Grant splits with Jemima Khan

A Short Grumble

2008-05-05T12:53:00.005Z

I still live near my old primary school. Back in the dark days when I went there, our playground consisted of a large bit of empty tarmac, a bench and a small wall. I think one time we spent a full week jumping off the small wall and attempting to grab this one leaf off an overhead tree. Happy days.

Yesterday I went past the old place on the bus - dear god! It is a riot of colour and so full of adverture playground contraptions that you could barely run a meter before tripping over some stimulus or another! No wonder kids are hugely obese and have such weak imaginations that if you ask them to think about a pink elephant they will pause, look confused and then look up google image search on their mobile.

Well tsk, I say...if my kids go to a school like that, I am going to take them out twice a day and force them to run around an empty car park and make their own fun. Yeah they will be a bit eccentric, skinny, and prone to talking to themselves, but frankly I would rather have a Holden Caufield than a horrible cabbage for a child.

Chicken Nugget

2008-05-05T12:14:00.005Z

The rather good Deceiver.com has many examples of why Peta are a load of idiotic hypocrits, but it's amusing to know that animal activists on this side of the pond are also susceptible to moments of brainlessness.

A family friend has an allotment. At this allotment, several plot holders clubbed together to buy some chickens, and being a load of middle class liberalistic enviromentals they endevoured to look after them in the most Jamie Oliverite fashion possible. However, in spite of all the organic grain, fresh water and clean hay, they still turn up one day to find out that someone has stolen the chickens and left a big 'Animal Liberation Front' banner in their place. Strangely enough, the suspicion falls on the one allotment owner who is a member of ALF and also happens to drive a white van like the one that was seen near the coop on the night in question.

It does make you wonder how exactly one 'liberates chickens' - being fat, slow and unable to fly very far, they are not exactly born surivors, particularly not in the Tiddles and Pusskin strewn enviroment of North London...

Oh, except that this is the kicker in this whole tale - these chickens technically were survivors, being that they had already been 'liberated' from a battery farm in the first place by the kind allotmenteers!

Idiots - 1, Chickens - 0

Oh Noez! Eet ees the Recession!

2008-04-30T15:04:00.009Z

Being brought up in the affluent 80's and 90's my only knowledge of recessions and stock market crashes came from the history classes I ignored because I was too busy txting people on my Nokia with it's one changeable cover or writing 'Spice Girls are Slags' on the back page of my exercise book. (how many people did that sentence alienate?)

This meant that when everyone started wittering on about recessions in the media I wasn't too concerned, because as I saw it, so long as we don't have to queue up for bread, fill wheelbarrows with fivers or dance the Charleston, it ain't that bad.

But wait! The warning signs have already started to emerge and infiltrate my self absorbed little world!

*First Direct now take bloody ages to answer their phone. Occasionally - typically when I NEED to speak to them when I have done something stupid like skipping off to eat my M&S sandwiches without first taking my card back from the cashier - I have been put on hold!

*Cadbury's chocolate bars now cost about 50p. But that could just be the greedy newsagent.

*The flatmate goes mad when she sees a good offer at the supermarket and we end up with 4 tubs of Flora Omega 3 margarine in our fridge. This encroaches dangerously on my olives and teeth whitening gel space.

*People at work start attempting to flog their gaudy Nike Air Force Ones on the intranet, as in these austere times they no longer want to look like a feckless neon teenager and instead dress in black like normal 30 year olds.

*More people quit smoking and in doing so eat more Kettle Chips to build up valuable body fat for when the food runs out. *ahem*

*It pours with rain the whole fucking time. It's impossible to have a recession when it is beautiful and sunny out, so thanks to greedy US banks and their sub prime motgages I am still wearing three layers plus a coat when scurrying between work and the Underground. This is a pathetic fallacy at work, and I won't have the weather centre or fables about 'April showers' tell me otherwise.

So whatistodo? Using the same line of thinking that lead me to ponder what in my flat could be made into a raft during the floods last year*, I have decided to take affirmative action. I am not going to buy stupid trainers, I'll keep that one cigarette I have left for future bartering NOT for when I am a bit drunk on Friday, and I'll put a new lock on the flat door to stop starving neighbours from breaking in and stealing my olives.

*The dinner table with lots of cling film wound round the legs with my guitar for a paddle

Now With Added Bullshit

2008-04-29T17:38:00.005Z

I like to think I am a relatively intellegent female - I have a degree, a good job, I regularly read novels that don't come free with magazines and watch BBC 4; yet for some reason, all this vanishes the minute I stumble through the doors at Boots.
Take this facewash I bought yesterday:

Biche in Boots - Ooh! Clean Detox Detoxifying Exfoliation Wash. That sounds incredibly impressive and effective. Two of the words are very long and scientific sounding.

Biche at home - Two of the words are basically the same! And clean is not a million miles away from detox as it is, when we are talking about face scrub opposed to crystal meth... so what we have here is Clean Clean Clean Scrub Wash. So it's basically liquid soap with rough bits in it.

Biche in Boots - Detox Detoxifying? Huzzah! This super product is going to do oh so much more than simply get all the gunk off my face and stop me looking like a crack addled panda after a night out, it will rid my face of all the evil poisons!

Biche at home - What evil poisons? I've never felt the need to detox my face before, how will this product with over 30 ingredients inlcuding 'methyl gluceth-20' and 'ammonium polyacryloyldimethyl' help me detox my visage?

Biche at Boots - Ooh it has 'exfoliating particles to purify pores'! Good good, I do have skanky blackheads.

Biche at home - I want to get rid of my blackheads, not absolve them of all their sins. What does purify actually mean? Is it just a clever way to say 'yeah it won't get RID of the blackheads but you wouldn't buy it if we said that'?

Biche at Boots - The blurb says 'a daily facial cleanser which eliminates impurities (pollution, makeup) from the surface of the skin'.
Well I do work in central London where the sky is low and yellow, and yup, I do wear a bit of foundation and mascara unless I'm really hungover.

Biche at home - If these terrible impurities are simply dirt and makeup, a bloody bar of soap could remove them! And if we are just talking about the surface of the skin, then I could theoretically scrape my face with a toothbrush and eliminate the mingy surface of my skin.

Biche at Boots - It says 'gently apply a hazelnut sized portion of Clean Detox Detoxifying Exfoliation Wash' This coupled with the picture of the plant on the front makes me think I am buying something lovely and natural.

Biche at home - I have no idea how big a hazelnut is. I only ever see them when I bite into my bar of Fruit and Nut.

In conclusion: It doesn't matter how much Doris Lessing or postcolonial discourse I read, when confronted by cheap things to make me beautifuller I turn into a weak willed silly bit of skirt.

"And then Snoop Dogg Strolled out the Fridge Singing in German"

2008-04-22T21:25:00.003Z

..and other things you couldn't make up.

Photo of the Day - The Hair Bear Bunch

2008-04-22T20:37:00.002Z

Who knew that if an Ewok and and the contents of a hoover had a baby it would look like David Bowie in Labyrinth?

If the new Gladiators isn't like this I for one will be sorely disappointed....

2008-04-20T19:48:00.007Z

These are the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (G.L.O.W) stars of the euponymous 1980's TV show. Yeah, it was basically like WWF but with laydees; 'Stallone's Sweethearts' the goodie good girls lead by 'pitbull with a facelift' Jackie Stallone (yes HER, awful Big Brother lady and who knew? Worst rapper in the world ever) and 'Kitty's Killers' the bad girls lead by some fat old woman who is probably dead now.

Go to the wikipedia site to read the hilarious descriptions of the girls, their fantastic names and their hilarious feuds, then go to Dlisted.com because I got the video from there, and if it wasn't for Michael K I might never have discovered this wonderful little gem.

I particularly love that because this was 1980's USA there were wrestlers called Palestinia and Ninotchka, naturally the mortal enemies of blonde blue eyed Americana. Oh, to be ten years older and American so I might have had the chance to witness this landmark of television!

Wiki

Dlisted

Edit: Having just seen THIS video, it would appear that Sky One is making efforts to capture the irony obsessed hipster audience. This ruse will most likely fail as Sky One is a naff cheeseball of a channel (and not even in a so-bad-it's good way so much as a 'meh, what's on Living? way'), but luckily there are vast swathes of idiot students who get high on nostaligic shit, and the marketers can easily twist dem demographics to be one and the same. Oh yeah, and the kids will love it too.

Thoughts on Adverts

2008-04-20T18:46:00.003Z

Yes, yes I know it's been a while (although not as long as I feared it had been) since I have written on this thing... I've been busy at work and so have probably lost all my loyal following (hello you two!) but oh well, I'll keep wittering into the void and pretend that there are people all over the world hanging on my every word.

I think last time I started blogging again it was inspired by some impotent rage I was taking out on the poor tv, and this time is not much different... recently several adverts have Got My Goat, so I have returned victorious to smash them down to size.

Case 1: BASF Group.
A man climbs up a glacier. He falls! But wait! His rope saves him. An invisible rope. This rope is BASF who rather self importantly call themselves THE chemical company, and thanks to their 'invisible contribution' there is a visible result.

Biche says: Wait, why are they THE chemical company? Aren't Glaxo Smith Cline a chemical company? Call me naive, but in this capitalist opportunistic climate, I somehow doubt that there is only one chemical company. This means they must really mean 'da' like 'you da man' and frankly that's just embarrassing. The more pressing issue however is the very point of the advert - invisible contribution? Then why the hell are you shouting about it three times an hour? That's like me repeatedly announcing that I direct debit monthly money to Amnesty International while in the pub and expecting praise and adulation every single time and not the 'shut up smugface, what are you trying to prove? Get a round in' that I would receive.

Case 2 - Frontline
Oh noes! The dog has the flees! Worrawegonnado?? Why, get Frontline flea repellent of course, 'The Gesture of Love you can Trust'

Biche says: This advert was obviously written by someone so jaded by 'dinner at a place with forks = putting out' that she now lives alone with hundreds of flea free cats.

Oh okay I had more, but now I've been distracted by Bear Grylls twatting around a Saharan salt plain with a urine soaked t shirt on his head, so I will leave you all for now safe in the knowledge that soon I will be back with some...funny...stuff....yeah?

Do you get the feeling some contries are no longer treating Eurovision with the reverence it deserves?

2008-03-29T00:14:00.003Z

Observe Spain and Ireland's entires:

It's all a little...

don't you think?

Random Wikipedia Factoid of the Day

2008-03-19T19:21:00.003Z

"Erica attended Robert Fulton Junior High in Van Nuys, California. During her teenage years, Eleniak became a regular on the San Fernando Valley party circuit and she began to use alcohol and drugs regularly.^[2] Steve Ferguson, a quadriplegic who socialised in the same circles as Eleniak, helped curtail her problem by introducing her to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1988 and helping her through her detoxification.^[3] Eleniak dated Ferguson for a while and there was talk of an engagement, but the relationship ended and her mother, Iris, ended up marrying Ferguson's father instead.^{[4]"

Huh.

Sorry, I have been really crap on the ole blog of late...no real excuses, just feels as if my brain has turned into a wheezing moribund bit of roadkill. Keep checking though, one day soon I will write something so inspired it will blow your socks off and people will quote it for years to come, causing 'Biche' to go down in history as an adjective for 'something really ace'}

Love Is...

2008-03-11T17:10:00.002Z

...nicking stuff off THIS website!

Who Watches the Watchmen?

2008-03-06T21:07:00.005Z

Geek that I deep down am (well, scratch the surface really) I was quite excited by these photos of Ozymandias, the Nite Owl and the Comedian from the upcoming film of Alan Moore's Watchmen. I was somehow drawn into a massive long ramble about graphic novels just last week, where I waxed lyical about the complex storylines, the art and the skill at being able to convey a wide range of emotions or a whole backstory in just a frame to some family friends. Unfortunately for all my oratorial olympics, every time I paused for breath they would respond 'oh so they are like cartoons right?' or 'like Garfield?' until I imagined a graphic frame of me howling with frustration, causing the walls to shake, fists clenched and face upturned. It would be from above so you saw my upturned face with gritted teeth and eyes desparing, and I am flanked by the two well meaning family friends, one of whom has taken a Peanuts anthology from the shelf and is gesturing to it as if to say 'like this?' The other one would be wearing a cardigan and holding a mug saying 'Abergavenny Jazz Festival 1999' Don't you wish I could draw huh? Anyway, I really hope Watchmen will be good, Moore's other works that have been filmified range from V for Vendetta (v good) and From Hell (alright, but ruined by some shocking accents but saved by Johnny Depp) to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (poo, dispite the presence of Stuart Townsend) One thing I wonder is how they are going to film the ending, which has New York being destroyed by a nuclear bomb for a greater good*. Mind you, they did Cloverfield, so I think Hollywood has got over the whole 'thousands of New Yorkers being killed by terrorists seven years ago' thing, those brave resilient Los Angeles producers...

*Well, in a rather large nutshell, but I don't want to ruin the book for people who haven't read it and really really should.

Hot Dating Tipz from MSN and the Biche

2008-03-05T10:43:00.007Z

Okay, I admit it, I was a bit bored at work (at 9.47, which is almost a new record) so when an article called 'How To Tell if They Fancy You' popped up on MSN Today while I was checking my emails, I decided to check it out.*
Quite how anyone who works at MSN has a boyfriend is beyond me, either that or they are so paranoid about it that they have decided to write an article which will deem anyone who follows it to a life of desperate singledom, and thus make the flirting pool a bit smaller.

Below are their fabulous tips, followed by my own interpretation of their supposed 'signs'**

Your date says your name more than usual.Maybe your date says your first and last name, like, “So, Michael Stevens, you up for a night cap after dinner?” Or maybe your date says just your first name three times, like “Kirsty, Kirsty, Kirsty.” Either way, it can be a sign that your date feels so much chemistry, he or she can’t help but connect with your closest possession: your name.

Biche says: If someone says your name a lot it is because they have a coterie of other 'birds' on the go, and the repetition is their way of keeping themselves in check so they don't call you 'Sabrina' or 'Dave' halfway through the meal. If someone says your name three times, like 'Kirsty Kirsty 'Kirsty' they are probably shaking their head in sad disbelief.

Your Date squints at you

When one person fancies another, they’ll give each other a sweet little squint, usually followed by a smile. What gives? It’s an unconscious bit of body language that shows the person is searching for more info about you.

Biche says: When one person wants to pretend the other is someone else, they will give a sweet little squint, usually followed by a smile. This is because through half shut eyes you almost resemble someone vaguely attractive, and when this is achieved your date can happily pretend they are on a hot date at an expensive bistro, not stuck in a Bella Italia with someone who sticks breadsticks up their nose for entertainment.

Your date asks the “why” and “how” questions.

During dinner conversation, any polite date will ask you factual things about your family like, “So, do you have brothers and sisters?” So it’s not necessarily a sign they feel chemistry with you. It is a sign of chemistry, however, if they delve deeper and ask more probing questions. As in, “So, how did you get interested in accounting anyway?” And “Why did you decide to move all the way down south?”

Biche says: During dinner any polite date will ask 'why' and 'how' questions of a deep nature, such as 'so why did you down twelve shots and dance on the bar without any knickers on?' and 'how were you not arrested when you kicked the barman in the face?'

This is what is known as a morbid curiosity.

Your date gets quiet midway through your time together.

Rather than taking your date’s silence as a sign your date has lost interest, it could actually be the opposite: Your date may be feeling such a pull toward you that he or she is lost in thought about it. “Sometimes, a person feels such a strong attraction that instead of nodding and following the conversation, he or she is just contemplating you,” says Wood.

Biche says: If your date falls silent it could be that they are feeling such a strong attraction to you that they cannot speak. Then again, it could be because they're not sure how to respond to 'I mean yeah, so I gave blowjobs for 50p or a can of coke when I was fifteen, but then that's normal right?' or they have regressed so far into their expensive bistro fantasy that they have actually fallen asleep.

You hear “you’re” a lot.

If your date says to you, “You’re great” or “You’re so funny” or “You’re so cool!” or “You’re something else…” then you’re very lucky! Personalising your admiration or approval of a date means a lot; it’s a strong sign of attraction, while statements like, “That’s great” or “That’s funny” don’t mean as much

Biche says: If your date says 'You're so great! You're so funny! You're so cool!' it is a strong sign that are you are wooing a ten year old girl, and that's paedophilia yo..

Your date gives you a token of the evening.

If your date gives you something you can hold onto and look at later, chances are they’re feeling chemistry. Jennifer’s date once picked up a pack of matches from the restaurant they were in and said, “Here, for you.”

Biche says: If your date gives you something to hold onto and look at later, such as the bill, chances are that you have accidentally mistaken that bloke who sells the Big Issue outside the restaurant as your date.

* Out of idle interest yeah? I need no help working out who fancies me. EVERYONE fancies me. Including me. Well, mostly me to be honest...

** TOTALLY not based on my own experiences. I asked for a can of coke and a bag of crisps.