Bollocks, Tears and Gold...

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

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

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

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

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**

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

...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

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

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...

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...

*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

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

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

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)

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

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'

*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)

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

Here is P Diddy treading in a poo.

This is why you are fat.

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.