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

One for the family album:

"Chipppth!"
Just bizarre:

Wheres My Bees at?

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!

Dearly Departed, Now with Omega 3

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

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

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.

Colindale - A Photo Essay.

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.

Chicken Nugget

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

R.I.P Lucozade Clock

Ever one with my finger on the pulse, I only realised this weekend that the Lucozade Clock, that wonderful glittering sign that you were entering London, is no more.

It used to stand near where the M4 motorway became the A4 (I think) and for me it indicated not only the time, but the fact that my doubtlessly boring as hell journey was almost over as we had officially entered London (although residents of Brentford may disagree)

It made Lucozade look almost like a glamourous sexy drink to be enjoyed with your friends...in the Odeon Bar*, not the neon orange sticky liquid in the plastic bottle enjoyed by fat people and MEN who like to define themselves by their fizzy pop, that it actually is.

Well yes, as of 2004 it was no more.. I personally think it is a conspiracy, as even though it was 50 odd years old it completely overshadowed all the big posh skyscrapers that surrounded it with it's tinkling bulbs and time/date function. But then I think everything is a conspiracy, from when the London Lite seller doesn't offer me a paper to when I graze my finger opening a tub of houmous with one of those tricky plastic breakable tabs on the lid.

*and if you get THAT little reference then give yourself a kudos

I Like My Celebrities Next to Increasily Irrelevent Stock Photos

So Holymoly is no longer showing photos shot by paparazzi while they actually physically chase celebrities. Good, says I.
Mr Holymoly's point (for those of ye who have not wasted your morning piddling around the guardian website) was that several celebrities - most notably Britney Spears and the Winehouse - have been completely hounded to the point of madness by the paps, and that we should not encourage this.

I agree with him on sentiment, but it has to be said.... Britney is a flipping retarded bi polar taste vaccum who doesn't take her meds and does nothing but drive around LA baiting the paps, and Amy, well, up to a week ago she was a smackhead who staggered around the streets of London covered in nothing but a bra and scabs in the middle of winter. Now I might be unduly cynical, but it wasn't actually the paparazzi who caused either of these (literal) walking disasters so much as their dodgy drug pushing fame hungry boyfriends.

But then if the boyfriends-cum-managers-cum-scum are the tapeworm felling the camels, the paps are still the vultures that hover around the moribund beasts looking for opportunity, and that can obviously never be condoned. For every 'meh' photo of some famous brat getting into a car or walking down a street that you look at for 0.0000032 seconds before scrolling down/turning the page, there is some loser who stood around in the cold for hours waiting to take it. Not to mention when in the case of Amy it is more like: 'ooh look she's covered in blood, this pic will be worth hundreds. Maybe thousands if I trip her up!'
How utterly shitty, scummy, boring and pathetic.

Heeh I say this, and I will blatantly have a child who grows up to be a pap. Mind you (if we think along such karmic lines) I am either going to have a child who is a pap, a Scientologist or a singing Turkey puppet from Ireland, and frankly I think I might as well buy a copy of L Ron's autobiography now, as at least that way I won't be jailed for infanticide*.

So yeah, I have decided: The Speeches of Biches is also going to be completely pap free from now on. *cough*notthatitwasn'tbefore*cough*

I do have to point out this is not just because of the above moral wibbles, the amount of boring photos of Britney in shite clothes buying a Starbucks has diluted the usually ace outputs of gossip sites like Dlisted and Perezhilton. A fat retard with cold sores buying a coffee is not so much news as something I can see outside Oxford Circus tube at any time of the day, and if I went to Camden I could get both that and a smackhead rockabilly staggering around in bloodied ballet pumps for my tube fare.

Likewise and less specifically, photos of pissed off people getting into cars are incredibly boring unless you happen to be a fan of the rear interiors of posh vehicles, or perhaps like looking at slightly crossed eyed drunk people on their way home, in which case there is always Carcraft and The N134 bus respectively.

So in conclusion: Pap shots are like porn bought out of someone's car boot round the back of the pub - utterly dull, bad quality, explotative, lining the pockets of scumheads AND makes you feel slightly grubby. Best to stay in the warm, spend your pennies on beer then go home to watch Hollyoaks in the City**


*The Biche would like to attest she is not some mad harpy desperate for a chile***, but she did see AM's scan of her baby boy this morning so got a bit gooey.
** The Biche has never watched a full episode of Hollyoaks in the City. Or bought porn from a pub carpark incidentally...

*** thats 'chile' pronounced 'chyel' oh ye who would dare accuse me of spelling mistakes or for longing after a south american country

Chinese New Year Themed Pathetic News Stories of The Day

A rat was given the kiss of life by an animal-loving policeman.
The poorly rodent was spotted by PC Adam Westall while on his beat.
'It ran out in front of me and stopped and looked up at me with its beady eyes,' PC Westall said.

'I cocooned him in my hands and he gave a shudder and fell unconscious. I tried to revive him by blowing into his whiskered nose and rubbing his belly.'

The rat did came round and he took it to a pet store in Clacton, Essex, but sadly it later died.

The Metro

AND

THE RSPCA is appealing for information after a collapsed and dying pet rat was abandoned in Somerset.
The white male rat, which was in a very poor condition, was found by a member of public in a cage on a wall in South Street, Yeovil on the morning of Friday 25 May. The member of public took the animal to a nearby shop, who in turn alerted the RSPCA.
The RSPCA collected the animal and rushed him to a local vet, where it was decided that he would not recover and so he was put to sleep to end his suffering. The male rat was dying from the result of an untreated viral problem and had probably been suffering from diarrhoea and been in a poor condition for a number of days.

RSPCA newsletter

I have no idea who this woman is, but she pops up if you put 'sad rat' into google images and it made me chortle

:( Fallen Idols

It's such a bizarre sociological..paradox.. when someone famous dies. Lots of people feel very deeply affected by it and are genuinely sad, yet the main reason we liked them is purely because they were good looking. Ultimately. Which is maddeningly shallow.
That said, it is weird when an old teenage crush dies. Almost nostalgic. And what with poor old Heath and Brad Renfro last week, Christian Slater and the lead singer of the Seahorses (ahem) had better watch their backs..that's all I'm saying

Death in Santaland

Just watched part of the most randomly bizarre is-this-a-massive-hoax documentary on More4. 'Death in Santaland' (part of the Travels with My Camera series) is about a town in Alaska called North Pole where thanks to good old American cashing-in, it appears to be Christmas for most of the year. The blurb from the website as follows:

"In April 2006 six 13-year-olds were arrested in North Pole for planning a mass murder. They were part of a gang of 15 'outsiders' who had drawn up a hitlist and were going to take guns and knives into class to settle some scores.

They had planned to disable the school's power and telephone systems before carrying out the shootings and then escaping to Anchorage on the train. But they were foiled when the boy who was supposed to bring the weapons failed to show up."

Okay, so far so serious documentary about current social issue.

BUT .

Apparently one of the reasons the kids were so disgruntled is that every year thousands of kid's santa letters (you know, bad writing, addressed to SANTA, NORF POLE') arrive in the town and they get the kids at North Pole Middle School to act as elves (literally, dress up and everything) for a month and reply to as many of the letters as possible, presumerbly in place of reading books or learning about history, maths or any other of those crazy things other schools do.

Now this obviously means lots of kids in North Pole realise not only does Santa not exist, but they have to purpurgate this falsehood to lots of other kids all over the world. To a rational adult like the hideously twee teacher they interviewed this obviously means giving hope and joy to lots of poor kids. To a 13 year old this is SPREADING LIES AND THERE IS NO MAGIC IN LIFE AND EVERYTHING IS FALSE AND THERE IS NO GOD.

Oh come on, we have all been there.

What also suprised me is that they even bother to send letters back. Man, if I had known that actually sending a letter rather than stuffing it up a chimney would have warranted a response, my childhood, nay life would have been very different. I would probably still believe in Santa, fairies, God and the little baby Jesus. I would probably roam Oxford Street banging a drum and blessing the angry shoppers who trod on my unshod feet.

So I think it is fair to say Santa responding to letters is bad for all involved - it turns the residents of North Pole into gothy school killers and turns the rest of us into BELIEVERS.

North American Scum

This fat fuck is called 'Big Boy Mark' and has an inane blog which can be found HERE.

I was merely laughing at the corpulent fuck, until I got to his entry on the Virginia Tech Massacre :

"Excuse me, but maybe it’s my instincts, my training, the way I was raised, my desire to live, the strain of whatever idiocy it is that runs thru me that says I will not just roll over and die, I will not surrender and I will not submit, but for the love of God, didn’t ANYONE think of fighting back??"

What was Mark trained as? A human shield? I would say running at a gun-toting madman was almost the same as rolling over and dying, particularly if you are rather rotund and more liable to rolling.

"Did 32 people just say ‘Oh well, he has a gun, I’m guess I’m going to die’?? Did 29 wounded people think, ‘Oh well, he’s shooting us all, I’ll just hide behind a desk and maybe he won’t shoot me again’?? Did no one have the GUTS to RUSH this guy and try to save themselves or their friends?? Apparently not, and for that lack of action, there is no excuse…"

Well it appears no one quite had Big Boy Mark's Guts, that's for sure, thankfully they had guts that could fit behind desks and brains to realise that bum rushing a hale of bullets is suicidal rather than heroic. I think that is actually quite a good excuse, along with the excuse that they were not IDIOTIC LAZY OBESE FUCKTARDS WHO SPEND ALL DAY ON THE SOFA MASTERBATING TO SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. (probably) You know he's sitting there at the computer with cheeto cheese all over his chin and the NRA website on the another window fantasising about saving all those lily-livered coward kids and smoting the evil badguy as one chubby little paw heads south....

"The MSM keeps on referring to the shooter as being heavily armed, well, apparently the MSM has never been to a real gunfight, going to a gunfight with a 9mm pistol and a .22 pistol does NOT qualify as being heavily armed."

Well, if we are going to get all pedantic...the deaths of 32 people is SUCH a good time to discuss the symantics of what 'heavily armed' means.

Really, why spend time critisising the poor people who one minute were taking French lessons, chewing gum and wondering what to have for lunch and the next were fighting for their lives, covered in the blood and brains of their fellow pupils? Why not critisise the authorities who totally failed to evacuate the school/find the shooter/do seemingly anything apart from twiddle their thumbs after the first two people were shot?

I'm so angry I can't even bring myself to laugh at him for being morbidly obsese and the '...what's your excuse' caption.

Kiwi Tears My Heart Apart

I'm sure most people will have already seen this animation of the kiwi bird, which was recently voted 'cutest thing on youtube'.
I personally would vote it 'most heartwrenchingly tragic thing on youtube', but then it appears people's opinions differ wildy, as I will outline below.

The Biche: "Oh GOD. I think I just died a little inside. What cute pathos is this? Oh woe, life is so short and cruel."

The Flatmate: after being dragged away from her breakfast to watch the thing by a wobbily lipped Biche
"So is a Kiwi a real bird then? Right. You didn't say it was an animation. Ah. Cup of tea?"

The Brother: in faux camp accent
"Oh, it is SO cute. Look at his little face."

The Benjamin: online, but clearly shellshocked
"That's quite upsetting. Pretty damn cute, if very upsetting."
then, when he is told he is being quoted:
"how about this...."
nothing appears
"no, use the last thing"
"I'm trying to be funny but it's just not happening."


So there. Now I must go mend my broked heart with chocolate.

Poor the Bald Britney and Bitty Bobo !

Ooh how iconic! Throwing off the shackles of celebrity blah blah blah. Seriously, I think she should go underground, change her name, become a muslim and not be found cold and dead in a pool of vomit with her knickerless torso on view to all in a few weeks time. That would be nice. In other news my hamster, as if sensing the change in Britney's wellbeing also totally flipped out today and shovelled all his bedding to one side of the cage and then ran around like a loony. Poor little mite. Poor little mites. I have since changed his name from Bobo to Iqbalbo in hope that it may stabilise his condition. It worked for Cat Stevens after all.


I really hope this isn't an elaborate hoax, or I will look like a right twat.

xx