world of fluff!

HURRICANE FLUFFY

2005-11-11T19:32:00.000Z

Did I mention I was off to Key West this weekend? First Katrina, then Rita, now Miss Fluffy. What must that poor, delightful town put up with this year? I'm staying here. Quelle charme, n'est pas?

A PRAYER FOR THE DAMNED

2005-11-09T21:01:00.000Z

Has it really been a month since my last post? My how time flies when your having your stomach pumped. Forget Carol Vorderman's detox diet, try an overdose of Temazepam and four weeks' rehab in the Priory. Kate Moss and I were roommates.

But all the aromatherapy and tantric yoga are still a little too raw and will have to wait. I just wanted to post a little bit of spit in the eye of all those sanctimonious christians out there who think their god designed my cock cheese and all us heathen folk are damned to eternal hellfire for our heracy. This little gem is from a paper by Gregory S Paul in the Journal of Religion and Society, volume 7:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies ... the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.

VALLEY OF THE TROLLS

2005-09-29T15:00:00.000+01:00

Jodie Foster appears to be the latest victim of Hollywood's infatuation with facial paralysis if the publicity shots for her latest movie, Flightplan, are anything to go by. She's wearing the familiar Nicole Kidman haunted look that implies a recent episode of incontinence.

Of all the frumpy, reclusive thespian stars to turn bimbo and sell out, I though she'd be the last. What happened to growing old gracefully, like Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Meryl Streep? Have you seen Faye Dunaway recently? Or Farah Fawcett? I think they've been standing too close to the radiator. Help me I'm melting!

Speaking of freakshows, I notice Joan Rivers and Jane Seymour were wheeled out at the Emmys again this year, like a public safety announcement. Now listen up girls, this is what happens when you marry your plastic surgeon. What a shame the warning has come too late for the rigor mortised Teri Hatcher.

Still, thank god for Glenn Close, flying the flag for natural beauty. Now there's a real star.

FAIRYTALE WEDDING

2005-09-16T14:01:00.000+01:00

Bravo to the brave, selfless Jordan for taking a stand on the spiraling costs of wedding dresses. Brides the world over should follow her lead and rent their dresses from the Disney parade company. I believe the breasts are on hire too.

WAR ON TOURISTS

2005-09-13T19:33:00.000+01:00

If there is ever any doubt that capitalism is the root of all evil, one only needs to apply for a US visa to dispel it. In a fit of what I will charitably call patriotism, those money-grabbing republican fascists at the US embassy in London have decided to do their bit for the war effort by defrauding unsuspecting tourists of thousands of pounds.

Since September 11, the visa application process has become an expensive business. You used to be able to apply through third parties, like the excellent and sadly missed BA Visa Office. Such brave souls have been hammered out of existence by those bureaucratic pea brains in the name of security. Now, the only way to get a visa is direct from the embassy. You must make an advance appointment and the only way you can make it is via a premium rate phone number charged at £1.30 a minute, on the same dialling code as sex lines and prize draw scams.

That, I think you will agree, is enough to make even the mildest xenophile frown in suspicion. £1.30 a minute, just to make the appointment? And Miss Fluffy is made of much more excitable stuff than that: my eyes rolled back and I nearly fainted with rage.

But the fun doesn't end there, because once you've bitten the bullet and made the call, you are presented with a plethora of costly automatic options narrated at half speed by a brainless American teenager on work experience. Five quid later and you finally get to speak to a real person — but if you're hoping for a human being you're going to be disappointed. The voice on the end of the line has as much life as vacuum cleaner and half the IQ. Their call centre script, which they read badly, is clearly designed to mug you of another fiver before you get down to business, but by this point I am only surprised they can read at all. Stumble over an answer or get a question wrong and they are programmed to talk through their noses in a maddening whine and ignore all logic or reason. In short, they are utter cunts of the highest order and quite probably ugly, frigid or both.

With distance and valium, it is probably a good thing I didn't get my appointment. I will be much happier in more civilised society, like Canada or Sierra Leone, and would probably have nutted the bitches anyway.

Next time I feel like a trip across the pond, I think I'll call the sex lines instead.

IN THE STATES, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM

2005-09-01T17:16:00.000+01:00

My worst nightmare is a world run by godfearing folk with monobrows and court shoes, and not just because bad grooming offends me. If the right-wing cabal of US Christians isn't stopped soon, it's likely to plunge the States into a second dark age — and suck the rest of us in with it.

Stories like this one bring me out in hives. It looks like the Kansas State Board of Education is going to give the same amount of teaching time to intelligent design as evolution — in biology classes. For intelligent design, read creationism in a pseudo-scientific burka. It's like Footloose, but without Kevin Bacon to save the day.

It's just the latest in a string of attacks on progress and science — think abortion, stem cell research and climate change. And this is from the same crusading waco god-fucks who rant about the worrying rise in Muslim fundamentalism! Before long, we'll be exorcising criminals and trepanning the autistic.

That idiot hick in the White House is determined to overturn every hard-fought freedom and priviledge known to the American people. So thank the noodly Appendage for Bobby Henderson, founder of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism and sane voice in the Kansas wilderness. This blogger, at least, is proud to finally find faith after decades of atheism and bacchenalia, and prays to the god of good pasta to end the Christian oppression of American culture. Because, quite frankly, she needs the sleep.

THE RULES OF DISENGAGEMENT

2005-08-30T15:39:00.000+01:00

Those rascals at LBL are compiling a set of London commandments for the new edition of the insiders' guide, which got me thinking. Life would be so much more enjoyable if I could make the rules.

Being a good dictator isn't as easy as it sounds. I want total control and total power, but I'm not irrational. I would like to ban Australians, but that would leave us with a city-wide bar staff shortage. I'd love to eradicate Fulham Woman, that pernicious breed of over-piviledged idiot slut, but how? In the venn diagram of hatefulness, one has to reluctantly accept that not all women from Fulham are over-priviledged idiot sluts (although many are co-incidentally Australian). Nor, unfortunately, are over-priviledged idiot sluts confined to Fulham (see Clapham Woman). Can of worms, you see.

One can't get too ambitious with these things — a lesson I learnt from that dear man the mayor, whose ambition seems to extend about as far as his comfy office in the London Assembly. You can't expect to solve problems, only move them around a bit apparently, as evidenced by the complete inertia (excuse the pun) of London's mouldering transport system, the peaks and troughs of crime, and the urban myth of affordable housing. So discounting anything too aspirational, I am left with a rather practical list:

you shall not go to Leicester Square, black-hole of tourists and criminals
only people with a decent IQ and hand-eye co-ordination shall use umbrellas
you must take your rubbish with you off tubes and buses and drop it in the nearest bin; this includes newspapers and magazines; yes, even the Metro (but see 8)
you shall not be a recruitment consultant, who are the agents of the devil
kissing, nibbling, fondling, sucking and stroking your partner on the tube, or otherwise mooning at them like a sick puppy, is absolutely forbidden, especially during the morning rush hour when it's hard enough to hold down a breakfast without your nauseating display of affection
cyclists should obey the highway code like all other road users, or else not complain when I stick a brolly in your spokes and push you under the nearest bus — that means get off the pavement, stop at lights, and look before you cycle over zebra crossings
you shall not wear dark glasses underground — it's dark already; you don't need them, and you look like a twat
you shall not read that pile of Nazi filth the Metro, which is written by the same fascist apes that pen the poisonous Daily Mail and props up the plague-ridden evil empire, Associated New Media
you shall not read that pile of Nazi filth the Evening Standard (see 8)
you shall keep out of my personal space — it is not a big space, but when you are touching me you are too close; step back before I go postal and rip your face off

That last one's very important. I mean it: Miss Fluffy is on the edge.

SHRINKING MANHOODS

2005-08-24T15:21:00.000+01:00

Poor Michael Buerk, beleaguered heterosexual and last man in England. The BBC dinosaur thinks the tough-talking macho man is a thing of the past, thanks to an army of ball-breaking women bosses and girly hormones in our water supply. Media pundits have laughed poor Michael out of the news room, but I know he's right because I go to a gym. You can tell the race is doomed when straight men start waxing.

Now I'm not going to cast aspersions on the sexuality of my fellow fitness enthusiasts, but many of them, so I am told, are straight. I have nothing against straights and know many pleasant chaps of that ilk. But they're not supposed to care what they look like. Beautiful heterosexual men are supposed go to bed on their twenty-third birthday looking trim and youthful, and wake up the next morning with a beer gut and sallow skin, having advanced to forty overnight. Gay boys have traditionally escaped this right of passage through our superior knowledge of moisturiser and the laws of good taste. It's our reward for surviving decades of abuse and ridicule.

These days, the only way you can spot a straight guy is from his pubic hair, trimming apparently not yet having made it into the grooming pages of Men's Health (and surely it's only a matter of time). All the traditional methods are lost to us: back hair and boxer shorts are a thing of the past, and labels are no use anymore. We even have to fight for the mirrors now, and last week I saw a guy drying his nuts with a hairdryer (I kid you not). It's all monstrously unfair: vanity and style are supposed to be gay traits. Straight men are supposed to get fat and have kids. Like Michael.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

2005-08-22T10:55:00.000+01:00

When the revolution comes, recruitment consultants will be the first against the wall.

Those who can, do; those who can't, recruit, apparently. The websites of these agencies glitter with promises of professional experience and intelligent industry insight, as if time served in the real world is a suitable primer for the role of mercenary bitch. If they're so hot at marketing, why are they reading CVs for a living?

And what do they really know about the jobs they're selling? Usually no more than you do — a job description which looks like it was written on the tube by a management consultant (next in line for the firing squad, by the way) and typed up by a gin-soaked secretary at four in the morning. How can I entrust my professional development to someone who makes up words and thinks apostrophes is a Greek philosopher?

Despite the noxious flattery and shameless ingratiating, these people are not your friends. Their only goal in life is to MAKE COMMISSION. They work for companies that are too busy or too tight-fisted to recruit for themselves, which is never a good start. They are utterly amoral and as thick as cheese. And most of them, as the divine Bette Davis once said of Joan Crawford, are about as stable as a basket of snakes.

Take a recent experience of mine as an example. I applied for a position for which I am eminently qualified. My CV is good, my cover letter impressive (you will just have to take my word for this, or else go to the wall with the recruitment scum and be damned). I was informed that, regrettably, the position had already been filled. Two weeks later, the position appeared again on a job listings website, so I applied again and was rejected again. The advert had apparently been published "by mistake". A month later, the job appears again. I was foolish enough to still be interested, so I called the consultant for a chat and was encouraged to apply for a third time. Less than a day later, I received a final rejection because the position had already been filled (again).

Make of this what you will; I choose to think the worst. As a profession, recruitment consultants have taken incompetence and degeneracy to new heights, like some lost tribe of idiots damned by natural selection to weed out professional competence, rational thought, and all traces of an honest work ethic. And that is why I will shoot every last one of them the first chance I get.

JOGGERS' NIPPLE

2005-08-19T13:33:00.000+01:00

You know what gets on my tits? Lunchtime joggers. They lope down packed pavements, all pink and sweaty, straight at you, breathing through their nostrils like a buffalo stampede, and just before you think you're done for, they careen off into the gutter, forcing some unlucky cyclist into the wheel of a car and leaving you shaken and choking in their odorous wake. Some of them even run in pairs for added terror and mayhem.

If I had any balls, I'd trip them up. But if I wasn't so angry and bitter, I'd probably wave them on their way with a cheery smile. Which is the crux of my dilemma for so many things. Should I use my powers for good or evil? It's touch and go on a day-to-day basis. Many people have a vested interest in this struggle for my soul, including my family, co-workers, cyclists, commuters, people who live in Fulham, Camden, Islington and Clapham, men in Hackett, women in gypsy skirts (who aren't gypsies), adults who read Harry Potter and tabloid newspapers, Clive Bull, Adam Sandler, Jim Carey, Philippa Forrester, lawyers, estate agents, recruitment consultants, civil servants, terrorists, god-fearin' folk, Italian teenagers, the government and medical research.

I subscribe to Kant's theory that one mind murder a day is a healthy prophylactic to gun rampage, but my therapist thinks I should try keeping a diary instead. So here it is. Actually, I feel a lot better already. I still hate joggers though. Join a gym, for fuck's sake.