Alcoholism: One for the golden oldies.

While supping on a Lidl’s gin and tonic at a party a while ago I was told by a friend that his gran drinks gin as a thirst-quencher, “she’s not an alcoholic,” he stressed.

Why not? I wonder. I fully intend to be an alcoholic when I’m old. I don’t really care about the addiction side of things, I’m going to be drinking so regularly that it’ll hardly matter. There’ll be no point looking after my body which is sure to have all but given up, and chances are my mind won’t be up to much either.

I’m also contemplating developing a drug habit. Probably when I’m about 80. I plan to collect my pension from the post office, nip round the back to meet my dealer then hobble home with a gram of smack in my cheek.

I will not be the only oldie drinking myself into a stupor. I’m following the lead of people like Patricia, a contestant on Come Dine With Me who started her evening with a glass of sherry and put it in every dish, and Jennifer Patterson of the Two Fat Ladies who ended each show with a stiff drink and whose food rivaled Nigella’s in fat content.

With the Two Fat Ladies in mind, I’m also going to gorge myself silly on whatever the hell I want to eat. And the brilliant part is, I won’t live long enough to get too fat. I’m going to reward myself for a youth of eating moderately, and eshewing substance abuse with an old age of decadence and hedonism.

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UPDATE – 3/02/08

My uncle Peter Rice is a psychiatrist specialising in alcohol and drug abuse. He has been calling for an increase in prices of alcohol to decrease its appeal. His arguments are extremly hard to disagree with, sadly.

He used the term “Saga Louts” to describe oldies who overindulge in the sauce last year. Here he gets laid into by a bunch of tories.

Brand, Walliams and Ross die on their feet at Morrissey gig

Russell Brand, David Walliams and Jonathan Ross took to London’s Roundhouse’s stage on Friday night after Morrissey abandoned the gig because he lost his voice.

According to ol’ Russ on his BBC Radio 2 show on Saturday the three comedians had gone to the show together and decided to get up partly to appease the baying crowd, and partly out of a shared passion for showing off.

Rather than being pleased that the announcement that Morrissey wasn’t able to come back on was given by arguably two of the country’s finest comedians (and Jonathan Ross) who were clearly willing to do some impromptu stand up, the crowd booed and pelted them with coins and bottles until they were ushered off the stage. After which, of course, there was no entertainment to be had and everyone had to go home.

Apparently Ross and Walliams got attacked outside the gig too.

Morrissey fans are mental.

YouTube footage

Westboro Baptist Church

Westboro Baptist Church’s propaganda is all over the internet. Not in a sinister way, but the news that they plan to picket Heath Ledger’s funeral has been posted on facebook and myspace walls everywhere and emailed to death.

They are all too easy to dismiss as a bunch of loons. Because they are a bunch of loons. The fact that they’re so interested in other adults’ sex lives is more than a little bit pervy, and I think all this gay-bashing is more of an excuse to hold signs with rude pictures on them (see madman below) and bond with their peers than anything else.

Really, if you were going to make a serious point would you use a wee picture of two people shagging? I think no.

But as fun as laughing at half-wit bigots is, it’s actually all a bit worrying. Quite aside from the horrible distress they cause by picketing funerals (at random as far as I can see: they picket the funerals of soldiers because they defended a country that allows gays… what the eff?) there are gay people who have to grow up in their malevolent shadow.

According to The Rough Guide to the USA:

“In the heartland [of America] life can look more like the Fifties – away from large cities, homosexuals are oppressed and commonly reviled. Gay travellers need to watch their step to avoid hassles and possible aggression.”

I know Rough Guides aren’t a piece of political literature, but a “sadly” wouldn’t have gone amiss. It just seems a bit flippant. “Oi gays. You’re reviled, okay? Watch your step.”

What’s more it shows the Westboro bigots are not a mental minority, in the deep south their views are the norm. And that’s making me lose my faith in democracy. Something needs to be done to protect the gay people in these areas. But as homophobia is so widely accepted, any state intervention would be suicide for whichever party put it in place.

Anyone got any good ideas? Obama?

The forgotten mixtape

It was nice to have my (always presumed) brilliance confirmed the other day by the discovery of a bloody marvellous mix CD I’d made a while ago then forgotten about. Here is the playlist:

1. Have Love Will Travel – The Black Keys
   Brilliant bluesy rock
2. World We Live In – Rufus Wainwright
3. Raindogs – Tom Waits
4. Lay Lady Lay (Hard Rain live version) – Bob Dylan
   This raucous live version is a completely different song to the studio version on Nashville Skyline
5. I Drink – Charles Aznavour
   In Bob Dylan’s words “a devastating drinking song”. Awesome lyrics on this rarity.
6. Hey Man! Now You’re Really Living! – The Eels
7. We Can Work It Out – Stevie Wonder
8. The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
9. Accidentally Like a Martyr – Warren Zevon
10. Reckless – Tilly and the Wall
11. Sons and Daughters – The Decemberists
    
12. The Ship Song – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
    
13. Such Great Heights – Iron and Wine
    
14. Chelsea Hotel No. 2 – Leonard Cohen
    “We are ugly but we have the music”
15. Cotton Fields – The Beach Boys
16. California Soul – Marlena Shaw
17. Drift Away – Dobie Gray
18. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel

Uggs is for Muggs

Everyone has an opinion on the ubiquitous Uggs (so named because that’s the noise they make you do when you see an otherwise perfectly good outfit ruined by them) and I am no different. But, being a fickle sort of person, mine changes every few weeks.

They are truly minging, are they not? They make the wearer look like an am-dram lunatic who has forgotten to take their pantomime horse feet off after a show.

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And yet we, and I include myself here, still wear them all the time.

I haven’t got real Uggs though, because they really are for Muggs. They are ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY POUNDS. Yes, yes, they’re real sheepskin, but the fake ones are just as warm and in my £6 Primarni pair I achieve the same uggly-as-arse effect at a fraction (that’s 3/70, maths fans) of the cost.

I came to own (fake) Uggs very late in the game, having sworn for a long time that I would never pay that much money for anything so hideous. In the end my mum got me some for Xmas, and my feet have never been so cosy and comfortable. And what do I care what I look like anyway? I’ve ensnared a chap (Hi Tom) and that is the point of being attractive (science innit).

However my new found Ugg-thusiasm took a bit of a beating the other day, when walking home from the shops in the dratted things I tripped over them and fell arse over tit. I now have a well bad bruise on my hand and grazed jeans.

Too many Nigellas spoil the BBC

Nigella was bad enough. It took me a long time to stop hating her stupid, vacant face and to accept my mum’s explanation that she’s calculatedly hamming it up to give (idiot) men what they want. Now my sister has started using her cookbook I can confirm that her food is truly delicious (as anything with mountains of sugar and butter in it tends to be). What’s more we can be fairly sure that she’s not actually a halfwit as she has a degree from Oxford and you have to be awfully clever to go there. I know. I didn’t get in.

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Well watch out Nige, cos there are some new kids on the block. And they have got your looking-sappily-at-the-saucepan-whilst-stirring move down to a T as the photo below demonstrates.

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Anjum Anand (above) is essentially “Indian Nige”. Indian Nige has a cookery column – just like Real Nige once did – and the Times refer to her as a Domestic Goddess – again, just like Real Nige. She – like (you guessed it) Real Nige – presented a show on BBC 2: Indian Food Made Easy. Unlike Real Nige, Indian Nige cooks curries instead of traditional English fare. Men like curries. Perhaps Real Nige is missing a trick.

Perhaps the most irritating Nige (in a hard fought contest) is Rachel Allen (below). Or “Blonde Nige”. Blonde Nige presents Rachel’s Favourite Food for Living on Saturday mornings on BBC 1. She is Irish and according to her biography (which I can only assume is self-penned) “her charming manner and effortless style make her a delight to watch.” Well.

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While Blonde Nige and Indian Nige go in for all the vacant smiling that Real Nige pioneered, they seem to have forgotten the personality bit. They have none of Real Nige’s cheekiness that keeps those silly old men glued to the TV.

 

Keffi-what? Fashion vs. politics

I may well be the only person who didn’t already know this, but uber-cool indie-schmindie scarves of the variety pictured below are called keffiyehs and are a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.

Most of the people who wear them surely don’t know they’re making a pro-Palestine statement, and pissing off Israel’s supporters just by doing so. I doubt the average hipster wanders around thinking that the Jews have been right nasty and should give the land back at once.

What’s baffling is how keffiyehs became such a universal trend. The scarves are traditionally worn by Arabs but for Westerners they had become an emblem of Palestinian support in the conflict with Israel. Now we see them on the back of every Tarquin, Sienna and Nathan Barley. A little bit of internet-based research shows that there are plenty of people up-in-arms about fashionistas’ casual adoption of such a political piece of symbolism.

Last year Urban Outfitters removed the scarves from their shelves saying: “Due to the sensitive nature of this item, we will no longer offer it for sale.”

And either in striking ignorance of what they symbolise, or in laudable defiance of her family’s pro-Israel stance, George dubya’s niece Lauren Bush sported a keffiyeh at a party last October. Nice.

STOP EATING SHIT AND DO SOME EXERCISE.

Come January, year-round shows like ‘Diet Doctors’ are joined by ads aimed at the slightly podgy and even much loved magazines such as the Times Style push ‘New Health Tips for the New Year’.

First channel five’s Diet Doctors: For anyone who’s not a halfwit it’s fairly obvious that bad food and no exercise means bad health and (for those of us without super-quick metabolisms) excess fat. Why then do otherwise sensible people strip down to their white M&S bra and pants and reveal their flabby, stretch-marked bodies to a nationwide audience in order to be diagnosed? What does it matter which part of your inactive, junk-food-guzzling lifestyle is resulting in fungal infections and broken veins? As qualified as I’m sure the two oh-so-concerned presenters are, their expertise is really quite superfluous. They lay out a week’s worth of the terrible ‘food’ and say “this is what you’re putting in your body EVERY WEEK,” at which their subject gasps/cries/wonders aloud just how it could have happened and I find myself screaming “it’s just the contents of your shopping trolley unwrapped,” at the television. Without fail everyone is told to eat fruit and vegetables and do some exercise. Duh.

Next, the magazines: It’s one thing when 60p rags like Take a Break, Closer and Pick Me Up scream that you can ‘Lose a Stone in Three Weeks Eating Only Doughnuts’ but QUITE another when the beloved Times Style magazine hops down from its pedestal and joins in. This week clever, witty (but sadly right-wing) India Knight says you can ‘Eat Yourself Slim’, she suggests cutting down on carbs and sugar but all the time stresses that you can still eat AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE. If she’s not careful she’ll end up on Diet Doctors with a load of side-effects of iron and protein deficiency. Some better ideas off the top of my head: run yourself thin, cycle yourself thin, or swim yourself thin.

Worst though are the adverts. Particularly the one telling us we can lose weight by replacing two meals a day with a bowl of Special K. Of course we can, because losing weight is all about consuming less energy than we use, and if we dramatically cut our calorie intake then we’ll probably do that. Eating nothing is another way that weight loss can be achieved. Unfortunately our poor old bodies need nutrients n that to survive. Annoying, eh?

Makes me laugh every time I see it

For more visit xkcd

Abortion rally in Cardiff.

Ann Widdicomb MP is coming to Cardiff on 4th March as part of her “Not on your life..or anyone else’s” tour, which seeks to promote anti-abortion goals around the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

I will be going to protest outside.

The debate on abortion has been well and truly had. I’m not going to argue my side here, but I will state my position: I believe a woman’s body is her own, there are too many badly cared for children in the world, and that believing that terminating an early stage embryo is akin to murdering a baby is just a hop, step and a jump away from “every sperm is sacred”.

The details for anyone interested:

Not on your life..or anyone else’s, The City Temple, Cowbridge Road East:-Tues 4 Mar at 7.30pm