Tuesday 30th January 2007.

This week, there’s been a lot of talk about Gay adoption. The centre of discussion was about the fact that the Catholic Church expressed a wish for an ‘opt-out’ from new regulations which mean faith based adoption agencies have to consider placing children with gay couples.

Ruth Kelly, Minister for Women and Equality amongst her many titles, worryingly campaigned against equality for homosexual people, supporting the opt out. This resulted in a cabinet revolt, with the majority of Parliament agreeing that she was off her rocker. Hell, when even David Cameron is against you, you know you’re fighting a losing battle.

January 29th 2007: One Big, Fat Cliche

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there lived a tremendously happy couple. Then they divorced, had a bitter custody argument (for the house, no less) and came to resemble the 155,052 lonely divorcees within the UK in 2005. Yes, life has many a tragic love story; be it unrequited, a living doll, a botched Shakespearean suicide (412 years today possibly, folks!), a superhero with an anorexic-looking reporter girlfriend or the Desperate Housewives cast, chances are the premise of being a swollen-faced Zellweger simile will send us reaching for the Prozac. Particularly now.

Sunday 28th January 2007- My Young Hollywood List.

Every year, Teen Vogue releases its Young Hollywood issue in the summer/autumn. Every year, I skip over the glossy pictures of pseudo indie movie stars to get to the shoes and bikinis. After salivating over the impossibly beautiful shoes, I usually move on to the Young Hollywood feature, which is actually just pictures of impossibly beautiful 13 year olds (who are often the daughters of famous producers and rock stars) accompanied by a “I love acting- it’s my life” quote in big writing, presumably so the beautiful 13 year olds can read it. That’s what happens when you take little kids out of school and into movies instead. They have to read in big writing.

This year, Rachel Bilson from The OC graced the front cover. She is really pretty, likes vintage clothing and wants to take on diverse roles after she finishes the show. That’s pretty much all I got from the article. The smaller pieces on young upstarts were similarly lacking in substance, with many enthusing “I’ve loved fashion, like, all my life”…They’re 13.They’ve been only dressing themselves for six of those years! Not that I’m being ageist or anything, I just utterly detest such hyperbole, in fact, I’ve hated it all my life!

It occurred to me that many of these beautiful young children won’t make it out of puberty. I mean their careers, although I suspect an early coca habit may not have anything to do with cola for some of them. In which case, I am going to compile my own Young Hollywood list but it will be added to whenever I feel like it, which will probably be when I remember to include someone I like, or when I have nothing better to discuss.

Saturday 27th January: Cost Effective, not Vertically Challenged

There have been a lot of things that have annoyed me in the past week. You could say after I mounted my high horse to write last week’s article, I appeared to forget to get off again. Whether it’s taxi drivers that can apparently take up to a month to hand in lost property, or train tickets which now cost the same for a single as they did for a return before Christmas, I have all-too-frequently felt the need to acquire a large stick to whip the world into place. But something that’s really frustrated me is that, yet again, my new jeans have started to fray at the bottom. Yes, you did read that correctly; I’ve lost my purse (containing a debit card, driving license, uni ID card, National insurance number and £10 amongst various other pieces of plastic) forked out £26 for a mere 2 hours on the train and children are starving to death in Africa, but it’s my fraying jeans that I’ve chosen to rant about.

Friday 26th January

Oscar Preview Special.  Woo hoo! 

After weeks of ‘umming’ and ‘aahing’ and ‘maybeing’, the nominations for the most important and well regarded film awards of them all are out as anticatiopn for the 79^th American Academy Awards hots up. Now I’m sure you’re all running about in a wild state of excitement now, clutching pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio, Helen Mirren and Bill Corso to your chest, proudly proclaiming them to be the greatest in their respective categories, but who else is up for contention, and, more to the point, what are their chances. For the love of God, what are their chances!?!?!?!?

Thursday 25th January 2007 – Preach on with the message of “Go fuck thy neighbour.”

Two days ago, President George W. Bush delivered his penultimate State of the Union address before Congress.

I hope I’m not stepping on Alan’s toes here, and I hope this column isn’t becoming too Americo-centric, but it’s hard to do a column on international news without mentioning the most powerful nation in the world a little bit.

He started off with some very professionally given but ultimately quite unconvincing congratulations to the democrats and I think that was pretty much the high point.

On Commenting

By the way, you crazy kids, I’d just like to note that I’ve just discovered that long comments (or comments with links in them) may be treated as spam and stored here for moderation. So if you’ve commented and it doesn’t appear right away, it is most likely due to an over-zealous Spam filter, so there’s no need to continually try to post the same message and get frustrated when it doesn’t appear, like I did. Just post once and someone should get to it; if it’s not up in at least the next couple of days, let us know.

Now I’m back off to write tomorrow’s post. See y’all.

Tuesday 23rd January 2007.

Well, Patchers (better nickname pending, I promise), this week, I’m a bit stuck for what to write. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this…plenty of things have happened, just none I’m really bothered enough about to have a half meaningful ramble about it.

I started to write a piece on the Jade Goody fiasco, since it’s been at the forefront of the news here for about a week now…but then I realised several of my lovely colleagues have already mentioned this in some shape or form, and that the whole “OMG, racist bitch!” debate has been going on for far too long now. It’s just not interesting anymore. She’s in all the papers saying she’s “nasty and ugly” (no shit, Sherlock), and is now apparently suicidal because of what‘s happened. Bonus.

I was also contemplating writing about Scotland’s renewed call for independence on the 300th anniversary of Scotland and England’s union, on the suggestion of a friend who feels quite strongly that Scotland should stay part of the UK. I decided against this for fear that our Politics correspondent Alan would have me strung up.

What else could I talk about? The Weather? How very British. I’m thinking that an article on the numerous elderly women who have been carried on a spontaneous flight through the town centre during last week’s gales wouldn’t be the most interesting thing. But who can say my pieces ever are?

And then I hit on it. Not the most thrilling of topics, but it’ll do.

Monday 22nd January – Plastic Society

Alice could not join us this week, so I am filling in for her. I hope I can uphold the standard.

Note: I have a lot of sources for my statistics and rather than making a separate citation sheet, I’ve linked to the sites where I obtained the information. I apologize for the copious amounts of links.

A few days ago as I was sitting in the lunch room at work peacefully enjoying a slice of leftover pizza and a book, I happened to overhear a conversation concerning plastic surgery. A woman from accounting was talking about how plastic surgeons “just take a hammer to your nose! It‘s awful!” One of the men she was talking to quickly piped up in a thick Texan drawl, “Well, yer under when they do it, so ya don’t feel anything.” The other man shared a quick anecdote about someone he knew who had gotten a nose job and how it was a few days before she was back at work. He said she had two big black eyes and it took two weeks to fully recover.
“I couldn’t even imagine…” said the woman.
“Well,” said the first man, “Look at it this way: would ya rather suffer through two weeks of pain or complain about yer nose for the rest of yer lahfe.”
Well! That sure puts it into perspective for me. The only thing the gentlemen failed to consider, I think, was the point.

Sunday 21st January-My Secret Girl Crush Cleans Up?

On the 17th January, a major piece of news was released that shocked the world. No, it wasn’t the news that China successfully used a missile to destroy an orbiting satellite. It wasn’t even the news that Jade Goody is an ignorant fool.  It was the news that I had been waiting for since the day I watched Mean Girls, and fell in love with Lindsay Lohan’s hair and epic boobs, only to watch her lose her breasts to cocaine, and her hair colour to the lesser garden whore variety of brown afterwards.
She has finally checked into rehab!
This news lightened up my world weary eyes as I read about the escalating civil war in Iraq, the failure of the 2015 international education goals in Sub Saharan Africa and global warming. It appears as though my girl crush hopes for her to return to sobriety and stop being such an utter fuck up have finally been answered. If ‘The Powers that Be’ can manage to pull off this feat, then maybe, one day, there will be world peace and I will have my own unicorn! Somehow, it takes a news story like this to make the world seem less daunting. If one of the biggest messes in young Hollywood can clean up, then maybe, just maybe, the harder issues facing the world can be dealt with. Let’s just start with Lindsay…