Tableclothes everywhere.. beware!

Bleeding art students everyone, THIS is what Lady Blah Blah wore to her college graduation. THIS! The expression on the girl's face behind says it all don’t you think, somebody’s Edwardian funeral parlour is going to be quite bare this winter.

Conflicted I am about Blah Blah, yes she writes her own material, yes she is very creative, yes she has landed like a fat bird turd in the middle of pop culture. It seemed such a short time ago when we did not suddenly explode into screams of “Raaaraaa ooo laalaa gaga romamaa” at the supermarket or make claws out of our hands when shopping for Dettol. Look I think she is just what the Dr. Dre ordered, someone who shows Shitney and X-Tina and Miley Virus up for what they are - The musical equivalent of blood clots. But I do wish she would tone down the hysterical over dressing and blithering videos that make those Siamese Latvian transvestite art film students look positively mainstream.

I remember hearing her first track online 2 years ago and thinking “interesting” as I tented my hands and stroked my fluffy white cat, but for all the hype her songs are pretty average and the only one I would have jitterbugged to ‘Telephone’, was thrashed so much on the radio that I would sooner evacuate my dinner than boogie to it now. Popping on my caring father hat *pop*, I am concerned that she will burn out too soon, all the crazy costumes and hype may deflate the tires on her Pussy Wagon before we get the really good juice out of her talent orange. The general public are quite fickle and this 'madwoman dressed in skinned Muppet thing' may get pretty tired after about 3 albums. I wish I was old enough to remember the hype when Madonna burst out of her pod to terrorize the world, I do remember a lot of buzz and chat that she was a woman of filthy morals and even hairier armpits but that's about it. I was too busy choreographing battle scenes with my Masters of the Universe to Like a Virgin to care.

I am just concerned about someone who can’t separate the fiction from the fact, you never saw Madonna walking around inside Rosemary's Baby's recycled cot fabric and a Vietnamese peasants hat. The new video for (WANK!) Alejandro makes me think the (WANK!) crazy is only just (WANK!) beginning, 9 mins long!!! WTF!? The last time I saw an epic like that was …..well……Lady Blah Blah….but before then was those visual rants the late Michael Jackson use to make in the 90’s. Who has the time to watch that, I have too many fish to gut and fake tranny nails to mail to penguins to make time for that silliness.

So to summarize, Lady GaGa is promising. Just want the world needed. But surely it about time to show what is under all the guff.

Note: It turns out the event was her sisters graduation...hmmm attention seeker says what?

Mittens is …having a s**t.

Oh the collective squeal is apparent for cat fetishists everywhere, after years of gazing into their cats eyes and wondering what lays beneath that nonchalant gaze…now you can know. Sony have just released a product which is Twitter for cats, the Cat@Log.

The Sony spokeswhore says “Hoping to tap the lucrative Twitter fan-cat lover crossover market, Sony has released a collar that gives cat owners constant updates on their moggies' movements.” How exciting, now I can know when Mr. Squiggles is about to shred my couch or spray my shoes. Rolled up newspapers at the ready!

My question is does it really say what the cats up to? Will it articulate at 2am that your cats shagging the neighbors moggie, or eating a rat or about to get hit by a mini cooper? I am not sure how many times I want to be updated that the cats kneading my chest painfully and pulling apart my jumper whilst doing so.

I would love if this device actually said what the cat was thinking, but you would probably find out your cat wished you went out more and found some people friends and stopped buying it stupid gadgets. What would you do if you found out your cat hated you? I would think the violin factories would be doing a roaring trade after that invention.

Oh well better go, have to go ask the cat how to use the stereo.

Bleeding Lip

When Klutzy Met Cracky

God, Leona Lewis needs to wrap herself in padding or somewhat, as she is most injury prone singer I has known. And I has known none!

Today, Leona fell down an elevator shaft on stage. Apparently she was fine, if not a bit shafted - tee hee. But this is that latest in a series of accidents the poor dear has experienced. This year she was headbutted by a horse, yes a horse! And punched in the face by a fan, who must not have liked her remix of Bleeding Love, whist at a book signing in 2009.

I am sorry but I laughed after reading this, what hysterically bad luck. I bet she is fun to have around, tripping over cats and getting comically wedged in the laundry shoot with a bucket stuck on her head.

Cutting off your nose to spite Facebook

I found it really interesting that only 30,000 out of 400,000,000 people deleted their profiles on 31^st May, out of protest to Facebook’s privacy changes, actually went through with it. Not hugely surprising though.

The amount of times I have heard my friends say “I am going to delete my FB profile, I am sooooo ovah it”, is too frequent to count. But none of them have gone through with it and when I hear it now I glaze over and muttering something supportive like ‘Oh really…monkey dishwasher hee haw.” To me they are idle threats like "I am so not drinking this month", "We are only friends" or "it's not you its me", I just file it under W for whatever.

The reason I don't believe them is that this unassuming site has become such a social behemoth, that for a user to opt out of the pool now, would be like throwing your mobile phone down the toilet cause your bored of talking on it. It won’t stop your friends using the site and won’t really say anything else to the world, apart from you are now not part of the online discussion or interaction. This is a bit of an ostrich approach. If a single tree falls in the social media forest, does the forest really care?

Admit it or not, FB is the future and time will tell if competitors join the market and manage to stave off being sent to the same binary code graveyard as MySpace. We could even see FB merge into other yet launched or successful competitive sites to create a single self governing communication device, like Internet 3.0. Who knows, I could chew the microchip for hours on this.

True… FB at the 11^th hour did a wee U-Turn on its privacy policy, that would make K-Rudd proud, even though it was relatively easy to protect yourself and I maintain even without this reversal, only a small amount of people would have deleted their profiles anyway. I REALLY want to know who of those who did delete will quietly rejoin in the next weeks..time will tell.

At the heart of this argument is that FB is not for the wallflower who wants to quietly chirp away with their 13 friends, it is a cyber soapbox to announce what your up to, to show all the cool things you have seen and done as well as interact and stay in touch with your friends – near or far. Simple as that. People who are on FB are by definition, not private people.

Another point to digest, is that FB is free. FREE!!! For all the old friends and scary exes you are now happily matey matey with online, but would ignore at the supermarket, you have not paid for any friend request. For all the photos you can share and random parties in Bulgaria you can be invited to…none of this has come at a cost. I am grateful i can keep in touch with all my friends and random party meets from around the globe. It was always a certainty that FB was going to try and implement some kind of revenue model, it was unfortunate thouigh that it was announced in a rather ham-fisted and autocratic way. That was sucky.

Now before I am faxed un-smiley faces of death or computer viruses attack me in a dark alley, I would like to state that I am not a FB mouth piece, I don't like the stirrings of FB going beyond the egalitarian model of keeping people connected… to helping brands to keep connected to people for $$$. But for the most part I really enjoy it and accept it for what it is, it’s not perfect but I don’t want to go backwards either.

Let's be realistic..FB or it's future incarnation/s is not going away, but if this teaches us anything it is us who have keep FB honest, as the privacy debate proved. Without people FB is just another site, so it's up to those who use it and keep the original ethos and user friendly policy for the site that got the world's knickers truly in a cyber knot.

So rest assured that I for one will continue to use Facebook to announce I ate a large meatball sub and am regretting it, or I fell down the stairs at work again or even to simply sent my friends a stupid link to a cat riding a unicycle.

Cause I'm just a boy.

Oh goody, the hysteria is back. Sex And The City 2 is about to open and I am less than eager to run screaming in my feather boa to see it. Maybe I am lacking the required estrogen to feel all heart fluttery about it but I thought the last movie was kinda good but pretty average too. I liked Miranda and Steve’s wandering genitals storyline and the scenes of Carrie completely devastated post wedding disaster with her friends rallying around her were genuinely touching. But what the hell was that whole ‘Let’s get back together cause your in my closet’ thing with Big. That just sucked, after all that navel gazing and eating-yogurt-in-bed C-Bradshaw just hitched up her $40,000 hemline and jumped back on his parade float. Stoopid. If I did that my friends would beat me so pulpy, you could box me and call me orange juice.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED the series. Loved. It was cutting, well written and observant. It also freaked me out how many times I thought ‘cripes that happened to me’, I don’t get that from True Blood. Though I did know someone who liked to bite a bit too much. Anyway I digress.

It seems to me the series closed on a good note, left the future open to interpretation. Carrie skips off down the avenue in her road kill fur and all of womanhood was at peace. AHA, but you would wrong and now the movies are driving a stake into your fanciful memories.

That is bad enough but seriously though what is the deal with the castrated males in their ‘Movie’ lives. Sure, men in the TV show have always been set pieces to be reacted off and shagged upon, but the guys they each ended up with were quite interesting. They had opinions and challenged the foursome. But now in the cinematic version the guys have become sterilized and seem more like handbags to be dragged out the cupboard for A) Wedding scene B) Birth scene as the father might have actually been involved in the whole conception think I think C) Supportive super husband D) Cheater, liar, candlestick maker who makes good in the end. To me this is a bit of lost opportunity.

SATC was always about the friendships, sex/relationships followed closely, in that context you could see the complexity of the characters and women in general. They did that with the key paramours, but why have they suddenly become so dull in the movie. Now they are shagged, married and breed from they are to be popped on the couch with a pat on the head - Their story is over, now they are owned.

Thus setting up a not very realistic nor responsible view of guys, I know I am not the market (or am i?!) but this shows men in two lights, boring one dimensional “yes dear, whatever you say dear’ husband or the dashing cad. This is part of broader issue I seem to see lately in which men are shown in media and advertising as sex crazed twats, cuckold lazy husband who would die without their smart wives or family ignoring sports fanatics who can’t multitask. Hmm.. annoying, I can multitask quite well and I am sure last time I looked I could buy detergent without a housewife leaping from behind the potatoes to scold me off for not buying ‘Shazam!’.

This annoys me cause if you tried today to pigeonhole women as cleaning, obsessed, baby making, naggy, airhead housewives you could pretty much count the seconds before having your nads strung up the nearest flagpole and A Current Affair chasing you with cameras outside your house. This double standard is rather glaring, but for the most part, largely ignored.

Not surprising, as all the surveys and cleaning commercials would lead you to believe we are all worried about getting laid, watching sport and being patronized for making non efficient purchases. So who has time really!?

Heineken released a "survey" this week, that said 90% of men talked about football over all else with their mates. Utter crap, I don’t remember being asked what I talked about with mates. It is also highly suspect as Heineken is sponsoring the upcoming Football World Cup in South Africa, so sounds like a very orchestrated PR line. Nevertheless this reinforces a rather patronizing and recurring stereotype.

Not really sure what to define this as, post feminist emasculation? Fuck knows, all I know it shits me.

Anyway, I hope that 'SATC2: Lawrence of a Labia' will have a more balanced view of the men but alas I doubt it. After seeing the trailer, Big seems bed bound, Adrian is purely there as the protagonist for Carrie’s marriage doubts, Steve will look after the ginger child somewhere, The hairy lawyer will just nod and grin like all good husbands should and Samantha’s loins will gobble all and sundry. I guess you can take comfort in repetition, but how much longer will the cupcake buying, shoe drooling, high speed walking SATC clones continue to like the movies once the icing goes decidedly funkier than Mr Funky Spunk.

But who cares right, I am just a guy.

UPDATE: SATC2 is getting some absolutely filthy reviews in movie land for being empty of soul and high on anti-Muslim material. Oohh not good peeps. Could the bedazzled cash cow that is the SATC franchise finally have snapped a heel? Read two reviews here and here. They are obviously off 'The Gals' Xmas Card list now me thinks.