Shit-but-compelling TV and the worst writer ever.

This is where I insert my usual thing about not updating because I've been doing important stuff. In this case, trying to console my laptop after it was brutally raped by a trojan virus thingy, being turned down by three McDonalds branches when applying, which is truly a new low, and then visiting the family in Devon, which is my usual low.
I'll try not to bore you too much about my family (especially given that they read this), but I shall sum up my stay in bullet points.

• I got yet another "chat" about contraception from my Granny. Now, my Granny is a nice, monobrowed Cornish lady who sweats profusely, speaks with the most rural accent in existance, and has a nun-like habit (no pun intended) of waggling her finger at you when lecturing you on something. Finger wagglings that day broke family records; first-off when bollocking my brother for considering voting Labour (she wasn't much happier at my decision to stick by the Monster Raving Looney Party), then going throughout the day until it reached the invariable conclusion of telling me to use condoms. Apparently, despite being 24 and having yet to add yet another squalling shitbag child to this overpopulated planet, she thinks I still have a 15-year-old's mindset of "You can't get pregnant if you do it standing up/if it's your first time/if he pulls out quickly/if you do it in the bum" (OK, the last one does work as a form of contraception, but will leave your farts sounding like one-note panpipes if keep it up).
  
• I had my hair cut. Exciting stuff, I know. It was shoulder-length, it's now a pixie-crop. Naturally, you probably don't give a shit, but in case you do, here's a before shot involving a dog (and a Jack Russell), and an after shot involving the Myspace angles. Basically, according to my folks, I look less like Neil from The Young Ones now, which is always good.
  
• I went out drinking with my 20-year-old brother and his burly, rugby-playing friends. Great idea, Ellie. I woke up the next day with the usual dry mouth, nausea, dizziness and pounding headache (according to my Mum, I got up, and shuffled straight to the tap for water in slow-motion), but also with a massive bruised lump on my head from where I vaguely recall an over-enthusiastic dancer elbowing me in the face. Other memories include being in Subway, being in a bar called Bohemia (the least bohemian place on the planet, incidentally. £6 for a double jack and coke? Fuck off), arguing with someone over whether or not there was a point to the existance of Myleene Klass, trying to help some trollied bint to find her handbag (and failing), and the taxi driver making me hold my brother's girlfriend's sandwich because she couldn't be trusted not to pick at it in the taxi. Mardy bastard.
  
• For some reason, I ended up watching The Sound Of Music with my Mum on Good Friday. If there's one thing that film teaches young women, it's that marrying someone who treated you like crap for a bit, is a shit father to his seven kids, has evident issues over the death of his ex, and has literally, minutes ago, DUMPED HIS FUCKING FIANCEE, is a fantastic idea if you include musical numbers and an insufferable troupe of brats who decide the best way to mourn their mother is to call their step-mum of five minutes "Mother" instead.
  

So, in other news recently, I accidentally saw pictures of Peaches Fucking Geldof naked (her middle name is not actually "Fucking" by the way, although it should be; her full name is actually Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof. Because clearly, if there's one thing kids need, it's five middle names)
Peaches, for those fortunate enough not to know, is the daugter of half-arsed sanctimonious Gandalf lookalike Bob Geldof, and late TV presenter/writer Paula Yates. And an internet user calling himself "thatcoolguyben" reckons they shot up together and had lots of unattractive, pale, skaggy sex. Hot.

Phwoar.

Anyway, now she's been ditched by Ultimo, classy lingerie range aimed at people who think they're too classy to get to buy their synthetic, thrush-inspiring kecks from Primark, for actually having a one-night stand, rather than just standing around in frilly underwear aimed at teenagers.
Now, I don't dislike Peaches because of this. Quite a lot of people have an ill-advised one-night stand at some point or other. She's just been unfortunate in that she's fairly well known for some reason or other.
The reason I dislike her is that she's well-known for being a complete waste of oxygen.
Basically, this is a girl who is known as being a writer and TV presenter. Well, in Geldof-Land anyway. In the UK, she's known as "irritating dung-faced daughter of that Live Aid cunt".
Let's have a look at her writing and presenting ability, shall we?
Writing
Just..... just click here. Dear sweet Christ. This is the best NYLON can do? I know fashion magazines aren't exactly known for being able to churn out up-and-coming talent in terms of their writers; just being able to point out what's "vintage, now and soooo stylelessly cool" is generally enough. But this does sound like an overprivilaged teenager yapping on about how their gap year was "like, totally the making of me, yah?"

The sun glows a burned orange as it sinks behind a skyscraper, a car horn screeches irritably, the wind whistles through the acres of willows in Central Park: New York, the most offbeat and eccentric city in America, is my new home.
I love it here. I live with my husband, Max, in Williamsburg, home of the plaid shirt and vintage Mecca Beacon’s Closet.

The first paragraph alone is actually worse than most creative writing that I heard at the University of Derby, where I studied Creative Writing. And that was a place where I heard the following poem in Creative Writing Workshop:
I cry when I'm happy
I cry when I'm sad
I cry when I'm angry
I cry when I'm mad
Basically, the University of Duh-by has yet to produce any particularly talented writers. And yes, I'm including myself in this wave of talent voids. I'm not a writer, I'm a stroppy fucker with a superiority complex and access to the internet.

Max and I settled on New York because I go to University here now, and of course work for my favourite fashion magazine, NYLON. Marvin, my great friend and the editor here, introduced me to the girl who would soon become one of my closest friends, Cory Kennedy. We present NYLON TV together, and it is the most irreverent, off-the-wall, and creative show I have ever had the pleasure of presenting. And I’ve presented a lot of television in my time.

Oh, good for you, Miss Geldof. Which brings me to:

TV Presenting





..... there's nothing I can add to that, except that, if you can watch this without wanting to introduce a crowbar to her head, you're an infinitely more patient person than I, and I suggest you work for the complaints line at DHL (which I used to do, and quit for a bloody good reason).

Anyway, moving on from oxygen thieves to....er....more oxygen thieves.
Now, as an unemployed person, I watch a lot of rubbish telly. Not as rubbish as NYLON TV evidently, but close. Here's yet another list, this time of my top five rubbish reality shows.

1. Four Weddings
Frequently referred to as Come Dine With Me with weddings. The premise is that four brides-to-be go to each others' weddings and bitch about them, and the person with the best score for the happiest day of their life get a honeymoon. Lucky them.
There are the usual weddings, with a registry office, a lukewarm buffet consisting of quiche and chicken drumsticks with congealed fat on them, and "Oops Upside Your Head" playing at the reception. There are the token "whacky" ones, like a nudist wedding, or a medievel-themed one, or a Pagan handfasting. And then there are the fancy ones that must be boring as fuck to sit through; cathederals, long, vomit-inducing speeches by a ludicrously henpecked groom, talking about how in love he is with his new bride (in a nervous mumbling style that implies she's holding a cattle prod to his back), having to wait an hour in between courses of Fancy Shite (tm), that kind of thing.
Of course, like Come Dine With Me, the best bit is hearing the brides banging on about how their rivals' weddings were all boring/cheap/generally shit compared to theirs. It's a bit like being at school, where you could frequently hear someone bitching about someone behind their back because they bitched about them behind their back and... oh forget it. Anyway, point being, watch it. It's astounding. Nothing is guaranteed to kill off excess braincells quite like it, other than What Katie Did Next.

How Clean Is Your House
Usually put in an evening slot, but generally repeated on daytime TV, this is something I watch purely to make my own life seem marginally less scutty.
Now, I live in a bedsit. Quite a small one, at that. There's a cupboard with a shower and toilet in it, but other than that, I do everything in the same room. As a result, it tends to get a bit grimey, to say the least. I have a lot of useless clutter I can't quite bring myself to throw out, and a habit of only doing a "proper" wash up (ie: not just rinsing out a mug because I want a cup of tea) when I'm reduced to eating food off a DVD case because there are no plates left. There is a pile of clothes between my bed and the wall (it's a floordrobe), which I refuse to move on the basis that there needs to be something to stop my pillow from falling off the bed and getting lost in the gaping void under it.
However, I am practically OCD compared to some of the people on this programme, in which Kim and Aggy, who seem to share the personality of your Mum when she visits your grotty student dive of a house (a mixture of tutting, affectionate clucking, and abject horror), descend on some grubby bastard's crib for a severe talking to and the household equivalent of an enema.
There are people who use worn socks as dishcloths, haven't seen their own bed in decades, and live in a knee-deep quagmire of cat hair and trinkets. Each episode is the same; after ten minutes of horror movie-style orchestra hits and Kim and Aggy shrieking in disgust at the mouse graveyard under the couch, they show us some helpful household hints (all of which involve either vinegar or bicarbonate of soda. Or both) that I always mean to remember but never do. At the end, courtesy of a good scrubbing and a decent interior designer, the house looks inhabitable. At this point, the prole responsible for the mess in the first place either shrugs and acts ungrateful ("Where's all my stuff?"), or, even worse, cries. This seems to happen on all daytime TV shows at some point or other. I don't know why it's still considered to be endearing, to be honest. If someone cleaned and sorted out my hovel for free, I'd be pretty fucking chuffed.

Miami Ink
..... or London Ink, or LA Ink.
It's a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a tattoo parlour, and the people who flock to it in order to get ink drilled into their skin. Sounds ace, right? That's what I thought. As much as I love tattoos, I still mostly dislike the people they're attatched to. Basically, each show features the following:

• The Memorial Ink. In which someone decides that they'd like a tattoo to commemorate the passing of their friend/relative/pet, regardless of the late friend/relative/pet's opinion on tattoos. It's not entirely uncommon to hear "My Grandma passed away when I was four, but even though I can't really remember her, I'm going to cry convincingly for the cameras while I get that sick tattoo of a skateboarding Grim Reaper I've always wanted. But.... um.... she was Italian. So I guess you should put the Italian flag on the Grim Reaper's back. Yeah. Grandma would have LOVED that."
• The Navel-Gazer. Invariably female (although you get the odd bloke who happens to have gone through some trauma or other). Usually gets something every other fucker on the series has, like a lotus flower, or koi carp. They'll make the effort to make it seem like they're very deep individuals deserving of such a tattoo though, and tend to come out with something along the lines of "I just think that a lotus flower represents ME, and all I'VE gone through, and how I'VE developed as a person and started thinking more about MYSELF, and ME ME ME ME ME ME" (at this point, they become so aroused by how AWESOME they are that they tend to trail off).
• The Temptress. Similar to The Navel-Gazer, but more superficial. Tends to, again, be female, and stroll in wearing nothing but a bikini, asking for a tattoo of, for example, a poisonous octopus "Because I'm beautiful but deadly, I break so many hearts, etc". Usually flirts with the tattoo artist, and seems genuinely surprised if he doesn't flirt back.
• The Nervous First-Timer. Either a middle-aged woman thinking "I may as well see what the fuss is all about", or a teenager who has "like, totally wanted this sick tattoo forever". They make a massive fuss about how much it's going to hurt, and then just sit there gritting their teeth when it's being done. Occasionally they cry and ask the tattooist to stop. This is exceptionally funny when they're having a small tattoo.

The Jeremy Kyle Show
If you haven't seen this by now, you've presumably been living under a rock, in which case you've probably met most of the guests on it anyway.
Every week, dead-eyed sociopath Jeremy Kyle attempts to sort out the issues of slack-jawed cretins who think that daytime TV is the perfect place to harp on about how they don't know who their babydaddy is. He mostly does this by exploding into a ball of vitriolic rage. Observe.



To be honest, it's a bit depressing, although, at the same time, strangely empowering, because no matter how pathetic my life gets (let's face it, it can't really get any more pathetic), at least I will never end up screaming "SHUT YOUR MAAAAAAAFF!" at a skanky-toothed convict in front of an audience of sanctimonious swinepeople.

Loose Women
Otherwise known as Dragon's Den, but with less begging for investments and more pointless wittering. Basically, you know how, when you were little, you'd be in town or at the shops with your Mum, and she'd bump into a friend of hers and stand there for ages discussing the most boring subjects she could possibly think of when all you wanted to do was get home in time for Superted? Yeah. That's exactly what Loose Women is like. Except it's even longer and televised. And it also partly resembles a middle-aged woman's hen night. When they get a male guest on, you can tell it's taking every inch of restraint not to shriek "'ERE MAUREEN, INT HE LOVELY? POLICEMEN ARE GETTING EVEN YOUNGER! COME ON LUV, LET'S 'AVE A SQUEEZE OF THAT LOVELY BUM...."

Moral of the story? I am in no position to make fun of these people when I spend enough time gawping at their onscreen antics. Dear God, someone employ me.