Overload Overlords

Just say no

Don't know about you but I'm worried about Katherine Jenkins. What I mean is that if she doesn't take a day off soon from forcing her way into 'nation's sweetheart' status, she'll implode, dragging fellow crumpled sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn, into the warbling black hole she'd have created. 
Jesus, does Jenkins ever say no to anything? If she's not knocking out tours or tunes for people with the musical discernment of Helen Keller, she's dragging her arse in front of anyone who'll have her, from desert-dusty troops to drunk rugby fans. Forget asking her to attend the opening of an envelope. She'll be too busy attending the opening of someone's bowel.
Perhaps my impression of Jenkins is such because my kraken cave is in Wales which means that, thanks to the desperate Welsh media, she is never, ever out of the bloody headlines. Jenkins represents a tenuous link to the Principality's global importance so all she has to do is take a shit and the Welsh papers are all over it like fleas on a mongrel's bum. Jesus, The Western Mail - our national rag - would prioritise a story about how Jodie Marsh's grandma once visited Tenby so you can imagine what a meal it makes of K frigging J. The paper is this close to printing a schedule of her menstrual cycle.
It's desperate stuff and it's going to get worse. The Six Nations is around the corner so I have absolutely no doubt that Jenkins will be wheeled out to do everything from bawl through our national anthem to lead the Welsh players through tunefully pissing against their urinals. Add to that her bookings at the Olympics and the Jubilee and she's going to redefine the word overload in ways that have hitherto been unimaginable. For fuck's sake, she's even been quoted as saying that the reason she couldn't get around to marrying her (now) ex-boyfriend this year is because she's got too much on. Take a hint Jenks, take a hint.
Fuck knows what will happen if Jenkins is taken out by a missile the next time she's harassing our troops. Wales would plunge into mourning so deep that it'd have to be crop-spayed with prozac. Our papers would drop 16 pages overnight, our TV channels would be physically sick onto the nation's carpets and the M4 would curl up into a ball. It'd be like some freakish wartime experiment to test the mettle of the Welsh.
So, kraken-lovers, we need to gird ourselves in 2012. We're heading for one fuck of an overload of warbling, doe-eyed, bottle-blondeness. I'd suggest ear plugs and a blindfold. Me? I'll be staying in my cave and probably beating my head against its walls. It'll be much more enjoyable.

You Wouldn't Let Her Lie

Gone, but she sure as shit isn't forgotten

Just when you thought our national obsession with Princess bloody Diana was getting creepy, I'd like to nominate the magazine Vanity Fair for reaching levels of weirdness that would make Fred West blush.
I read VF every month - tidy, in-depth journalism on the whole - but what is with it's never-ending probing into Jackie Kennedy? For fuck's sake, she's been dead since 1994 but VF bangs on about her as if she's just risen from the Greek tycoon-shagging grave. VF has never knowingly produced an issue without a photo of Jackie-O shoved in there somewhere. Look, I have the latest issue in my kraken paw and even though there are no J-O features in it they've still managed to include a frigging pic of her on the contents page.
What. The. Fuck? Is J-O catnip for Fith Avenue toffs? Can VF not find a more current woman to bang on about? And what in the bollocks is there that's left to say about J-O? Perhaps we've not yet been regaled about how many shits she took a day or whether her cuffs matched her curtains. And perhaps said information is so vital to our existence that it would almost be inhumane of VF to not pick over it, word by word, until we're actually sicking up pill-box hats with matching handbags.
Look, VF, leave J-O to enjoy her eternal rest, will you? Even she must be spinning in her fabulously accessorised tomb by now. Jesus, you're this close to dusting off the ouija board, begging for a photoshoot before disinterring her for the delectation of the chattering classes. Move the frig on, will you? Just make sure that's it's in an open top car through Dallas. I fear a bullet to the brain is the only thing that'll cure VF of this particular malady.

Small Beer

Anchor. I said Anchor.

What the festive fuck? Over Crimbo I saw a story on the BBC news website that made me splutter a half chewed twiglet over my keyboard. Not because it was particularly horrific or shocking, but because it was such a belter of a non-story. The headline? Dad gives up drinking for sick daughter's hospital.
Aye, poor, poor kraken-fumbler, you did indeed read that right. To cut a shit story as short as possible, said father is not drinking for a year to raise funds for the hospital that is treating his sick daughter. And that's the story. That's it. That's some bloke isn't chugging beer for 365 days. Yes, his daughter's rare illness gets a mention but for some fucked up reason it's this most piffling of sacrifices that makes the headline.
Again, I ask you, what the festive fuck? Who in the frig decided that this was a story? Perhaps it's someone who is so incapable of passing a discarded tin of half-swigged Carling that not drinking for the flimsy sum of a year warrants star billing on a news site. 
Ok, so I'm not a drinker. I've just had my annual port n lemon. But that's because dealing with Kraken Junior while cradling a hangover would be the equivalent of dipping a foot into the seventh circle of hell and letting Satan himself nibble on my toehairs. It just ain't worth it. It sure as shit, though, doesn't warrant a BBC news story. Just label it under parental sacrifice, one of the things you do to stumble from one day of childrearing to the other without alerting the lankier-haired factions of the social services.
Sure, raising money for charidee is a noble pursuit. That's not the problem. Nor is the fact that the dry dad's daughter has a rare illness. That's, of course, horrible. But the guy hasn't exactly decided to reject his body's own production of amino acids for a year, has he? And I haven't heard mention of how he's scaling the Burj Khalifa via the Blu Tack he's stuck to his tongue either.
Like the dad says in this arsed-up excuse for news, refusing booze has been a "piece of cake". He also revealed this thrilling insight: "I almost ordered a drink by mistake the other day and then I realised". And if this wasn't enough to convince the misguided reporter that there was fuck all to write about - if these are your best quotes, you're barking up the wrong exclusive - then I suspect that booze is indeed a problem, mainly because you'd have to be as drunk as fuck to file it. 
So get a grip, BBC. Go into rehab, picture a world without Heineken and reconsider whatever wild reasons make you want to be a news service. Whatever the hell they are, this story ain't it.

Ask a Stupid Question...

Please?

Christ on a bike, I was treated to some supreme inanity today. I was in my local coffee shop, which runs various music channels on its TV, whereupon the winkle-eyed, mouth breathing Olly Murs appeared (on the telly, not behind the counter). He was being interviewed by some off-camera goblin and do you know what he was asked? "What's your latest single about?"
Now, you could forgive said goblin for asking this question had Murs been bleating the lyrics to Hotel California or The Times They Are a-Changin'. But no, Murs latest single is called Dance With Me Tonight, leading most sentient beings to believe that he's singing about dancing. With someone. Quite possibly tonight. 
Oh, for fuck's sake. Dumbing down has never been so dumb and has never made me feel so down. Who in the giddy crevices of hell asked such a glaringly retarded question? What the fuck are they doing in paid employment? And why haven't their organs been harvested for those who need them to lead useful lives?
Assuming the goblin in question did his research beforehand (by reading back copies of Heat) he'd have known that the penetrating lyrics include the lines I just wanna, oh baby/ I just want you to dance with me tonight/ So come on, oh baby/ I just want you to dance with me tonight before inviting some lucky laydee to run her acrylic nails across his permanently broiling wedding vegetables. 
So, my celeb-whoring goblin, what did you expect the boy Murs to say in response? "Actually, I'm highlighting the heinous crime of female genital mutilation,"? Or perhaps, "I was so excited about the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson that the lyrics to this song came to me in just ten minutes. It'll also form the basis of my next concept album."
In fairness to Murs, when asked the question he sounded as dumbfounded as I felt listening to it. He blathered something about walking into a pub. Or club. Or bar. Then asking someone to dance with him.
Look, I don't expect searingly in-depth questions on a music channel (or on any channel when it comes to ex-X factor wannabes) but I sure as shit don't expect the sort of questions a toddler would snort at. Perhaps acting hip, shuffling like your piles are seeping and wearing the contents of Top Man/ Shop are enough to bag you a job on the likes of MTV or VHM. How fucking depressing is that (and I know what depressed is, by Christ)? 
So could somebody direct said gremlin to, I dunno, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan or Jackson Browne? I'm not a fan but with any luck the gremlin in question will have a meltdown at a song being about more than clumsy bollock nudging, sparing us valuable oxygen on this withering planet. it's not the only remedy I have. But it is my only legal one.

What Are You?

No thanks. I'm already
a member of  the Wombles

Pretty arsed off actually. Why? Today's The Times carried one of those really fucking irritating features which insists on wedging its readership into pigeon holes. It was all about the "new tribes" in British society and begged readers to find out whether they were such ridiculous things as Retronauts, Craftivists, Girl Geeks...whetever the fuck else the desperate editor could come up with to fill a worrying amount of white space 20 mins before deadline.
Who in the frig reads this shit? Seriously, does anyone actually read articles like this in the hope that by the end of it they'll have been duly labelled as one thing or another? If they do, I'm afraid they're really fucking weird. Apart from the fact that these pigeon holes are the work of one hack sitting at one desk in one newsroom they are, of course, non-bloody-existent. 
Take the bollocks I saw in a magazine a few weeks ago, imploring its female readers to decide whether they were yummy mummies/ slummy mummies/ Myra Hindley. Excuse me? So it's no longer enough that I'm a depressed working mother who is all things to all people? Suddenly I have to belong to some fucking clan or other? Jesus, is that supposed to give me hope because the reality is that it makes despair. 
Look, idiots, I don't want a label thank you. I don't want you to tell me what I am supposed to be. I'll sodding well decide what I am and right now it's this far from nipping up to the News International offices and introducing someone to a large pointy stick. Oh, and a 'tribe' called 'patronising gimps'.

Hack Attack

Gaze into my navel,
not around my navel...

Speaking as an ex-journalist, d'you know what I find really fucking irritating about journalists? This stupendously egotistic idea that no one ever really experiences parenthood/ depression/ cancer/ poverty until they have. You know this from the endless stream of weekend features about said subjects with the appropriately stricken hack gawping at you from some double page spread or other.
Christ, it's unbearable. If I have to read Giles Coren banging on about his newborn again, as if fatherhood had been freshly minted in his back bedroom, I'll have to replace my eyes with dung beetles. And there are other journalists I know who have turned their offsprings' development into entire blogs, actually listing - yes, writing lists - of their kids' achievements. As if anybody gives a shit. Chances are that most parents won't have time to read said bollocks because they are too busy weeping over their own kid's terrifying ability to produce a pint of snot per sneeze. 
Why do journalists do this? Or why do editors want to run with this stuff? OK, if said hack has gone through a lightning-strike type of experience, let 'em write about it. Take Melanie Reid in The Times who writes a weekly slot on living with her crippling injuries after breaking her neck and back in a horse riding accident. It's genuinely a window into a world most of us have no knowledge of.
You can hardly say that of a yet another hack's skirmish with childbirth can you? Look, unless you gave birth while swinging from a trapeze during which you have to plead with Iran's Ahmadinejad for your release from captivity don't bother me. I've given birth, I've had depression, I've been broke... your tales of feeling a pinch low because you couldn't afford to host a dinner party just aren't cutting my brand of mustard.
And yeah, I admit that when I was a hack I wrote about myself once in a very, very long while but at least these were justified by my suitably freakish circumstances or relevant to a national issue which formed the bulk of the story. They weren't the prurient outpourings of someone who simply thinks that they are important enough to accompany a random reader's breakfast. Fuck cracking my boiled egg. I'd be happier aiming for Coren's writing hand.

And another thing...

Where I keep my chips

Christ, It's nice being able to blog/ write whatever the frig I like. As a journalist there was always the chance that an editor could see my blogging which meant:

a) they'd hate my writing and never commission me

or

b) every one of my posts would have to be pithy and arresting and insightful foreverenever.

Now I can write utter cobblers, though. In fact I have already started. Oooh, and I can swear too. 
Fucketyfuck!

Stuff, like

Me, sporting the natural look

Chances are that if you’re reading this pile of pish you want to know what I’m up to these days. Merrily, not much. I’m a regular Barbara Cartland of a Kraken these days, swathed in puce chiffon while barking utter shite from my chaise longue. Short story is that the black dog of depression bit me on the arse in April 2010. Problem was that the flea-bitten bastard gnawed on me until my plot was well n truly lost, I became a psychiatric patient and I rattled with joyous amounts of medication.   

That’s when I chucked in freelance journalism.  Not an easy decision because, frankly, I was good at it. But honestly, if I had to crawl up the arse of one more fucking editor, prattle with one more PR or chase yet another late payer (you stingy shits know who you are) I was going to be even less responsible for my actions than I already was.  And I speak as someone who already takes anti-psychotics.

Now? Well, I’m almost recovered although still nicely medicated. I have my hobbies – dressmaking,  learning to play the piano, reading (I’m like an extra from Pride n Frigging Prejudice) – and may have to add blogging to that list of keep-me-off-the-street activities too. Let’s see how that last one goes though, eh?