The curious Hoff phenomenon

I just don't get it. As if paying Chris Moyles to use his ghastly vocal chords wasn't bad enough, Radio 1 has launched a campaign to get David 'The Hoff' Hasselhoff to number one in the musical hit parade. Or rather one of it's DJ's has - as far as I'm aware it's not actually part of the station's charter or anything.

OK, so it's vaguely amusing that in this day and age a record company has paid David Hasselhoff to sing the dirge-fest that is his new single 'Jump In My Car' AND has seen fit to unleash it on the unsuspecting British public, but getting it to number one?? It's neither a) big, or b) clever. Why is it cool to like shit things all of a sudden? 10 years ago no-one in their right mind would have bought a record by the has-been permed hunk that is The Hoff (except Germans of course) and it was as rubbish then as it is now (I expect). What next - William Shatner doing Pulp covers? Oh...

For the love of god...

As if the Daily Mail's Diana non-story wasn't annoying enough, it would appear that on the anniversary of one of the worst terrorist attacks in history, as conflict rages in the middle east and people are killed in suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, the Express saw fit to cover the entire front page of today's paper with...you've guessed it, a story about Princess fecking Diana. 'Diana was so much in love', it screams at us, with one of the umpteen archive photos they have of her looking gormless beneath it.

Apparently, she and Dodi were going to get engaged that fateful night in Paris, and Paul Burrell is horrible evil man who drowns kittens for fun. THIS IS NOT NEWS, PEOPLE!! Why do people waste 70p a day on this shit? This paper pays 'journalists' to peddle this bollocks - how can any one of them sleep at night? Do they all dream one day of working on a publication that tells real news stories - like Heat or Bella for example, or maybe even TV Quick magazine. There's more journalistic integrity on the 'Celebrity Style Secrets' page of Heat than there is in one column inch of these bog-roll worthy heaps of rubbish, yet the morons who buy it swallow every ill-informed sound bite that's thrown at them. AAAGGHH!!

Nine years on and she's still dead

It baffles me, truly it does. To be fair, even when she was alive I struggled to understand the media's obsession with Diana, Princess of Wales - nine years after she started pushing up daisies in the middle of a lake in the Midlands, I understand it even less.

OK so, it's around the anniversary of her untimely death, but barely a week passes when one of the so-called 'quality' tabloids, The Daily Express & The Daily Nazi - sorry, Daily Mail, feature some kind of article perpetrating the ridiculous conspiracy theories that surround the death of one of the thickest worldwide megastars of the 20th century. Today the Mail featured this piece raging on about Paul Burrell, Diana's ex-butler/the devil incarnate. Whilst I find it slightly distasteful that his entire 'celebrity' status came about purely as a result of her death, he has to make a living somehow, what with him having no-one to butle for any more. By featuring him in their paper at all, the Mail make sure he remains in the public eye - there's no such thing as bad publicity, after all.

If they really gave a flying toss about the sacred memory of someone they themselves re-characterised from treasonous slut to angelic deity overnight following her death, they would do what her sons seemingly do - rise above it all and refuse to be drawn into the endless media circus. Diana died because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt in the back of a speeding car that crashed because the driver was drunk - and that's that. Even if the Queen had strangled her with her bare hands, nothing can change that fact that she is dead, and will remain so for eternity. So can everybody please stop bloody well going on about her!

Scary sights in Doncaster

Whilst on an emergency pizza run to Donny the other week (that's how much of an emergency it was) my boyfriend and I happened upon one of the most genuinely blood-curdlingly scary things I've ever seen - an extremely fragile looking old man driving a Citroen AX round a roundabout - wearing an oxygen mask! Don't ask me why I found this such a distressing sight, but believe me, it's not an experience I'd wish to repeat. I mean, surely if you need a bit of assistance in the simple matter of breathing in and out, driving is one of the last things one should be considering. And he had a passenger as well!

I was reminded of this occurrence today after reading this brilliant story.

Nice to see our police force are as vigilant and infallible as ever - 'Pc Edge said: "I asked him if he could see me. He removed the dark-coloured sunglasses he was wearing and I could clearly see he was blind as he had no eyes."' Good work PC Edge, there's bound to a promotion in this for you after that cracking bit of detective work...

Glamping Queen

For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'glamping', it's a word I first came across in one of the Sunday supplements, used to describe the recent phenomenon that can best be summed up by the fact that you can now buy tents and sleeping bags with pink flowers on them - the idea that camping is very hip, very fashionable, and SO now. Well, I've just returned from a week in various fields in and around the Scottish Highlands, and believe me, there is nothing glamourous about sleeping with only two layers of vinyl between you and torrential rain, having to wrestle yourself into two layers of fleece, walking boots and a wooly hat to tramp half a mile to the lav if you need to pee in the middle of the night, or having no access to a hairdryer for six days.

Which is exactly why camping is so brilliant - the kind of people who look at a Cath Kidston tent and think "Ooh, how delicious! Wouldn't it be fun to go camping in one of those!" are just the kind of people who find the thought of a week without hair straighteners and eyeliner something akin to a living hell, so therefore never do it. I'll admit, I'm hardly the hardy outdoor, fell running type myself, but that's not the point. Camping is wondrous - especially in the breathtaking beauty of Scotland - enjoying the fresh air, eating cold beans out of tin, contemplating a night sky seemingly fit to burst with stars - but unless you're Kate Moss at Glastonbury and actually staying in a big fuck off trailer with a wardrobe the size of small house and an annexe housing your stylist and hairdresser, camping is not, and never will be, glamourous.

Best Intentions...

OK, so it's (well) over a month since my last post, full of good, regular-blogging type intentions - but it has been a fairly busy few weeks, what with weddings, holidays and house moves to contend with. So, excuses over with nice and early...

Well, today my boyfriend and I embarked upon a week of detoxification from the lard rich excesses we have been indulging ourselves in over the first few weeks of our co-habitation. Initially we had a fairly passable excuse - no cooker on which to cook healthy, virtuous vegetable-heavy feasts, so naturally the chippy or domino's pizza was our only possible source of nutrition (I think domino's put heroin on their 'football frenzy' pizza or whatever it's called. They couldn't sue me for that could they?) However, despite having had a cooker for well over four weeks now, we have no excuse but laziness and a deep affection for shit food for our continuing diet of questionable healthiness.

It started well - I decided early on (about ten minutes after arriving at the office at 8am) that coffee was actually quite good for you, and was acceptable refreshment for any self-respecting detox-er, especially given that the latte machine in the office canteen uses skimmed milk. Lunch was a very virtuous salad (coleslaw given much the same detox-friendly rating as coffee at this point. And cheese) and if you disregard any kind of cheese and onion pasty eating type incidents, the rest of the day was also an unprecedented success for both of us - so much so, we treated ourselves to a little midnight snack of cheese and biscuits. It's a piece of piss this detox lark!

The Joys of Home Ownership

When I started this blog, I was determined not to lose interest after three posts and stop bothering...given that I haven't posted anything for nearly a month, you'd be forgiven for thinking that losing interest after three posts and stopping bothering is exactly what I've done, but I've just been far too stressed to write anything. (And yes, stopping bothering is perfectly grammatically correct, in case you were wondering)

The cause of this stress? Moving house. Or rather not moving house to be precise. The plan was, we would complete on June 23rd, but the solicitor of the woman I'm buying from at one stage seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, making me extremely nervous indeed. June 23rd came and went with solicitor still AWOL, taking my nerves with it. At one point last week I was lying in bed and clocked my heart rate at 89 bpm, the discovery of which served only to increase it still further. However, the solicitor reappeared last Thursday (with no explanation for his three week wall of silence mind) and completion has now been set for July 10th. Heart rate is now a much more healthy 62 bpm, and I have ceased incessantly gnawing at my fingernails, or what little remains of them. I'm now actually quite excited about the move - even though I appear to be moving in with someone who has two whole boxes full of cables (well, you never know when you might need them...) three times the necessary number of PDAs, and a Betty Boo album he's not even slightly ashamed of. And I'm off to Prague for four days tomorrow - yay! Watch this space for updates - my good blogging habits start here...

Everybody needs good neighbours

The street on which I live is a public road with no parking restrictions. Most houses have garages and/or drives for cars to be parked on, but as I live in a basement flat, my only parking is on the street outside the house. Sometimes I can't get parked right outside. This is a fact of life, and a bit of a pain, but ultimately, walking a few yards extra when I come home of an evening is hardly an inconvenience for me.

When I arrived home on Friday night, there was a car parked outside my house, so I parked as close as I could get, about three houses away. I didn't use my car again until yesterday evening, when I found a little note tucked under the windscreen. The note was from the woman whose house I was parked in front of, kindly requesting that I desist from parking outside her property for 'days at a time' as it is inconvenient for people visiting her. Now, my initial reaction to this was to set fire to the note and put it through her letterbox - I didn't do this of course, but the sheer petty mindedness of the whole thing riled me beyond belief. Firstly, my car is always parked near or outside her house, so she knows I obviously live nearby. Secondly, every time I left my house over the weekend, my car was either the only one or one of two or three parked on our run of spaces, so her friends are either very lazy or too stupid to be able to park in a space smaller than about six car lengths (my guess is both).

So I am now considering two courses of action - 1) Ignore the note and park outside her house every day, even if there's space outside mine 2) Send a polite reply pointing out that if she doesn't like people parking outside her house she should move to one that isn't on a public road, and I'll park wherever the fuck I want to thanks very much, you poisonous, uptight, Daily Mail reading old bitch (you can just tell from her handwriting). And park outside her house every day, even if there's space outside mine.

I'd like to think I'm mature enough to go for option 1, but the fact that she was bothered enough about something so stupid to write an arsey note about it without thinking for one moment that she had no right whatsoever to be bothered about it pisses me right off. She needs to learn. But would sending her a note make me just as bad as her? No, it wouldn't, because I'm right and she's wrong!

When Cows Go Bad...Update

For the love of god! It seems I might of been right about the cow uprising after all...check out these further examples of bovine field rage. Seems I had a lucky escape!

Cow vs Car

Cow vs The Elderly

Cow Induced Coma

"I shouted for help and shouted at the cow, but it was unrelenting"

I'll never feel bad about eating burgers again...

When Cows Attack

Hello there...welcome to Muppeta's world!

We'll begin with a mirthful tale of mardy farm animals. Whilst out walking yesterday in the wonderfully dramatic Leicestershire countryside (and by wonderfully dramatic I mean prosaically pastoral), my boyfriend and I began meandering across a field that had a smattering of adolescent bovines in the far corner. Nothing remarkable in that - indeed, we had passed through two almost identically populated fields only minutes previously...but there was something different about these particular herbivorous ruminants. Maybe they were just bored - being a cow can't be the most action-packed existence on earth - maybe it was just the bovine equivalent of teenage angst, or maybe they were just plain nails, who knows, but what began as a seemingly harmless inquisitive look in our direction soon became, well, frankly bordering on terrifying. I don't know if you've ever seen a herd of 12 cows start to run at you, but take it from me, it's at once hilarious and bleeding scary.

I don't think my brain knew at all how to cope with this bizarre turn of events - the ringleader of these ASBO worthy quadrupeds (I know, I'm running out of cow analogies now) was heading straight for me at quite a pace, yet all I could think was 'but it's a cow for Christs' sake!' 'Yes - a cow - heavy and hoofy - run like f*ck!' Is what I should have been thinking. Fortunately, my boyfriend had the presence of mind to give the cows a taste of their own medicine, and advanced menacingly on the cows with his best Manc swagger...and then we both ran like f*ck from whence we came, over the stile and in to the safety of the neighbouring field (also full of cows, but the benign, friendly kind - thank god). By the time we had crossed that field, I had just about stopped laughing at our cow-related near mishap, and the sinister f*ckers were still staring at us, bunched around the stile over which we had made our hasty retreat.

I like to think that maybe they just thought we were bringing them food (even though cows eat grass...I think) and didn't really mean us any harm - but then I remember the icy expression behind those long, unblinking eyelashes; cold and confrontational - and wonder if maybe it's the start of some kind of sinister cow uprising. Either way, if you learn one thing today, make it this - cows: they're not clever, but they are quite big - and I reckon a misplaced hoof could do a lot of damage. Respect our beef giving countryside compatriots, and give them as wide a berth as possible.