Just a Thought: Desperate Housewives

I’d never seen this before, though I recognised some of the actors. Kyle McLaughlin from that Twin Peaks, a lady from the TV series Superman and another one from pictures of her bottom in The Sun, which caused me to look at her face after a while.

My first impression is that it’s complete and utter shit. Everything’s so garish and bright and super-real, like the first twinklings of a hastily consumed microdot at the exact moment you discover all your friends have left you alone in a strange pub. The actors themselves are all clean and symmetrical like children’s painted wooden blocks and the acting follows suit.

Of course, apart from being shit, the look of the show is entirely deliberate. It’s meant to be cod-surreal, a bit ‘weird,’ but the acting is so knowing it completely lacks any subtlety. What wit that may have existed in the first place is condensed unto an unblinking blob of soulless drudgery.

I’m very sure that the makers of this tripe knew they’d cooked a turkey; this is born out in the tooth-grinding score which seeks to emphasis the whole ‘ooh, isn’t this weird’ aspect by employing a pizzicato plinking, plonking string section to imbue every scene with a supposed quirkiness. It’s unbelievably awful. It’s so loud that, even if you wanted to hear the script, your ears have to strain round the pumps of some bored session muso earning his living on his cacky cello.

In one scene the tempo of the score sped up every time the shot featured a male, only to drop to its heartbeat pace when the female mugged into the middle distance. This drone is there all the time; it’s gradually fed into the beginning of scenes and ends them with a self-satisfying ‘plong!’ But it’s also oddly hypnotic and I’m convinced that the incidental music is the key to the programme’s ongoing success.

At first it’s mildly irritating, then it becomes intolerable and all of sudden, your tea is cold and you’ve dribbled all over your pants. The only reason I saw 15 minutes was because I was channel hopping and happened on it. You see, I saw the last 15 minutes; I made it to the end – it was the music that made me do it.

I still don’t understand.

Interview With a Cannibal

In 2002, German cannibal Armin Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to over eight years in prison for killing, dismembering and eating another man.

Most of us have heard of this fellow and what he did with Bernd Brandes, so watching ‘Interview With A Cannibal’ on Channel Five was, on the face of it, no more than one’s own voyeurism taking advantage of the channel’s tendency to sensationalise events.

As the programme trundled inevitably towards the ‘good bits’ I was surprised that Five had made some effort to explain why on earth the man might have a vibrant fetish for the consumption of human flesh. Putting it bluntly, his dad left the homestead when he was nipper, his domineering mum remarried three times to rotten types, all of whom nicked her money before nicking off and when the last one left Meiwes obsessively cared for her until death.

In short Meiwes wanted something permanent for himself – what he described as a ‘brother’. He concluded that, by consuming a lover, the digested flesh would physically transgress into his being for evermore. We learned that aside from a spell in the army, the desire to eat human flesh had been an all-consuming urge (excuse the pun) since he hit puberty.

Whilst his character was being dissected (if you’ll excuse the pun, again) much less was made of the victim. We got a miniscule amount on his background. It wasn’t dissimilar to Meiwes, but there was nothing to explain why he wanted some random fellow to eat him – in particular, his winkle.

I’m not saying I can understand why anyone would want to eat another person, though I can project my sympathies sufficiently to inform you that I’d much rather be the diner than the meal. Incidentally Brandes wasn’t the only person offering himself for consumption; apparently Meiwes had a pick of over 400 individuals that wanted to be his tea…

After meeting online and discussing plans, Miewes arranged to meet Brandt at the station near to his late mother’s 44 bedroom mansion and drove him home. After showing him around, lobby, winter lounge, kitchen, ‘slaughter room,’ as he openly referred to it, they had sex because, according to Miewes, Brandes wanted to. After the latter dosed up on sleeping pills and cough syrup, and following one failed attempt, Miewes cut off his lover’s manhood, as discussed of course.

At this point I started to feel a bit peculiar. Far from a barrel of laughs, Miewes came across as quite affable. He was almost affectionate when discussing his lover, but the manner in which nonchalantly described some of the events had a tendency to suddenly chill the blood like liquid nitrogen. In two or three instances it was impossible not to feel physically sick. One period of nausea arrived when Miewes recalled how Brandes screamed for no more than 30 seconds before expressing his disappointment that it didn’t hurt more, casually acknowledging the spurting wound.

As Brandes ‘relaxed’ upstairs, Miewes popped down into the kitchen, split and broiled the winkle, fried it with some garlic and took it back upstairs for a spot of post-penectomy dining. Apparently Brandes was very upset that it was inedible, which is a disappointment to say the least, especially as he was, by that point, bleeding heavily from the hole where his penis / sausage was.

I have to say I found the next part the hardest bit of all to comprehend, which may come as some surprise with regard to what has happened so far. Miewes ran his pal a hot bath and, whilst he went downstairs to read a Star Trek book, left him there for a few hours to ‘bleed out.’

I don’t think this translates as well in writing as it does when spoken by Miewes, and this was the programme’s strength. The interviews were inter cut with footage of the actual locations within the house – kitchen, slaughter room, bed, hook in the ceiling etc… This gave the variously unpleasant stages an insidious quality which occasionally convulsed into unmitigated horror.

Brandes was still alive after his bath – by now more blood than water (‘as he was still spurting’) – and after getting out and collapsing a few times, eventually he passed out for good.

Miewes made it clear he wasn’t interested in killing anyone (weirdly I sort of believed him, killing was a means to an end in the same way as carnivores buy meat at the supermarket) nonetheless, after a small struggle with himself he slit his lover’s throat, removed his head and hung him on the meat hook where he was disembowelled and dismembered in accordance with instructions attained online. The body parts were packed as choice cuts (65lbs worth) and placed in the large chest freezer in the kitchen. For the next 10 months he ritually cooked and ate Brandes daily (describing its taste as ‘rich Pork’) with his best dinner service by candlelight.

Incredibly none of these facts are remotely contentious. From the outset Miewes and Brandes agreed to film the whole evening, particularly as Brandes was keen to watch himself having his penis cut off. When 20 minutes of the more grisly ‘highlights’ were shown to the jury all but two vomited in their seats as Miewes stood by watching calmly.

This will probably be the part of the programme that will stick in my brain. Miewes’ calmness, his matter-of-factness, made the events he described seem virtually normal, like he was talking about two mates on a Saturday night eating pizza, getting drunk and one of them passing out from over-indulgence…

But there was something else in this interview that concerned me and it took me a while to work out what it was. Initially I thought he was a little arrogant, almost smug – but it wasn’t just that. As the credits rolled I got it. Miewes appetite had been sated. He was full.

Barnardo’s

The Barnardo’s advert, currently casting a black shadow over commercial TV, will continue to air despite attracting almost 500 complaints. According to the Advertising Standards Authority the advert was ‘justified,’ despite some of the complainants being victims of abuse who found the advert ‘distressing.’

Before we tackle the commercial itself it’s worth noting the power of the buck in this instance. Barnardo’s are paying a lot of money to run this advert. If they weren’t I should imagine 500 complaints would see the bastard taken off the air at once, especially ones from abuse victims. This is something the BBC, a publicly funded organisation, don’t have in their favour. Complain about them and a national scandal emerges, moan about your rights as a viewer after suffering shock following a confrontation with poorly judged and sensationalist shit such as this offing from Barnardo’s and you get brushed off like pubic hair that’s escaped from Stalag Luft Underpant.

The main problem with the advert is that it makes no fucking sense.

Yes, we get the cycle of abuse thing on paper but how does this offing from a Children’s Charity reinforce this? Who is this targeted at?

Teachers who don’t listen to adult women in school uniforms saying ‘I don’t understand’? That rotter who gives her a good smack round the head as she’s trying to eat toast?

Even if this was made clear I’m not sure where Barnardo’s fit into all this and am now left confused as to what Barnado’s actually do. I thought Barnardo’s was a children’s home. Are they advertising for residents or what?

The advert falls on its arse from the off by the choice of lead. The blonde ‘teen’ could be anything from 18 to 35. Either way, the character doesn’t have ‘vulnerability’ written all over her. In fact, the first thing you notice is she’s quite hot with big tits.

The choice of the ‘cycle of abuse’ is bizarre too. Not just the sequence of events, but the situations in which our heroine finds herself in. First off, we see her assaulting someone so our sympathies aren’t really engaged with her. When we see her crying in nick, a few of us probably thought she jolly well deserved it (what-ho).

Then comes the hitting scene which is as powerful as it is upsetting. Between you and me, it’s very well done, but it can’t be justified in any rational way as it doesn’t function outside of what it is… which is ‘nasty’.

The final scene of her getting whacked on horse is more farcical than hard-hitting. The makers may as well have portrayed her with a dribbling tongue hanging out, trying to catch imaginary butterflies over a Jefferson Starship soundtrack. Speeding the sequence up (instead, perhaps, on focusing on her welfare when she was younger which may have saved the whole shambles) demonstrates an ironic ‘fuck it, this’ll do’ mentality.

Should it be banned?

Not really, there’s no such thing as bad publicity and through foul means or fair, many more people will now have heard of Barnardo’s. Its just a shame that because of the poor way they’ve portrayed themselves you’ll have to find out what they actually do via other sources. The twits.

Studio Line

It’s okay, even though it seems like last week this advert is 22 years old…

Finished throwing up yet?

No?

Done now?

Good.

I thought I’d mention something about this quite amazing piece of advertising because, for some reason, whenever I heard the word ‘L’Oreal’ (and without wishing to go into detail, for work reasons I do) my mind always automatically responds with ‘S-S-S-S-Studio Line’ then the final part of this commercial mentally reveals itself to me like vagina dentata. Specifically, the models bursting through the desperately 80s styled wall, miming playing instruments with less conviction than Julian Sands doing Hamlet in jelly.

That last part is possibly the most irritating thing ever, and I mean ever, put on television.

But I’m finding it hard to criticise it. Twenty-two years later I can still remember the fucker as if it was yesterday. Every drop of the advert is in me. It lives inside me like some sort of dreadful turd I can’t shit out.

That, sadly, is the point of advertising. To make a brand stick in the mind by foul means or fair and whilst this advert seems harmless enough, maybe I’m now convinced beyond doubt that the makers of the ad deliberately ballsed up the ending in order to make us (me) recall the product via inexplicable anger at the sheer naffness of it all.

Moonpig, anyone?

Heat

How does one sum up the contemporary female as viewed by the gutter press?

Well look no further folks, it’s here.

Being perpetually presented with media stereotypes of women, the new Heat advert is the perfect representation of all that is wrong with how we view the role of the young woman in today’s society. What is more disturbing is how this celeb crap is something women aspire too.

My favourite whipping boy (and she’s got a face like a bloke) is Jordan, the tit-waggling tart who, by a combination of self exploitation and sheer greed, has managed to make a fucking fortune by using the media to reinvent herself at the expense of her own family. As a role-model, the damage has already been done. Every other aspiring ‘celeb’ is only too happy to be seen, cosmetically adjusted for the purpose of the universal proletariat bloke, swaggering about wearing nothing but tooth floss in order to gain the attentions of the paparazzi.

But there is more. After the mutual exploitation has established a ‘celeb’, said celeb will often bite the hand that fed it. This results in violence – think Allen/Winehouse who regularly find themselves having to punch their way out of their own homes or clubs when the monster they’ve created turns to suck the very marrow out of their bones.

It has to be said that the violence is usually dished out by those that, to some degree, have earned their fame via talent (the likes of Jordan and Marsh couldn’t afford to spurn the attentions of the press) but obviously such behaviour keeps the artist in the public eye, which will ultimately result in record sales. young women are left with the notion that it’s acceptable for women to use their fists as well as their tits.

Now the Heat advert. Incidentally, Heat is nothing more than a paparazzi-landfill with a desire to do no more than poke its nose into the lives of those that jangle their enhanced privates / damaged emotions at cameras before dishing out gushing praise or more commonly, screaming vitriol, to nosy gossips and fishwives.

So, after being presented with a typical cover of Heat, an expose on some gits Lumpy Thighs’ for fucks sake, two women start to punch the crap out of one another.

We’re presented with the idea that Heat is of such value that two perfectly normal women are prepared to kick seven bells out of each other in order to read the last available copy. But even within the advert there is more bird-baiting, while these two fairly ordinary wankers roll about on the floor a model serenely plucks the magazine from the shelf looking down at the ‘ordinary’ pugilists with a certain degree of disgust.

Sort of says it all about the magazine, it’s content and it’s readers.

Actually, I could go on and on about this… but I won’t.

NewsGush: Icke and Tina Edmonds

Not content with one former TV presenter howling at the moon, the planets seem to have called upon Noel Edmonds to go all David Icke on us.

Have this for starters. Notice the quote marks – I’m not making this shit up..

Orbs are little bundles of positive energy and they think they can move between 500 and 1,000 miles per hour. They look like little round planets but they come in all shapes and sizes. Conventional photography can’t pick them up but digital cameras can.

They think?

Orbs?

“What are these orbs?” you may ask. What are ‘they’ that think?

When Edmonds was pressed, more Bedlam waffle dribbled from his fucking beard.

My belief is that these are something to do with some form of positive energy and, possibly because I miss my parents like mad, I like to think they are them. I’ve got loads of photographs of me at home with two orbs that visit me.

Edmonds, brain age of 96, is a follower of the New Age theory of Cosmic Ordering which involves writing a wishlist and asking the planets to carry it out. So that’s cleared that up then.

In case it’s not, he continues:

The two that I have are about the size of melons. One sits on my arm and the other is usually in the back of the shot, sitting just over my right shoulder.

Personally I think the bit about them being the size of melons sums it up. Edmonds has has been maddened by constant exposure to his 37 year old girlfriend’s tits following the divorce with his over-the-hill wife a couple of years ago, probably.

Undeterred, the man behind Mr. Blobby – possibly the most disgusting character created since ‘The Wandering Jew’- and snuff movie mogul insists that he can cosmically order stuff for others.

He barks on:

I’ve got a few nice little orders in at the moment. I’ve got one in for a friend who would like to meet the man of her dreams. And another for a couple who had some difficult financial issues recently. I’m confident they will come true.

I’m confident you should order yourself an ambulance, Mr Edmonds. You pointless fuckarse.

NewsGush – Marsh vs Price

According to some guff on the GMTV website, Jodie Marsh – glamour model and ‘TV Personality’ – suffered bullying at school because of her nose.

Jodie Marsh revealed on GMTV this morning she was cruelly called ‘plastic face’ at school after having a nose-job.

Talking on the breakfast TV show about the increase in teenagers having plastic surgery as a result of bullying, the glamour model admitted that after she underwent cosmetic surgery at the age of 15 – she was bullied at school even more.

“I did have a nose job because of the bullying – because they made me feel so embarrassed and ashamed and ugly and hideous about it” said Jodie.

“I don’t think surgery is an answer to bullying, certainly not. Because my bullying then got worse after I had my nose done because then they started calling me ‘plastic face’, or ‘don’t stand in the sun – you’ll melt.’But I felt better, I felt absolutely amazing afterwards.”

What she doesn’t say is that she originally fucked up that very nose by playing Hockey at Brentford School, where she was privately educated.

Anyhoo, she claims to have had plastic surgery on said hooter at 15 after being bullied about and it was following the surgery that the bullying got worse. She was called ‘plastic nose’, heaven forefend! Sounds like her tormenters were as imaginative as the tormented.

In fairness to Marsh she’s always moaned about being bullied, Celebrity Big Brother viewers were privy to a disgraceful and completely unwarranted attack on her by cunts Barrymore and Burns precisely because she was ‘Jodie Marsh’ and the result is the nightmare we witness shoving its bum into the photographer’s lens every time someone releases so much as an eggy guff.

Anyone can see that under that nose and make-up and wotnot is a deeply insecure person who feels the need to put it about a bit in order to be adored. In addition to the growing collection of dreadful tattoos, she’s had her tits done now – something she vowed never to do – and just about any other bit of cosmetic reconstruction on the menu. Why? Because she’s insecure and fame hungry in a way that takes precedence over money.

She can offer the world nothing, yet like Jordan (who seems to have succeeded in achieving vast sums of wealth by manipulating the press and public alike) desperately keeps trying to force herself into the public eye by wearing as little as possible.

Unlike Jordan, though, she’s despised way out of context for what she’s actually done. She’s not invaded Poland has she? Or, more pertinently, she’s not leaked a sex video. She doesn’t wave her clout about in public, she doesn’t pretend to write fucking books about Donkeys, she chooses instead to dress like a trollop and involve herself at the lowest possible echelon of tabloid TV. In this respect she shares that gem-paste tiara with Jordan, except Marsh only exploits herself. She leaves her family, disabled children et al out of it.

In a way we can see Jodie as a feminist, unlike Jordan who seems to have become a fucking role model for little girls -and in my opinion poses much more of a danger to the psyche of the younger generation of females by muddling up sex, pink ponies and wealth. Men and women seem to despise Marsh without prejudice and while the likes of Callum Best stalk the paparazzi, I’m not entirely sure why.

Garnier / Topps Tiles

For the last few years the bastards at Garnier have been hissing ‘Take Care’ at me. Anyone else find this particular version worrying?

I used to be lithe and slim, I’d never smoked a cigarette in my life and only had a glass of wine at Christmas with the family. On the basis that I refuse to be told what to do by anyone, especially a faceless corporate suit, I’m now so fat I can’t see my own feet (or penis). On most days I’m pissed before 10am and have recently taken up the crack in order to sate my desire to smoke and take class A’s in one convenient package.

I’ll not have the bastards tell me what to do.

So imagine my surprise when, following a night of unprotected sex with a visibly ill 50-year-old European prostitute, another organisation – via the now-pawned TV – hissed ‘take care’ at me.

I thought I must be dreaming (or still whacked, I’d had two and half bottles of cheap Port the night before and had polished off three grammes of really bad speed as Dominika lowered herself for the umpteenth time on my weeping member…) when I turned my swollen head and fleetingingly saw a logo for Topps Tiles fade into the ether.

Of course I was still whacked (or dreaming, not that I have dreams anymore, I hate myself, I’ve nothing to give save sewage) but why the fuck would a company selling tiles want me to ‘take care’?

Take care of what? The tiles? Why the fucking Christ would anyone want to take fucking care of Tiles?

I mean, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not a monster – I’m happy to wipe away the accidental shard of diorrhea or splash of coagulated blood when little accidents occur on what’s left of the tiles in the room with a broken sink and chod bin – but ‘take care’ like that Garnier bird does with her skin? Fuck that.

I can see why someone would want to take care of their hair, or skin, or whatever (penis?). I used to be like that until I waged my one man campaign to prove that I could stick it back to the man as much as his sticks it to me.

But tiles? I don’t understand. Tiles are inanimate. They don’t care, or feel. They’re like my sister since I kidnapped her husband and held him up for ransom for an eighth of skunk and a drink – just a fucking eighth… And a drink.

Tiles don’t give a shit, okay? They don’t fucking care. No one does.

No one

does.