The Only Way is Essex...?

The Only Way is Essex is a new soap pretending to be a documentary which ITV2 have launched for reasons known only to themselves.


I watched it because I am from Essex and wanted to know how closely they would be sticking with the Essex stereotype. Pretty closely, it seems.


I imagined it would be like the lovechild of two equally cringeworthy programmes, What Katie Did Next and perhaps some disgraceful hour about Kerry Katona, that slurring Iceland woman. It proclaims that “people from London wish they was from Essex”. I’ve never heard anyone from London say this.


Despite my low expectations of the programme, within the first ten minutes I was left confused by a mixture of emotions, ultimately rendering me completely speechless and slightly guilty that I hadn’t already switched it off.


First came amused. Every single girl in this programme appears to be modelled on Katie Price. All of them! They are orange. They are incapable of intelligent thought. They appear in Nuts magazine. They think of themselves as glamorous, spending most of their time in candyfloss-pukey-pink salons. At one point a character gets something called a ‘vagazzle’, which should not exist but apparently does.


Then anger took over. Particular highlights include the mentioning of several phrases which people who are not from Essex think that people who are from Essex say. These are:

1. A reference to something called a ‘Brentwood swoon’, as if it were a widely recognised hairstyle. What is that? Nothing. It doesn’t exist.
2. Geezer. No one says geezer.
3. The males in this programme refer to females as ‘birds’, constantly.
4. Mark wants to go “boozin’”. BOOZIN’?
5. Males also persistently refer to eachother as “son”, which does not happen. (The girls refer to eachother as “babe”. Unfortunately this is fairly realistic.)

If I had never been to Essex and based all my opinion on the filth and lies this programme promotes I would believe it to be a county inhabited solely by wealthy, good looking yet overly preened 20-25 year olds with vomit-inducing accents who spurt nonsense chat from the moment they wake to the moment they fall into bed with tonights’ stranger. Although I’m sure there are people in Essex who are similar to Candy and co. there too exists a breed of Essex people who do have functioning brain cells and don’t get two or three spray tans before leaving the tack infested mansion in the morning.


Essex is inhabited by children and adults, people of all ages in fact! This is not made clear in the programme. It features only two people not aged 20-25, someone’s mum and someone’s nan. Nan brings round sausage plaits. Brilliant.


Slight bemusement set in later, as two male pseudo Essex boys go on a shopping trip. Mark is 23 years old yet appears to be filthy rich. How is he so rich? He can’t have a job, he is too stupid. He buys a three thousand pound watch and a seven hundred pound jacket, before staring intently at a mirror for around ten minutes. If he was actually that rich he would have left Essex by now, we all know this.


Most of the programme centers around a “Rachel and Ross from friends” style on/off relationship between two equally grotesque characters, Mark and Lauren. The fact that the pair have allegedly been together for nine years is mentioned 20-25 times. Mark then states, as if fact, that they began their sham of a relationship when he was 15. Earlier we were informed that he is now 23. That is not nine years, you plank.

Just some of your average essex girls and boys displaying average essex magpie like tendencies.

The Only Way is Essex is also sponsored by a cold sore cream. Nice.


Is this a “real-life soap” really, ITV? I don’t believe you.


From Alexandra

Lady GaGa Wears Dress Made of Meat. World Goes Mad.

Lady GaGa is of the unusual persuasion. In case we forget how unusual GaGa is she likes to remind us by making clothes out of things that are in fact not clothes. They are often unflattering and not normally even shaped like clothes. Sometimes she wears a telephone on her head. People have ceased to pay much attention to what GaGa has adorned herself with over time. It appears this has caused her some kind of image crisis, forcing her to constantly rack her brains trying to think up a more unusual outfit than her last unusual outfit, which was pretty unusual, probably. 

Yesterday GaGa attended the VMA’s (which is an award ceremony just for music videos, i.e. pointless) in a dress made entirely of meat. Raw meat. All bloody and probably smelling like dead animal. There was a steak on her head. Just slapped on there.

Blatant attention seeking acts such as this generally wind me up and cause one of those rage blackouts that I have. This one did not, though, for I am still struggling to get my head around the wearing of meat as a dress. I’ve spent the whole day wondering how such a dress would feel. Is meat a breathable material when used for clothing? Was she all sweaty beneath the meat? How did the meat stay stuck on? The sweatiness could have caused the meat to slip. Perhaps it was glued on. So many questions. (I don’t have much to do with my time.)

Clearly this gesture was something GaGa dreamed up in order to get people talking, provoke strong reaction and so on and so forth. It worked well, ten points to you Miss GaGa, but you did have to sit in meat for the duration of the award ceremony, did you not? I am struggling to see who the real winner is here.

PETA are suitably enraged by the wearing of a dress made of meat. PETA are annoying though, all self-righteous and loving the world. This makes me side with anyone they might be complaining about, whether they’ve tortured twenty kittens, set a dog on fire or (gasp) worn a coat made of FUR. PETA get too worked up over the cows. I think they just need to spend more time drinking tea and they’d feel much better about it all.

Is the meat dress fury justified, anyway? I’m not sure it is. The main criticism is the fact that GaGa wasted the meat. People waste meat often. If GaGa had worn old meat, would this have been OK? Who’s to say she didn’t feast on the meat at the end of the ceremony anyway? I mean, she is somewhat eccentric. I don’t think I’d be entirely surprised if tomorrow she announced that she lived on a diet of sweaty meat, believing that by wearing the meat as a dress first you might get to know the meat better, allowing for easier digestion once one finally has the dress for dinner. 

Why is the meat dress so much more outrageous than wearing leather shoes? 

The wastage of meat does not trouble me. I am a carnivore and fully aware that my steak was once a living, breathing animal with a face. It’d be hypocritical to get all irate about the wearing of steak as a dress. I ate beef for dinner. I could’ve sewn the pieces together and fashioned a small scarf if I’d felt the need. It would make little difference in the grand scheme of things, seen as how the cow is actually already dead and probably not watching me from cow heaven in order to ensure that the pieces of his corpse are ingested as dinner, like what he wanted. 

The thing which one did find a trifle exasperating was the absolutely abysmal message GaGa claimed she was trying to promote through the wearing the meat as a dress. This fruitcake claimed that it was a protest about the US military’s attitude to homosexuals. Yes, that’s right, by wearing steak as a dress GaGa was helping gay soldiers. The modern day Mother Theresa. Perhaps she thought that when she mentioned soldiers people would just start clapping and wailing sounds of encouragement, because this is what Americans do whenever the words ‘servicemen and women’ are mentioned, thus getting the entire American public on her side no matter what she is wearing as a dress. (This is true. There was a military chap on my American Airlines flight last year. We all had to clap for him. I think he was just going on holiday.)

Quite short, wasn’t it.. the meat dress. Didn’t actually cover her bottom like how conventional clothes do. I wonder what she meant by this bit. Probably some kind of statement about meat and bottoms. Or perhaps the promiscuous butcher is a big look this season. Or she ran out of meat half way through.. hmmm

The best part of the entire meat dress scandal has got to be the idiotic interpretations ‘experts’ have come up with, taking the dress made of meat seriously and not dismissing as the publicity stunt it clearly is. GaGa, when she shut up about the soldiers, said the dress was open to many interpretations (which loosely translates as PLEASE TALK ABOUT ME). Foolish folk have however taken the bait. 

Here are their expert opinions... 

Andrew Groves (fashion chap) thinks that “what she's doing is quite subversive - it's a commentary on the fashion and the music industries and I think it's very clever.” Interestingly Groves does not divulge what he believes this commentary to be, simply that it is one. 

Laurie Penny (feminist writer i.e. nutcase) claims “it's a clever play on women being viewed as chunks of flesh, as pieces of meat, as things to be consumed." Wasn’t Lady GaGa supposed to be a man last year? Have we forgotten about that now? 

Dr Richard Noble (Goldsmiths artsy type) has claimed that “it taps into the artistic tradition of the memento mori or the still life. The still life, after all, is a meditation on mortality and the state of decay. You have the flowers and the vegetables, but all the corrupting elements as well." This sounds suspiciously like most justifications for cabbages and half-eaten bananas as ‘art’. 

What will you wear next, Miss GaGa?! I don’t know if I can handle the suspense. I imagine the next logical step would be for GaGa to cut bits of meat off of herself, in a Saw movie style, and make a top hat and tails out of it. Then the world would be truly impressed. 

From Alexandra

LADY GAGA WEARS DRESS MADE OF MEAT. WORLD GOES MAD.

http://alexandrascomplaints.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/meatdress/

Bieber Fever

Symptoms:

1. Loud screeching.
2. Mobbing of strangers with mop-head Bieber style haircuts.
3. Wailing in annoying fashion. 
4. Blurred vision due to intense excitement. 
5. Uncontrollable, intense production of high pitch noises when presented with vision of real life Bieber.
6. Fainting. 
7. The watching of youtube videos of Bieber. 
8. Listening to Bieber songs. N.B. The fever is shown to have taken hold in cases where subjects show signs of genuine enjoyment of Bieber’s music. 
9. Inability to prevent self from stalking fifteen year old Canadian boy, despite the illegal/weird nature of such actions. 
10. Making plans to wed said stranger and birth strangers children. 
11. Sending of marriage proposals, declarations of undying love and pictures of self and Bieber encased in a heart on cards in which victim has scrawled rubbish poem, believing that the Bieber himself will read and respond favourably to creepy advances. 
12. More screaming.
13. Obsessive plastering of Bieber’s face on schoolbooks, bedrooms walls, clothing. 
14. Throwing of knickers at the Bieber.
15. Owning a Justin Bieber pencil case. 
16. Eventual heartbreak following crushing realisation that Bieber doesn’t actually love you/know who you are, leading to slow miserable death in Bieber themed bedroom. 

Those at risk:

1. Female idiots aged 10-14. 
2. No one else.
3. Not a single person.
4. It is currently being argued that this proves the theory that humans grow fully functional ears/brains around the age of fifteen. 

Treatment:

1. It is suggested that those affected ‘get a grip’. This is to be achieved through a course of counselling in which sufferers are confronted with their bizarre behaviour. It is expected that in time they might begin to ask themselves why they have been stalking an adolescent boy they have never and probably will never meet, carving his name in their arms with blunt penknives etc etc.
   
   Having completed the course of therapy sessions and learned to confront truth i.e. fact that this is simply a young boy from Canada who sings songs on youtube and not the second coming, it is hoped that Bieber Fever victims will complete the journey back to real world.
   
   Victims who have been successful in recovery will eventually feel able to listen to ‘Baby’ and agree with therapists that it is, in fact, shit. 

From Alexandra

Take Off That Fucking T-Shirt.

Every time I am confronted with a person sporting a Che Guevara t-shirt I have a small rage blackout. I feel like smacking them over the head whilst screaming obscenities in their ears (to get their attention) before questioning them as to what they actually know about this esteemed revolutionary.

I believe that if one wishes to wear an item of clothing with a strangers face plastered across the front it is necessary to know a substantial amount of information on the figure. I also believe that about 95% of people strutting about in their Che Guevara shirts do not possess the required knowledge. 

Bad things about Che Guevara:

1. Guevara was a Marxist puritan who operated a cold blooded killing machine.
2. Guevara loved to shoot defectors. He sent execution squads out searching for the deserters and massacred them in an unchristian fashion. 
3. Che was an Argentine Chris Moyles. He set up Radio Rebele. I can only assume he used this to play crap songs by N-Dubz and Pixie Lott.
4. Whilst in control of the La Cabaña Fortress prison Che executed 55 to 164 people convicted of being traitors, informers or war criminals. Apparently he loved a bit of the old firing squad, which is generally not seen as a good thing. 
5. Che was heavily involved in bringing Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba, which initiated the Cuban Missile Crisis and almost brought about a nuclear war, which would have been quite bad for most people wishing to inhabit Earth. 
6. Che then claimed that had the missiles been in Cuban control he would have fired them off. No comment. 
7. During the Vietnam war Che urged the peoples of developing countries to take up arms and create “many Vietnams”. Sterling advice. 
8. Guevara spat in the face of Bolivian Rear Admiral Ugarteche shortly before his execution. I don’t like men who spit. 
9. Guevara hated consumer culture. Oh the irony. His face is now one of the most universally merchandised and objectified images of all time, ever. Thus if you did know anything about el Che you should know that he would have told you to take off that fucking t-shirt himself. (If he wasn’t dead, which he is.)

Good things about Che Guevara:

1. He could ride a horse. 

Therefore Che and I would like to respectfully requested that you TAKE OFF THAT FUCKING T SHIRT. Thank you. 

P.s. The same applies to fifteen years olds sporting those with names of rock bands they’ve never listened to but think sound oh so cool. Recently my dear brother stepped out in a Guns n Roses shirt. “I didn’t know you liked guns and roses,” I said to him. “Can you name any songs by them?” He could not.

From Alexandra

Blog's First Moving Day.

This blog is now on http://alexandrascomplaints.wordpress.com/

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LOVELY

“Paris Hilton ‘arrested with cocaine’ in Las Vegas.” Really? My god.

This weekend I took it upon myself to catch up on recent world events, current affairs, natural disasters and what not with a little clickety click on the old BBC news website. The headline left me shocked and enthralled. (Notice the sarcasm dripping from this sentence, dripping everywhere, all down the page. Drip drip.) It seems America’s sweetheart is at it again, do her wild partying ways know no bounds? Goodness this one is out of control, I thought to myself, whilst wondering whether to shoot myself in the back or front of head in protest to the fact that the exploits of Miss Hilton are again occupying my busy mind. This would be a sure fire way to put an end to all reports on what Miss Hilton and her band of birdbrained bimbos have been up to this week, I think. Really, Paris Hilton? On BBC News? The news of the actual, real BBC? Shit. 

It never ceases to amaze me that Paris Hilton is still considered a ‘celebrity’. She is not deserving of such status. Do people like Paris? Has she a fanbase? It seems people must be interested in her. Why do I know who she is? I don’t want to. Things like this make me worry for humanity and the soulless, rapacious capitalists we have become. Then I have a biscuit and it usually cheers me up. 

Paris’s claim to fame is that she produced a sex tape, apparently not on purpose. That and her father owning a hotel or something. These are not reasons to document a persons life in the international media. These do not warrant a report on what Paris Hilton orders at Starbucks, or what Miss Hilton is wearing today. Stories about Miss Hilton make me want to set fire to my magazine and rub the ashes into my eyes so that I might never again bear witness to the thoughts and musings of this cretin. You may think this a strong reaction, but it is fully justified. Miss Hilton is a twerp. As if this wasn’t enough justification let me share with you some of the ramblings of the peroxide twiglet herself so that you too might share in my indignation: 

“The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.” 

Great advice here from Paris, spreading her bountiful wisdom about with some kind of giant butter knife. Clearly she felt the need to inform her public that it is good to wear nice clothes. Sterling advice. Throw away your romper suits everyone! We must dress cute!

“No matter what a woman looks like, if she's confident, she's sexy.” 

Not such good advice from Paris. She is stating, as if fact, that all women are sexy if they have confidence. This is a lie. Ugly women exist. 

“I don't really think, I just walk.” 

Here Paris is demonstrating outstanding self-awareness. Presumably she meant this in jest? Oh, sweet irony. 

Oh and lest we forget, Miss Hilton has her very own catchphrase,“that’s hot.” Which she uses to describe most things. Imagine her two brain cells clanging together as she thought that one up. Must’ve been exhausting. 

Enough about Paris, BBC News. I hereby request more news on those lovable Chilean miners, please. Another song perhaps? 

From Alexandra

All the Football, All the Time.

In England there exists a game, it is called ‘football’ and it gets people all worked up. I believe it’s been around quite a while and seems a fairly popular game currently. Notice how the word game is in bold, so as to emphasise the fact that it is a game, and not a determinant for life, the universe and everything. Just so you know.  

(Google Images)
Here is a football. 

There are several problems with this game, aside from the fact that many do not believe it to be just a game. 

Football is very time consuming. I imagine the football fan must be a tired person. This game is happening all the time. I would be wondering how the football fan could keep up with all the football, if it weren’t for the shedload of football orientated television programmes created to aid him in his struggle. There exists a channel entirely dedicated to football news, they call it ‘Sky Sports News’. It has a desk with a man sitting at it, or sometimes a girl (she will always be easy on the eye), who read out the news as if imitating a real news reader. This is not news. This is a game, where someone wins and someone loses and no actual news is ever generated except if a football player of note drops dead on the pitch, which would actually be interesting. Other things which are not news include footballers arguing with other footballers in dressing rooms, whether or not someone threw a shoe at another person’s head, or whether or not Joe Cole deserved to receive a red card for his naughty tackling antics. 

(Google Images)
Goodness, how dramatic. 

There is a BBC sport website which allows the football fan to catch up on the latest football gossip. Gossip and football do not mix. Gossip is an interesting thing, it’s focus is primarily scandal and drama in the world of celebrity, or people you know, which is the best kind of gossip. Football gossip is infinitely less stimulating. The gossip items revolve around a footballer playing for a new team (changing the colour of his t-shirt), or thinking about playing for a new team, (thinking about changing his t-shirt) or trying to get more money to play for said new team (wants more money for a change of t-shirt). This is dull as dishwater. Dishwater is apparently pretty dull.

The ‘football season’ is a myth, designed to keep women happy with the empty promise that at some point the football will cease. It will never cease. There is the Champions League, the FA Cup, the Carling Cup and the Europa League which occur, as they should, during the designated football season (I’m told). However, outside of the football season, when we should be having a break from all the football, all the time, we are subjected to the World Cup. People claim this only happens once every four years, (this is called quadrennial - interesting fact there), however shortly after the end of the World Cup of 2010 England were again playing football against some other country in a World Cup style.  Suspicious. There is also Euro 2012 which I imagine is like a miniature world cup. There is no such thing as the football season. 

The footballer is probably nature’s most empty-headed creature. I believe this is a prerequisite for becoming a successful footballer, only a vacant imbecilic human could devote his life to kicking a ball around a green rectangle in the desperate hope of it travelling into a net (which is quite big, but which the footballer will usually miss). However, these birdbrained gentlemen, upon making a success of their footballing careers, find themselves absolutely stinking rich. Christiano Ronaldo’s salary is £11.3million. I don’t believe such a vacant species should be so well-off, they couldn’t possibly be capable of spending such riches on anything worthwhile. It is not often that you hear of a football player donating any money to a good cause. I doubt they’ve heard of Africa, anyway. It seems grossly unfair that these footballing halfwits should be so wealthy. A Robin Hood type character is what is required. Mr Hood should steal their pennies away and give it to people doing jobs which do have a purpose, such as doctors, nurses, firemen and people of that nature. It’s not like the dimwits would notice. 

(Google Images)
Ronaldo: He smiles because he bathes in champagne.

So that you don’t think I am being biased due to my hatred of the beautiful game I have obtained proof that the average footballer is so stupid he could forget to breathe at any moment: 

"If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again." Terry Venables

"They're the second best team in the world, and there's no higher praise than that." Kevin Keegan

"I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened, but I don't know into what religion yet." David Beckham

"I never make predictions, and I never will." Paul Gascoigne

Fantastic.

The footballer is an untrustworthy character. During 90 minutes of ball kicking the average footballer will feign life-threatening injury 35-40 times. (This is not a real statistic, I made it up). When the footballer is tapped on the side he will usually grasp his leg and throw himself to the ground, screaming and crying like the little girl he always wished he could be. Yet when a foul is called against the opposition he will leap up, cured as if by Jesus himself. His lack of intelligence lets him down in this area, he is yet to realise that the average broken leg is not fixed within the time it takes for a man in striped attire to take a teeny piece of coloured card from his pocket. 

(Google Images)
Gerrard flying through the air in mock agony.

Football is dangerous. It turns the average middle aged man into a murderous, menacing creature. Within minutes of the commencement of the game he will rise up off his seat and begin swearing and screaming at the innocent telybox, edging closer to it, his eyes brimming with fury and exasperation. At this point it is worth remembering that you must not tell him it is only a game. He will be so full of outrage and indignation that he will probably be unable to stop himself from slicing your face off with the ringpull he has torn from his beer can, (which he needs in order to fully enjoy the tantrum he is having over the referee’s controversial decision) before bludgeoning you to death. If the game is going well and his team is kicking the ball as he would like he will rise up off his seat in the same manner and begin wailing encouraging noises at the telybox, inane phrases such as “whip it in” will start to fill the room, as well as noises similar to those a child makes during it’s first firework display... “ooohhh”... “ahh” (but louder, of course. These are manly noises, made by men.)

Football is a greedy sport. Even if it did stick to the football season this ‘season’ encompasses ten months of the year. It commences in August and finishes in May. That is not a season. That is the entire year with a short two month interlude for the footballer to take his wag to Mauritius. To then allow the interlude to be taken up by World Cup mania (despite the fact that England have not put in a reasonable performance in this tournament since 1966, which was a while ago) is preposterous. What if it gets worse, what if more tournaments start happening, and there is so much football that Sky Sports News cannot cover all the football? What if it begins to take over from real news leaving us with no knowledge of any events in the world other than the exploits of the footballers? What then? How will we cope? What will we do? Society could be in tatters within years. Therefore my request is a perfectly reasonable one. We must no longer be subject to all the football, all the time. Someone must put a stop to it. It’s only a game, after all. 

From Alexandra