Blah Blah Flowers

Updating this blog might go a bit patchy for a while, if newjobstress wasn't bad enough, I've had insomnia for the last three nights which is obviously affecting my ability to write the clever words.

Hopefully I'll be back to sanity come the weekend, or alternatively my blog will become the merry adventures of someone who used to have a career and now takes mood stabilisers instead.

So off I go today to my new job, yes fear me for from today I'm a library MANAGER! I could have done without the insomnia last night that meant I only had about three hours sleep, but at least I'm no longer wishing I was back in my old job.

Eeeeeee!

Labels: personal history

This guy has given me the caption for the t-shirt I wear at the next Pride march:


If you watch it all the way through you can see he's obviously very pleased to come up with the phrase 'rights for sodomites' so feel the need to get it in as many times as possible. As he's speaking sense of the 'blithering non' type there's not much else to say, there's certainly nothing approaching an argument to engage with, as ever the homophobia came first and the Scriptural backing followed (in one of his other video missives he talks about how he used to be a policeman, he bemoans the good old days where sodomites did their dirty business out of the public gaze, which makes me wonder what parks he's been walking through recently where you can't move for the rimming).

You may also enjoy God DOES hate fags but Fred Phelps is wrong or Ewwwwww! Keep those women's bits away from me!

Adult Sheep Finder: The World's #1 Sheep Sex and Dating Personals Site.

Labels: humour

Bush Quietly Rolls Back Iraq Death Toll To Zero.

Labels: humour, Iraq

I didn't think it was going to be possible but the trailer suggests The Simpsons movie may well be pretty good.

Now, when does the episode with Alan Moore in it get shown?

Labels: movies

Lee and Herring, reunited in 2007!

"I haven't had a serious relationship for three years!"
"Three years?"
"Well, it was three years when I wrote this joke, so it's more like fifteen years now."

"I'm a Mac."
"And I'm a PC."
"FUUUUUCK OFF! That could have been us!"

Labels: comedians, humour, YouTube

Mathematicians map a 248 dimensioned structure. It took four years apparently. Now they start on the longer and more difficult task of trying to work out why they bothered.

Labels: science

Labels: Heroes, humour, YouTube

Here's an interview with the South Park creators about the controversies of the last few years.

When we look at the shows we were doing years ago—to think that people were freaking out over these episodes! If you look at our first season now, you could put it on PBS next to Sesame Street .

Labels: cartoons, religion, Scientology, South Park

What I don't understand is how, now they are owned by the same company, I can no longer post YouTube videos directly to my Blog, whereas I could when they were seperately. Sure, YouTube says the video will appear in my blog shortly but I had to post the MadTV vid manually because when I told YouTube to do it for me it never showed up.

Labels: Blogger, Google, YouTube

Labels: comedians, George 'Shrubya' Bush, humour, iPods, Iran, Iraq, YouTube

I don't think Tony Blair has much to worry about. For all that bloggers want his blood, either for the war or because he's Labour and they are Tories, for all that he is currently electoral poison for much the same reason, for the fact that he will be remembered for the war in Iraq than for anything else he did in Government, I suspect history may well treat him better than current affairs. One need only look at the various dramas in which he has been portrayed. They've tended to show someone nice . Someone who surprises everyone else by being the only moral man in a morality-free age. It's not his fault we went into Iraq, he was duped, his sense of right and wrong was subverted and used by that crooked Texan who wouldn't know 'right' if it was etched on to a gold brick and used to club him round the head. Gordon Brown has more cause to worry as The Deal showed him as too out-of-touch and old-fashioned to be either a decent Labour leader or Prime Minister and The Trial of Tony Blair had him as a weak and indecisive poor replacement for Tony. Two strikes against him and the only time he's in 10 Downing Street so far is to sleep at night.

And so we have The Queen. I don't understand why Helen Mirren is getting so much acclaim for her role as Liz Two. The film is largely a sequel to The Deal , a television drama of a few years ago about the careers of Blair and Brown up to the former's becoming the leader of the Labour party in the mid-nineties. The film opens on the day of the General Election in 1997, the Queen sitting for a portrait while Blair goes to vote. Michael Sheen reprises his role as Tony Blair and it's really his story, from his first meeting with the Queen when she asks him to form and lead a Government after his success in winning the election, through the long week after the death of Diana and his struggles to stop the Royal Family from letting tradition march it to self-destruction. Helen Mirren does not give a great performance as her role gives her no opportunity to show what she's capable, save perhaps a scene in the middle of the film when her car breaks down in the middle of the Scottish highlands and we see from behind her shoulders shake as the frustrations of the aftermath of Diana's death briefly overcome her. But the rest of the time she's stoic, albeit increasingly angered by Blair's attempts to steer the Royals away from protocol for their own sake. She is the solid centre around which everyone else revolves.

Apart from Sheen the other great performances are James Cromwell as Prince Philip and Alex Jennings as Prince Charles. Given that most of the genuine articles appearances in real life tend to tip into self-parody anyway Cromwell and Jennings outshine Mirren by not trying to make their parts direct imitations of what we 'know' the Princes to be like.

Peter Morgan's script is superb and deserves more acclaim than it's been getting. He treats the Royal Family with a light touch, so even when Philip is testily arguing about exactly why there is no flag flying at Buckingham Palace it makes perfect sense of the protocol rather than seeming ridiculous. And the sparing use of clips of Diana throughout the week help to emphasise the pressure on the Family, even if they don't really recognise or understand that it exists until it's almost too late. I rather expected that when the Queen and Prince Philip finally agreed to return to London we'd get some terribly staged scene of 'commoners' no longer willing to tip the knee to the Queen until she made some attempt to apologise for her behaviour but the script also avoids that trap, as just her presence then seems to make up for her distance before.

In a telling scene at the end the Queen exposes that this film is about Blair, not her, warning him in one of their weekly meetings that one day the people will turn on him, and question whether he should stay in the job, as they briefly did with her. There's no mention made that when the Queen's jubilee came around several years later , or the death of the Queen Mum, any fears for a Republican revolution in the immediate future were shown to be baseless.


I wonder how long we'll have to wait until Frears and Morgan give us their third film about Blair's great love affair with George Bush?

Labels: actors, British Royal Family, Government, Labour, movies, Royal Family, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

From the Daily Mail's website this morning

Labels: actors, comedians, Flickr, humour, music

I know that pointing out Weebl and Bob is funny is like pointing out the night is dark or that water is a really crap thing to rub yourself with when you are seeking to be dry. But special mention has to be given to their take on the Carusobot.

Labels: actors, humour, Television, YouTube

Wil Wheaton's William FUCKING Shatner story.

Labels: actors, science fiction, Star Trek

I know it's a glacially slow news day, the prospect of British Government committed between now and 2025 to buying nuclear weapons by someone whose own political future is now measurable in double-figure days isn't particularly sexy. But for fucks sake. If everything I see, hear, taste and touch around me weren't a cunningly designed prison intended to drive me completely mad there is no way this shit would count as news.

Labels: Conservatives, David Cameron, politics, stupidity

"Do I hear £9.3 billion? £9.3 billion, thank you to the lady from the Department for Culture..."

Well, you can't blame her, Tessa Jowell has always had difficulty keeping control of her money.

Labels: Government, London, Olympics, Tessa Jowell, waste of money

So, bored, I played with Flickr's search function and my iTunes Party Shuffle, so this evening I've been listening to

Radiohead- Everything in it's Right Place.

Originally uploaded by killer blythes.










Pet Shop Boys- New York City Boy

Originally uploaded by CMP73.










Boards of Canada- Aquarius

Originally uploaded by CDSanderson.








Qpe- Drown

Originally uploaded by Jack of Nothing.













Manic Street Preachers- The Intense Humming of Evil

Originally uploaded by ldandersen.








Depeche Mode- Condemnation

Originally uploaded by Catapulpe.









Portishead- Undenied

Originally uploaded by maliceorchid.












Well, that was fun. Please check out the photos of these wonderful people. If any of these wonderful people object to my flagrant nicking of their photos let me know and I'll take it down straight away.

Labels: music, photos

A gay man goes to one of those 'ex-gay conferences' to see what goes on. It's sad that the parents of gay children get told that it's their fault and chilling to wonder what effect this has on minds looking for an explanation for something they don't understand. [via Pandagon]

Labels: Christianity, gay, homophobia, lesbian, queer, United States

Labels: art, Christianity, London, photos, sculpture

So, bu-bye SG-1 . You had twice the amount of time as Babylon 5 but only managed half the story. And that's a shame. You lost your way when Daniel Jackson died. The first time. There were good stories after that, and Corin Nemec was good as Jonas Quinn. But it was painful to watch. After the sixth series Daniel came back and things went wrong, the series was infected with the New Misery. I've never been able to define it for other people, though I can point to examples: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel 's penultimate seasons (and the second half of the last season of Buffy ), Spiderman 2. I suppose it's the televisual equivalent of depression, a celluloid levelling-out of emotion at a level of pain and despair that hurts most due to it's never wavering single-mindedness. Season's seven through ten tended to ramp up the pain rather than the drama so that by the time SG-1 are fighting genuine gods there is no threat, only misery. The production team never started a season knowing where they were going to end it, I'm sure that when they started season eight they didn't know Osiris, supposedly dispatched at the end of the previous season, would be back. So the stories in that year were always servicing storylines and keeping them open, By the last few years that meant you only needed to watch half a dozen episodes to see all the key moments for that year. That left an awful lot of filler, the nadir of which was an episode where it turns out that for seven years Jack O'Neill has been sharing his memories with a barber, and not once being concerned about the breach in security. On the other hand, the 200th episode which is basically an hour long parody of Stargate and pretty much every other show and film on TV is hilarious.

And it would have been nice if the finale had tried to offset this. If it had tried to put all the things that happened to the team that we've followed for ten long years into context and put a cap on it. But no, if you hadn't heard beforehand it was the last episode you wouldn't have known. An alien race that we've known for ten years has been offhandedly destroyed in the first ten minutes. We don't even know whether the enemy they've been fighting for the last two years has been destroyed or not.

So now I'm feeling a bit bitter, a little cheated. That's ten years times forty minute episodes which I lost. Ten years for a story that doesn't end, that rather sucks.

Labels: science fiction, Stargate, Television

Had a couple of toddlers in the library. While their Mum chose books they were playing with toys and seemed obsessed with a toy shaped like an old rotary dial telephone. They were happy as anything 'making' and 'receiving' calls and, as I remarked to their Mum, it's odd that they seemed to know and recognise the toy as a telephone when telephones haven't looked like that for years, a good decade or two before they were born. Seeing as they had the handsets to their ears and were dragging the rest of the phone around, maybe the handset was what they recognised as the phone rather than the rest of the toy.

Labels: children, libraries, toys

The Arts Council want to have an Arts Debate with people who follow the Arts about how money should be allocated to Arty Type Stuff in the Future.

Labels: art

Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order?

Labels: literature

Ahhh, it's the spirit of '88 as the Daily Mail resurrect the old Oh noes, our kids are being taught about teh queer! This will turn them into interior designers or car mechanics! It is noticeable that this time the Mail don't try to pretend there's no difference between 'teaching about' and 'promoting', they have those wacky, wacky Christians to do that for them, although by mentioning Section 28 the inference is there. I went to school under Section 28 and in a gulf of space between Danny La Rue and Lily Savage and look at me, so the idea that a few schoolbooks can make you gay you'd think even newspapers would have given up on that one by now.

Thousands face pay cut under new equality law. Because, you see, the villains here are all those women in lower paid jobs expecting equality, not management for refusing to raise them to the same level as that of men doing the same work.

Labels: bisexual, Daily Mail, feminism, gay, lesbian, school

Was shocked, shocked I say, to read an article by Sarah Sands in today's Independent which said that boys preferred to blog while women go for social networking sites, not because that's so obviously bunk but because my self-image, as fearlessly bounding around across gender boundaries, is always rocked when I'm told I'm just doing what comes naturally to anyone with a Y chromosome and a dick.

Still, I'm sure I can overcome the disappointment. After all, today was a lovely Spring day, cold but bright, so I could hang washing out to dry on the line in my garden and open the windows to let some fresh air into my foul dark den. I sorted out some old clothes for one of those door-to-door charity collection things, there were some pullovers from the back of my wardrobe that I've had for some fifteen or sixteen years going in there, still in perfectly good shape, and they say nothing these days is made to last. I wish my shoes or my trousers lasted as long.

Go here. Find link to MP3 of The Arcade Fire covering Maps, originally by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I'll be waiting here while you check it out.



...


Good isn't it?

An essay about lesbian, gay and bisexual characters in Star Trek. I've always tended to think any claim by Trek fans that their show is socially progressive to be a humorous one. Of course, there was that Kirk/Uhura spit-swapping session in the sixties but while the visual was undoubtedly progressive let's not forget that in the context of the story neither party wanted to do it.

I don't agree with everything in the essay, I quite enjoyed most of the treatment of religion in Deep Space Nine, and I think the fact that the only queers in several decades of Star Trek were leatherclad degenerates in an alternative universe suggests a much more homophobic attitude than the author is willing to suggest.

Still, we don't need them, we've got Doctor Who and (well, you'll forgive me if I don't use the 'girl')Slash Goggles for all our needs now.

There's another essay on sexuality in Star Trek and Star Trek slash here.

Labels: bisexual, Doctor Who, gay, geekery, lesbian, science fiction, slash, Star Trek

Liz Jones will be appearing at something called The Vitality Show that runs from the 29th of March to the 1st of April. She'll be appearing on the Thursday and Friday, if you fancy popping along to ask her whether she's kicked Nirpal out on his arse or not yet.

Labels: journalists, Liz Jones, Nirpal Dhaliwal

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten.

Previously on Nirpal Dhaliwal Watch. 'Nirpal Dhaliwal', played by Nirpal Dhaliwal with a squint, continues to be mean to his missus and try to shag anything in a skirt that doesn't have a restraining order because 'that's just how men are innit?'. Meanwhile, neurotic desperate housewife 'Liz Jones', played by Liz Jones and a chopping-board full of onions, tries to combat her non-existent self-esteem and chuck 'Nirpal' so she can find someone who isn't a complete shit and have loads of neurotic but perfectly dressed babies. The story contiues...

I'm afraid Nirpal isn't playing ball. He seems to think we're interested in his opinions on culture, so we get articles about V.S. Naipaul or Indian poetry. We don't want this! We want him writing about how his cock hypnotises women at thirty paces and turns them into drudges, which is what women should be because they aren't as great as him because he has a great cock! Bah!

However, we do have this amusing article in which he talks about the difficulties of monogamy...

How to stay married (and I should know)
Evening Standard (London); Feb 7, 2007; NIRPAL DHALIWAL

DR ROWAN Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, blames the "commenting classes of north London" for undermining the role of marriage in Britain. Living in Islington, I am apparently responsible for society's ills by promoting the "fluidity and changeability of relationships and the transience of marriage".

I agree with him that marriage is an important component of a stable society, and that children are better served if raised by two committed adults. But his speech to launch National Marriage Week only reiterated the usual candied sentiments that advocates of marriage spout.

Marriage is "a relationship which constantly unfolds over time", he gushed.

It is "a story to tell about yourself, a story about how I discovered and moved through time to something more like the humanity I'm capable of ".

Rather than being the Oprah Winfrey of Anglicanism, it would be more helpful if Dr Williams addressed the innate difficulty of marriage. Placing marriage on a pedestal is often why it fails. People are literally shocked by the problems posed by commitment, and poorly equipped to deal with them.

Regular readers of NDW may enjoy substituting 'people' for 'I' or 'me' in this article.

The difficulty of marriage is obvious to those who work in relationship counselling. Making a brave and desperate attempt to save their marriage, couples enter into therapy; but often the therapist helps them only to break up in a healthier, less embittered manner.

I'm not sure why Nirpal is worried here, as portrayed in his wife's articles he could probably bring his latest mistress home and she'd just sulk for a bit.

Even the profound desire to stay married isn't enough to make many marriages work.

A successful marriage requires an extraordinary range of skills: the ability to keep one another amused and intellectually stimulated, sexually captivated and emotionally reassured, while also meeting the needs posed by careers and household requirements. It is a formidable challenge. It's no surprise people fail, and it's remarkable any marriages last at all.

Well, sometimes they last because your wife is to insecure to chuck you out and why should you cut yourself off from someone who does your washing for you and gives you a bed to sleep in?

Right now, my wife is away, and the house has descended into disorder. The untidiness proves how infuriating I am for my houseproud-wife, and reveals how problematic marriage is for me.

I'm not sure how this works. Your marriage is a difficult one... so you don't do the hoovering?

My messiness would be difficult for any woman to cope with, unless she was a complete slob - in which case, I wouldn't fancy her.

And yet he doesn't seem to care about what his untidyness means to his wife, although he KNOWS she doesn't like it.

The synchronicity of personalities that a blissful marriage requires is impossible for me.

Instead of talking up the magic of marriage, we should discuss it in practical terms. Boys should know how to manage female neuroticism

Mmmmm!

and be taught techniques to keep women happy in bed (though not necessarily by the Archbishop).

And girls should learn how to manage fragile male egos and forbear their vulgar habits.

'Boys should be taught how to impose their demands on girls, girls should be taught to obey their men.'

Instead, we teach them as we were taught, to expect their marriages to be happy, though it's obvious we're expecting too much.

Meanwhile, life continues it's path of misery and despair for Ophelia Jones. Has she summoned up the courage to turn Nirpal out on his ear? What do you think? What would she have to write about and use to elicit sympathy with if she didn't have him there any more?

Liz Jones's diary ; In which I tell him he has cellulite
The Mail on Sunday (London); Feb 4, 2007; LIZ JONES

In bed last night, I told him I had been to see Daphne in New York.

'When did you go to New York?' he asked, propping himself on an elbow. 'Two weeks ago, in case you hadn't noticed.' 'How did it go?' 'OK. I went to her office. I still had the business card you had put back in your wallet.' 'Where is her office?' 'Like you don't know. I'm not going to tell you. I called her a FW in front of all her colleagues. She's really ugly, isn't she?' He just laughed and turned his back on me, before saying, 'I don't believe you.' At four in the morning, I was woken by a noise. He was sitting up in bed. 'There is a weird bleeping, and a voice saying "Fire",' he said. 'That is the fire alarm! Why haven't you checked it out?' 'I didn't even know we had a fire alarm. And it's four in the morning! I am not going to pad around the house looking for an alarm.' So there we have it, even if he thought the house might be burning around our ears (it wasn't; a battery had run low, which of course I had to change the next day), he is too lazy to do anything about it.

I am becoming angrier and angrier at him, a sort of delayed reaction to what he has done to me over the past six years. Although he has used my credit card countless times to pay for things (rarely paying me back), when I asked him to book a hotel abroad using his (hurrah! He has his own credit card at long last!), he moaned and whined and asked questions but he still hasn't done it. (He managed to order two new yoga mats over the internet, though.) On Friday night, he went out for dinner with two male friends, and I noticed on checking his emails he had actually booked a table! When has he ever done that for me?

Apart from on my last birthday, when the restaurant turned out to be a tiny sandwich bar in a cultural wasteland. I am still angry about my Christmas present. OK, he bought me earrings, but could he not have spent more than Pounds 375 on them? The pair I bought myself seven years ago cost Pounds 800.

Please bear in mind that he has never bought a sheet, or a pillow case, or a tea towel, or a bath towel, or a plate, ever.

Things he has bought for the house in six years of rent-free accommodation: A tea strainer (I don't drink tea) Two mugs (he has broken six) A large cafetiEre A Dualit toaster A potato peeler (he lost the one I had).

Anyway, I had a lovely evening on my own, with the cats, trying to get over the flu he had given me, and he came in at about 11pm. He sat down, narrowly missing Squeaky. 'The moment you opened your eyes this morning you were whining,' he said. '"Is your office messy? Blah blah blah!"' 'I was ill!' I croaked.

'You said you were making me coffee and it never materialised.' 'Nag, nag, nag,' he said, doing his naked glove-puppet impersonation. As he left the room I ran after him. 'I hate you!' I shouted.

'You are fat. Cellulite!' I yelled incongruously. 'The only reason I nag is because you never do anything to help me. You never say thank you. Why didn't you say, Lizzie, I'll change the bed, you go and see your mum. Why didn't you say thank you for borrowing my car! Why should I put up with your laziness when I get nothing from you: not love, not support, not faithfulness, not children. Nothing. I want you to get out!' He disappeared upstairs and tried to get into bed. 'Don't get in there, I've just made it and you will ruin it!' He slunk up to the next floor and I followed him. He lay on the spare bed and shut his eyes. I poked him really hard. 'Every time you call me old I will call you fat!' I shouted. 'Don't you realise how you have made me feel? I can't stand this!' He opened his eyes. 'Well, maybe we just got off on the wrong foot this morning,' he said softly.

And then, a change in tactics. Rather than take control, she decideds to try and annoy him into leaving.

LIZ JONES'S DIARY In which it gets worse and worse and worse ; 'I am tired of going to the cinema with youandyou never taking my hand. I am tired of the fact that you never look at me, or ask how I am'
The Mail on Sunday (London); Feb 11, 2007; LIZ JONES

I have been driving him away.

Mainly because I know that if I don't, we will just carry on with him at the top of the house with his 'office' door shut, me at the bottom of the house watching telly with Squeaky.

Until, of course, he meets someone else (he is off to India again in a month's time) and I stumble across a text that says, 'I need to make a graceful exit. Liz is a great gal.' Well, I don't think I could go through that again, and so I have been deliberately confrontational and demanding. We have had three rows so far this week, and as I write it is only Wednesday Argument one, Sunday evening I was exhausted, having been to visit my mum, and I asked if he wanted to snuggle down and watch ER with me.

He mumbled something. I sat down to watch the opening credits, and discovered he had disappeared. A quarter of an hour later I went in search of him, and found him in his 'office' reading a book called The Argumentative Indian. How apt. 'I thought you were going to watch ER with me?' I said. 'I hate it, it's crap.' 'Well, rather than disappear without a word, why didn't you say, "Do you mind if I go upstairs and read?" and I would have said, "Of course not.''' He then started shouting at me, calling me a 'pathetic moron' and 'needy'. I later found him in bed at 10.30pm asleep, with the door shut. I put the one remaining lamp on (of which more later) so I could read, and he took his pillows and shuffled off to the spare room.

Argument two, Monday night I was asleep in bed, and he came up late. (It seems we no longer manage to coordinate bedtime. I sometimes wonder why I have a bathroom with two sinks.) 'All right, my old mum,' he said as he folded his pillows in half, punched them and plonked down next to me. 'Why are you always demeaning me?' I asked him. He closed his eyes. 'Don't close your eyes!' I shouted. 'What, are you so exhausted from yet another day working down a mine? You haven't written a word of fiction in two years! Why haven't you opened your iPod? Every day seeing it sitting there is like a kick in the teeth. Why did you only spend Pounds 375 on my Christmas present, you mean bastard.' I think he was quite shocked, and he just lay still. 'Why won't you say something!' I yelled. 'I am tired of being ignored. I am tired of going to the cinema with you and you never taking my hand. I am tired of the fact you never look at me, or ask how I am. I want you to move out and go and live with FWD. I hope you will be very happy together.' 'I'm sorry,' is all he mumbled.

Argument three, Wednesday pm About two weeks ago, I heard a huge crash and went upstairs to find he had kicked a bedside lamp by mistake, and it was lying shattered on the floor. I told him he should replace it. By Wednesday, he said he could still not get on to the website to buy a new one (he had no problems ordering a meditation stool). And so, knowing he would never replace it, I went out and bought a new one. When I got home, I found him still in his dressing gown, his iPod unopened, clothes all over the floor. 'You are like a teenager,' I told him. He picked up a T-shirt and flicked it in my face. The fabric caught both eyes. 'Ow!' I wailed. 'You've blinded me! Get the f*** out of my house!' He disappeared into the night without a word. He might never come back. I had to do it. I couldn't let him do it to me first. Not again.

Gasp! Is this it? Is this the end of the most equally self-destructive double-act since the last national tour of Bottom ?

Don't be daft.

In which I realise he loves me
The Mail on Sunday (London); Feb 18, 2007; LIZ JONES

We were sat on the sofa watching the Bollywood star on Big Brother (something I don't normally watch because the house is so untidy) when I said to him, 'How will I know you won't sleep with anyone when you go to India?'

'Because I won't,' he said.

'But you said you wouldn't contact Daphne again, and you did. So I don't believe you.' And then, despite the fact a) it was his birthday eve, b) his gran had died earlier that week, and c) his dad was also in hospital, I couldn't let the subject drop.

'The trouble is that I can't talk to you. You are like a brick wall, a clam, a giant silent teenage flatmate.' He got up and sat at the kitchen table and opened his laptop. 'Why don't you respect me?' I continued, doing what I always do, which is to carry on and have an argument all by myself.

'Why did you think more of a woman who would sleep with someone else's husband? [He had told me that Daphne had had a long affair with a married man before.] I know you don't respect me or care about me. You don't look after the house or the things in it. Why are you always losing teaspoons? Why did you leave my car unlocked yesterday?' 'Now hang on a minute,' he said. 'I might have had other things on my mind, my gran, my dad' I shook my head. 'No, I'm not going to make excuses for you. I did that for two years while B was dying. When have you ever been sympathetic towards me?

What about that December day when I had to go and see my mum and help her into bed and she was in pain and she was crying What were you doing? F***ing Daphne!' (He denies he slept with her that day, although he admits he kissed her, but I know he saw her toes.) He scampered upstairs, saying, 'I'm going to bed.' I then watched Sex and the City, the episode in which Carrie learns that her girlfriends are more important to her than any man. I went into the bathroom and completed my elaborate cleansing routine, something I never fail to do no matter how overwrought I am.

I got into bed and finished my book, The Accidental by Ali Smith. I switched off my lamp and as I did so he wormed his way towards me and took me in his arms.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It must be hell being in love with me.' It seems no matter what I do, he takes it and forgives me. I think he might, in his own perverse way, actually love me after all.

Or rather that he realises he's on to a good thing with his wife so beaten down that she'll never kick him out but so pathetically eager for praise that she'll take the smallest morsel as proof that he's Casanova.

Anyway, despite the fact I bought him an iPod and an iPod hi-fi for Christmas that he still hasn't unwrapped, I have got him two nice shirts, a Smedley round-necked sweater and a lovely soft pair of burnt orange vintage tracksuit bottoms. It is now his birthday morning, and I am waiting for him to get back from yoga so that I can give him his gifts (not only do I shower him with presents, when on my last birthday I got a bunch of flowers and an email from FWD saying, 'Nirpal, are you still planning on coming to New York next week? Let me know what your plans are, OK? Love, Daphne,' I have also started pilates classes, and taken up jogging).

And then I realise that of course he prefers her to me. She just sends him emails saying, 'I Googled your book reviews the other day, well done my sweet.' She doesn't berate him for losing spoons or leaning his bike on the wall. She could give him children, too; I imagine at 37/38 she is pricking holes in her boyfriend's condom or whatever else it is that women do when they have baby hunger. On Friday night, watching my husband get into bed and squashing between his thighs the duvet that I had just ironed, I said to him, 'Sleep nicely!' I mean, I ask you, who on earth would want to be with me?

But how's this for a cliffhanger?

Liz Jones's diary ; (1)In which I start crocheting doilies(2) I have come to terms with my inevitable fate, which is why I told my husband that we need to talk

Daily Mail (London); Mar 4, 2007; LIZ JONES

On Wednesday, because I was having a really busy morning and was due to fly to New York for the fashion shows (oh, the joy; another week of the youngest and thinnest women in the world parading their tiny spherical buttocks inches from my nose), I asked my husband if he would pick up my dry cleaning. When I got home later that day, he told me it wasn't ready (there is no domestic task he does not have a perfectly reasonable get-out clause for), and so after 6pm I had to go and pick it up myself. I gave the man my docket. 'Ah yes,' he smiled, 'your son tried to collect it earlier.' You see.

Even though my best female friend Kerry and my little friend Emine and my sister Sue and just about everyone else in the universe tells me the age difference doesn't matter, that I look 'confusingly young', that my husband doesn't deserve me, that he will never find anyone as lovely and kind as me, that FWD is probably a really horrible, unintelligent, unattractive, unfunny person, it takes an objective (and soon to be worryingly down on his weekly turnover) person to actually tell you the truth. I am too old for him. And it is this unalterable fact that will cause us to break up, not the infidelity or the laziness or the ignoring. I reckon I have a year, tops, before bits of me start to fall off or seize up, and when he will have every right to start sleeping with other women again, finally falling into the arms of the most moist among them, with whom he will then start having babies (bald ones, not fur ones), leaving me alone, in a shawl, crocheting doilies and eating battenburg. He has just come in and interrupted my typing by demonstrating something called 'up rocking', a sort of preparatory dance performed before you start body popping. I told him to mind the floorboards.

I have, though, come to terms with my inevitable fate, which is why I told my husband that we need to have a talk, before I go to New York and he goes to Mumbai to take part in a literary festival. I am going to tell him that we need to separate. I will blame him, of course. That he is too much hard work, that even the cats won't miss him (he insists on picking Sweetie up and tickling her tummy, which is making her bitey and scratchy), that he no longer cooks, even though we have boxes of organic veg delivered every week and there is an island in the middle of our kitchen, that he smears the shower and doesn't pay for anything.

But it is my fault, really. I should never have lied about my age, telling him I was 36 when we met. He told me once during an argument that he felt cheated by the fact I had lied, and that when I came clean it was too late for him to back out of our wedding. But then I have always lied because I have never felt good enough. Even at primary school, I told the girls that a piebald pony in the field opposite the playground was mine. When it disappeared a few weeks later, I told them it had died, and was buried in my garden next to Penny the rabbit.

When it miraculously reappeared they wondered what on earth had happened.

And so I told more lies.

The reason I lied about my age was because I was tired of working all the time and coming home to pasta and tomato sauce in front of Frasier. I wanted a normal life, with someone to phone when I got off a plane. But I have realised that even if you want something really badly, you can't always make it happen. And it took the dry cleaning man to make me realise it just wasn't meant to be.

So, next time on NDW: Did Liz bite the bullet and break the news to Nirpal. Has Nirpal been shagging anyone else recently? Can he actually remove his head from his arse or is it stuck there for good?

Labels: journalists, Liz Jones, Nirpal Dhaliwal

This a terrific little story: Pat Dollard, Hollywood Guy Gone Gonzo. [via LinkMachineGo]

Serbian vampire hunters stake the body of Slobodan Milosevic to make sure he can't come back from the dead. Afterwards they gave themselves up to the police but I'm preparing to bust them out should Margaret Thatcher die in the near future. WE HAVE TO BE SURE IT'S OVER!

Remember that website with the teeny-tiny tourists standing on paving-stones the size of tennis courts and looking over kerb drops that were deeper than the Grand Canyon? Perhaps they'd like to visit some of the miniature properties on this site. Fantastically detailed castles that fit into gaps in masonry, beach huts in an undusted room corner.

The Long Now Foundation. Because slower/better is better than faster/cheaper. They're the people that invented the clock that ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.

Readings from Beowulf in ye authentic olde English. Possibly of interest to people who liked the Riders of Rohan bits of Lord of the Rings . Wikipedia Beowulf page.

Here's an interesting little video, Joshua Ramo on Movement, Enlightenment and Why He's Still Single. It's looking at the concept that while knowledge (or perhaps information) is easier to access in the IntertubeWebbed world today than it might have been forty years ago, has the speed of (or time it takes to) understanding that knowledge increased at all and how that relates to the personal quest for enlightenment. [via Aula]

Labels: art, Conservatives, internet, Iraq, literature, news, philosophy

No one will be charged in Celebrity Big Brother racism case.

Labels: racism, Television

The humble suburban library takes on a whole new meaning in the ABC TV's new comedy-drama The Librarians... The six-part series centres on the trials and tribulations of Frances O'Brien, a devout Catholic and head librarian. Her life unravels when she is forced to employ her ex-best friend, Christine Grimwood - now a drug dealer - as the children's librarian. Frances must do all she can to contain her menacing past and concentrate on the biggest event of the library calendar - Book Week.

Sometimes being over the other side of the planet doesn't seem far enough. Anyway, I'm off to write my script that I'm submitting to BBC Drama, it's called We Know Major Tom's a Junkie, in which a librarian is hit by a car, wakes up in 1980 and finds it surprisingly easy to fit in at his place of work.

Labels: libraries, Television

Following the story I mentioned this morning the officer caught on camera repeatedly punching a woman has been removed from front-line duty while the police wait for the IPCC to have a full independent investigation into the incident and then proclaim the officer innocent of any wrongdoing.

Labels: Independent Police Complaints Commission, IPCC, police

So I read this story about a woman who went into a 'Jamba Juice' (which I presume is some American purveyor of liquid refreshment that hasn't yet made it over the ocean, unlike Starbucks) and got a receipt which describes her as a dyke. This made me angry. Then I read the comments, which included pearls of wisdom that the clerk wasn't at fault for being offensive (and hey, how is 'dyke' offensive when it's something the gay community uses itself?!) but the woman for being offended, and hey, it's not like she was called something 'really' offensive like 'ni@@er'. That made me angrier. Then I went over to Feministing and read this. Angry is no longer the emotion, I think I've invented a whole new feeling and am naming it 'Clamboxsis', and am clamboxsing like crazy. This, combined with the news that any vote for the Conservatives in the Newark and Sherwood area is a vote for racism, and I'm about ready to start hoping that Iran does have nuclear weapons and is about to destroy us all because at the moment it's about all we deserve.

Labels: Conservatives, feminism, lesbian, news, queer, racism

Ann Coulter having a few problems at the moment. She'll probably bounce back, weeds often do, but that doesn't stop me giggling right now.

Labels: Ann Coulter, Christianity, Conservatives, United States

Labels: London, photos

AMERICA IS DEAD! Don't worry, he'll probably walk out of the shower before the story ends.

The Daily Mail has been reading Isaac Asimov, Robots to be programmed with 'code of morals' so they won't attack humans, and 'prominent off/on switches' that will be all that stand between us and horrible T2-style destruction.

The Guardian has an interview with the Modified Toy Orchestra. The album is worth getting and can be ordered here.

The news of a woman being repeatedly punched while being subdued by police is worrying, though if the woman does have epilepsy and did have an attack right after drunk and disorderly with police then it's understandable that they might not have realised, but surely 'punching someone in the head or neck until they stop struggling' isn't in the police manual as an acceptable method of getting someone to stop struggling, especially when she's one woman and there are three men sitting on you?

Lord Levy has only five hours to live! Well all right, the Government are worried that he's going to implode, which I presume means they are worried that he's going to tell police stuff that he hasn't told them in two interviews under caution. What's rather annoying is that there's now a strand of the story starting to come out that this has nothing to do with whether he did anything illegal but because he's Jewish. I could have some sympathy for Levy if it wasn't for the fact that since his first interview last year his every utterance upon the subject has given the impression that he feels that now he's a lord he should have immunity from prosecution whether he committed any crimes or not. And to suggest that the party fundraiser shouldn't be closely scrutinised in an investigation into party fundraising seems crazier than Tony Blair telling me that ID Cards will help fight terrorism.

The Scum and Mirror have also run a number of small stories on Beth Ditto in the last few days. Her lesbianism has been overlooked, probably on the grounds that she's a fat lass, which has been what they've concentrated on. One of the last acceptable prejudices?

Labels: cash for peerages, comics, ethics, fat, Labour, music, news, police, politics, robots

This is exactly how I feel when I sit down to watch legal DVDs such as Boston Legal ). [via BoingBoing]

Labels: adverts, DVDs, piracy, Television

There's a fresh ID Cards petition here.

Labels: ID cards, petitions

Another case of explosives being found where they shouldn't be in suburbia but it's not considered to be connected to terrorism. I'm also going to jump to conclusions and guess that the people involved in this were white, hence the confident proclamation that this wasn't a terrorist act.

Labels: England, terrorism

My claim to fame: I was the librarian at the school where some or all of Cheetara went. They got in the Maker twice from what I recall, once as part of a 'Old Manics fans versus New Manics fans' article then sharing a page with another all-girl band that similarly failed to set the world alight. The biggest surprise from this article was learning that they actually stayed together long enough to put out a single.

Next time on personal reminiscences: When I met local TV news anchor Mike Debbin.

Labels: personal history

Far be it from me to gloat but stupid 'buy more shit, we'll give a pittance to charity' campaign Red hasn't done that well saving the world so far.

Labels: charity, consumerism

'An anonymous tipster has advised us to expect a redesigned iMac and widescreen iPod Nano no later than second quarter 2007'

Minutes of fun with the Apple Rumour generator. [via Forever Geek]

Labels: computers, humour

"Tired of the LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears? Now it's time for the Conservatives to get our voice out on the internet! to make a real half-arsed effort to do something about it.

Conservapedia, for when you want to obfuscate issues rather than debate them. And it has that crunchy American bias that you'd expect from drawing from such a narrow pool of contributors, nothing for Tony Blair, a paragraph for Margaret Thatcher with at least two factual inaccuracies that I could spot and one dodgy sentence which would appear to say the opposite of what I expect they mean. Sadly, they are locked up tighter than wikipedia so I couldn't make corrections, being a helpful sort and all.This is what happens when you let school projects loose on to the Internet.

Labels: Conservatives, internet, Margaret Thatcher, politics, United States

The Sun have discovered that shockingly, 'extremist' websites are talking about kidnapping Prince Harry while he's serving in Iraq. The actual proportion of British servicemen killed or injured in Iraq is surprisingly small I seem to recall hearing somewhere, though I don't know where, so I don't think Royalists need to panic yet.

Labels: Royal Family, The War Against Terror

So I've been sweets (or candy if you must) free since February 1st, no real reason other than I was rather concerned about how I was automatically buying sweets every day and not really caring what I bought but then practically inhaling them and finishing them off within a few minutes. It's hardly the same as turning old ladies over for their pension money to fund a crack habit but I've become rather sensitive to noticing repetitive behaviour patterns in myself, especially when they don't add value to my life, so I decided to knock the sweetie habit on the head.

Less successful has been kicking soft drinks, though I'm down to a can of something coke-like and a can of something Red Bull-like a week. Avoiding Coke should be a moral duty, let alone what it does to your body. But whilst visiting my parents this weekend and having to step into a health food shop I discovered Whole Earth's sparkling delicious cola. Sugar-free it uses a mix of apple juice and lemon juice to give me the kick you expect from Coke's sugar overload.

What odds can I get on not being able to find it anywhere round where I live?

Labels: Coke, drink, ethics, food, whole earth foods

Catching up with emails and stuff, so big hugs to Creepy Lesbo about her sad news.

Evening kids. I've spent the weekend with my parents, celebrating my Mum's fifty-sixth birthday. We all dressed up smartly and had a family portrait taken on Friday. And you know, after all that, my soul does feel a little smaller.

Anyway, the Tube Zone One walking map that shows the walking distance between tube stations, from The Shortwalk Blog, via Going Underground.

Labels: London Underground, maps, transport

The Guardian tries to defend Al Gore's anti-environmental lifestyle. Yes, he's a hypocrite. I try to be green but not very hard, so I'm probably a hypocrite. Being a hypocrite doesn't automatically negate his message, but that doesn't exonerate him either.

Labels: Al Gore, environment, ethics

Labels: House of Commons, Parliament, police, SOCPA

The Met- Not 'institutionally racist' at all.

Labels: police, racism

Happy World Book Day everyone!

Labels: books, libraries, World Book Day