Following my theme of guilty pleasures, tonight I shall dedicate time towards attempting to justify my fevered passion for the bone chillingly awful Ghost Hunters. Ghost Hunters, much like Deadliest Warrior, possesses such simplistically eponymous a title that I can avoid a detailed plot description and jump straight to ruthlessly mocking it.



Jason and Grant mere photoshopped inches from some buttock oriented coitus.

We follow The Atlantic Paranormal Society a.k.a. TAPS! As they bravely traverse a diverse assortment of expected (an abandoned asylum with an impending demolishment, The Cuban Club) and admirably inspired (an aquarium, a bowling alley) locales, at the prompting of people clearly possessing dubious grips on reality. What follows is footage of TAPS bravely hunting indistinguishable sounds and pesky moving objects that unfortunately disappear from shot when the camera approaches.

The show operates under a rather flimsy unoriginal ghost hunting premise, but it is the activity and the personalities contained therein that elevate it towards brilliance. We follow three teams as they each investigate different portions of the purportedly paranormally plagued premises. Team 1 usually consists of the founder, and bomber jacket aficionado, Jason “I love it when you call me big poppa” Hawes, who proves so genuinely earnest and sincere that I cannot poke too much fun for fear of causing big manly tears to drip from his bald pink face. He usually pairs up with his platonic life partner, the unwisely gelled, Grant and they conclude every investigation in their van performing a totally bromantic fist bump, dude. Team 2 is usually an interchangeable selection of women who never really do much and say things like “it’s a lot different in here when it’s dark!!”

By far my favourite team involves Steve and Dave, who retain such perpetual gormless ineptitude that they evoke comparisons to the great bumbling duos that have entertained so many with their idiocy throughout the ages. Their specious delivery of clearly scripted, and occasionally supposedly comic, dialogue is an eternal source of unintentional comedy. The acting and the budget function at a slightly higher level than your average telenovela and they clearly lack anything in the way of finances, so the supernatural activity largely involves our intrepid ghost hunters acting more as intrepid muffled noise hunters.

By far my favourite moment was during their investigation of an abandoned asylum, when one reality challenged supernatural tour guide dispensed:”around 10,000 people have died here” and “one of the patients ate his bed, springs and all.” These hyperbolic claims were reciprocated with an awed gaping of mouths that spewed the same statements later in the night with reverential sincerity.

Currently stealing my love away however, is the self proclaimed EXTREME! and RAW! Ghost Adventures, whose initial higher budget and heightened arrogance frequently dissipate midway through their investigations as they devolve into amateurish panic, faltering bravado and quick fire dudeisms.



I don't remember buying tickets to the gunshow.

Despite the fact that it unfolds more or less like Ghost Hunters on steroids and despite their insistence on their RAW and EXTREME nature, I can't help but feel that the impact is somewhat softened by the awful choice of title. I, personally, would have gone for something along the lines of AWESOME EXTREME GHOST ASS KICKERS, which is a devastatingly accurate encapsulation of what occurs every episode of a show in which the hosts cannot communicate at a volume less than 150 decibels and conclude all sentences with DUDE (uttered in a rainbow variety of different tones depending on the context). Also, really, the only extreme thing about the show is how extremely fast they run from the direction of loud noises that threaten the silence of the early morning hours.

Once again, the characters revitalise an overused format as we follow 3 EXTREME! and AWESOME! (I’ll stop now) bro’s: Zak “walking Ed Hardy advertisement” Bagans, whose body almost quivers with an abundance of testosterone. He veers between irritated school ma’am and irritable drill sergeant in his interactions with both the restless deceased and his bumbling companions, Nick “drowned rat” Groff and Aaron “cuddly bear” Goodwin, who spends the majority of his night vision explorations with fear visibly pooling in the inky black depths of his eyes, as they desperately scour for the nearest available window for him to leap from. AWESOME FACT: in a bout of sensitivity, something that the TV series is known for, Aaron was made to sit alone in the shower room of a prison where an inmate had been gang raped to death.

As if the fact that he was originally a documentary filmmaker isn't suspicious enough, Zak is awfully fond of loaded questions and frequently leaps across the chasm of logic towards baseless assumptions. His method of generating supernatural responses is rudimentary and suitably obnoxious for a man whose muscles are larger than his face: he literally stands around in the dark and shouts insults. This antagonistic approach produced a wonderfully self congratulatory talk with a priest at the end of one of the episodes, where Zak, clearly relishing the opportunity to channel Clint Eastwood, gravely informs that despite the risk to his soul, screeching down darkened corridors at inhabitants who died well over a century ago is just something he has to do, man. Coupled with this amusing sense of profound self importance is, unsurprisingly, a curious case of over enunciating everything:



This succinct visual representation encapsulates the brilliance that my failure as a writer cannot quite convey, thus I beseech you to witness it for yourself:

It often occurs to me that that which separates us from the animals, our innate higher consciousness, is both boon and bane. The essence of our humanity seems persistently plagued by unanswerable questions.

What is the meaning of life? How do I know I’m in love? What does the future hold? Why are we so callous to one another? Who would win in a poorly reconstructed battle royale between a pirate and a knight?

Thankfully, I can alleviate one of these vital questions no doubt taunting the sullen recesses of your soul (for all other niggling existential crises may I please direct you to this) for now there is...DEADLIEST WARRIOR!! A beautiful product of television that could only burst forth in such an insidiously bloody spray from the fertile womb of celebrated violence lacking any consequence: YOU ESS AY! YOU ESS AY! Indeed, it appears to transform me into some 18 year old keg swilling porn enthused frat boy, whooping such obnoxious obscenities as:

“HOLY SHIT!!” “THE MAFIA, FUCK YEAH!!” “BAD ASSSSS!!” “LOOK AT THAT SKULL EXPLODE!!”

and nonsensical sexual crudities as:



“I'D TAP THAT ASS!!”

(lovingly lifted from my favourite episode (or at least the one that seemed to provoke the most violence fuelled salivation to amorously drip from my open mouth) Mafia vs Yakuza)

But, what in tarnation is it all about Tasha?

Patience dear readers, for I am about to enlighten you to the throbbing brilliance beating at the heart of the show. The series follows a very simple premise: if two infamous warriors from history fought, who would win? It explodes onto the screen like an undersexed, ramen sustained, WOW addicted fifteen year old boys wet dream. We are assisted on our voyage of admirable discovery by the magnificently named Dr. Armand Dorian, who I suspect moonlights as a super villain of world renown when not gauging whether an ice pick has punctured adequate amounts of flesh to kill, some geek with a computer who runs the battle simulations and some other average dude who knows about biomedicine or something, but who usually just stands around stating obvious unsciency things like pointing out how a mannequin with half its fake brain exposing its seductive fleshy curves to the world would be "TOTALLY DEAD, DUDE!!!"

Each week they are flanked by 4 reliably unattractive, testosterone infused “experts” some of whom have such bizarrely specific realms of expertise that I can’t help but wonder what exactly they do when their knowledge of Viking battle techniques is not being called upon to save the world. So, during the course of the next 40 minutes each team of 2 "experts" simultaneously exalt the virtues of their preferred warrior in a sticky explosion of perpetually smug posturing, it's like vicarious machismo masturbation, and engage in poorly scripted uncomfortably acted attempts at rivalry that are only beaten in levels of awkwardness by the replicated history battles themselves. This artificial antagonism unravels itself in a manner marginally more intellectual than“YOU’RE MUM!!!”, which is largely why it’s so amazing. But this is not all!! When not squabbling at the prompting of the producer, they try their very best to disfigure a series of mannequins, possessing varying degrees of likeness to our own internal anatomy, with their chosen warriors terrifyingly awesome arsenal of weaponry. All to elucidate precisely how dead these infamous killing devices will render you, but not really because it's mainly to show awesome and cathartic fake carnage is and not show how ever so slightly worrying an insight into the human condition that is.

When all these results are collated, the aforementioned computer geek runs a computer simulation 1000 times and whoever emerges with the majority of the victories wins. However, this is not before we are subjected to an ingenious visual estimation of what these historical hissy fits would possibly maybe probably not look like. Red corn syrup, utilised lessons in stage fighting and artful camera angles exploited to conceal budget deficits and locational anachronisms abound and I sit before my laptop and silently question whether I will ever witness something as incredible as this ever again.

Growing up in the age where boybands ruled the earth, I think it’s fair to say that I am largely desensitised to their overly coiffed hair, inoffensive good looks, eager to please faux sincerity and harmlessly placid pseudo sexuality (as always The Simpsons has produced the perfect visual cue to demonstrate my point:)


I did after all progress towards adolescence surrounded by images of young men who possessed a demeanour of such unabashed and unassailable pep that they seemed to exude a mixture of glitter, hair product and CK One for men from their very pores.



Of course N*Sync skilfully managed to make this analogy an eye searing reality.

Yet, I find I approach the subject of Korean and Japanese boybands with such awed trepidation that I cannot help but resort to the type of attitudes usually exhibited by a middle aged world weary father who just wants to spend all day on the golf course but instead has to spend time entertaining his young daughters who not only alienate with the ever mystifying fruitions of societally influenced femininity, but now also manage to isolate with the erratically souring trajectory of their hormones and the manic infatuations these biological cataclysms impose upon previously logical human creatures. I just don’t understand. Am I repulsed? Am I intrigued? Am I....aroused?

I’m not one for imprisoning people within gender stereotypes, but it’s pretty hard to feign the stereotypically brutish hyper masculinity reserved for lumberjackin’, beer chuggin’, big sweatin’ MEN!! when you’re wearing ensembles so clearly inspired by Liberace and more make up than I will wear in a lifetime. Sensibly, most of the bands attempt to avoid this, thus giving them the appearance of possessing some semblance of self awareness.

Thus, we segue smoothly into a band that sadly does not seem to fathom this delicate balance between machismo that is somewhat warranted and machismo that is fantastically laughable. Big Bang (whose name ironically refers to the period in time all those years ago when Justin Timberlake exploded into solo popularity and thus formed, with fragments of his supposed talent and sex appeal, 5 inferiorly talented questionably attractive Korean equivalents) are a strange bunch.

A real example of style completely eclipsing substance, their songs serve as continual onslaughts of reliable blandness with each outdated RnB infused offering more inanely mind numbing than the last. They meticulously imitate their American counterparts, thus the only shocking thing about them is their brazen unoriginality...and because of this grossly offensive awfulness they rotate and become MIND BLOWINGLY AMAZING. So terrible, so inadvertently camp, so earnest in their attempts to appear well...bad ass that they stray into unintentional comedy gold. They deviate between embarrassing estimations of what constitutes middle class white boy gangsta:



And their recent nu-rave, Indie kid fusion:



To me they are:



The horrendously malformed inexplicably popular G-Dragon (also known as ‘The Visual Abomination’) whose name is so ridiculous that I shall divulge it and whose countenance is so naturally infuriating that the desire to throw flammable liquids at it every time the eerily pubescent troll face traverses my screen flares within me. Recently released from rehab due to eyeliner abuse, recently relapsed, but has yet to agree to return. This is actually an intervention...G-Dragon I don’t really care, but if we lose you I’ll have to start making fun of Daesung and he seems far too innocuously nice to be able to handle my withering bon mots. Speaking of....



The ugly fat one who is actually the only one with marginal talent. Shame that.



Abs...Abs...ummm...The disappointingly frequently clothed Taeyang whose face is the culinary equivalent of topping caviar with ketchup or fashion equivalent of wearing a Chanel suit with a pair of Crocs...what I’m trying say is, the boy sure is plain when he’s wearin-


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.



The one with the charismatic eyebrows who I would tap so hard they’d call me Fred Astaire WHICH I HAVE NEVER SAID BEFORE, REPEAT: NEVER. I have it on good authority that he turns lesbians hetero. TAKE THAT BIBLE CAMP!



The forgettable one who is so forgettable that he forgets who he is some days, this theory is cemented by the fact that he always seems to point at the camera, as if confused by the reflection he sees in there.

Now that the uninitiated know both how to identify the members (hideousness, fatness, abs, eyebrows and...something else that I appear to be forgetting) and, more importantly, how far I would advance with them sexually (NEVER!,.. no but then he’d probably start crying and I’d have to, A HUNDRED TIMES YES, IF THERE IS A GOD IN THE SKY THEN ONE DAY YES and yes, but I’d probably forget we were sexing midway through respectively), we can progress to their latest aural offering:



The song is irritatingly catchy and an abortion of good taste and the video involves mainly revolves around them sitting in a singular swivel computer chair on the set of Timberlake’s Rock Your Body video, but I’ll be damned if I’m not aroused.

Things I noticed:



Taeyang wearing an interesting choice of t-shirt.



The depressing lack of T.O.P which I felt deeply in my erogenous zones.



.....words really evade me when I am confronted with something that is as simultaneously sad as a box of abandoned puppies and disturbing as a box full of dismembered gangrenous limbs.

Lastly, the greatest gift I’ve ever received (I just realised you added a rainbow into it, thus proving that you could not get any gayer):



Pop quiz next week so revise this weekend, guys.

p.s. Yes, I am deeply ashamed both for secretly liking Big Bang, although it's not my fault because someone exposed me to them and for unleashing this like...not love...onto the internet at 21 years of age.

So, I spent literally all day watching the 24 hour BBC news channel. Why? Masochism, morbid voyeurism and a reprehensible thirst for salaciousness of course. This is, after all, the leading focus and output of all news outlets. It is wise to remain acutely aware of how disastrous the approach towards news stories are in order to perfect that healthy cynicism with which you should ideally view every facet of society. STORY FIRST, FACTS LATER – IF EVER. Sadly, nothing is as it seems and a story is rarely as basely black and white as it is presented. The news scripts itself to unfurl like the most histrionic and ridiculously overblown Lifetime melodrama. There are villains (Boo! Muslim extremists!) and there are heroes (Hooray! Jesus, Santa and Princess Di all rolled into one: all hail Lord Obama! Saviour of the centre of the universe a.k.a Planet America.)

Unless a story is, or can at least be manipulated to appear, theatrically emotive, then it is disregarded as staid and unexciting. But lately the whole approach is so hyperbolically apocalyptic that it borders on comical. So relentlessly depressing and eerily nihilistic that I am attempting to reign in the paroxysms of manic laughter threatening to consume my body. I know we are currently being urged to recycle (unfortunately a few decades too late) but I don’t believe that this mentality should be applicable within the context of news. I could mention that this is largely due to the fact that first and foremost, yes more important than being a beacon of enlightenment and dispenser of pure and unbiased current affairs, the news is a business. The reason that they run certain stories into the ground is due to the fact that they have usually invested a lot of money in it. I could mention this, but that is far too intellectual an argument for my unintentionally pretentious ramblings.

At least with the advent of our latest bleak shamble towards inevitable doom: SWINE FLU!!!! We can finally stop beating the steadily decaying equestrian form of the crumbling economy. Although, BBC news is admirably attempting to create a truly terrifying economic/epidemic hybrid. A soulless, depression inducing Frankenstein's monster that they are currently attempting to shock to life as they piece together both disasters, just to sink the world further into despondency. Because we’re not merely embarking on a terrifying downward spiral towards unemployment and the poorhouse (only being widely reported on because it’s now impacting the previously impervious purveyors of the news: middle class white people), we’re now going to be dead and, if not, infected whilst on our way there.

You can see them circling, waiting for the first European victim to drop so that they can all swoop and pick hungrily at scraps of misinformation and exploited human misery. Ah, the duplicitous voice of the media that seems to be simultaneously screeching “TWO AWAY FROM A PANDEMIC PEOPLE, TIME TO TEST SOME DARWINIAN THEORISATION, BITCHES” and cooing “but hey don’t panic, don’t panic. Oh look, it’s Susan Boyle!”
How disappointed they are that this OUTBREAK! has not:

1) Produced a wave of death and desolation in the wake of it’s infectious progress across the globe, the likes of which has not been seen beyond the confines of the ostentatiously expensive Hollywood disaster films or any other outbreak of disease in one of those unimportant poverty stricken countries (more than likely contained within Africa)

and/or:

2) Caused mass hysteria as we all clamber towards our fallout shelters clutching the last remnants of tinned produce procured from the nearest available, and recently ransacked supermarket, to our heaving chests.

So until Swine Flu finally starts steadily killing us all they painstakingly elongate the story, contort it and attack it from every possible angle whilst praying sincerely to their golden statuettes of Murdoch that someone, somewhere (possibly Madagascar) closes their borders soon. What a story that would be.

Ah!...ah, I say! I have nothing of intellectual validity to narrate to you, dear readers, but this is not a particularly revolutionary statement considering the subject matter that I usually choose to dispense onto the internet. I am currently mired in existential (well educational, but I wanted to sound profound) malady, but as I cannot contain myself any longer I am here to talk to you all about a very serious problem: twittering.

What a great idea! What I mean to say is that it’s not like we’re already set adrift in a sea of meaningless, alienating internet socialisation advancing us ever closer to urban isolation and complete segregation from normal human interaction. It’s not like Twitter swam up blasting the Jaws theme as it punctured a hole in our dinghy and devoured common sense whole. It’s not as if people are already instilled with enough self importance, unearned self satisfaction and ignorance they feel they must broadcast whilst genuinely believing that the entire internet landscape simply must hear their oh so articulate and intellectual opinions on the state of the world economy (I don’t wish to alarm you folks, but I heard tell that it’s failing). I can't help but feel that it's some sinister factory line producing selfishness and egocentricity.

Personal grievances aside, all humanity is concealing, within those fragile fleshy increasingly widening bodies, an extroverted behemoth. So now, what could be better than a medium allowing you to divulge to the world, waiting with baited breath, that you just woke up! had a coffee! left for work! All within the confines of 140 characters. 140 characters? Bypassing the occasion my mother informed my father that a condom would not be necessary, no one has ever said anything important or interesting within 140 characters.

Society has already rapidly hurtled towards mass, self imposed, technological seclusion in the space of my teenage years and lo and behold, it does not appear to be abating as I progress, somewhat reluctantly, through my 20’s. The internet is surely wondrous, there’s a boundless (forgive me mateys for further perpetuation of the nautical theme) ocean of information at our fingers. Yet I cannot help but think that it's making us all the more ignorant. I’m not going to launch into a huge rant about our instant gratification society and how harmful it is, as I feel this concept is so established that it’s redundant to add my poorly worded diatribe to the many others. As it is I’m not intelligent enough to fully articulate the breadth of what I’m trying to say here.

It’s not so much the machinations of Twitter, it’s what it symbolises. This emphasis on the superfluous, the inconsequential. Because really, my bitter alienation and borderline nihilism aside: WHAT.IS.THE.DAMN.POINT? Except to serve as a perfect demonstration of the hive mentality seemingly present in the majority of the population. I don’t like Facebook and I don’t like Myspace, but at least they had a perceivable, and more importantly, a definable purpose. Twitter is just really a depressing case of ‘what the hell are people going to ridiculously consume next?’ Because I heard the Emperor has some new clothes.

Phew, it's getting sanctimonious in here. Let's liven the mood with some lovely, sunny Swedish girl pop:

Pssst. Guess what? Society is sexist. I know, I know. I too thought feminism was over. After all, we can vote, abort, divorce and, most importantly of all, we have the right to remove our clothes to receive that fuzzy sensation of gratification from all assembled and whooping males. But this is not the focus of my rant, if it were I would communicate that feminism, like society, has mutated. Thus, what was relevant to sexually repressed housewives and rebellious young women in the 50’s and 60’s is, rather unsurprisingly, no longer relevant to this our sex saturated society of the present. Where women’s bodies are no longer a fleshy expanse of territory upon which rages a mighty battle of morality, but an eternally scrutinised commodity. You are not “owning your body” whilst greased up and gyrating suggestively in child sized clothing. You m’dear have been manipulated by the ever slimy form of the media, which is now freely exploiting your pseudo feminist rhetoric whilst, and here’s the clever part, making you believe that you are the one in control. The media is slyly Machiavellian like that, imprinting thoughts onto your fragile subconscious, making you think it was all your own choice when it was actually theirs all along. This is not to say that I have a problem with women choosing to either take their clothes off or perform sexual acts for money, regardless of how debatable it is that she is freely choosing to do so. My rage at the porn industry is not directed towards the participants but the creators. I mainly have a problem with the pre-packaged, empty artificial feminism that said participants seem to enjoy simultaneously perpetuating whilst operating under the genuine belief that they are aiding the cause.But this is not the focus of my rant.

I’m less affronted by the overt outright misogyny perpetuated by Playboy, advertising, television, music, drunken frat boys, American teen comedies and just about every other facet of society. I do, of course, take issue with these aspects, but I’m more irritated by the insidious, subtle form of sexism that threads through our lives so quietly, that you have to squint to notice it’s there at all. The type of sexism that establishes itself with such certainty, that we never question it at all. The type of sexism that brands make up necessity not choice, the type of sexism that freely expounds, with little to no criticism, that women are too “emotional”, the type of sexism that still propagates that all domestic acts should be assigned to women, despite how egalitarian a couple’s professional life may be. This is currently rampantly prevalent in the disgustingly patronising reporting of any woman in a position power. More specifically, the blatant overlooking of any intellect or achievements in favour of savagely analysing her appearance.

Michelle Obama, Harvard educated lawyer and general fierceness incarnate, reduced to a walking mannequin as the media surges forward to gush over her yellow shift dresses and pastel ensembles. Let’s concentrate on her appearance thus successfully undermining any and all academic, political or social achievements she’s made in her life! That’s how we keep our women in their place, never once let them forget that regardless of how much they achieve in life, it’s meaningless if they’re not conventionally attractive or at least give the impression that they are trying to be. I remember the criticism Palin received when it was revealed how much money was spent, spent not wasted, on facilitating her made up appearance. It’s just like the hyper hypocritical news media to savagely pounce on attitudes and behaviours that they create, maintain and sadistically thrive upon. If Palin had taken to a podium sans make up, regardless of what she said no one's attention would be focused on her words or political rhetoric or even her funny accent and penchant for inappropriate winking.

Channel 4 news even suggested that Sarkozy’s, the temperamental entitled bratty egomaniac with a severe case of short man complex, wife Carla Bruni (former model/current acoustic guitar backed heavy breather) may, in fact, have been absent from the G20 due to her feeling threatened by the presence of the almost 5’11 Michelle Obama, Patron Saint of J. Crew. Because you know what those girls are like, eh? Put a couple of them in the room and watch the sparks fly! Ohohoho, let’s conveniently forget that just about every war that has torn countries apart and murdered millions of people was the result of male influence. Ohohohoho. Let’s also forget that global politics for the past, present and conceivable future has been dominated by machismo charged, hypermasculine, vain, egomaniacal men, throwing their testosterone about in the form of psychologically phallic power plays in a display more spectacular than sparring silverback gorillas. Ohohohoho. Let’s forget that the majority of violent acts are perpetuated by men. Because nothing is more terrifying or irrational than a group of women vying for the attention of the ostensibly male populated media gaze, eh boys? Except maybe if they were on their periods, eh? Eh?

Fucking idiots.

Ah, winter. If you enjoy the sensation of possessing skin, and I do not believe it presumptuous of me to presume you do, you may find it simply too cold to emerge from the musty dark pit you’ve dug for yourself as you hideout in the house to avoid the current London climate. And so you remain indoors, in that mire of sin, discarded wrappings and half mouldering food you’re melding around your prostrate form like some kind of organic armour. Rocking back and forth slightly, becoming increasingly paranoid and twitchy as you surface at night to scavenge through near empty tins and boxes bearing increasingly dilapidated Christmas regalia, surviving on the Quality Street everyone left behind because no one likes them. “It’s times like this that separate man from boy,” you murmur to myself, in the throes of winter madness, as you place another Vanilla Fudge Quality Street into your mouth, attempting to chew through your gag reflex. However, chocolate coated Brazil nuts are surely the pellets of Satan himself; therefore you refuse to touch them. And then! As soon as the sun piques the suburban landscape, you’re gone! As if you were never there at all, had you not left a trail of shiny foils and biscuit crumbs in your wake. And if you hadn’t walked into the broom, knocking it into the pile of dust and dog fur lying dormant in the corner, causing it to explode into your face and create a riotous coughing fit at four in the morning. This didn’t actually happen. I am, of course, the paragon of grace and the catlike reflex, but for comic effect let us imagine it did.

I have done absolutely nothing productive. I have slept all day and watched bad horror films by night. And watched vintage sexist adverts on youtube (in chronological order for yer amusement);


This may be a testament to the perversion of innocence and my warped 21st Century mentality, but I took ‘coffee’ as a euphemism for ‘blow jobs’.


(narrated by Zapp Brannigan)
I do so love that spiffy 60's pep, though.


What you need is a properly constructed skirt that does not so spontaneously detach.


Cutting social commentary. Manslaughter over marriage, chaps.

Anyway, my hair is beginning to house a new species of parasite and it’s a possibility that I’m forming bedsores so, before my breasts decide to descend south for the summer and my ribs become irrevocably lost in a soft cushion of chocolate endorsed fat, I should probably leave the house...tomorrow.

Also, can anyone who has been to Seoul before recommend the best region to stay in? I know where I’ll be staying in Tokyo but I’m clueless about Seoul.

Stay cool, hep cats. Have a beret:

Well hello there my woefully neglected, slightly dusty section of the internet dedicated solely to my pompous, longwinded rambling.

So, university, eh? English Literature degree, eh? Filled as it is with such perpetual superfluous non-content that it causes me to daily desperately question whether it’s worth me turning up at all, whether I’m wasting 3 entire years of my life and placing myself so hopelessly into a vat of debt that death by a tragic accidental on purpose slip on a banana peel off of a very tall building may just be the only escape, eh? Ehhhhhhhhhhh?

I may be exaggerating slightly but I cannot help but become immensely frustrated (translation middle classily indignant –I huff, a lot!) at the persistent prevalent Jumping Through Hoops! mentality of the education system. I admit it is already evident that I advanced to university possessing a startling naivety, how foolish I was to believe that on an English Literature course, merit would be earned on our writing skills! That we would not have to perform for our tutors and cater to their whims and idiosyncratic personality quirks in order to receive the best grade possible! Thus, any genuine earnestness has quickly dissipated into the still hated Canterbury air. It doesn’t help that I have befriend a young gentleman who happens to be my neighbour and happens to reliably consistently possess a veritable cornucopia of narcotic substances.

Ah, Canterbury. Permit me to recant a chilling tale from the cold depths of the Canterbury countryside. That hasn’t been done before, right? Direct your eyes to the entry lurking directly below this and my opinions on Canterbury are clear, only if clear means buried beneath useless metaphors and tiring tangents so allow me to reiterate with rare lucidity: I hate Canterbury.

‘Twas a cold, moonless night as my friend and I scampered along the cobbled backstreets of Canterbury, as everything conveniently closes at around the time I manage to convince my body to slump out of the bed and crawl towards the door so I can at least perform socially constructed behaviours with some semblance of normality - the daily routine. Although, my daily routine usually commences around 5 in the evening when I am left to my own devices. The point I am trying to make is that the streets vacate of all life possessing sobriety as soon as the shops close. Thus, there we were, chased by shadows as we trespassed upon vacant alleyways and disturbed dormant wraiths of activity. A thirst for adventure that only foiling some kind of assassination attempt or discovering a mutilated corpse could quench...either of those two thrilling scenarios or simply just managing to get lost would have been exciting enough. Yes, Canterbury is so boring that the mere, previously unless planned, rather irritating process of getting lost would prove exhilarating.

So we tried, oh how we tried, scouring the floor for traces of blood, keeping an eye out for any stray members of royalty or visiting politicians out for an evening walk with a bounty on their head...OR JUST TO GET LOST But alas! The city failed us on all three counts. We did naively surge with excitement upon turning down one particular street and witnessing former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy:


(pictured here glancing lustfully at Ursula the Seawitch from The Little Mermaid)

AND a graveyard we had not encountered before:

(actual graveyard was not made of cake...I’m ambushed by immense sadness upon that admission)

But disaster would soon become our bitter mistress, upon closer inspection Charles Kennedy was actually a bush:


and the graveyard led out onto the large, random Habitat:


This large capitalistic beacon, situated in the middle of nowhere, for no particular reason, seriously, there is no logical validity when considering both the size and the placement of that shop. Who, when driving down the motorway, suddenly spontaneously gasps and realises that they desperately need riotously overpriced kitchen and dining equipment or bed linen? Middle class white people, that’s who....oh....right.

I fear I am still recovering from New Years. Narcotics, fellatio, rum, house parties and camping in a car in Camden as the temperature slowly descended into a frosty embrace with minus numbers.

So...university. Well it's just one big amalgamation of all that I loathe about, and all that is fundamentally wrong with, students and the youth of the British middle class. All conveniently confined to one blindingly bucolic campus, causing my suppressed homicidal rages to coalesce into wonderful little shards of migraine [too soon or a throwaway statement I will return to as proof of dormant psychic powers honed to exploitative perfection? I don't know, there are always angry teenage shootings, don't worry this diatribe isn't my equivalent of some nihilistic manifesto against the human race before I go kill people for notoriety, I just have a raging superiority complex and class guilt]. Desperate cover-up of my impending spiral into murderous insanity aside, watch me utilize hypochondria as a crafty distraction: I think that all this fresh air is crippling my blackened, pollution ridden London lungs.

I'm in Canterbury, yes THAT Canterbury, THAT Canterbury home of the one and only Rupert the Bear museum, I also believe some chap named Chaucer did some sort of writing here. Well, I'm in Canterbury stranded in the countryside, if you get lost, well, you're essentially fucked. Day 2 I misguidedly attempted to walk to the city centre on foot and ended up first trespassing on farmland, thankfully avoiding the irate pitchfork wielding inhabitant, perhaps he was too busy fucking a cow and then stranded in quaint, white, middle class suburbia. Bestiality or white suburbia? It’s a tough one.

Kent is referred to as ‘the garden of England’, that’s not anything to boast about, English people hate gardens, they remind us too much of our one true unrequited love: the sun. Our gardens are rendered perpetually, occasionally dangerously, swampy due to the suns constant contemptuous spurning of our advances. Lawn furniture lies ravaged, wrecked, ruined, strewn across lawns, forgotten and broken as nameless soldiers on a battlefield. Barbeques stand to silent attention, immaculate, unmarred by the scars of charred residue from burnt, E.coli ridden meat products. Brave citizen’s bath nightly in vats of gravy in flawed attempts to hide their woefully pasty, vitamin D deprived skin. Outbreaks of rickets…this is getting slightly ridiculous now. Look what you’ve reduced us to oh, solar Adonis, we’re constantly getting wet for the rain as our booty call.

English people lavish much income, both disposable and indisposable, on items to furnish their gardens with and there is a constant heady barrage of television advertisements for said products, which is odd when you consider that our average yearly rainfall would be enough to drown the entire world’s population of obnoxious university students. Or so I imagine. This segues nicely back into the topic of my rant and navigates us away from the uncomfortable melding of weather and sex exhibited in poorly worded metaphors.

It doesn’t aid matters that I:

1) Really, really hate students.

2) Am old. At 20 I already symbolise the downward spiral into dementia and reemerging bladder dysfunctions of old age to these kids.


3) Am really, at heart, a misanthropic, cantankerous loner who hates people, with their overeager desire to please/fit in/talk/talk to me/have the audacity to not like things that I like/generate noise/exist and just generally annoy the centre of the universe a.k.a ME.

4) Officially no longer possess the desire to drink myself into a visit to A&E to befriend Mr. Stomach Pump.


5) Or from the female perspective: officially no longer possess the desire to drink myself into a visit to your dorm room, exuding that exotic, quintessentially male perfume of Lynx, sweat, budding machismo and discarded sperm dispensed into scrunched up tissue where I befriend you, Mr Student, in your stripy Topshop shirt, your stylistically ripped jeans and your artfully sculpted hair and your overenthusiastic, under performing penis before it hammers inexpertly into my cavernous ladyhole and before you vomit love and half digested kebab into my mouth and visit A&E to befriend Mr. Stomach Pump.

6) Really, really fucking hate students.

This flaunted, undeserved sense of their own elitist entitlement, the overinflated ego, the toffee nosed accents, the taking courses you have no actual understanding of or interest in, the apathy towards academic work despite the fact that you voluntarily decided to pursue higher education, the complete disregard for the cost of things:

"Oh ma gahd, yah, sew I'm, lyke, totally gonna flop out this yehr 'cause I m going to get sew wasted all the time."

Wow! Allow me first to stitch up the flabber you just so readily ghasted as I recover from the sharp intake of breath that I could not help but take upon encountering such edgy and shocking a statement!...Ok! Let's see if this is all crystal...This year the minimum expenditure wasted on your undeserving ass to get to university and, unfortunately, survive there, will be ~continental edition~:

1) At least ￡3,500 on accommodation. Da!

2) Your spontaneously chosen course in a subject you have a vague interest in another ￡3,500. Ja!

3) Cost of books left to gather dust and splashback residue from whatever the fuck you end up drunkenly doing in their vicinity…anywhere between £50-£100? Si!

3) The cost of all that alcohol suckled down your throat, from the teat of malformed handles on consequences and moderation, only for it to reappear, mere hours later, in an acidic eruption of cereal from the morning and other such refuse lining your stomach...around ￡60 a week? Oui!

And so you waste all this time, money and effort to go to university and spend the whole time in an inebriated haze, or the remnants of the previous nights inebriated haze, because boy howdy! you're just that edgy, original and utterly, laughably stupid, oh, I’m sorry, I of course mean: fun loving?

It's not the drinking that annoys me, I’m not buckling down for Prohibition ’08 and I’m not suffering from a sudden bout of amnesia that coincides perfectly with my newly discovered inner hypocrite, it's the mentality. I've seen it all before, I've done it all before and it's only when you reach that horrible epiphany, when you wake up with your hair sticking to your vomit encrusted face, the lingering taste of cigarettes, semen and stomach acid in your mouth, when you realise there have been more days spent drunk that year than sober, that you realise how disgustingly pathetic you are, what a waste it all was. And on that uncharacteristically somber note I bid you, gentle readers, goodnight.

La Princess, a gargantuan mechanical spider currently residing in Liverpool that seemingly no one has informed Square Enix of as court proceedings have yet to be initiated.

Think this is impressive? You ain't seen nothing yet. La Princess is still sleeping. When he awakes on Friday morning, he's going to stretch out those legs and grow to almost double his size. And, when he wakes, he won't be very happy....
This week, Liverpool will play host to one of the most eye-popping public art spectacles that this – or any other city – has ever seen.
They've removed street lights, re-routed traffic, and taken out an entire roundabout in preparation. There'll be special effects, buildings scaled, bus-shelters bounded over like discarded burger boxes...

-http://www.liverpool.com

La Princess also sounds like he’s dealing with some serious gender issues. There will be a series of performances revolving around this enlarged arachnid throughout the weekend as ‘scientists’ instigate tests and snow and special effects abound before the inevitable finale where this terrifying feat of engineering horror attempts to escape.



It doesn’t look it but this baby is 50ft tall and weighs 37 tonnes. It’s set to rampage through the city while arachnophobes gently weep:

Friday 5th September

11.30h The scientists perform experiments on the creature using different special effects to see how it responds to different stimuli. The creature wakes up and is prevented from running away by a wall of Chinese firecrackers and by a fire effect. Eventually the creature is sent to sleep by a snow machine.
19.30h The creature arrives at the Dock and takes a bath, accompanied by live music. After her bath, she is dried and perfumed.
21.00h The creature arrives at Cunard Building. It begins to snow gently and she falls asleep.

Saturday 6th September

11.30h The creature wakes up in the middle of a magical snowscape, and is serenaded with music.
16.00h Water ballet at Derby Square (Waterproof clothing highly recommended).
16.15h The creature walks down Lord Street to Holy Corner where it is snowing.
20.00h A tempest rages at Ranelagh Place.

These two days sound lovely and I really, really want to go see it but I’m poor and cannot afford the train and thus would have to take a 6 hour coach journey there and back most probably surrounded by shrieking children and their equally shrill parents indulging in mild forms of child abuse as they attempt to silence the endless procession of noise emitted from the accursed mouths of their brats. DARN STUDENT POVERTY.

I do believe it is that time again.

PT.2 OF TASHA’S AMAZING PHENOMENAL SEXUAL EROTIC INFORMATIVE ADJECTIVE ABUSING POORLY PUNCTUATED TRIP TO JAPAN!!!



ENTER MY PLEASURE QUARTERS~
( (as long as you’re over 16 because I cannot afford another lawsuit.) )

I know you’ve all been waiting for this one:



PT.1 OF TASHA’S AMAZING PHENOMENAL SEXUAL EROTIC INFORMATIVE ADJECTIVE ABUSING POORLY PUNCTUATED TRIP TO JAPAN!!!

( Day 1 &2. I’ve tried to make it as interesting as I could but I’m afraid I failed miserably… )

Back from Japan. I fucked a salary man in a love hotel, got chatted up by some boy in a VK band and was on Japanese news. You'll hear allll about my adventures when I can be bothered to write up all the crap I scribbled down. It was a strange place though, I felt incredibly isolated, even in the middle of the swarming masses pulsating through the streets of Shibuya in rush hour.
So, how are we all?

Ugh. UGGGGGGGGGGH.











PLZ COME BACK TO US RINGO.

What is she doing to meeeee? I've just begun to finally begin to accept Tokyo Jihen and she decides to parade pseudo solo before my weeping eyes by reminding me how amazing solo Ringo is. It's making me so nostalgic...It just doesn't feel the same in a band...sigh.

Watch for foamy amazingness;

Shiina Ringo - MELLOW
Uploaded by yyug

Oh & hi I'm not dead...I think.In fact I'm almost 20...when the hell did that happen and someone catch that thief who stole my youth from me, I think they're getting away.

Ok can we please take time from our busy schedules to discuss how amazing Sa Dingding is? Not only does she have the best name ever, she creates musical loveliness like this;





I’ve been slightly obsessed with her album ever since she was on the cover of one of the Sunday Times magazines where they hailed her the ‘Chinese Björk’. Of course. For any slightly eccentric female artist, regardless of ethnicity or language, who cannot be categorised as Ethereal Piano Chanteuse or Folksy Guitar Girl must immediately be hailed as either ‘the new Björk’ or the ‘[insert nationality] Björk’. Björk really inhabits a little sparkly, fabulous globe all of her very own so any comparisons are automatically rendered redundant and erroneous. Amusingly enough the article where she was labelled the ‘Chinese Björk‘ was essentially about her supporting China and its stance on Tibet which you are probably all aware Björk rather vocally disagrees with. Whoops.

Anyway Sa is as exceptionally beautiful as she is ridiculously talented and interesting;



“Sa Dingding is a singer and musician born in Mongolia. She sings in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Lagu, and Mandarin, and also in a self-created language. She plays several instruments, including the zheng, the Chinese drum, Chinese gong, and horse-head fiddle. Inspirations include Buddhism and Dyana Yoga.”

Her album is most definitely not over at this link so don’t even bother clicking it;

http://www.mediafire.com/?2umwtwxzvnv

Seriously download it, it's a really beautiful, calming album full of chants, traditional instruments, electronic wizardry and Sa's pretty, childlike voice and it's so damn catchy. You'll be singing the chants for days to come.
...ahem...moving on to something...DRAMATIC!!!!!

Yesterday started like any other, with my alarm blaring into my reluctant ears as I cursed how quickly the frightful blight of morning arrives each and every soul destroying, morale obliterating college day. However college was actually fairly eventful, for some reason yesterday was the day I ran into everyone in the entire world and was forced to converse at length despite how cantankerous lack of sleep had rendered me.

It was just another ordinary day...UNTIL!!!! A cold flicker of dread spread slowly through my body, the cancer of forgetfulness attacking my thought process as anxiety gripped my heart. Alas! The sudden onslaught of memory plunged into me as if it were a knife, for yes...that was it...I had forgotten the piece of work I had foolishly promised I would deliver behind in the library. Only it was not work of my own oh no, no, no, but the work of another student, leaving me no choice but to utter the awfully dramatic, not-at-all-cliché;
“I WOULDN’T CARE IF IT WAS MY WORK, BUT IT’S SOMEBODY ELSES DAMNIT!!!!”
Disclaimer; damnit added for dramatic effect, may not have actually been said.

It was epic, akin to those epic moments in super epic war films where the wounded solider epically wails “I’M...I’M JU-JUST HOLDING Y-YOU B-B-B-B-BACK, JUST GO ON WITHOUT ME!!!!!”
And the brawny all American corporal with a rugged ‘Nam beard, rain soaked hair, artfully placed cuts and mud streaks and a jaw so square he can use it to draw straight lines replies “DAMNIT MAN, I NEVER LEAVE A SOLDIER BEHIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” also very epically!!!
But my scenario, I think we can all unanimously agree, was far more heroic.

So that was it. Not only my pride but my reputation was now at risk in this dangerous game of Reliability Roulette. So this was it, fate wanted to fight and I'm not one for cowering in a corner (unless there's a spider somewhere within visible vicinity but that's perfectly understandable) I'd kick its skinny little arse or go down in a blaze of glory. And so, I ventured back to college but oh!no! disaster had struck again, this time in the form of the obnoxious neon of the digital clock. Time was racing against me and I’m a poor runner...that may have been a metaphor too far.

I HAD T-MINUS 60 MINUTES TO GET TO COLLEGE AND RETRIEVE THE DOCUMENT and so...I ran. Gallantly galloping graceful as a gazelle. But just as I stepped beyond the realm of my comfortable domicile, the clouds parted and an ominous downpour commenced to pour down upon my frizzy, unbrushed hair. The weather was now contorting to my anxiety and soaking me in a cold reality.
I refused to succumb to the disheartening properties of English weather however so still I ran. Somewhere beneath that gloomy sky painted the eerie pallor of the grave, rain pouring down grey and relentless, relentlessly grey, I dashed frantically out of the car and towards the imposing figure of the college building, slamming into the doors of the library.

I glanced chaotically around. To the left, to the left. Empty. Empty as my head had been when I’d been too busy gossiping to remember that the piece of work I’d left out so I would not forget it was ironically forgotten.

The right, empty!

“ARRRRRGH!” I shrieked like a baboon in heat as I pounded desperately on a stray desk, again, much like a baboon in heat but alas I do not possess a posterior of such a delightfully unnatural hue so the similarities sadly ended there.

“I DEFY YOU, STARS!!!” I howled which was a bit nonsensical considering it was still very much daylight and technically there were not yet stars out to defy, well other than the sun but I feel the sun is not a star one wants to be messing with if you wish to benefit from its Vitamin D boosting, radiant glory and any aesthetic tanning side effects, so this was a warm up if you will for I would give those twinkly little bastards hell later.

But then! Just as I was about to complete my rather drastic leap from the window, the only sufficient way to once again recuperate my wounded pride would now indeed be to plunge from this ground floor window and accept the tragic fate that awaited me, a flash of white atop a desk in the corner.

I lurched forward, a surge of cautious optimism and premature disappointed engulfing my stomach, my heart thudding at such a pace that it managed to drown out the dry, monotonous clacking of keyboards as students eager fingers danced atop them all around me. My fingers trembled as they flirted with the cool, crisp white of the paper before me and....

( WILL TASHA EVER FINALLY REACH THE END OF HER EMBARRASSINGLY OVERLONG ANNECDOTE ABOUT AN EVENT THAT REALLY WASN’T THAT EXCITING ANYWAY? WILL SHE GAIN SOME SEMBLANCE OF SELF AWARENESS AND REALISE THAT SHE SHOULD NOT DESCRIBE THIS AS IF IT WERE THE MOST EXCITING THING THAT HAPPENED IN HER OTHERWISE DULL DAY? DOES ANYONE ACTUALLY CARE? FIND OUT NEXT PARAGRAPH AS YOU READ THE SHOCKING CONCLUSION UNDER THIS CUT!!!  )

So Tokyo Jihen and Sherbets are playing at the same festival.
Wonder if Benji will once again smack Ringo with his Gretsch EH EH? IF YOU GET MY EVER SO SUBTLE AND CLASSY DRIFT. Now let us all form a prayer circle and hope that Ringo and Kenichi will once again be bumping uglies ridiculously beautifuls.



I’ll get him to impregnate you thus producing exceptionally beautiful and talented spawn yet young Ringo. You ain't gettin' any younger and neither is he.



YOU CAN ONLY HOUSE YOUR MAGICALLY MUSICAL PROGENY WITH THIS MUSICAL MAN IN YOUR WONDERFUL MUSICAL WOMB FOR SO MUCH LONGER. I also think she should hit up Mukai out of pity because he so obviously loves her and HZM because they would be dynamic! before finally marrying Ukigumo because that would be amazing but I'm hoping for too much here

This entry is really only aimed at spinnigold to be entirely honest and this is naughty as I have a mound of washing up to do and two psychology essays..HIT ME UP GURLFREN'

Today I concocted an exquisite meal of;
+ +

But not separately oh no, no, no. All cooked together in a large pot because I do not possess;

a) Wealth
b) Food products
c) Culinary skills capable of producing anything not of the omelette or cereal family
d) All of the above*

It produced a bizarre cheesy, beany, tomatoey, tunay, orangey paste but I’m not gonna lie I ate it and it tasted good. When you’re excruciatingly hungry though I tend to find that the very thought of the most repulsive of foods has you salivating.


.........errrr.

*The answer is D by the way. I don’t have the skills to cook the food I cannot afford. I’m a triple threat.