Tuesday 17 February 2009

Newsreaders, Reading Gossip Magazines

The latest ‘trend’ amongst the serious ‘newsreaders’ is to essentially, pick up a copy of The Sun and OK magazine and just read it out. Who cares about the fires in Australia killing over 200 people, or 45 people dying in a plane crash in America, or even the Credit Crunch – that was so last year. No, the things everyone wants to know about it are 13 year old fathers, who aren’t the father and dying celebrities getting married.

What happened to the days when you turned on the TV and 6PM or 10PM or whenever and heard about important stuff that affects the day to day lives of normal folk? I’ll tell you what happened; we harnessed the power of 24 hour news, and decided to repeat 15 minutes of news, over and over again.

They ran out of stuff to say, so they picked up The Sun and some ‘clever’ spark thought, “We could make the news longer by telling people gossip instead of telling them about Russia turning of our Gas.” So now when the news is on, we get told which celebrities are getting divorced, and get breaking news on the American women who had octuplets.

You may recognise the woman in the picture above as Mika Brzezinski from a few years ago. She is the newsreader who refused to read the story about Paris Hilton coming out of prison and set fire to her script in protest. She is one of the people who helps believe that there is still hope for the human race; there are newsreaders that will stand up and say no to nonsense news! And I thank her.

At the moment, when you turn the TV on, the headline news is either about Jade Goody’s cancer (see yesterdays blog for more details), and 13 year old boys who claim to be the father of a 16 year olds child, as well as two other boys. She’s a slut essentially, just get over it. There is no need to spark another debate on whether children are educated enough about sex. If that teenager is going to have sex, then they will have sex, it won’t matter that when they were 10 they got told that ‘Unprotected sex leads to STD’s and babies’. Another story (which involves Twitter), is that Lily Allen and Parez Hilton (whoever he is) are having an argument over the modern blogging phenomenon – Twitter.

Then after that load of nonsense, the newsreader turns around and says ‘In other news’, where he or she will tell us something important finally, which is usually connected to either terrorism, credit crunch or some member of parliament getting up to certain ‘shenanigans’. This is the stuff we want to know.

I mean what will be next? Will I turn on the evening news with the headline story being; ‘Breaking News - Michael Jackson reveals colour of his penis. Find out which colour, after the break.’
You never know, weirder things have happened.

‘Z-lebrities’ In Need (of Sympathy)

Unless you are a tortoise who has come out of hibernation early, you are most probably aware of Jade Goody’s new reason to have the media spot light. The racism has blown away, and the perfume and finally dried up and meant men are now aloud to smell women again without catching some disease. As you are aware, she has ‘Cancer’.

Now you may be asking why I put ‘Cancer’ in apostrophes. It’s not because I’m implying she hasn’t got cancer, because that is out of taste, even for her, but maybe it’s being played up a bit to make it sound worse. The news today is that she is getting married on Sunday to her fiancĂ©e, which sounds very sweet – wanting to spend the rest of her (short) life with him; until you find out she is selling the pictures to a magazine for a lot of money. I don’t remember the amount, mainly because I don’t care.

So, she is getting no sympathy from me. She is no different to the thousands, probably millions of people who are diagnosed with cancer, which is terminal. So why should she be treated any different, just because she was on Big Brother in 2002. I’m not trying to make light of the situation, I just find it annoying that she gets all this attention from us because she has cancer, when there are many women with identical cases who don’t even get a mention in their local paper, let alone headline news on the BBC news.

Although, I will say this, as a lot of people have, I do have sympathy for her children. Not only for having her as a mother, but also the fact they will lose their mother. No-one deserves that.

Then there is Michael Jackson. Who, last I heard, has MRSA, which is from his latest nose job. Now, if you think about it, he brought it on himself. He looks dead already, so would we really notice the difference? The MRSA is apparently flesh eating, which will mean his eerily white skin will be gone. Although I’m sure he’ll make sure he gets it back.

It’s times like this when you think that there is a God(s). He/She has finally had enough of people changing the way they look and being total bitches. So he is getting his revenge, in what my Nan would say, ‘God doesn’t pay his debts in money’. This does lead you to believe, if he did, the credit crunch would be solved, but anyway, I’m getting off the subject.

The question I want to know, and I’m sure a lot of you want to know; What colour is Michael Jackson's penis? Black or White?
Or actually, does he even have a penis?

Monday 9 February 2009

Let’s Get, Twittering... Twittering


In case you are one of the few left who doesn’t know what Twitter is, it basically is yet another online social networking website, which essentially lets you write a question, pondering, or whatever you want, in 140 characters. A good quote I read this week was in The Guardian by a Mr Charlie Brooker who said that Twitter is the online equivalent of popping bubble wrap.

Twitter has been getting lots of media converge lately with the snow storms being experienced over here in the UK, and also because a TV star (Stephen Fry), got stuck in a lift, and spent his time ‘Twittering’. Thus boosting Twitter into the starlight, and helped remind me that I had made an account a few weeks earlier.

It is amazing how many celebrities are on Twitter. I had a moment earlier where I went through and added comedians I know. It ranges from Jonathan ‘Woss’, Stephen Fry, Jimmy Carr, Tim Minchin, John Cleese and many others, but they are to name some I am following. I do however have one friend on here, which amongst all the celebrities, looks a little weird, but it makes him look big and famous.

He has returned the favour, and is following me, as are two other people, who I have never heard of, and probably never will. So I feel I have succeeded at it already. The world shall know of my on going’s and thoughts. If I say something random during the day, I shall add it to my Twitter. I am going to try and say one thing every day, which has a bit of humour. I may stuff it up sooner or later, but I think this could be something I get addicted to.

Twitter though, to sum it up in one simile, is like a proud stalker. You follow someone, throughout their day-to-day lives, but you are very open about it. You are basically shouting to them, 'I'm following you!' and there is nothing they can do about it. Well they can block you, but thats about it.

To me though, it is basically Facebook, without all garbage. You essentially just put in your status update, and read others. But I’m not going to deny, it is interesting to see what celebrities are up to, for instance as I’m typing this, Graham Linehan (writer of things like Father Ted and IT Crowd) is playing online poker. The life of a comedy writer is bloody interesting.

The gobbledegook used at Twitter as well are... interesting. Just like Facebook ones, if you have a Facebook profile, you are a ‘Facebooker’. You ‘Tweet’ when you write something and having an account means you are ‘Twittering’.

So, if you want to add me, my profile is at
http://twitter.com/MrStuy.

Toodles m’dears and I’ll try not to leave so long before I write another blog.
Stuy