Emerald Bile

Cave paintings. Like I did them, only with my feet

2012-01-16T07:33:00.007Z

People who are ruled by their hormones, Creationists and Communists get very excited about history and pre history. The rest of us don't really give much of a fuck about it. I, for example, don't think it matters who used to be King, whether we were once fish, or how we coped before we had knives. Do I have a knife? Yes I do - a fantastic penknife and, what is more, a large range of Sabatier knives in my kitchen. If someone asked me to use a flint to cut stuff with, I would simply use it to cut them.

So when I find myself in the company of any of the above group of people and we end up, say, looking at cave paintings or rock carvings done by our ancestors thousands of years ago, I find it very hard to look interested. Why? Because the paintings and carvings are pure shite. It is worse than when someone shows you the awful scrawls their children produce at nursery, as, judging from the height of the paintings up the wall, they must have been done by a human adult, and adults should be able to draw better than children. I suppose it is just possible, that the paintings and carvings that exist in the world are actually evidence of prehistoric 'special schools', but I doubt it. I don't think there was much difference between normal and special back then, if Stig of the Dump and the Flintstones, with that cretinous great man, are anything to go by.

There is always some wanker who pipes up with a theory about how the paintings are stylised, or they are symbolising some great event, or a way of asking the prehistoric gods for a favour. What a load of old shite. How come these cunt cavemen only ever paint cows? What's that about? I'm not having David Attenborough and nature programmes giving out: '90 percent of the worlds species have disappeared from the planet', and then excusing the cavemen for only ever painting one sort of creature. And if I were a caveman and for whatever barking reason, were only allowed to paint one sort of animal, would I paint a cow? No I fucking well would not. I would paint a Przewalski's horse, racing some other Przewalski's horses. That is all.
Noreen

Daughters Will Have Your Heart Broken

2011-11-02T14:08:00.005Z

My mother is in a decline. It is because of me, again. I left my husband, again. Actually, I am not one of those sap women that goes running off to her mother every time there is a marital row. I left him ten years ago, because he was a big cunt, then I forgave him, because I have an enormous heart and a generosity of spirit that knows no bounds, and then I left him this time because I was dying inside and he wasn't over the moon either.

I didn't tell her for a while, Himself did, in an email, but Merciful Jesus prevented her from receiving it, because she is old, has got a new car that she keeps locking herself into and could not get herself out of the car and in to the library to look at a computer.

My brother Francis eventually broke the news to them, after treating me to a lecture about the sin of divorce, and she then settled in to an enormous state of worry, which was relayed to me via skype, email, text and increasingly threatening phone calls from my siblings.

Eventually, under pressure from Francis and even Maud (who was gettting it in the neck about why I had absconded to east africa) I rang her. You'd have heard more life in cadaver, the voice she had on her.
'Hello' *weakly
'Hello Ma, It's Noreen. I'm in Africa'
'I heard. How are the children?' (this is typical. I could be being eaten by a lion, or gang-raped by the whole of the Masai tribe while I am on the phone, and she is only interested in the grandchildren)
'I believe they are fine. Himself is looking after them very well'
'Are you still losing weight?'
'I am still skinny yes - I think it was the stress of leaving'
'Well of course I knew. I just knew that it was emotional. There was no way there was anything physical wrong with you, you've the constitution of an ox. I said to myself 'It'll be to do with her marriage. She always gets thin when there are problems'
'Why didn't you say anything to me then? I had to go and have all those fecking tests, and there you were, telling me how you are a martyr to your thyroid and it was almost certainly the appalling health that you had suffered your entire life coming to bite me on the arse in middle age. You could have just said 'are you unhappy, Noreen'
'Well of course I have been incredibly stressed these last two months as well, probably more than you, because I was thinking you had the cancer or possibly even something worse'
'I thought you said you knew it was stress? And what is worse than cancer?'
'You know perfectly well what is worse than cancer, and the way you carry on, it may yet afflict you' (I think she is talking about HIV or something 'social' like the clap)
I let her go on a bit and then she started to try to figure out the name of the country back in the dark ages, and whether she had once owned a stamp from there, and what it said on the stamp, but do you know what she did not do? She did not tell me that someone I hardly knew had died. So there you have it. If you want your Irish mother to stop harping on about the departed, leave your spouses and move to the third world. That is all.

Noreen

My Vagina Is Not French

2011-08-26T05:26:00.006+01:00

This morning I went for my Brazilian waxing. It is still the summer here in Hong Kong, and I am often required to parade myself on super-yachts, in a series of increasingly revealing bikinis, to ensure repeat invitations. Nothing is more likely to get you back riding the Star Ferry with all the plebs, than unsightly pubic hairs escaping from the gusset.

I have found a useful waxing woman, who just about keeps the right side of bull dyke, and seems to do an efficient and reasonably painless job. There is everything to be proud about, for being a good minge waxer. So many people are shit at it.A particularly vicious, butcher beautician, left me bleeding from my perineum, something which I consider should only happen during childbirth, or after a especially vigorous night of passion. Inept waxing has made me sore for days. I have had an allergic reaction to the wax, which caused stinging and a great reluctance to sit, for about a week. Yes, the art of bikini waxing is one which, when mastered, should be an occasion of great pride for the practitioner.

If you are good at something, there is no need to try and add other strings to the bow. One of the skills I sometimes use in my job as a therapist, is hypnosis. I can hypnotise people, but I don't feel tempted to learn how to saw them in half as well. I'm a mental health therapist, not a fucking magician, even if we do use some of the same techniques. In the same way, I don't expect my waxing lady to lose focus on the business of removing hair from my fanny and start practising clairvoyance.

"Ah, it is you" She said "You want all the hair off, right? I remember you". I was a little insulted by this, as have always thought the "Hollywood" look to be one that women wheel out for men who are closet paedos. I don't like the thought of some bloke banging me and pretending I am ten. It's just a bit hideous, and I especially don't like being mistaken for one of those idiot, paedo-shagging whores.

The other sort of women who have Hollywoods, are those ones with the grey pubes,who don't want men to notice that they are old boilers. My pubes are still untroubled by grey, and in Hong Kong, blonde pubes are rather a curiosity. I am not going to lose that edge, thank you, and I hope I do not look old enough to "need a hollywood".

"No, not all the hair off. Just leave a little"

"Ah - you want landing strip, right? I remember now".

At this point I went slightly pale. "No. I want a small triangle. Natural looking shape, but just really tiny". Landing strips are for people who need to earn their living through their vaginas, or for unimaginative chavs who think marrying a retarded sportsman is the height of success.

I disrobed and she had a good old stare at my vulva and a prod around the houses with a glorified lolly stick.

"Are you French?" She asked "French women have very strong hair. You have very strong hair. Like French woman."

I just couldn't be less French if I tried. I am tall, I am very blonde. I don't eat snails or cream. I hate coffee. I have large hips and huge feet and broad shoulders, and avoid horizontal stripes and berets. The only reason she could have for calling me french, is that I have a French minge.

People have given me shit in the past, for showing insecurities about my vagina. Women are supposed to be proud of their clouts and and see them as powerful life giving forces, that have the potential to keep men in thrall. We are encouraged to go on that show "The Vagina Monologues", or to pay money to watch other women droning away about their clunges on it. We are expected to go to Anne Summers parties and wave enormous, cervix-eroding dildos about, whilst cackling like hags. Well, I say this to you, vagina-overconfident women. I am in solidarity with men, who have small penises. And with men who have penises with a bend in them, or uneven shaped balls, or a really gargantuan and misshapen head. I am not in solidarity with them because my pudenda is unsightly, it is not. I am being insecure about my vagina because somebody called it French.

Noreen

Fast or Feast?

2011-08-05T10:37:00.005+01:00

Today I watched a clip about UFOs, and this man was going on: "We have the technology to travel to the stars. Aliens have been sharing intelligence with us".

Having worked in mental health, I just rolled the old eyes and thought "Here we fucking go. The next sentence out of his mouth will be about the antenna he has in his brain, and he'll round it off with an announcement that he is the next Messiah with a message for us all". Loonies tend to go down the same couple of roads. They are either scared shitless of the television and how it is looking at them funny, or they think they should have a channel on it all to themselves and tell everyone important messages from on high.

Interestingly no one else seemed to think this man was a mentaller, and people got awfully excited "Alien intelligence, how interesting, and you say it is because the information carried a high level secrecy rating that that is the reason no one else knows about these Alien liaison agencies, telling us how to fly into space". I'm exhausted by the chatter about UFOs and the like. I just couldn't give a shit about aliens or their vehicles. This planet is already wearing me fucking thin and the stars, apart from the sun as I like a decent tan in the summer, can kiss my arse and fuck off while they are doing it. In the next breath, someone else was harping on about how we have never, actually been to the moon, yet the moon is incredibly close compared to even the nearest star. "Oh no" said this one "There is no way anyone has actually set foot on the moon. It was just propoganda, to poke one in the eye of the Russians".

Where were those fucking Alien Navigation Experts then, hhmm? Does anybody know the answer?

Well, I know why the Aliens did not help spacemen get to the big, dumb moon. It is because they were not interested in petty earth squabbles about who was the fastest up into space, or Communism vs Capitalism. And who can blame them? I am a human and both of those things bore me rigid. If I had one eye, and a very long forehead, and lived in a jellified crater, I can't for a second see myself getting all revved up about either of those questions. And especially if I were a one-alien-genius Universal Navigation Expert, then the idea of directing a bunch of bickering men in oversized white suits and heavy boots, to the equivalent of the corner shop, would leave my rubbery green skin, entirely cold.

Noreen

Cuntcakes

2011-07-19T13:29:00.006+01:00

When I was a little girl, cakes were generally made by old women. These "old school" cakes were large and round - anywhere from 6 to 12 inches in diameter, got cut into slices and passed around medium sized groups of people, and then were returned to a tin, that generally had some kind of important decoration on the outside. Depending on how fancy the woman baking the cakes thought she was, you might have to eat the slice with a fork, rather than poke it into your mouth with your hands, or there might be napkins, or, God forbid, doilies, or fuck knows whatever. And women, old women, were incredibly competitive about their large, round cakes and would lie to each other about the ingredients and then laugh like witches, when their unsisterly recipes turned out shitely for their rivals.

That isn't to say, that the indidvidual cake wasn't around in those days. But small cakes - fairy cakes, we called them, were the province of children - the type of thing you made with your mother, as you could just dollop a spoonful of mixture into a paper case and it didn't matter how awful the thing tasted, or whether it was wonky-shaped, as the entire thing would go into the mouth, in one go, just like that, with no fucking around with forks or spoons, and there might be icing and those ball bearing things that broke teeth on the top of it.

By the time I was about nine - I noticed that the spoilt children who had no siblings, or the ones whose parents were getting divorced and were caught in a war of affection, started to bring these new types of cakes to school in their packed lunches. Larger than fairy cakes, there were, cased in deep silver foil, with a dark slick of greasy brown thick fatty sludge on top of them. Cupcakes. These cakes were an occasion of great envy amongst the children with more functional backgrounds, and I pleaded with my mother to be bought them too. "No, Noreen." Said my mother. "Bought cakes are wicked things - made by uneducated people with filthy hands and stuffed full of chemicals. You should feel sorry for those poor children whose mothers have no clue about the nutrition. I mean, it isn't difficult to throw a few ingredients into a bowl and just whip up a simple.... what? Don't say such wicked things. Divorce is a terrible sin, not a great deal for the kids. Jesus, what have I raised here..."

One time I persuaded the most spoilt girl in the school to give me a bite of her chocolate cupcake, in return for a look at a photo of my brother having a pee, as she had never seen a mickey. It wasn't a great shot, as I had had to take the thing covertly to avoid being beaten to a pulp by Francis,and she started giving out about it: "I can't see anything. I mean there is a slight pinkness there, but I can't see "it" at all!" Under normal circumstances I would have been ready to give it right back and ask her how she came to be such an expert on the male member, when she had no brothers and her Dad looked like a fairy, but I was struck dumb by the hideousness of the mouthful of powdery, rotten cake, slathered with oily paste that I was entirely failing to swallow. It was fucking appalling. Just revolting.

That was the first incarnation of the cupcake, and now you can't move for the fuckers. They've changed a lot in appearance from the glistering, brown, factory- efforts-in-boxes of the eighties. No - now cupcakes are these revolting, garish American canonballs with two inches of blue or green lard whipped about the top of them, that cost thousands and thousands of pounds to buy. I see really gormless looking women pointing and giggling at them in Kensington shop windows, and am overwhelmed by photographs of them, all over gruesome lifestyle magazines, and people having them instead of wedding cakes, the lazy fucking cunts.

Someone bought me a modern cupcake the other day, when I was having a cup of tea, and there was this enormous performance about it: "This. This, is a Red. Velvet. Cupcake!" "Oh," I said, "How lovely!". It was six inches high of whipped yellowy butter and sugar icing, over a rather gritty, red coloured sponge. There was no flavour to the actual cake bit whatsoever, but the topping tasted like cheese, and when I pointed that out (trying to conceal the absolute horror on my face - cheese - dirty bastards)I got the "Yes - it's a cream cheese frosting" line. Fuck me, those dirty fucking American cunts. Make individual cakes, because "you are worth it", or hate sharing, or whatever your uncle sam values are - I don't fucking care. And if you must dye your cakes peculiar colours, then I suppose that is ok, especially if you are used to things like aerosol lamb and pop tarts and like everything a bit ersatz. But cheese should be kept away from bakery products. I would no more put dairylea in a fairy cake, or cheddar, or stilton, than I would toothpaste.

And they are tedious to eat, cupcakes, with all that rich, horrible cheese paste on the top, getting all over your face. I notice women taking bits off with their fingers and licking them in a faux sexy way, but I think it all looks a bit sad and like a chapter of the Women's Institute have overdone the HRT. No - cupcakes can completely and utterly fuck off, along with anything "vintage" or "retro" and those overpriced, lacquered ringpieces, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which are just the end of a dog's cock.

Noreen

Utopian Parking

2011-06-09T07:26:00.006+01:00

"Polite Notice. No Parking" said a sign outside a residential block near the supermarket. How is that polite? How is asking someone not to do something they absolutely want to do, remotely polite? And how about, if you have to be such a cunt and stop people from parking where they want, how about "No Parking Please". It would be more polite than just ordering people about.

But worse - even worse than a "polite notice" that actually says something rude and mean, worse still is the habit they have around here of labelling nazified instructions as a "friendly warning". Warnings, quite simply, are never friendly. I mean there is a sliding scale between a bossy street sign, a letter from a solicitor, a visit from the boys and a severed finger through the post - I get that, but warnings, by their very nature, are meant to frighten - not ooze warmth.

A group of cunts near the shops I visit, who, like the polite notice people above, are sick of people parking in their driveways, have put up a sign reading "Friendly warning - no parking". A friendly person would not put up a mean sign like that. A friendly person, upon seeing a shopper looking for a parking space, would come rushing out of their house and would gesture in an generous fashion to the space in their drive. If they were really friendly, they might offer to wash the car while the driver was shopping, or offer a cup of tea in one of those carry-cup things American mothers cart everywhere with them, for the shopper to sip while choosing a new handbag. A really friendly person might even ask for the keys, so they could give the upholstery a once over with the hoover, if time allowed. That. That is how to be friendly with regards to parking. That is all.

Noreen

Watch Your Step, Batman

2011-05-04T02:08:00.004+01:00

I think the security guard in my building is psychic. He is a young lad, and like most young men, enjoys skiving off work, having a cup of tea and riding around on his motorcycle scooter. He keeps his scooter gleaming and has a bunch of stickers on it - the usual testosterone-y old shite: a Ferrari logo, some stripes, some words in a language I don't read.

My favourite sticker that the security guard had on his bike, was a large oval one, featuring Osama bin Laden, grinning like a lunatic, with one hand in the air. My husband was a bit worried by this show of fundamentalism, and thought that our guard might be in some kind of a terrorist cell, but to be frank with you, the boy is a bit on the slow side, and the only type of group he would be asked to join would be one for the educationally half-witted.

Anyway - last week I noticed his scooter parked outside the guards' office and do you know what? He had peeled off the Osama sticker and replaced it with one of Batman. He may be a lazy weirdo but if I were Batman, or Robin for that matter, I would be shitting my tights right now.

Noreen

The Mediocre Cat Fight

2011-04-21T09:03:00.003+01:00

I watched this film called "The Romantics". I think I must be due on my period, because I actually rented the film, it wasn't just a question of being stuck on a plane with nothing else to watch. No. I, myself, went into the video library and I took a film with the name "The Romantics" off the shelf and brought it home.

Not only did the film have the most despicable name, but it was described on the back as a "dramedy". I can't explain to you how angry that made me. A fucking "dramedy". What will those film makers think of next? A "snuffedy". A "pornma". Well, if they do come up with either of those genres, I would watch them a million times over, rather than watch another dramedy - it was the worst thing I have ever watched in my life. When I was working in a hospital I once watched a man having his chafed crotch bound up with clingfilm. That made me feel pretty ill, as it was putrid and oozing, and crotches are not the most attractive area on a person. I have also watched stomach pumping, which equally isn't pleasant to look at and yet both of these procedures were not as bad as "the Romantics". Fuck me, what a terrible film

Oh, what was wrong with it? Well it had no story. It was all grainy and poorly lit, and they were wearing terrible clothes. Tom Cruise's wife was one of the three main characters, and she basically had a cat fight with this blonde one, over a deeply uninspiring and tedious man who was an academic. In the background were a group of boring hangers on, who took some coke and got their clothes off and rode each others spouses, which sounds like it ought to be interesting, but they made it look as exciting as weeding. The three main ones were so disagreeable, that there was no one to cheer for. Instead of thinking "God, I hope Katie Holmes gets the ride off the academic and shows that sour faced one who is the boss", I just thought they should become mormons and live together polygamously and worship Red Indian Saints and never have another cup of tea in their lives as they deserved each other, the joyless, self absorbed, American cunts

Noreen

The Afterlife: No Place for Steve Jobs And His Monkey Tricks

2011-04-11T06:54:00.006+01:00

Last Tuesday it was Ching Ming festival. To celebrate this holy day, the Chinese get up at the crack of dawn and go to visit their family graves. First they sweep the graves and give them a good old clean. Then they build a little fire, and burn paper effigies of things they would like to give their ancestors in the afterlife - paper cars and houses or a few paper notes of money. There are specialist shops in Hong Kong, where devoted mourners can easily get hold of paper riches.

Yes, there's quite the business over here for anyone handy with a pair of scissors - I can see how cutting out a paper Ferrari, or a Lamborghini with those great, big, fucking doors like wings, that open in a stupid way, could be an accomplishment. Cutting out some paper dollar bills isn't quite so genius, but then I suppose the craftsmen need to draw on the paper, as well as cut it out, to make sure the dead ones know how much their relatives are giving them.

This year there was a new paper "thing" on offer for the mourning relatives to set fire to. Paper iPads (also pretty fucking easy to cut out, wouldn't you think?) These paper squares or rectangles (no, Philip Challinor, I do not know the exact shape of one but know it to be a fairly simple, geometric form)were flying off the shelves of the "Things To Buy Your Deaders" shop. They were the highest selling paper burnable object this year.

If I were a Chinese corpse - especially one who had reached a fine old age, or one who had died a century ago, I would not want a paper iPad. I am not even dead yet, and I live in the 21st century and I don't want a non-paper iPad. IPads look like etch-a-sketch toys, but less fun.

Buying paper iPads for deaders is cruel. Old people hate technology, and to me it seems mean to torment them beyond the grave with paper new-fangledness. Last year it was the paper iPhone 4 and in the last ten years the poor dead fuckers have been subjected to digital cameras, laptop computers and those little fucking blue-tooth headsets, when everyone knows that ears are the first thing to rot on the dead. What is more, those lazy cunts in the paper-technology business don't even bother to supply their paper gadgets with instructions. The thieving, opportunistic bastards

Noreen

Elderly Eggs Can Fuck Right Off

2011-01-20T05:27:00.003Z

I love eggs very much. I enjoy the thought that I am eating something which, if I did not actually eat it, has the potential to be an entire creature. I also like eating seeds and nuts, as I pretend to myself that I am eating baby trees and herbaceous borders. That makes me sounds a little odd, but not as odd as people who enjoy eating ancient, jellified, blackened eggs.

Here in Hong Kong it's hard to escape the 100 year old egg. A great, wobbling sulfurous, smokey yolk, jiggling atop a black, viscous "white", chopped into slices and served cold. And don't worry - I'm not about to rant on "Oh those Chinese, they eat pandas and foetuses - it's disgusting" I am quite happy about that. I think it's very interesting of them to eat tiger's hands and penises and foetuses - they are entirely welcome to all of those things. While the Chinese are eating that god-awful fodder, the queue in McDonalds will be shorter for me. I have no argument with them and their unusual eating habits whatsoever.

What I will not fucking put up with though, is the Chinese having a go at something which is alright. I am never going to eat a panda or a foetus - so if they want to serve it with stinky tofu sauce and a snake-shit coulis - then that is fine by me. But eggs, well as a dairy-free vegetarian (fuck off - before you start, it is my choice) well eggs are a very important part of my diet. I like them in a McMuffin, fried and hard boiled.If you are a bit of a cunt, you can scramble them, or make the fuckers into a great, big, poncing omelette. There are literally, a million ways to make a delicious egg, into something delicious. So why, why would you steep one in horse's urine and make it into a dank, trembling, fragile orb of horror? The Chinese have gone too far this time. Fuck away off from eggs, Chinese people. Just leave them alone. That is all.

Noreen

Wikileaks: Yawny yawny cunt cunt

2010-12-10T08:21:00.007Z

Whistle blowers are frightful cunts. Usually they end up dead, either assasinated by the CIA or terrorists, or they die because in a moment of rare insight, they realise that the only decent thing to do, is to stop boring on about secret things and to end it all. A very selfish few manage to carry on living, gnawing away at the ears and eyeballs of anyone presented with their tedious, sneaky yawnery.

Most people have not managed to work this out, because they are too stupid, but secret documents carry a secret classification, because they are so very, immensely dull that only a few people with a very high boredom threshhold are able to look at them without their eyes bleeding.

I never want to look at secret things. Like whispering and the Masons, secrecy is just incredibly gay. And most people's sacred, secret things are just the most enormously trivial, old bag of bollocks imaginable. But it's hard to get away from secrecy, even if you don't court it, which a lot of people do, it just fucking comes and finds you. Even I am not immune to secrets. In fact, I am particularly livid at the moment because I have been asked to take part in a Secret Santa. A fucking Secret Santa! I am not a stingy cunt so I am not going to be one of those ones who says "Oh I will not do the Secret Santa, I don't approve of it", because that's just mean and tedious. But I have to make a stand against all the secrecy - so I have bought the man a present of a mouse mat for his computer and have put "Dear Alan, Happy Christmas, love Noreen O'Brien" on the outside of it.

And now I have done it, haven't I - because that one from the Wikileaks - the Danish man, will be interfering with his Blackberry as I type this "Decipher yourself: Noreen O'Brien has bought Alan a present in the Secret Santa". Well, Mr Leaks, now you know it all- but once something is posted on the internet, it no longer is classified or secret - so stick that up your pale, lanky, pastry-pooping hole

Noreen

See the good in flu

2010-11-28T10:08:00.000Z

Flu season is starting. I am away off to have my flu jab this week, and I'm looking forward to it, as last year I had Swine Flu, which was shite, and the year before I had the seasonal flu - which was actually worse than the swine flu. Flu jabs make you feel rough for a day or so, but I cannot afford to have flu again as it means I cannot smoke, and that is tedious.

The best thing about having flu, or thinking you might have flu in this country, is facial medical masks. Hong Kong scared the living daylights out of itself with SARS a few years ago, and since then the whole business of hawking and spitting is out of fashion along with coughing, sneezing and other involuntary spasms of the upper respiratory tract. If you have even the faintest sniffle, custom dictates that you have to hide your snotty face behind a blue paper, chin hugging yashmak.

Facial medical masks are a really good idea for the ugly, as they conceal a large portion of the face - really only the eyes are visible. A mask would also be a great help if you had a really big fight and split your lip and bust your nose, as no one would know, and you could wear the medical mask and just sound a little husky and throaty. But most of all I think a mask would be useful as I want to go to work wearing a set of vampire's teeth. Now, I am not stupid and I know fake pointed teeth could be misinterpreted and could make me look either not-very-serious or even creepy and mental. I think the way round this is to start sneezing one afternoon, just before I leave, and then to return the next day, with the vampire teeth and the medical mask over the top. Any difficulty posed by the vampire's teeth in speaking could also be put down to the flu. So there is my positive thought for all of you dreading a dose of the flu. Facial medical masks are fucking ace.
Noreen

The Worst Chinese Laundry In The Middle Kingdom

2010-11-09T10:34:00.009Z

The woman in the Dry Cleaners is getting on my nerves. Every time I go in there to fetch my clothes, she gets the massive arse at me about my poor organisation. "Where your ticket?", she shrieks, like a bad extra in a Jacky Chan film. "Where's your computerized record system?" I josh back at her. She still hasn't got a computer, the tight wadded cow, and I would not mind her giving out about my lost tickets, if I did not have to wait an entire week, for her to dab cheap chemicals crappily and ineffectively and very, very fucking expensively at my work dresses.

I was under the impression that laundry service was a bit like rice in China - cheap and available all over the place. In fact - in most public spaces there are signs forbidding the drying of clothes. I was impressed by the need to legislate against public clothes washing, as if the nation, when not watched, just turn every nook and cranny of the place into one great big washeteria, scrubbing away on washboards and wringing the skid marks out of knickers, and huge, great sheets, white as corpses, flapping away on their illegal washing lines, strung between see-saws and joss houses, and the Bank of China tower. Not so in my corner of Hong Kong island - it's just the shittest place to get anything cleaned, in the entire world. The only reason I can think, that it takes a whole week for this particular dry cleaning shop to clean anything, is that the owner is outsourcing my smalls to the fucking Spratley Islands. On top of this, the lazy cow in the wash house tries to steal my clothes. "You sure you bring dress here missy?" she says to me every fucking time I go in there. "We not have black dresses here". The fucking neck of it!

Most of all, though, I resent being talked to in her dicey pidgin, as it's an absolute show, to try and wriggle out of not washing, and then trying to steal my clothes. Just the other day I walked into her shop when she was very busy and hadn't noticed I was there, and there she was, this one, talking to some expat wife's Filipina servant in BBC English. "Awfully sorry, old thing. Must be some kind of mix up. Perhaps you took madam's dresses to the other dry cleaners over the way. We don't have any black frocks here, I'm afraid."

The lazy, thieving, plum-in-the-mouth bitch.

Noreen

Famine: Not Just For Africans

2010-11-08T08:12:00.004Z

"Let's go to Cambodia for Chinese New Year", said my husband. "Are you mental?" I said "That's a fucking long way to go for a week. Think of the jetlag". "It is not a long way" he said "It is just around the corner. Get a map"

After I had told him to fuck off, I did have a quiet look at a map and I was flabberghasted, just astonished to see the place is quite close by, squatting over Vietnam to the south east and getting the ride off Thailand from above.

The main reason for my amazement is because of all the killing and famine and almighty row made about the place during the seventies. I remember watching that awful Protestant programme, Blue Peter, and there being a great pressure on small children to collect the lids of milk bottles and old pieces of tin foil, to send to a warehouse and turn into rice. I just assumed the place was in Africa. I also thought Nicaragua was in Africa until I met a Nicaraguan a couple of weeks ago who kept harping on in Spanish and giving it "Latin America" this and that, so I managed to avoid getting the old foot stuck in it, for that one.

I was telling someone at work about my Cambodia mix-up as I thought it would make me come off as self deprecating and humble, but she just looked utterly horrified and reminded me that I work for an international organisation. She didn't say "Get a map", but I could see the thought passing through her head, and the words struggling, elbowing each other, to get out of her mouth, but with her being all self controlled and making sure she was not "being offensive" or "not being inclusive" she held it in.

And then this other one overheard me doing my part for humility and being inclusive for ignorant people, and he piped up "Have you not seen that film The Tomb Raider. That film is set in Cambodia" so I had to point out that I am not interested in films about cretinous computer games, featuring women in their underwear, scaling old, crumbling buildings and fussing about collecting artefacts, as I am neither a wanker nor a cunt.

Computer games, drawings of people in their bras and pants, non-African famines, fuck you all.

Noreen

Herbert Highs

2010-06-30T10:29:00.009+01:00

I despise energy drinks with every lobe of my brain. Liquid idiot fuel, that makes boring cretins remain conscious and irritating, for more hours of the day than they already occupy with their tedious yawny chat. Drinks with fucking appalling names like "Relentless" and "Incessant" and "Aving It". They taste like the smell of Lynx deodorant and are utterly fucking horrible chav juice. If Osama bin Laden could organise his minions to fly planes from Ibiza, full of energy-shot-downing holiday makers, into the rooves of energy drink factories, I would put on a burqa, get my arse over to the Pakistan borders, and setting aside my fear of enclosed places, crawl through narrow tunnels until I got to his cave and then I would get down on my knees and suck his (probably rather long and thin) evil cock until my jaw went numb.

Worse than energy drinks are "herbal highs" - legal pills for idiot children who think that the word "herbal" makes the substance somehow alright to take. I have seen so many kids terrified out of their boxes after taking those awful things, and yet, through their sheer terror, these kids still manage to express confusion at how something "legal" can be so fucking appallingly dreadful. Of course, they are fucking thick for falling for that herbal/legal nonsense in the first place. Many, many legal and natural things exist, with which it is possible to intoxicate oneself, but most people with functioning cortices, choose not to eat hemlock, or lick toads or do other revoltingly weird things to alter their states of mind. That said, thickness, although fucking tiresome, should not be punished quite so hideously - and I loathe thick people, so that just shows how very fucking unfairly awful, herbal highs must be, to make me feel pity towards other human beings.

One could view herbal highs in a positive light, since taking them could be seen as a form of Darwinism that may help to free the world of ghastly tattooed Herberts. However, I think there are better ways for dreadful chav idiots to disappear, than by falling into a dark pit of terror and mental illness brought on by some fucking awful "herbal" pill.

People that peddle herbal highs should be put on IV drips full of "Relentless", laced mildly with arsenic and PCP, until they twitch and writhe, wracked with stabbing abdominal pains, their eyes assaulted by the most vivid hallucinations, their minds incredibly alert and incapable of drifting into sleep, to escape the dreadful multifaceted mental and physical assault, until goggle-eyed and gibbering they promise to spend the rest of their lives weeding old ladies' gardens and listening to people drone on and on, about England being awful and gay at football.
Noreen

No, Andromeda, I think you mean "Poke"

2010-05-05T13:41:00.007+01:00

"They're like crack" said the woman in the health food shop. "Don't blame me if you get addicted".

I actually wasn't surprised by this passing reference to Class A drugs used by the scummier classes, from a vegetable-dye-wearing vegan. Lots of junkies merely change horses in midstream, one addiction replaces another. Indeed the Health Food Scene is as didactic, inclusive and substance obsessed, as that of the Serious Drug User. And it's a short leap to transfer a previous devotion to things that have been up peoples backsides, into one for things which race through people's backsides.

Anyway - the addictive thing this woman with the itchy-looking jumper was talking about, was an uneven ball of green matter, stuck with nutty bits, in a not-very-vegan looking plastic wrapper.

The reason I go to this hippy shop in the first place, is because I am allergic to milk, and health food shops make disgusting cheese out of soap, or something, which I can then put on a pizza and pretend that I am normal. So before any of you fuckers start up "you are a vegan, you love health foods" I do not. I am ill and would like nothing more than to eat a dirty, stinking, runny brie whose creation involves the sacrifice of a million Charolais calves, but instead am reduced to some fucking appalling and overpriced crap called "Sheeze".

So, I buy my strange pretend cheese, and to liven things up, each visit, I take a Russian Roulette approach to the confectionery counter in the Health Food Shop. I have previously lost in the game to "carob" (grainy turd), "fruit leather" (what it says - leathery old shite) and "Licorice sticks" (a twig. Seriously - a fucking twig, I couldn't believe my eyes). This time I spotted a misshapen ball of snot stuff - spirulina it is called - and I decided to try it. Not only was I not surprised by the shop woman's reference to crack, but was also used to her excessive, but inaccurate, gushing about products. One time, she had described carob as "better than chocolate" - she is clearly mental as well as a junkie, the hairy old slag. So I was not holding out a great deal of hope for this sphere of snot, but I was looking forward to slagging it the fuck off later, to this one I know who actually is a vegan.

I paid the woman an obscene amount of money, which again did not surprise me. They had charged me over a pound for that fucking twig,last time, the thieving goat-milking cunts. And I ate the ball, and it was, remarkably good. I looked at the list of ingredients to see if it was one of those health food things that is actually the same as normal food, just a million times as expensive - that's it "organic", is the way they describe it, but it was not an "organic" item. It was a weird combination of brown rice and this thing, the spirulina, and some almonds, and grape juice (which is vegan for sugar) and some oil, and then I saw it, on the list of ingredients. "Fo-Ti". Fucking "Fo-Ti". I know what that is from China. It's boner medicine. The Chinese take it to treat erectile dysfunction (to get wood). So although your one in the shop HAD identified that the spirulina ball had medicinal properties, she had picked the wrong street name for what sort of drug it actually contained. Fo-Ti, boys. Get some lead in your pencils. Buy yourselves a health food snot ball. You heard it here first.

Noreen

The Cunt In The Punt

2010-05-04T16:33:00.002+01:00

Dr Seuss
Dr Seuss
I do not like you Dr Seuss

Do I like moronic rhymes?
I do not like them anytime
I do not like moronic rhymes

Do I know they’re meant for kids?
I know that but I care no whit
I still don’t like them, not one bit

Don’t I find them culty-cute?
No, in fact I want to puke
When faced with rhymes designed by fluke

What about the wackiness?
Well that just makes me want to shit
On Dr Seuss, you fucking tit

Noreen

Small Hell

2010-04-07T11:14:00.016+01:00

A name is the first signal a place gives out about itself, and should give some sensible information, or even just an impression about the area, that is vaguely accurate. Like Hull. A hull, well it is an empty shell that has been discarded. The name Hull gives a sense of a place that once held something, but no longer does. A place that is a natural and useful housing for something, unlike, say, the unnecessary extra piece of polythene wrapping that goes around a box of tea.

A slightly flattering placename works fine as well. "Great Missenden". Well "Great" is pushing it slightly, but it is the best Missenden around, so that is fine by me. A bit of boasting is good for the esteem of the inhabitants of a place. They will be more likely to prune their trees and take the bins in, or refrain from leaving stained matresses in the streets. Great Missenden - another well named place.

Place names that really dig into the sides of my hole, though are diminutive country names, given to small, unremarkable areas within a town. "Little Italy", "China Town". These labels only describe the ethnicity of the people who live there, and signal to middle class people, the fact that you might be able to get your hands on some buffalo Mozzarella or a pot of bear bile for a "themed" dinner party. I hate those places. If I want to go to Italy, I'll fucking go - but I don't, because I have already been and it was grubby and full of wankers. As for China - well I lived there for ages and I am going off to live there again in a couple of months, so really, I am all fine for bear bile and chickens feet, thank you. But despite being irritating places full of annoying nationalities and fawning foreigners oohing and aahing over coloured pasta or mooncakes and despite being sickeningly irritating concepts, Little Italy and China Town are, nonetheless, relatively well named places. I would prefer "Italian district" and "China district" but not enough that I thought to bother studying town planning at university and then go out and get a job naming areas. I am not a completely boring cunt.

No, The worst named place in the world for me, worse than anything starting with "Democratic Republic" that clearly is not one at all, or even those ones with dumb names like "Fuckey's Hole", worse, far worse than that is the place called "Swiss Cottage". It just isn't either, is it? It is neither Swiss, nor a cottage. Well it isn't. Is it a diminutive swiss dwelling? No it is not. It is a grubby hole near St Johns Wood? How is it Swiss? Does it have Nazi gold underfoot, a clinic where you can take your own life and a machine that could reduce the universe to a heaving void of dark matter? Does it avoid wars, and whittle dark, endangered, wood into birds on springs, and then coil them into dark recessed boxes, that they may unfurl to mark the passing of time? Does it have a chocolate factory? Do they eat dog meat in the mountains of North London? I think they don't. And don't you fucking taxi driving cockneys start up: "Actually, Swiss Cottage is named after a pub", because I know that, but how is that suddenly ok? Will we rename Knightsbridge "Harvey Nicks Fifth Floor" or Kingston upon Thames might decide to be known as "Yates' Wine Bar"? God, there'd be a scrum on for which crappy district should take the name Wetherspoons, although my money is fairly firmly on Wimbledon for that one. And what about the many, many people in Britain now who pursue a dry religion? Would they be happy to know that their address is 16a Tessa Sanderson House, Pig and Whistle, London SW11. I don't fucking think they would like that. So there you have it, on technical and religious grounds, the name Swiss Cottage is not ok. Call it "Quite convenient Grey Hole" instead.
Noreen

Oooohhhhh! Mummeeeeeeeee!

2010-02-22T19:55:00.006Z

I am sick to death with hearing about how Gordon Brown bullies his staff. Honestly, these lefties really do want to have their cake and eat it. Clearly, no one who works in Gordon Brown's office has ever been to public school, so all his staff have grown up, used to going home to Mummy at half past three, then having a little whine about how someone was mean to them during their twenty minute breaktime. Now that these characters are in the big boys' playground with Bruiser Brown, who keeps them after hours for a good, hard shoeing, it's all a bit much for their little, dayboy spirits.

But Gordon Brown should know better. He, of all people, should know that the way to talk to people who have been educated at comprehensive schools, is to get on their level. Try crouching in front of them, explaining why you are disappointed in their performance, using very simple words. It's best not to try to be "street", as that might offend them, and do remember to say "difficulty" instead of "problem". If that doesn't work, you may need to call their social workers in for a bit of a chat.

I bet that big toff David Cameron, has one of his staff warming up his loo seat every morning. And I would not be remotely surprised to hear that he entertains himself between make-up calls, by debagging his lackeys in the lifts. And that, that sort of caper, would just be larks on a normal day, before any of his poor, overworked, assistant bastards, have even had a chance to put a foot wrong. Christ knows what sort of penalties he dishes out to his team for bad handwriting, backchat and rude remarks about his wife's hairstyle. If those moaning minnies from Gordon Brown's side of the tracks had to spend even half an hour over in Millbank, with Slasher Cam, they'd all need a new set of trousers.

Noreen

What Colour Is A Charlatan?

2010-01-27T17:25:00.008Z

People often give out to me about how predjudiced I am: "You are always stereotyping people, Noreen. You should open your mind and realise people cannot be put in pigeonholes. What insecurity is it exactly, that has you categorising people like some form of a human librarian? You are bitter and closed minded".

Fair play to them, as I am indeed very bitter. However, I am also very "now", with the categorising. Just yesterday, this one was talking about his executive coach, a sort of modern day school matron for the workplace, who offers guidance and training in how to behave like a human being at work. Executive Coaches are held up as a picture of wisdom, when in truth they are merely capable of displaying the occasional flash of lateral thought, amongst some long winded stating of the obvious, with a smattering of cod neuro scientific language: "limbic" this, "programme" that, to give their chat some gravitas.

In addition to generalised pontificating, to impart true wisdom and give a good service to his clients, the coach must wheel out some awful old categorising exercise, so the client can finish his coaching session, with a personality label, that is shared by other people and googlable on the internet. You've probably done these sorts of things too- I certainly have. The Belbin scale ( stereotypingand labelling people in a team). Myers Briggs (stereotyping and labelling individuals). And now there is some recent, trendy gayness, some ghastly coaching tool where people are alloted colours and shades, which reflect the way they behave at work.

Effectively these gesticulating, coaching charlatans, who adminster these tests and hold forth afterwards with their straightforward analysis of the results, are being paid decent sums, to make narrow minded statements about people based on a couple of hours of wittering and a questionnaire. Do people give out to them: "Bitter this,insecure that?". No, of course they do not, no. Rather they open up their wallets, or paypal accounts, and pour streams of coins (or virtual currency) into the polyester laps of anyone willing to inflict a cretinous, profiling exercise on a group of gullible executives.

Whereas I, I make generalised, prejudiced statements about all sorts of people, regardless of their means or occupation, based on limited observations, out of the goodness of my heart. And I don't make anyone fill in a gay questionnaire, nor do I talk in acronyms or neuro-babble. What is more, since I am keen to avoid the sin of pride, I won't even draw your attention further to the fact, that I do all this pro bono work alongside full time employment, motherhood and shouting at the telly. AND do you know what I am going to do about all the abuse I get for my generous-spirited anthropological research? I am going to offer it up for the starving children in Africa.

Noreen

What Should James Do?

2010-01-21T13:41:00.007Z

My friend James got the worst present imaginable from his sister this Christmas. She bought him a unicycle. A fucking unicycle. He lives in a flat in London, and works in a bank, and he now has a unicycle. He can't ride the thing inside his flat, so he will have to go out in public on it. At best, he is going to look like a proper cunt, riding up and down his street, in his suit, balancing well on, and doing a good job of, riding a unicycle. At worst, he is going to look like a big arsehole, falling off the unicycle and going over the front of it, landing on his head and bleeding all over the pavement, with great rents in his trousers for his wife to darn.

"I will ride it at night" he said to me. "That is the only time I will be able to practise it".

I don't fucking think so. If I were a nutter, or a junkie, or some other kind of marginalised London street creature, and I saw a middle aged man, in a suit, on a unicycle in the dead of night, I just think it would nudge me up to the next level of offending. I mean the neck of it - Jesus, I am feeling violent just thinking about it, and I am incredibly sane, and James is one of my dearest friends, but imagine, a fucking grown man, riding on, or alternatively falling off a unicycle, in pitch darkness, in fucking London! My heart is beating like a Protestant drum. I must lie down.
Noreen

If You Are Incredibly Binary, I Suppose It Might Be..

2010-01-21T13:14:00.004Z

I just watched that new film called :"It's complicated". It really wasn't complicated at all. It was a film about this old one who was divorced, getting the ride off her ex husband, who had remarried, but his new wife did not understand him. Then the old woman decided that it was stupid to go back to shagging her ex husband, because he was an ex husband for a reason, that reason being that he had overlong, greasy hair and a great pot belly on him, and he was pretty much of a selfish cunt. So instead of shagging her ex husband, the old woman rode the man who was working on the extension of her house.
Noreen

Gayed Secrets

2009-09-24T13:04:00.005+01:00

Secrets are tedious. I don't hate the deceit, I really couldn't care less, nor do I hate the fact that they are exclusive and make people feel left out. I just hate the pomposity secrets inspire in their keepers, that viscous smugness. Just look at your local Priest. Does he have a fucking smug-arsed expression on him? Well, that won't just be because of the Masses and holiness. The main reason will be because of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. All those secrets he carries beneath his habit, making the face on him all lordly and sly.

Of all secrets, the ones I hate the most are secret recipes. Like anyone could give a flying fuck about them! "Oh no, Philomena, I can't give you the recipe for my fudge, it's a family secret". It is not a secret though, is it? A secret would be if you could make fudge out of hay. The fact is, that Philomena's recipe will be a minor variation on sugar, butter, condensed milk, syrup and vanilla. Yawny, cunty, hole.

But I can almost forgive those old crones making the song and dance about their cooking. It's something to do, while their spines crumble and the grave approaches. What I can't fucking forgive is companies, who have a lot of money and make boring things, being all secretive about what it is that they make. Heinz, for example only allow a handful of people to know their recipes for the various tinned and bottled things that they make. What happens to the indoctrinated people if they tell anyone? Do they get shot? Jesus!

Having secret recipes does not even deter competitors - there are millions of other companies making baked beans and ketchup and selling masses of the stuff, without needing to bleat on "secret" this and "secret" that, and they taste enough like the real thing to be OK enough that you'd buy them, but not so good that they can charge quite as much as the original. Heinz should just think to themselves: "Imitation is the highest flattery", and then just get on with inventing more things to put inside metal tubes. And if the competitors did get hold of the recipe, what would actually happen? Would Heinz go bust? I don't think so. People like the Heinz labels and the thought of the beans, or whatever, just as much as the taste - they'd still buy their stuff.

On a more personal level, as someone who loves Heinz baked beans, I can tell you for free, that if one of the Keepers of the Heinz Secret sidled up to me and said "Noreen, this, this recipe here, this is how you make Heinz baked beans. Do you see? It's got a pinch of cinnamon in it, a fucking pinch of cinnamon and that, that, Noreen, that is the difference between the Heinz baked bean and the Tesco's value one". Do you know what I would say? I would say: "I really can't imagine ever being arsed to boil dried white beans and piss around with all those sugars and tomatoes and whatnot, in order to recreate what I can just go out and buy and get from a green can, or a close approximation in a different coloured can. Thank you for the secret recipe, but I won't be making it myself". So just stop having secrets and carry on boiling pulses and pounding tomatoes and whipping eggs. Thank you.
Noreen

An Open Letter To My Hole

2009-09-22T19:00:00.002+01:00

I hate open letters. I know it's all the rage on the blogs these days to write out a post, seemingly addressed to someone famous, or about something that is a bit witty, or a bit "out there", or a bit serious, but it makes me want to shit.

I cannot think of anyone at all that I even want to write a closed letter to. The only possible candidate, would be the man with the massive poodle that attacked me today. If I were to write to him, it would be a very closed letter, made with letters cut out of a newspaper and it would say: "Your dog is a sub standard cunt with wool instead of hair. Now fuck off and get it put down". So more of a threat than a letter really, and I wouldn't bother signing it, like you would an ordinary closed letter, and I'd probably get one of the children to put it in an envelope and lick it shut, to avoid my DNA getting on it and leaving myself open for identification and conviction for a criminal offence.

So really, to sum it up, all letters are for cunts. But I've been put under a lot of pressure from my fans to expand my repertoire into the epistolary genre. So here it is. My first open letter.

Dear My Hole,

Just a quick note to say thank you for being so accommodating, in every sense of the word. Special thanks for enduring the indignities of travel that I sometimes subject you to. You are very long suffering, since you have no control whatsoever over what is fed into you, you just have to fucking well get on with it. I really appreciate the fact that you did not get piles when I was pregnant, so I could be a really smug bitch in the labour ward, harping on about my immaculate starfish. I promise never to get you bleached, that would be gross, and I'm worried about the stinging, to be honest with you, as I would feel that as well. Anyway - you're a great hole, and I thought it was about time I let you know that.
Noreen

People, Who See Large Creatures

2009-09-21T11:46:00.005+01:00

I'm so bored by people who see oversized, or exotic animals, wandering around in incredibly ordinary places in Britain. I blame that boring Victorian Sherlock Holmes story "The Hound, of the Baskevilles", or stories about Yetis, or that fucking appalling television show "Bigfoot and the Hendersons". What a load of shit that was.

In England, now they are not allowed to go hunting, more and more people have free time to spot large cats, or great big fucking tigers, or misshapen beasts, lumbering around moors and streets and fens: "It is a creature that has escaped from a zoo or a private menagerie", they say. Or :"In the early twentieth century there was a secret lion breeding programme in North Hertfordshire. The anti-viivsectionists got in and let all the lion foetuses out into the wild and now they are all grown up and roaming the place", "Yes, little Ethan's rabbit was ripped apart by something with jaws at least as big as a crocodile and it only ate the spleen". Jesus Christ!

I have a special face I do for people talking about oversized zoo creatures, pit pattering around large fields. I put my tongue down towards my chin, behind my lower lip, then I screw my whole face up and make flapping, fliddy, mong movements with my hands, and then I make a low, intermittent moaning spazzy sound with my mouth, to just show how fucking stupid this sort of nonsense is. I would rather have those charlatans that film themselves in black and white, screaming and pretending to see ghosts in country pubs, than people exaggerating, about their pets going out at night for a shite. Just fucking stop it, please, now. That is all.

Noreen

I no longer like WH Smith

2009-09-02T09:15:00.012+01:00

WH Smith rules the high streets and railway stations of Britain, peddling newspapers and magazines, stationery supplies to school children and selling popular books. It carries a few stuffed toys, an aisle of sweets, and some board games and jigsaws in larger stores. There's no need for it really, as hundreds of corner shops sell newspapers and magazines, I'd rather buy toys and games at a toy shop and most people nowadays are foreign, or illiterate, or buy their fiction on Amazon.

I generally ignore WH Smith and think of it as a kind of dustbin of a shop, that has taken up where Woolworths left off, until I am at a station or an airport, in which case WH Smith or Boots the Chemists are the only places you can buy a bottle of water for the journey. Airport WH Smiths are hideous places, with enormous coiled queues and staff who have been briefed to flog the most mindless objects, to the customers.

"Would you like a five pack of Twix bars? They are on special"

Let me think, there. I'm about to go on an aeroplane. What would I like least to sit on my lap, in a hot metal tube, for an hour? That's right, a multipack of chocolate. Oh, and I'm flying to Paris, where they make very nice chocolate indeed, so a five pack of chavvy cocoa fat, gluey caramel and low quality biscuit, wouldn't really be what I was after.

Once or twice I have been offered a kilo bar of Cadbury's Dairy milk on a special offer. A kilo. Of the most quick- melting chocolate known to man, in a dirty great big, shitty, old box, the size of a painting. They aren't keen on extra weight in the old cabin baggage. If I had a kilo to spare in my case, and I never, ever do, I'd be as likely to stuff it with diamonds or heroin as Dairy Milk.

What people do want on a plane, is something to read. Very often there'll be a film or whatnot as an entertainment for plane passengers, most people have some kind of an iThing to listen to and drinks and food etc are generally provided unless you are fucking cheap and flying on a trashline. But reading matter - you'd need to bring it yourself, and a plane ride is a good time to try out a new book. Those terrible inflight magazines are moronic as fuck and there's only so many paeans to terrible seafood restaurants and pictures of turtles, one can take during a flight. I'm not a great reader myself, but even I am tempted by the idea of a good old murder book to read or anything off the best seller list really.

But what do WH Smith try and force on to their pre flight customer? Hard Backed Books. Hard Backed Books. On a fucking plane. I'm at a loss to know who buys the fuckers on dry land - they cost seven times as much as normal books, and take up loads of space, but on a plane? Jesus. No, I don't want half a stone of reinforced literature. Where will I put it? It won't fucking fit in that flap pocket thing on the back of the seat in front, will it? And if it does, where am I to put my legs? And actually, I don't really ever want to read an overweight version of Valentine Warner's tedious, sloany musings about how to use seasonal produce, or a book about Austrian Churches, or an awful chicklit novel called "The day Mr Right Fell Down the Chimney" with squiggly writing and pictures of cartoon shoes all over it. Just fuck away off WH Smith, and stick your massive bars of chocolate and enormous heavy books up your hole.

Noreen

The Queens Of Leon

2009-08-31T13:28:00.005+01:00

I have just come back from Reading Festival, it was a horrible, horrible place. Rock music is a dreadful racket ranging from a walloping, thudding, fingers-in-ears, thud-thud-thud, to a whingy old drone-on. I hate Rock Music, but I hate Rock Stars even more. The new Rock Stars at the top of my shit-list are the Kings of Leon. Despite playing to a stage, cram-packed with screaming teenagers, fainting and moshing away and fighting with each other and singing along "I was coming around la la la la whatever" to their miserable, lugubrious tunes, the main one from the Kings of Leon got the arse with the crowd, halfway through his set. He shouted to the children watching: "You are fucking crap - if you don't like the music why don't you fuck off". And at the end of his performance he crushed up his guitar and flicked the V sign and shouted "Fuck off Reading" to all the bewildered kids in the crowd.

I don't understand. If the man doesn't like singing on a stage in front of children, then he should get another job, I don't sing on a stage for a living, because I would not enjoy it. I don't like singing much and I would find it tedious hopping about like I had ferrets in my drawers, and I am not interested in drugs at all, so really, it's not the career for me. Equally, if, like the King of Leon there, I appeared to dislike crowds and had a very highly strung personality, I would consider a job as a librarian, or I might think about working in the back of Argos, fetching the boxes down, where human interaction would be at a minimum, or if it really were more noise I was after, then I would seriously consider operating a large drill, working on the roads.

Noreen

Via Nova Crucis

2009-08-22T17:10:00.003+01:00

I updated the stations of the cross a bit. I did it while I was at a boring wedding, sitting at the back, not listening.

1.Jesus is condemned to death
2.Jesus is given his cross, which is pretty heavy.
3.Jesus falls the first time
4.Jesus meets His Mother, who tells Jesus to mind his back carrying that heavy cross.
5.Simon of Cyrene carries the cross, just to see how heavy it is.
6.Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
7.Jesus falls the second time, and this time grazes his knee really badly
8.Jesus asks for some Savlon
9.Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem
10.Jesus falls the third time
11.Jesus is stripped of His garments
12.Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
13.Jesus asks for Savlon for a second time
14.Jesus dies on the cross
15.Jesus literally shits himself
16.Jesus' body is removed from the cross and cleaned up a bit.
17.Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense, largely to hide the smell.

Ball Bag

Number One Chinese Anticlimax

2009-08-10T17:02:00.004+01:00

I lived in China for several years during the late nineties. It was a pretty interesting place, I was often, utterly fascinated by my surroundings, and then there were times, when I just wanted the billions of people gawping at me and asking me for visas, and rabbiting on about cultural imperialism, to just fuck away off.

My low tolerance levels for chiselling behaviour were a bit of hindrance, as I found the Chinese people monumentally pushy. They would ring at six o'clock in the morning and ask to visit. They were consistently, hours early for social appointments and expected the same wacko punctuality from their guests. They ate breakfast at dawn, washing down foetid beancurd and fried breadsticks with heavily garlicked cold spinach and rank, millet porridge. They ate lunch at 11 and dinner at four. Their concept of distance was generous spirited, many people I knew thought nothing of driving eight hours across a province, just to have lunch in a mediocre restaurant, or to take a photograph of themselves in front of a sign. I found the Chinese entirely knackering to be with - well intentioned, but absolutely fucking exhausting.

One evening, I found myself out for dinner in a small town some ridiculous distance from where I lived. There was one street with a few stalls, doing their trade to the warbling reverb sounds of bad karaoke, drifting from an open kiosk. A woman was sitting on the ground with a blanket in front of her, piled with round fruits each about five inches in diameter. I was grabbed sharply on the upper arm, by one of my party, who thrust me towards the blanket in great excitement:

"You must buy one of these melons. They are a great, great speciality. Melons that you punch"

"Melons what?"

"That you punch" (she made a punching movement with her fist) "hit with hand, then break open and eat. Very good flavour"

Now - the Chinese word for both melons AND gourds is "gua" which means "a melon or gourd like thing". In order to establish whether you are dealing with something fruit-like and suitable to eat raw, or something watery and like a glorified vegetable marrow, one must look at the prefix to the word gua. For example, xi gua is watermelon and nan gua is a pumpkin and a huang gua is a cucumber. Being aware of these delicate linguistic differences, I checked with the woman what type of a gua this thing was

"The flavour of this melon - is it like a watermelon. Can you eat raw, or must you cook like a nan gua"

"Eat raw. Hit it with your fist, break then eat. But flavour very special, not like watermelon. Unique"

I bought a bag of these things, to oil the choppy tide of jabbering excitement from my companions and to boost the melon woman's profits. I duly took a melon and punched it. It didn't give.

"Punch harder. Like man" said my companion, helpfully

I walloped the thing with a full downward blow from my fist. It split enough that I could break off a piece the size of my hand. The whole shopping street of people, by now, had entirely given up wandering around aimlessly and were instead, frozen in
their tracks, watching me closely. Silence issued from the karaoke parlour, as three faces popped around the door.

"Now eat", said my friend. "Not skin"

I was quite used to eating in front of an audience. I had recently eaten a packet of salt and vinegar crisps in Tian'an men square, to a crowd of about two hundred peasants. I felt famous, to be honest, famous and important, just for eating stuff. This time, with the melon, was a small, provincial show and I was quite comfortable with the situation.

The fruit did not look particularly exciting. Its flesh was a very pale, grey-green and seemed to be slightly cushioned. I had been prepared for a generous douche of melon juice to issue from the slit side of the fruit, as I thumped it, but it was menopausally dry. I brought the piece of fractured melon to my lips and gnawed and the flesh with my incisors. It gave a little, and was quite difficult to separate from the toughened skin. It took some detaching, but I got a mouthful and chewed. It tasted of nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. Less flavour than a raw courgette (which, if you have never eaten one, is of minimal excitement). It was just leathery enough that it did not dissolve immediately in the mouth, the outer membrane required a little chewing, but once perforated, the inner matter was squashy and vanished without making a great impact. I dished out the rest of the melon to people standing about, hoping to see what they made of it. Each person gnawed and slavered at the melon appreciatively.

"Very good" one of them said

"Very good flavour. Excellent taste"

I just didn't get it. It was the most boring melon in the world. It wasn't even fun punching it open - I hurt my knuckles the first time and the heel of my hand the second and I got stringy bits stuck between my teeth and it was a big yawny thing. I wondered briefly if it might have been a wind up, but if it was, it was a very mild and rather pointless practical joke. I never saw another punching melon while I was in China and I have not seen one since. It was the vegetable equivalent of someone who likes watching birds, going on about a new colour variety of chaffinch, or someone who likes whittling things, discovering a new, sized blade for a knife which turns out to be a bit blunt and not a very helpful size for getting a point on things, or someone who likes swearing discovering that "Hell's bells" is a synonym for "damn". I want to say "I hate punching melons" but I don't. I just think they are a little bit gay.

Noreen

Lingua Fatwa

2009-07-16T18:30:00.007+01:00

It's been a while since I issued an edict about permissible language. That's not because I have become more tolerant, it is simply because I have been busy being enraged with other things.

"Parenting". Always uttered as if the nasty concept has gravitas. It doesn't. Describing the act of picking up the pieces after having unprotected sex and then a sprog, isn't something anyone other than your direct family needs to know about. Parenting has become an academic subject, the focal point of hundreds of awful "the guardian" articles, and the central theme of millions of hormonally charged, wittery mum-sites and blogs. And yet most people who talk about it, are shite at it and their children hate them.

"Stems From" As in "My interest in finance stems from a lifelong fascination with order". Is that right? Well guess what stems from trees? That's right, fruit. Fruity, fruity, fruit.

"Offensive." often used by people who make a meal out of "parenting", as breeding gives those of lower self-esteem a "good reason" to be royal pains in the arse to everyone around them. Generally deployed to describe fairly nondescript, mildy annoying, or just slightly rude things. Fun-spoiling. I've seen fascinating sweary exchanges interrupted by goggle eyed women, with dirty-faced brats: "Excuse-meeeeeeeee. Could you tone down your language pleaaase. I find it reeeeeeelly offensive". I swear people turn on moronic programmes like "Big Brother" and that one about moustaches made out of shit, just so they can complain about "how offensive" television is. How about if I slash your lips with a blunt razor blade and then smear them with a vinegar chapstick? What would that be? Would it be as offensive as a swearword, or a little bit more offensive. Fuck off, you wets.

"Little people". A woman asked me "Do you have any photographs of your little people". I couldn't for the life of me, work out what the fuck she was on about. I know "Little People" is a modern way to describe dwarves and midgets, but Snow White is a fairy tale, and I, although I am quite fascinated by dwarves and midgets, don't actually farm them. Or was she talking about leprechauns, in a bid to show cultural awareness? It turned out she wanted to look at a photograph of my children, the dirty bitch. By the time she had been forced to watch my bewildered face saying "Sorry, what exactly did you want to see a picture of? Little what? I don't think I have any photographs of short people. I mean, I might do - but I'd need to poke around in the attic first" I think she had gone off the idea.

Do add more examples in the comments.

If you want a beautifully syntaxed, cliche-free read, Philip Challinor has written yet another book about satanism. I expect it would read best in a secure ward, or an Al Qaeda training camp, but one thing is for sure - there won't be a comma out of place.

Noreen

It grows shitly, thanks

2009-07-14T12:17:00.011+01:00

I first started trying to grow vegetables in Morocco, when I had a full time gardener. One would think, that having a professional person, whose job was just to dig holes, put plants in them and then water them and stuff, would make growing produce an easy matter. Add to that the incredible, year-round sun of the North African climate, fecund soil and the fact that I had a massive well, right next to the vegetable patch -I should have been selling produce to Sainsburys.

Unfortunately my gardener was a jack the lad, capable only of conversing in nasal, reedy tones of Darija, a language he chose to ignore, when spoken by anyone other than a native. He was lazy as fuck, letting the lawn grow to jungle height and announcing that the mower "was broken" whenever he was asked to cut the grass. He thieved everything that could be thieved - if I wasn't standing guard over a fruit tree he would strip it of its produce, sell it, and when challenged would announce that it "had died". I once caught him selling the leaves off a climbing plant to a man on a passing donkey. Extraordinary entrepreneurship, from a bone idle idiot. I couldn't be arsed to sack him, as compared to a friend's maid, who stole all her employer's jewellery and then announced that she had been hypnotised in the street by a con artist to whom she had later delivered the spoils, some light fingered leaf and fruit pilfering seemed a pretty easy hit to take. At least I knew how much he was stealing from me - a new gardener -well it would take a few months to get accustomed to how much he actually was costing me in "perks".

I decided that to offset Saeed's thieving, I would try and save money on the housekeeping, by growing our own food. I got him to dig up a rarely-mown lawn, which he did with great fury, and my mother posted me seed packets of proper vegetables. I had swedes, brussel sprouts, cauliflowers, beetroots, leeks and savoy cabbages and I got my very competent housekeeper to explain to Saeed when, where and how to plant small amounts of each crop. As the seedlings grew, I visited them in the garden and noticed that they looked very alike. Saeed swore on his mother's life that he had both staggered the planting of each crop and stuck rigidly to the intructions he had been given. Since the weather was so excellent, it didn't take long for the plants to get from seed to table and after a few weeks I had fifty three perfect, white cauliflowers, a recipe for colitis. However, I was so determined that Saeed should not receive a single head of cauliflower as reward for his insolence/fuckwittery, that for the next few weeks the housekeeper toiled with farty salads, soups and tagines and when nobody was looking I howled with laughter to myself at the situation.

After his final warning, lack of Eid bonus and new instructions on the importance of variety in a vegetable bed, Saeed went ahead and planted out two entire packets of brussel sprout seeds. I was dubious about the amount of success we would have with them, given the too-warm climate, but I was keen to have sprouts for the Christmas meal and actually, having forty square feet of the fuckers wouldn't be the end of the world, as I knew a lot of Northern European people who wanted them for Christmas too. They grew fine, the sprouts themselves were a little smaller than I would have liked, and there was never going to be the frost that makes the difference in flavour that people go on about - but Brussel sprouts were hard to come by in the markets over there, so I was happy enough with the situation.

They were probably about three weeks off being ready, when the housekeeper came running to find me, dripping sweat and breathless: "Saeed is digging up the choux de Bruxelles!" She panted. I followed her to the vegetable field, where Saeed was leaning crossly on his spade, and got her to translate for me:

"Why are you digging up these plants? Leave them alone!".

"These cabbages are over. Look at them. They are all long and thin"

"They are not cabbages. They are a different plant, a European one. They are supposed to look like that"

"No plant looks like this. I am a gardener and I know what cabbages look like when they are finished. These cabbages are finished"

I bent the stem of a plant over and pointed to the small growths, clumped on the side of the thick, pale green stalk. "Look. Look at these. These are the cabbages. The rest of the plant is just like a tree and these small green growths are the fruit of the tree".

Saeed looked at me as if I had shat in his slipper: "If you want me to leave these dead cabbages in, then so be it. But don't blame me for your wasting this space. I work hard to grow these vegetables and you don't pick them in time, so they die".

He stole the rest of the seeds that my mother had sent and barely lifted a finger for the rest of his time with us. He did come in with a massive black eye one day, which pleased me, but apart from that his remaining career was utterly inert and uneventful.

When I moved to the UK, I decided I was going to manage things better than Saeed had done. I made my husband dig up a big weeded area in the back garden. I bought small vegetable plants, rather than risk seeds not germinating, and I watered and weeded and fiddled about. It was fucking boring and I could see how thieving and bartering with donkey riders could be a grand way to pass the time, instead of digging fucking holes and tying things to canes, but I had this thought, like I wanted to be good at something useful other than deep throating and I wanted something to help me to fit in with the locals and the English love to garden. But I fucking hate gardening. Everything grows but just so gaily, like it gets leaves on it, but no vegetables come out of the leaves. And all these fucking worms and beetles and things, crawl around and eat the plants, and there are bees stinging the whole time and great black birds with vicious beaks pecking and eating all the berries, and the earth is either parched dry or a swamp of rotting roots and the plants are so fucking ugly I could just shit. I was moaning about the hideousness of vegetable plants the other day and this English woman, do you know what she said to me? She said: "Did you know the runner bean was originally grown as a decorative plant?". Was it? Really? Did people not have eyes years ago? I don't see a "decorative plant" at all, I see a great big straggling old stalk with some tendrils and a few red flowers that turn into pointy green lumpy pods. I don't care if they have chelsea flower show over here, I hate gardening and plants and I hate vegetables until they have finished growing and I can eat them.
Noreen

Telephone Call To My Mother: Role Reversal

2009-07-09T10:05:00.008+01:00

"Hello Ma! It's Noreen"

"Oh hello Noreen. I hope you aren't calling to tell me you have the swine flu. Your father and I will not be coming to visit if you do. Not with his chest"

"No, we don't have it yet. I'm actually ringing because I have some very sad news"

"Is it the drains again?"

"No Ma, it isn't the drains. Actually I was calling to tell you that X has died. Y's sister - do you remember? You gave her a cutting of one of your shrubs once"

"Oh I thought she had died long ago. Are you sure you haven't got the wrong end of the stick?"

"No, she died last week. It was peaceful, and the family at her side after a long and drawn out illness"

"She's been dying for years, that one. I'm sure I remember you talking about her dying when you were only eighteen and that was a very long time ago - half your life she's spent dying."

"Well she's dead now, so even tomorrow it will be less than half my life that she's spent on the way out."

"Don't be cheeky Noreen, it doesn't become you at your age. And maths was never your strength. Why are you telling me anyway. Are the family after donations for something? I bet it's some peculiar humanist charity, something about choices, one of those sorts of things. She was always keen on letting people know how "different" she was"

"Actually her funeral is going to be a little different. She's getting buried just in a hole with no tombstone, in unconsecrated ground"

"I'm surprised she is being buried at all. I would have had her down for the cremation" (I sense my mother crossing herself) "She was very green, and those green people go on, don't they about how "cremation is better for the environment". It is not better for it, look at the Indians. They cremate everyone and their country is no environmental role model whatsoever. I find it very tiresome when people have these wacky funerals. I mean, she wasn't a Catholic so I suppose it is different for her in some ways"

"Well, she'll be going to hell won't she. So it doesn't really matter about the hole and no tombstone thing. And there'll be plenty of cremation down there"

"Don't say things like that Noreen. That's a terrible thing to say about someone who has recently died. I thought you were fond of her?"

"No, not especially. I just thought you liked to hear about when people die"

"Why would I want to hear things like that at my time of life? I like to hear about positive things, like people buying new houses and getting pay rises and having children. I'm not interested in death - that's just around the corner for me anyway. Did I tell you I have been put on a stronger dose? The doctor was amazed at my test results - never seen anything like it one someone with a working pulse"

"Right well, I have to go now Ma. Great talking to you. Will I send your condolences?"

"You'll do no such thing. I'll write a letter and I have a lovely card that will be just ideal. I bought a whole load recently. Mrs X has started making her own sympathy card range using hand made lace. She held a sale a few weeks ago to raise money for a new limb.........."

I don't take the bait - Although I am actually desperate to know about the limb and to discover which amputee/mutant will be on the receiving end of it, or even to find out if Mrs X's lace cards are going to provide limbs for poor foreign children - but I can't, I have to go to work. Besides I know it will be a long story, one designed to show me that, although I may have advanced a little in the "who's died recently" competition, I still have a reasonable distance to go before accomplishing proper Irish Mammy crazy.

Noreen

Message to My Pop Up Tent

2009-06-29T13:37:00.001+01:00

Fuck you.

Noreen

Quiet! Mr Obama is "doing the maths"

2009-06-19T14:05:00.011+01:00

New, palatable president of America, Mr Obama, and highly unpopular British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have been awfully quiet about Iran and its elections, whilst news agencies and wild-eyed bloggers have been yapping on and on and on about it: "Let's have a nice moderate leader for those Iranians," they say. "Get rid of that one with the big smile - we hate him, he's a loony".

The reason for the reticence is because Mr Obama is "doing the maths" about the outcome for the world. He can't have Mr Brown piping up "We love democracy and the moderate one" until Mr Obama has finished the following two sums. I have just done the answers for him below, in case he has dyscalculia.

Sum 1. Iran + moderate leader= ?

Answer 1. Iran + moderate leader =no resistance from China and Russia regarding Iran's obtaining nuclear weapons =Iran gets the nuke= Israel gets the arse and nukes Iran = destruction of the world

Sum 2 Iran + nutter leader= ?

Answer 2 Iran + nutter leader= no one, not even China or Russia will want Iran to have any sort of weapons whatsoever - in fact the whole world will be opposed to them even being allowed to run with a pair of scissors=Israel remains focused on winding up Palestine and making a nuisance of itself in other regards = world remains relatively intact

If I were the President of America, or the Prime Minister of the UK, and someone said to me: "Noreen, you have been doing the maths for hours, what's it to be? Will we support the one with the crazy eyes or the other, quieter one?" Do you know what I would say?

I would say "Did you know Xerxes had Jews in his army?" and then I would pull a special politician face, which looks slightly amused, but also has a tinge of sadness and wisdom. And if they asked me any other questions, I would smile and wave, and then go inside and bitch about how small the White House actually is, or complain about the really vulgar colour scheme in 10 Downing Street and how the government art collection seems to be favouring very peculiar new artists that look like they paint with their arseholes.
Noreen

TK Minimus

2009-06-19T10:52:00.006+01:00

I do not like shopping for clothes much, ever, unless I can go to a tailor and get stuff sewn for no money at all. It's one of the few benefits of living in Third World Countries, which I frequently have to do. At the moment, however, I live in England, which although having many of the trappings of the Third World, doesn't run to me designing all my clothes myself and having them hand made by my own personal sweatshop for sixty pence. So I asked some English people for advice on how to do my dress shopping on a reasonable budget. This woman told me about a place called TK Maxx, which, she assured me, despite sounding like a Turkish chicken shop, was actually a place where one can buy "designer" clothes, at knock down prices.

Now, I think I really have the hang of England, and generally when people say "designer", they actually mean some type of overpriced leisurewear, like a Fred Perry shirt, or ugly, top-end, high- street merchandise, like Burberry trousers, or Hackett rugby shirts. But that's fine - I'm not proud and since I think that most people in this country look like they are wearing their outfit for a bet, it is probably safer not to worry too much about the old appearance and to blend in with them, as they are an unpredictable and vicious race.

The main thing that really irritates me about shopping in English shops, is the personality of the shop assistants they have hanging around in them, lezzing about the changing rooms, pulling the curtains back and having an opinion about how you look. I mentioned this dislike to the woman with the shopping tips: "Oh they do not have that in TK Maxx" she said. "Not a bit of it. You just browse and everything costs around eight pounds and it's all designer and brilliant as the stock changes regularly and you can get really amazing stuff". She stuck out her leg and showed me a pair of sparkly leg warmers which made her look like an extra from Fame. "I got these there and they were fifty pee" She said "And I got a Calvin Klein suit for a tenner".

I took myself to TK Maxx on a Saturday afternoon, which I know is not the brightest time to go to a clothes shop, as they are all cram packed with fourteen-year old girls with individually lacquered eyelashes standing proud of their eyebrows, in identikit leggings and eighties polyester tops, shrieking at each other and dawdling themselves around the clothes rails. You even find these kids in Country Casual and The Edinburgh Woollen Mill. Fuck knows what they are after, but like tills, every clothes shop has its quota of them.

TK Maxx was a great barn of jumbled items, assembled on the worlds longest rails, ordered only by signs saying "skirts", or "girls fashion". I pawed weakly at a line of tops on a rail close to the entrance, while two female, human doughballs, with necks that melted into vast, rounded humps of shoulder, encased in draped lilac jersey, eyed me; muttering to each other in a strong local brogue. Flanking these larger women, were sixteen fourteen year old girls, dressed like shrunken stevedores, grabbing clothes from the rails, indiscriminate of size, or price, or colour, clutching them possesively to their chests. I fished out a sleeveless blouse with a pattern that resembled regurgitated wham bars. The size was right, the shape and colour were hideous, but it felt like a small achievement, to have found one item in the store, that I could theoretically wear, if I were entirely out of clothes and didn't have the werewithal to sew plastic bags together into a makeshift dress. People around me were rummaging in large crates, pulling out plastic hats, sandals made of rope and hats made of felt and lurid, garish colours and hundreds and hundreds of ugly washed out jeans. I held the shirt a little distance from my bosom.

A woman with thick, leathery skin approached me, holding out her hands.

"Do you want that or not?" She said.

"Oh, do you work here?" I said.

"Are. You. Going. To. Buy. It?" she said, rudely, "Because if not, I want it".

An Eastern European woman appeared and solved the problem, by removing the shirt from my hands and taking it off to the till herself, with leather-face chasing her, as fast as her towering, strappy, golden, wedge shoes would allow her. I was relieved: I had been saved from making a terrible wardrobe mistake, and the two old slags fighting over the top created a perfect distraction from my utter gormlessness at shopping in a rotten old aircraft hangar filled with overpriced jumble. TK Maxx - fuck off. I will have to toughen up and become a nudist.
Noreen

The Philology and Linguistics of Work

2009-06-12T13:46:00.006+01:00

I was talking to a man recently, and he was telling me about his work. He reeled off his job title, which was something boring: "Investment Manager in Emerging Markets", something like that. Anyway - it was pretty obvious, from this title, the sort of stuff he worked at - yawny boring finance in poor countries. An awful lot of people have lunatic job titles, that give you no clue at all about what they do for a living: "Vice President, Integral Logistical Resource Development Systems" that sort of thing. When someone describes themselves in those vague and hideous terms, run fast, because they will follow it up briskly with a tiring and considered explanation for the layman. Dreadful.

Because this emerging markets man had a boring job that had already explained itself to me in one short phrase, he felt the need to make more conversation about his working life. "I'm a bit like Ronseal." He said. "I do exactly what it says on the tin".

I watched the Ronseal advert, and it is correct up to a point. Written on the side of the tin is the description of the contents: "floor varnish" (noun)and yet, one can describe the use of the tin contents as "varnish" (verb). If those were the only words written on the tin, the claims of the advertisement would be entirely true. But on the tin, as well as the words "floor varnish", there is also the brand name "Ronseal" in big letters - probably the first word any purchaser notices. As far as I know "Ronseal" doesn't have a meaning beyond "a company that pretends to be incredibly down to earth" (noun). As well as the massive words "Ronseal"(noun), there are a whole load of other words on the tin, including a description of the ingredients in the product, which are also not ways to describe the use of the product. "Ethanol" (noun)isn't something you do (verb), unless you are homeless. What Ronseal need to do, is to be more clear "Does exactly what the verb on the tin says". That is all
Noreen

The Etymology of Talent

2009-05-29T13:15:00.004+01:00

Jesus was always going on "talent this, talent that" in parables. But His definition of talent, as a skill or gift, was not entirely accurate. For a talent in those early AD days, was actually a unit of measurement - a measurement of volume, or mass. The "talent" was a substantial quantity- about the weight of a large child, and was frequently used as a measurement for precious metals. From there, it was a short step for the talent to be seen as a unit of currency.

Jesus, however, was not a fan of the materialism, so he rebranded "talent" to mean "the ability to do anything more than breathe in and out".

Noreen

Explaining Juche Idea To The Masses

2009-05-26T17:23:00.008+01:00

Long metal chopsticks
struggle to hold cold noodles.
Plastic zippers
outrank brass buttons.
Land of simultaneous movement and immortality,
where God resides in each person
and there is no finer delicacy
than the bitter bile of crows

Noreen Jong-Il

St Patrick was more effective at pest control than St George

2009-04-23T12:21:00.006+01:00

St Patrick is not actually my favourite saint, my favourite Saints are the ones to do with physical problems - St Lucy, the patron saint of styes on the eye and St Blaise, patron saint of throat diseases. What useful saints they are. However, I do have very great respect for the Patron Saint himself, as he drove away snakes from Ireland, and I fucking despise snakes.

I've heard people giving out: "St Patrick did not actually drive the snakes away, the ice age did it". Fuck away off with the ice age, you jealous, snake-riddled nations. St Patrick got rid of the snakes and that is that. Are there snakes in the world? Yes there are. Are there snakes in Ireland? No. So it isn't because of the ice age, is it! It's because of the holiness.

Across the Irish Sea, St George, Patron Saint of England, got rid of dragons from England. If there were still dragons (not Komodo ones, they are not dragons, they are lizards) in other parts of the world, then I would absolutely think: "Well done, St George. Fair play to you, for getting rid of the dragons out of England". It would be especially impressive if there were still dragons in Wales and Scotland but these lumbering, terrifying creatures were unable to cross the Severn Bridge, or go over Hadrians wall without combusting. However, I don't think there ever were dragons in England, or indeed anywhere in the world. Now I'm not saying St George was a lying shite and made up a dragon that he had driven out. No, I think he did have a go at driving out cold blooded animals but I think rather than mythical dragons, he focussed his driving out powers onto newts and then there was a spin put on his achievements by the media.

Whatever the size of the creature he destroyed, St George was clearly not as efficent at his job as St Patrick, as newts remain in England to this day. I'll hand it to St George that he reduced their number - newts are now an endangered species, but he didn't sucessfully rid the country of them, nor did he leave a legacy of people who were going to take up the baton after his death by finishing off his work and getting rid of the rest of the newt population.

In fact, where I live in England, there are several groups of bossy people in sturdy shoes, who make it their business to poke around in damp wells and springs, hunting for newts and taking pictures of them, and getting incensed when people want to build houses, or dig lakes near the newts and they start on, protesting and making picket lines and hollering: "What about the newts!" Recently in the local paper there was a four page spread, explaining how newts are as fussy about shagging and eating as pandas, and so it is, therefore, our national duty to nurture newts, and to make sure they have absolute silence and darkness and privacy to copulate in, and no children must disturb them ever. And there have been groups of people gathering in the evenings, discussing whether, as well as maintaining a utopia for newts, we should also draw pictures of newts at the top of all municipal documents and put a newt on a flag and so on and so on - you know what the English are like.

No, St George did not do a particularly good job at pest control, especially compared to his highly efficent, holy neighbour St Patrick, and that is the real reason for his fete not being a public holiday in England. Don't say that to anyone English though, or they will cut you.
Noreen

They shouldn't have fucking bothered

2009-04-20T17:56:00.001+01:00

I was reading about the history of the pencil. Fascinating - just fascinating. I'm not joking. I've no time for the history of wars, or tedious nations, or people invading each other and teaching each other languages - you can put that sort of history up your hole, but useful history, like this, the history of the pencil, is something that captures my imagination, and as I read this type of thing, I go back in time until, I feel myself there, in that time, scratching away at a slate, wearing a bustle, and just being amazed by what an invention a pencil actually is. Everything was going well for me and pencil history, until I got to the footnotes: "A mechanical (or "propelling") pencil was patented by Sampson Mordan and John Isaac Hawkins in Britain in 1822". I fucking hate propelling pencils - they are pure shite. No - I don't think it was clever of those men to make thin sticks of graphite and put them in a dispensing receptacle, not when normal pencils were perfectly adequate, and could be easily whittled with a knife to a decent point. There was never any need to waste the energy inventing a peculiar hollow tube, that spits out near- invisible lengths of grey writing matter. Propelling pencils are annoying, the leads break and they fall out of the end of the shaft, and if you press the leads out anything more than a fraction of an inch they are impossible to write with. Propelling pencil leads remind me of poos, in that there is a critical point at which they can't be sucked back into the main body, and they just hang, pointlessly until eventually they drop out, useless, unwanted and messy. They differ from poos, but not in a good way, in the sense that the leads can only be sourced from a specialist shop.

If Argos, or Barclays Bank or my local bookies started leaving piles of propelling pencils around instead of little plastic biros, I would stop stealing them. And if, inadvertently, I were to pocket a propelling pencil after placing an afternoon bet, or browsing through a large laminated catalogue of tat or queuing up to be served by a hatchet faced clerk in a cheap uniform, then do you know what I would do? I would give it to a tramp.
Noreen

Explaining Fantasy Art

2009-04-19T18:55:00.008+01:00

Fantasy art can be monochrome or coloured, there doesn't seem to be a rule. It is rarely lifelike in appearance, tending towards the medium of a highly stylised cartoon. The subject matter is usually a flower, or dragonfly, or something traditionally feminine and pretty, with a bizarrely sexualised mermaid, or fairy, or goddess perched astride it. There aren't ALWAYS tits on display in a fantasy art oeuvre, but there's usually a very strong suggestion of them. The females in fantasy art are the sort of people a hobbit might want to fuck, but would never get with in real hobbit life, unless the fantasy female were blind, or understood the hobbit to be a member of the Rothschild family or a Getty.

Fantasy females have that slightly tough-chick look sometimes, like they parked a big motorbike round the corner and have a fanny that tastes of sweaty leathers. I can't work out the purpose of fantasy art - it's not beautiful to look at and it isn't dirty enough to be erotica - it's just weird. I understand Manga art, because that has drawings of Japanese people holding the flaps of their vulvas apart, and close up sketches of jizzing knobs and women licking each other out. I mean, I still think it's odd to look at pornographic cartoons when you could just turn on the telly, or buy a magazine with pictures of real vulvas and knobs in, but I can see that Manga is a hand-drawn substitute. The only reason I can see for fantasy art existing, however, apart from to make me feel slightly unsettled, is that there actually are gnomes and elves and hobbits and women who live in the herbaceous border with their diddies out and their legs akimbo.
Noreen

Glorified shell swappers

2009-04-09T12:13:00.011+01:00

I'm not interested in the economic crisis in Britain. Gordon Brown, da da da, taxpayers money blah blah, big bonus bollocksy wollocksy. I don't see anyone lying in the street starving to death with suppurating wounds, I don't see rampant homelessness. I see schools and hospitals which, although not perfect, are free to all people who live in the country. If someone loses their job, the government pays them to lick their wounds for a bit. So I don't get why the streets are full of whining bitches punching each other and behaving like savages, camping in front of banks and making a terrible fuss. Get over yourselves you pathetic drips. Just because this is the most "dangerous" thing that has happened to Britain for a while, it doesn't mean that you are forced to mince about the streets being "really shocked" at how the police manage crowds, or "really furious" at the injustice of some boring old man being given a golden handshake after fucking over a bank. If every moron protesting and marching and littering and costing the country money by wasting police time either because they have never paid taxes and are unemployed and bored, or because they have lost money on their share portfolios and are angreeeee about that, if every one of these idiots just stayed home, grew some vegetables, stopped buying horrible cars, gadgets and clothes every five minutes, volunteered in their local community to help improve the standard of local schools/hospitals etc, and instead of being a sly throng of sneaks and whistleblowers mincing about the City, actually got involved in the democratic process usefully, in a positive way, by starting a new political party or, heavens to betsy, voting something other than Labour, then I might have some time for their complaints. But as it is, I think protesters are a bunch of inadequate, petulant, tedious cunts.

When I was at Cambridge everyone was obsessed with the Gulf War and Poll Tax. There was a free bus every week, that took all the busybodies to London, so they could make a nuisance of themselves marching and shouting. One girl that I used to go to supervisions with, would catch the bus, go to Harrods, buy stuff, wait for everyone to come back from marching and catch the bus home again, laden with goods and having lined a rich Arab's pockets. I liked her.

An uncharitable part of me* thinks that marching and protesting is a way for losers to make friends and get the ride. It's all down to poor social skills. Protests are like festivals - a great place for the shy, weird and weak to interact, in a situation that doesn't punish the gauche and that creates an atmosphere of heightened emotion, so people don't feel silly and have a reason to talk to one other. If these protestors had a chance to do the season, it might do the lot of them a power of good. What many of these protestor -middle- class types don't realise, is that the social calendar exists around specific sporting and music events so that people do have a shared subject to talk about, and even the gauchest can manage to trot out a line or two about horses or boats or singing and acquit themselves reasonably well. Mind you - they might need to make the Stewards enclosure at Henley larger, to accommodate all the marching people, but I'd accept that in return for less shouting and posturing about banks. That is all
Noreen
*my brain

Kenny Rogers May Not Be Entirely Right This Time

2009-03-12T18:55:00.014Z

I love Kenny Rogers. He's a musical god, with the voice of a man who has a long, fat cock. He sings sensible songs everyone can relate to, with a tune. However, I do not completely agree with his views on death. "The best you can hope for is to die in your sleep". It is always going to be a popular option for people contemplating end of life choices, but it won't work for absolutely everyone.

There's a lot of talk at the moment about this young woman, Jade Goody, who is terminally ill with cervical cancer and living out her last days very much in the public eye. Lots of yappy hacks have been all: "how vulgar, how like her to court attention and make money" about it and some other ones have snorted worthily about how great it is that she's raised the awareness for the new HPV vaccine and has encouraged lots of slags to go and get their smear tests done. I went and had a smear test - not because of Jade Goody - but because I got a letter telling me it was time I went. I don't mind smear tests at all. After an adolescence as a bit of a goer, and three vaginal births, I don't give a shit who puts what up my slot - I've had all manner of people stare at it over the years, a small poke with a glorified chopstick is low on the scale of fanny insults. But I get that a lot of women make a terrible fuss about showing their vag to a stranger and letting them put metal in it. The frigid dykes.

What interests me about Goody's death in the spotlight, is the squeamishness of the general public: "Enough is enough!" It's an English thing. English people are weird about death - they hide from it, put the lids down on their coffins, don't let children go to funerals, expect people to grieve quickly and quietly. Dying is usually done in hospital, people are discouraged from visiting and are shooed out quickly, after death. You never get a good look at actual dead people, or people dying on the telly either - for instance in Russia, I remember watching their version of crimewatch - on at teatime, complete with quite gruesome photographs of corpses that had not been identified. No one thought that was strange at all. English people don't like to look at real people's dead bodies - anybody working with the dead is viewed with great suspicion and fascination - hence all the pathology drama shows -experiencing closeness to death or dying is only acceptable when one stage removed by theatre.

One of the few truths accepted by every human belief system, is that our bodies go through a process of shutting down and finally shutting off. The question of how that process is handled, is what involves the complicated taboos in different societies

Years ago, giving birth was put in the same queasy category as dying - women were hidden away, before and after birth, and expected to get on with it and not to give too much away about the whole performance. It has only been in the last twenty years that people have started to take a more active role in planning their births - home or hospital, how much intervention, how much pain relief, who is present. Of course, the best made birth plans often give way to emergency caesarians and many wannabe hippies wind up growling for pethidine and hurling foul abuse, in a way they never could have planned. But what matters, is the labouring woman's sense of having some control, however little any foreward planning relates to the actual outcome. The fact that a patient's wishes have been acknowledged and accommodated to the best of the caregiver's abilities, is something that lowers anxiety and makes the birthing process less unpleasant.

In the same way, anxiety about death can be reduced by letting patients with terminal illness make choices about their palliative care, about where to die, whether to have an active death where they remain unsedated for as long as possible, or to slip away in a fug of morphine. But the squeamishness and unspoken expectation that the dying will just do it gracefully and quietly in a side room, with as little fuss as possible, is something that makes dying people feel a nuisance if they want to deviate from the norm (stay in hospital, it's nice and clean, people come and visit and say goodbye etc etc). I'm not saying that everyone wants a "natural" death, or that hospitals are wanton pits for following Hippocrates and shoving drips in the dying to keep them going for a few hours more. The problem is that dying people are weak and tired and find it hard to be forthright about their wishes when they are in extreme pain. They need support from their families and to know that their death choices will be honoured and communicated by their next of kin. Unfortunately a lot of non dying people don't want to think about death, and get upset when confronted by it, and end up making someone else's death all about them. This then makes the dying person feel mean for wanting particular things, and they feel an obligation to protect their families from the whole dying shebang. But that's wrong - at the end of your life you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want. That's your time, to be an utterly selfish cunt, and everyone around you should shut the fuck up and do what you say. You're the daddy. Of death.

I've heard people say they would find bringing a dying relative home "too upsetting". Not as fucking upsetting as stopping living though, is it? Grow some balls, people. Watch this woman die and learn from her - not just how to prolong your life by keeping an eye on your flange, but how to have the best death you possibly can. That is all
Noreen

Dancing At Lughnasa Is No Longer The Worst Film In The World

2009-03-10T18:20:00.016Z

I hated Dancing at Lughnasa - it was a horrible, gruesome two dimensional portrayal of a gaggle of stupid women, competing with each other in a nasty old cottage, with some kid and a scruffy, loser, sperm -donor of a bloke who turns up and then fucks off again. It takes some beating in the shitness stakes, that does.

However, I recently watched "Nights in Rodanthe" which had Richard Gere and a famous woman in it. It looked like the usual old shit I am happy to watch - middle aged people, having another crack at romance, even if life has treated them a bit hard up until now. Well, it was just fucking appalling - really just the sort of thing women on HRT can tolerate but no one else. Here's a list of horrible things that happened in the film.

A woman, who is recently divorced, spends a precious child-free weekend running her friend's bed and breakfast place.

The bed and breakfast place is a large wooden house on stilts, on a beach, right next to the water in a tornado region.

It has terrible plumbing (Americans only like mixer taps, power showers and good water pressure) and she is v blase about it (Americans are never blase about problems - they at least pretend to give a shit if stuff doesn't work or they get sued)

A famous plastic surgeon (Richard Gere) is the only guest at the bed and breakfast on stilts

The woman gets really, really drunk on her second night in charge of the guest house, and throws tins of food at a dustbin, in front of the only guest, who thinks it is great (Americans take their service v seriously and would not like to have tins thrown around them by a drunk)

The plastic surgeon goes off to visit these two toothless hick people in a shack

The older Hick is angry with the plastic surgeon because the surgeon "killed his wife"

The Hick's wife had saved up all her money to have a sizeable, but benign facial cyst removed. We are shown, repeatedly, a picture of a simple looking woman that hick-man clutches and snivels over, but no evidence of a cyst. Photoshop? Do they have that in houses on stilts in fuck-knows-where? I don't fucking think so

The Hick man says "I never noticed the cyst on her face" Nor did we. (Sorry - I am getting obsessed by the facial cyst and it was only meant to be a small mention. Moving on...)

Despite never noticing his wife's cyst, and living in a shack, Hick man had still stumped up for his missus, to travel to an extremely posh hospital miles away, and have Richard Gere the surgeon remove her facial cyst. Thing is, she was allergic to anaesthetic and karked it on the operating table. Very unfortunate, but then, there is a small percentage of the population allergic to general anaesthetic. She shouldn't have been such a vain bitch.

Hick-husband is too thick to understand anaphylactic shock, so holds Richard Gere responsible. Unlike most Americans who have been bereaved by a medical procedure, he doesn't seem to want money, nor is he willing to listen to a simplified physiological explanation for his wife's demise. No. What he wants, is for Richard Gere to ask mindless questions about what colour his wife's eyes were, and to find out about her life and look like he gave a shit. Fucking dreadful. Gere returns to the guest house, bemused.

Gere, after getting a lecture on bereavement and grieving from his guest house landlady, eventually goes back to the shack and listens to a litany of dullness about cyst-face's boring crap life. He cries and says "thank you for letting me know her".

He returns to the house on stilts, and there is a terrible tornado, and everything breaks, and doors fly off and stuff. Gere then rides the guest house temporary landlady, and tells her about his estranged son, who, despite having completed 8 years of medical training, also "won't forgive him" for having the misfortune to operate on a woman who is allergic to general anaesthetic. The landlady, who has much younger children, then tells Gere how to parent a man in his late twenties.

Invigorated by his ride, Gere drives away in a posh car, full of promises. The landlady woman goes home, and her ex husband tries to get back with her. She still has a quim full of Gere's jizz, and doesn't feel like shagging her old man, so she says no.

Inexplicably, Gere suddenly moves to a mountain, somewhere Third Worldish, and starts helping his son (who is now speaking to him again) to immunise orphans. He writes long, worthy letters to the main woman, who cries and hugs the letters to her chest, all the while having a sub plot struggle, to relate to her goth teenage daughter.

A letter arrives announcing that Gere is "coming home", so she gets excited about her new life with him. She cooks a meal, tarts herself up and waits. He stands her up. The next morning Gere's son is on the doorstep, holding a cardboard box. He explains that his father has been killed in a freak landslide, whilst saving medical supplies for unimmunised orphans. She collapses in heaving sobs. There is a shitey old letter in the box from Gere as well. The son is considerably fitter than his father, but the woman doesn't ride him instead, unfortunately.

The bereaved woman takes to her bed and goes all weird, forcing her teenage daughter to be nice to her. Mother and daughter talk about love together, and it is just fucking vile, until the mother eventually gets her lazy arse up and out of bed, puts a bit of slap on, stops being so wet and treasures the memories of her dead love. She probably goes on to ride some other old man later, but without making such a terrible meal out of it.

The only way in which this film could have been acceptable, would have been if it had turned out that the plastic surgeon wasn't really dead after all, and that his son owed him a massive favour, so he had called his son over and explained: "Jesus, son - she's a nice enough woman, but she was a terrible ride. I tried to tell her I was moving to South America, but she kept on writing and going: "I love you" and talking about the shag we had, and she just didn't get the message, even with the orphans and "I'm so busy" and everything. So I've come up with a kind way to let her down gently, I have to do something now, I've this new woman who squirts and everything, so will you go on round there and just take a box of old tat, and tell her I'm dead, there's my boy?". Yes, I could have stomached the cyst, Richard Gere's 'O' Face, and all the other old shite as well, with that finale.

Now I've spoiled the whole plot for you, I'm guessing you won't feel the need to go and see "Nights in Rodanthe", but, just in case you are still dithering, please fucking don't. It really is the worst film in the world.

Noreen

My Vagina Is Not A SatNav For Your Fucking Stuff

2009-03-09T12:52:00.009Z

I am not interested in "stuff", I hate shopping and don't really care if I lose things, unless it is something vital like my keys, which would prevent me from getting into my house, or my wallet which would mean a trip to a British police station - a fucking horrible experience. I don't have many clothes, as I don't like buying them. I am not interested in fashion, so the clothes I have are pretty boring and conservative and go together without a great song and dance and perfomance of having to try stuff on and wondering what goes with what. I hate jewellery and don't wear it. If I lose the book I am reading, I just start another one. I do get slightly irritated if I can't find my trainers, as I do a lot of running, but if I can't find them, then I don't actually die, I just manage and go swimming instead or do circuits in bare feet, or have a fucking rest. Getting attached to things and worrying about where they are is tedious - who wants to be a pair of shoes' or an MP3 player's bitch? I fucking don't.

My father used to ask me constantly where things were, when I was a child. He had very poor sight, so I used to make some effort to help him look for stuff, putting his hopelessness down to his appalling myopia, and feeling bad if I didn't join in the hunt. I know now that this is bollocks - not his myopia, I mean he is as blind as a bat, that's for sure, but his inability to find things was purely down to the dismissive wave of his memory for "unimportant" stuff like remembering where he put his belongings, which remarkably became "extremely important" half an hour later when he needed them. He had a special way of searching - "man-looking" - walking in and out of rooms fast, head up, gaze forward, mouth chanting: "I'm sure it's in here, where is the fucking thing," never making eye contact with anything in the room at all, just picking up peculiar objects that bore no relation to the "lost" item, waving them around a bit and putting them down somewhere else, all the while loudly accusing the cleaner of stealing, until, eventually, someone else found whatever it was that he had lost.

A good many years later, living with three grown males (two are my children, I'm not that "modern") means that I am constantly being asked where socks and knickers and trousers are. They are always in the same three places, but it's like the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind round here, or it could be that the location of underwear just isn't information to be retained in the male brain - taking up space they could better use for thinking about when they are next going to eat, or what player their football team is going to buy. I really fucking do hate being asked where things are, because it's incredibly big of me to organise their knickers and socks and stuff at all, given that I don't particularly like living in an ordered environment, so having to go the extra mile and start talking about socks and knickers as well as fucking washing and sorting them just makes me tired and cross. But these are my children, so, like the excruciating innard-clawing pains of labour and the sick feeling when they are late home, as well as the constant fear of outliving them and spending the rest of my life drowning in grief, I get it - it's part of the deal of being a mother to boys - talking about fucking pants.

Anyway - I'm a woman, so my synapses get firing at the first sniff of being a martyr, even if the tedious methodical processes required to find things efficiently make me want to shit, so I guess I can't mind that much, otherwise I would just not fucking do it. What I really do mind though - and this is fucking appalling - is men, who have nothing at all to do with me, asking me where their stuff is. I was minding my own business in the swimming pool on Saturday when a man came over to where I was swimming and asked me whether I had seen his bottle of water. I hadn't, nor did I give the slightest shit that he had lost it. "Sorry" I said "I haven't seen a bottle of water. I hope you find it". A bit later, when I was in the sauna, a different man opened the door, leaned in and asked me if I had seen his towel. I hadn't, so I said: "No, I haven't seen your towel". Did he go away and look for it? Did he fuck. Two minutes later "Sorry, just checking - you haven't seen a towel lying around anywhere else, have you?". "No". I said "I'm sorry. I have not seen your towel. Maybe you left it in the changing rooms?". Barely a minute had passed before his dumb head was peering around the door of the sauna again "I can't find it" he said. I just couldn't fucking believe it. I didn't know him. I had never met his towel. I didn't care remotely about how he was going to dry himself, he was a grown man and there are starving people in India who have never, ever seen a towel, and they probably would stare open mouthed at you in the street if you asked them about towels and mutter "Towel. What is towel? Please, tell me. What is towel?" and then marvel at what a great luxury and non-essential item a towel actually is "What, a cloth, not to keep warm, just to rub on body and then put aside? This is a wonderful privilege, this towel". What a fucking nobber that man was. Yes, I have a vagina, no that doesn't mean I like finding things. Fuck off!
Noreen

The Only Thing Gayer Than Going To The Ballet...

2009-02-06T14:12:00.005Z

Is an English man going to the ballet, but making sure that everyone in the vicinity knows that he doesn't normally go to things like this, and to be honest, he never really thought ballet would be his cup of tea at all, but, well, it's actually rather fun, and isn't it amazing how the human body can DO that? God, most men can't lift their legs more than a couple of inches from the floor. Seriously incredible!

Watching wiry people contort themselves to music is indeed very gay, but you if enjoy watching ballet, (and I do) then the best thing to do, is to say: "Fuck it - I'm a terrible fruit, but I am interested in watching ballet - so I'm just going to mince on down to my seat, sit in it, and look at people dancing and miming a story." And don't give me "But you're a woman so it's ok for you to like ballet, but I'm a self-deprecating English male, so I NEED to talk in a loud voice about how amazed I am at the gymnastic feats, but I'm not awfully sure what's going on in the story, and isn't the man dancer - well, can't he jump high?". It is not OK for me to like ballet either, it is despicably gay of me, and I know that, but I enjoy watching people jump about and act all miserable or happy, and I like looking at the men's cocks.
Noreen

The News In January, By Noreen

2009-01-21T17:10:00.004Z

Old, fat women in fleeces, London spinsters in their uniform, "statement" red coats, young men with their knickers hanging out of their trousers and the smell of dusty heaters puffing out their smothering warmth in shops and offices, while the wicked cold rips the air from the lungs of those who venture outside.

I have always loathed January - it's a shitty month with nothing to recommend it, and before any of you Antipodeans start up "I'm eating mangoes in cancerous heat, it's bonza" I would still hate January, even if it were hot. Not as much as I hate it cold, I'll give you that, but still a reasonable level of hatred - say as much as I hate eating quinoa, but not as much as I hate eating snails.

The Americans have tried to liven the start of this year up by putting that idiot and his wife all over the news. I can't fucking stand either of them already and they haven't even done a stroke of work yet. The news was all "He used hawaiian dialect in a speech, to show his interesting upbringing". Well I use coarse invective to show mine, so stick that up your cunt Obama.

When I spell check Obama - it gives Osama, which amuses me, until I think about the effect that might have on those lunatic Yank conspiracy theorists - we don't need them spell checking your man the president, and then getting the big idea about manufactured terrorism and world domination. I've heard some real shite about Osama bin Laden either being an invented enemy, dead or an American spy - it would be the absolute nadgers for the lunatic vote if they could make out that he was the President of the US. So get on it, Microsoft - fix the spellchecker - do your country proud.

British journalists tried to draw the eye away from the doings of the White House by announcing that 19th January was "Officially The Most Depressing Day Of The Year", ensuring that anyone whose brain had emerged from Christmas hibernation in search of newsworthy sustenance, would collapse back into a stagnant pit of self hatred, fractured resolutions and bitter chill winds, thereby allowing the British writers hanging around DC to go out on the lash, have a skinful, and write utter bollocks that no one will be able to read through their tears of misery.
January can fuck off.
Noreen

You Are Not The Most Eccentric Person In The Framing Shop

2009-01-14T17:32:00.007Z

So I have two African Tree Frogs. I thought they would be interesting pets but all they do is sit about in a sweaty glass box, staring balefully into the middle distance. Sometimes they eat a live cricket, but not with a great long tongue flicking out there, and catching the thing - they just gulp quickly. I've tried to liven them up by knocking on the glass (something that is always banned in zoos - so I figured it must have some kind of an effect on the animals) but nothing. They just sit there, fatly, the only sign of life a light pulse on the translucent skin of their necks.

Anyway - the lid of their cage thing broke and it's important that they have a proper lid to keep the humidity in. I did wonder if leaving the lid off would perk the frogs up a bit, but apparently all they will do in dry conditions, is the same as they do at the moment, but without the pulse and the crickets. The old lid was made of thickened glass, so I decided to go to the local picture framing shop, to see if they could make me a new one.

Like many women in their thirties, I suppose I have an idea of myself as being quite an interesting and exotic figure, and I was looking forward to seeing the framing man's face when I walked in and gave him his unusual commission. "Good morning" I said "I'm afraid I have a very strange request".

The man in the framing shop looked up from his desk, smiled and put down his stanley knife. "There's nothing you can say to us in here that sounds strange," he said. You see, I had forgotten that this is England, land of the nutter, where "individuality" and borderline madness is a matter of national heritage. The words "strange", "unusual" or "bizarre" make the English very, very happy.

"I have just got pet African Tree Frogs and I need a new lid for their cage. I was wondering if you could make me another one just like this".

The framing man looked at the piece of toughened glass and shrugged. "No problem," he said and turned and yelled into a back room. A large man with tattoos and a goattee beard appeared and looked at me shyly. The boss man gestured to him. "This is Robert".

Robert stood quietly in the doorway of the back room, examining the backs of his hands for small cuts - a hazard, I imagine of the framing business. After a few seconds he looked up at me and gave me a small grin. "I've got a seven foot boa constrictor, a load of corn snakes and a tarantula at home". he informed me.

It's not the first time that a small attempt at idiosyncracy on my part, has been roundly trumped by a local enthusiast in this country. God, they wear their lunacy on their sleeves, especially where animals are concerned. It's like a constant game of "mental health whist" is underway. "I have a weird pet," "Oh do you, that's nice. I have an entire zoo in my trousers," "Well I have an entire zoo in my trousers and I only wear bedroom slippers in the street" "Well, I do wear my bedroom slippers in Tesco, but I have to spend quite a lot of time walking my six pet otters, and slippers aren't really sensible footwear for that." "Oh how lovely, well I am off to write to the paper as I am outraged that local horses aren't going to be allowed to walk in the indoor shopping mall" "Good for you, and I am going to email the local paper, and tell them about how my pet parrot can speak in tongues".

It's worrying that I care about how boring I appear, compared to the English. I have definitely been here too long.

Noreen

Doing My Duty By Wikipedia

2009-01-13T11:02:00.009Z

I've always disliked democratically written, pub-quiz trivia reference work Wikipedia, because it has a "knowing" tone, despite having huge gaps in its knowledge. So I have decided to transform Wikipedia from the inside, by writing an entry that it lacks, on "The Middle Voice In Ancient Greek". I'm actually finding it a challenge not to be judgemental about the Middle Voice because I think it is a rather jumped up piece of grammatical crap, but I realise that, despite Wikipedia being an amateurish bag of shite, personal opinion really ought not to come into an informative entry to the work. Here's what I have so far:

"Most languages are satisfied with simply an Active and a Passive voice . In the majority of situations that use a verb to describe them, a person is either doing something to someone, or having something done to them. X is doing Y to Z = Active Voice. Z is having y done to him by X =Passive Voice. Even in an intransitive situation, where the subject of the sentence isn't actually doing anything to anyone else at all - the subject of the sentence is, nonetheless, still doing something, and therefore ought to be spoken about in the Active Voice of the verb. The clearest example of an intrasitive verb, is the verb to be : John is at home "ho Ioannees oikoi" -( I can't find the correct font so fuck off). In the same vein, an example of the Passive Voice "to kreas esthietai" (meat is eaten) does not necessarily require clarification as to by whom or what exactly, it has been eaten. It's just passive meat, sitting there, being eaten by someone or something we are not interested in.

When someone is doing something to themselves, rather than to someone or something else, most languages are content to leave it at a reflexive verb: je me lave le visage, I pick myself up, Ich frage mich ob du wirklich noch 'was Kuchen brauchst, dicke Kuh. However, Ancient Greek prefers to add another voice to the more mainstream Active and Passive - the Middle Voice. So where the verb used in English is reflexive, Greek would use the verb in its Middle form.

If the Subject of the verb both initates the action, and participates in its outcome the verb will be in the Middle voice. In addition to this, when there is some confusion as to whether the supposed nominative of the sentence was really taking an active or passive part in the proceedings, Greek uses the Middle Voice to blur the boundaries of precision. That is why Greek was used in the New testament, as the Middle Voice was required, both to get around Voice-predictingly difficult concepts like "rising" (from the dead) or "being raised" (from the dead), AND the challenges presented by the nominative of a sentence being part of a Trinity, making it hard to tell exactly which of the three possibilities is actually carrying out, or benefiting from the verb. So there you have it -the Middle Voice in Greek. Look in your Abbot and Mansfield for how to create it, and learn your principal parts."

Suggestions for amendment in the comments please.

Noreen

The Holy Land Can Fuck Off

2009-01-10T16:30:00.005Z

Under their cheap, Christmas scarves, British people are frightened - not so much by the precarity of their situations, but by the relentless pursuit in the media, of boring, yawny- yawny crap about the Middle East. I hate the whole of the Middle East, apart from the food, and even that has an exception - felafel. I loathe felafel - dirty -tasting, mealy, old owl pellets, made from dried Broad Beans. Disgusting.

As a Catholic, I know I ought to think the Holy Land is great, but I have no desire to hang around there praying at all. When I was about seven, and had been forced to go to a Protestant school, my mother used to take me to the local convent, for weekly religious instruction. One kind nun gave me a rosary she had brought back from Jerusalem. The beads were made of wood, and there was a bit of red oily stuff set into a filagree metal disc, at the point just after you announce the first mystery. The oily matter in the disc, apparently, had touched the cross of Our Lord.

The Holy Land leaves me entirely cold - the Christian part is full of rather dodgy Orthodox people, rubbing away at stones and doing peculiar Byzantine stuff - it's not half as good as Rome. And the rest of the Holy Land can really fuck off - it's full of frightful, ranting, mad faced loonies who like killing and yelling about their respective Gods

I think Mormons are utterly insane - but I have to hand it to them for creating their own Holy Land in the US of A - it takes some of the religious pressure off the Other Holy Land I guess. And all those Far Eastern religions - thank you for being relatively self contained over there - although the Dalai Lama can fuck off as well "Tibet this, Tibet that"- he gets on my nerves.

I have never understood why people are all "Don't talk about religion - it's a taboo subject" It is not a taboo subject - but getting all hot under the collar about it is a gay subject, like knowing all the words to showtunes or liking Audrey Hepburn.

Noreen

The Art Of Conversation In January

2009-01-10T16:30:00.002Z

"Well how would you feel if people started lobbing grenades at London - hmm? That's right - You'd bomb the fuck out of them too"

"I've decided to avoid wheat because I just feel it makes me lethargic, and my tummy gets all hard, like an hour after I've eaten bread, and my doctor thinks I have IBS maybe or like PRE IBS and it's so weird because since I stopped eating wheat I have loads of energy and I bought a new skirt and seriously - it's like the twelve is almost loose"

"I mean, it's not unreasonable to feel the need to STAMP on anti-semitism as soon as even a slight whiff of it is in the air - god I mean you can understand it, can't you"

"I've been thinking for a while that dairy and I don't get on either? You know - I mean I'm not exactly allergic but it definitely makes more mucous and I just feel, well, congested and sort of inflamed, and like my insides are inflamed and I really do notice how much lighter and more energetic i feel since I have been cutting it out"

"Anyway Hillary Clinton is going to be Secretary of State and she is very pro Israel"

"This year is definitely going to be the year where I listen to my body"

Noreen

Choices, Choices

2009-01-10T16:25:00.001Z

All the choices available to people in life will have their advantages and disadvantages. Even very violent practices will have their pros and cons. Some people like being strangled, as it has an erotic effect on the body. I imagine the first few seconds of being disembowelled might have a similar frisson. Obviously too much strangling or too much disembowelling is going too far and results in death. But a little strangulation/bottom foraging can be fun.

I think I've been in England too long..

Noreen

Thumbs Up For The English Language

2009-01-09T18:56:00.003Z

When the English needed words for dried fruits, they took the French words for fresh fruits and used them. So the English word for dried plum is a "prune" (which is the French for a fresh plum - an English prune is "prune seche" in French) and a dried grape is called a "raisin" (an English raisin in French is a "raisin sec").

A Neuro Linguistic Programming Master would probably start on saying: "The reason for that particular choice of the French word, is to embed the suggestion into English peoples' minds, that French fresh fruits are actually wrinkly and shrivelled up and not worth importing". And they would be absolutely right.
Noreen

American Irony

2008-12-18T18:19:00.010Z

I went to a party thrown by some Yanks in London. It was good fun - the location was excellent, there was plenty of champagne, and all the Americans there were having an evening off from being boastful cunts, and instead, were trying their hand at self deprecating English humour: "Oh don't worry, we won't go on about how we got independence from you again" or "Not all our holidays are about seceding from the English, you know". And they were very keen to show off how much they knew about Britain: "Oh we love the Lake District!" one of the Yanks said. "We love your trains!", I heard as well - admittedly from a rather chubby, mad-looking woman in a large, grey sack of a dress, who grinned broadly and opened her eyes really wide, every time she spoke, displaying unequal sized pupils. Fuck me - I've been on an American train and it was like the Orient Express compared to the shit that rolls around the UK. One word for her - lithium.

It may have been the champagne, but I decided to ignore the toadying all the Yanks were doing to their British counterparts, and instead, put their sycophantic chat down to charming, if over zealous, diplomacy. My mood changed a little when the food came around. After the Quebec raw elk incident, at foreign parties, I always ask what exactly I am being offered. Like the Quebecois, Yanks are North American - so it is more than possible that what is touring the room, is a raw reindeer bollock smothered in cranberry sauce.

"Would you like some Stilton cheesecake?" said the waitress. "I'm sorry," I said. "What is that actually?" "It's Stilton cheesecake," said the waitress, patiently. "What - like cheesecake the pudding?" "Yes," she said slowly, "Except it's made out of Stilton cheese".

Fuck me, there's fusion food like peking duck sushi, or chicken tikka pizza, which is pretty avant garde, but at least it is a "savoury" alliance, not a mad mixture of main course and pudding. And then there is dirty old shit. Stilton cheesecake. The filthy swine.

One British man had taken a square of the cheesecake, before being told what it was. With the image of Mummy or Matron in his head, reminding him that gentlemen must eat what they touch, the poor man clearly felt obliged to down the thing. He bravely popped the stilton cheesecake in his mouth, his eyes swam with tears for a moment, then he swiftly drained the contents of his champagne flute. I followed the waitress with the cheesecake, at a slight distance, and quickly separated out the savvy Brits, who smiled and waved away the vile tray, from the dopey, florid men, who shovelled the cheesecake in, assuming it was some type of pate on a cracker, and then paused with an expression similar to that on the face of someone on the receiving end of an enema. I didn't notice any Yanks eating it. Happy Holidays, you cunts

Noreen

Nuts - part two

2008-12-16T13:04:00.005Z

I went to the zoo the other week and saw these lions fucking. The odd thing about it was that they were in the missionary position - the woman lion was on her back with her lower legs spread, the male lion climbed on, and with his back legs in between hers, pumped away quite vigorously for a few minutes, giving a quiet growl here and there, until he came. The woman lion didn't struggle or try and get away, she lay still and seemed to like it well enough. I was pleased for them both, the lions got the ride, and the next time some drippy girl at a party starts "endangered- speciesing" at me, I can tell her that the lions in captivity are doing their bit to keep the lion race going, and I have seen it with my own eyes. Anyway - the reason I am telling you this is because I was very disappointed with the lion's mickey. He had a large swinging pair of balls, lightly covered in a golden fuzz, but his cock was like a little red cone. I know that balls are the bit of the male tackle that provide the swimmers and therefore arguably are the most important part of the genitalia, but I still like a penis to look imposing.

Men talk about shaving their nuts a lot. Ball Bag dithered about doing it a while back, my friend Richard has just trimmed his mangina and my friend Harry regularly shaves all the pubes off his nuts. I asked him why he bothers - it isn't as if he has to strut around in a high cut pair of tanga knickers, and he explained that he shaves his balls thoroughly as he wants women to suck them, and thinks that smooth balls will be a great lure for the ball-sucking lady and she'll be elbowing the pussycat dolls out of the way to get her chops around them.

For the record, gentlemen, women never want to suck nuts - they just don't. They will do it out of pity, for money, to get the reciprocation, or to offer it up, but there are no women who wake up in the morning and think to themselves "Today, I would like to put a ball sack in my mouth". Never. Shaving the hairs off balls makes them no more enticing to lick, just less ticklish -it would not make the difference between nut-sucking, or not nut sucking, the reasons for nut sucking are the ones listed above - nothing to do with smoothness. Anyway most men don't have really long hair on their balls, and if they do - well they might enjoy having them brushed rather than slobbered over.
Noreen

He Clearly Hasn't Ever Had Any Staff, The Fucking Pleb

2008-12-15T16:26:00.004Z

Neil Young is a miserable bastard, second only to that po-faced gloom bard, Leonard Cohen. I don't know what it is with these men and their monotonous, tuneless, grim and melancholic songs - why can't they play something with a bit of life to it? Everyone knows music alters the mood and I cannot see why anyone would set out to make themselves suicidal, listening to those depressing old arses. Anyway - it's not only the melody of Mr Young's songs that is getting me down, it's his lyrics as well. "A man needs a maid." I don't fucking think he does, not without thinking the consequences through properly first.

People often think having domestic staff is great and a real help. Well it is in many ways - it is always great not to have to do your cleaning or your ironing - I can't fault that logic. However, having a maid carries with it a serious responsibility as an employer, and effectively if a man were to get a maid, then he would be responsible not only for her salary but also for her professional development, safety at work, as well as listening to any grievances she might have, thinking about Chrsitmas bonuses, dealing with personal problems that impinge on the timing/quality of her work and keeping an eye on his jewellery so she doesn't thieve it. It's all very well for these singers just scribbling down some old shit that pops into the head and setting it to a tune on three notes, and getting a whole load of mindless miserable people to buy it and drone along "A man needs a maid, a maaaaaaiiiiiiid" but it is very irresponsible indeed. Don't listen to him. Think hard before you get a maid, or do your own cleaning you lazy, filthy knackers.

Noreen

Non Gender Specific Virus Of The Orthomyxoviridae Family

2008-12-11T12:19:00.011Z

I've been ill for a week. Before that, I just couldn't be arsed to update the blog, but the last week I've actually been chronic. Coughing up great pieces of stuff, hot and sweating like a bitch, I can't eat and my face has got all thin. My head feels like there are rocks rattling in it, and my naturally olive skin has taken on a paleness to give a ginger person a run for their money.

Given half a chance, I've been cocooned in my house, exhaling bubons and spores only at the walls, sparing the general public my germs - but I really had to go into town yesterday. I don't ever make a fuss about the tube, or all those shopping cunts, or any of the other things people whine about in London - it's always been shit, it's still shit, so doing central London ill, is not significantly worse than doing it healthy.

What I really do object to, in central London, or indeed anywhere at all, is people talking about "man flu". I've heard the phrase before, it's the sort of thing Nuts readers snigger about, in between droning on about naff cars, or dressing like toddlers. Or the kind of thing the Guardian does a hilarious piece on, made a little bit highbrow by some tame doctor wittering on a bit about "brain sex issues" and "male perception of pain", that ends with the crazy columnist either accepting defeat (if he is a man) and admitting that he probably does exaggerate his symptoms a bit, or making a funny comment about some other health-related gender predjudice , but this time in favour of the male sex (if the columnist is a woman). I don't know whether the Guardian have done that or not, but it's the sort of shit they spit out regularly. A little bit pop-culture, a little bit deep - the cunts.

" Ah - you must have man-flu!" said the man on the door of the building I was visiting, as he watched me blow my nose. I smiled, showing him a skein of light green phlegm, stretched across my teeth. Inside the place, a man I passed on the stairs winked at me, as I let rip a consumptive cough, spattering the walls with blood-flecked sputum, and said: "Thank your lucky stars you aren't a man. WE have to suffer Man flu - that can kill you, you know". A woman I was chatting to later, peered closely at my red, sore, upper lip. "You don't look well" she said. "I have the flu." I said. "I wanted to stay at home, but really had to come to today's thing". "Well" she said "If you had man flu, you really wouldn't have been able to make it - man flu is terminal I've heard!". I really fucking hope it is, for two reasons - the first being that when I am dead, no one will talk about the man flu, and all the people who have already talked to me about the man flu will have caught it from me and die too.
Noreen

Whirling

2008-11-13T18:05:00.004Z

I got trapped in a conversation, where a woman was telling me about an argument she had with a man over where he parked his car. She's quite a nice woman as it happens, but the mouth on her, Jesus, she needs to clean her teeth. Anyway here's a transcript:

"So I turned round to 'im and said: 'I don't think so mate, you can't fucking park there, it's on my drive', and then 'e turned round to me and said: 'I'll park where I fucking want, you slag' so then I've turned round to 'im and said: 'Don't call me a fucking slag you fucking nonce - I've seen you looking at all them schoolgirls' and then 'e's turned round to me and he's said: 'Did you call me a nonce? I'll fucking burn your fucking house', so I've turned around, and I've said: 'Are you fucking threatening my family, you fucking nonce? Have you noticed that everyone in the street thinks you're a fucking nonce as well, and one word from me and you'll be the one looking like Simon Weston?' and so 'e's turned around to me, and he's got 'is face right there, and e's said: "I'm not moving my car. Fucking deal with it you fucking mouthy slag".

What I want to know, is what way round they were facing to start with. By my calculations, they probably both started out by not having eye contact, so began by performing a half turn apiece, followed by pirouette, pirouette, pirouette, pirouette. If they were facing each other when the conversation began it would have been pirouette, pirouette, pirouette, pirouette, pirouette, pirouette. I have been thinking about this for nearly a month.
Noreen

Nuts

2008-11-03T13:25:00.007Z

Nuts are a divisive issue. On the one hand there are people who are violently allergic to them - so much so that they can't stand near a nut tree or even think about nuts. On the other hand there are people who argue about the best type of nut and get passionate about the subject. There is a class element to nut choice, as well and there is a definite vogue for the different breeds of nuts.

Women often boast about the pecan. Shaped like a flattened brain, it tastes of not much. "Oh but the pecan is a very special kind of nut" you will hear. "It is like a walnut, but far nicer". See - I don't like walnuts very much. I find them a bugger to crack - the shell gets caught in the convolutions of the kernel, the nut itself has a bitter taste and the texture is gritty and a bit oily. I'll eat one or two to be polite, but I am entirely happy to leave them alone. The logic of a pecan being "better than a walnut" is just like the difference between Danny Baker or Cheryl Baker - neither person is totally hideous, nor is either of them all that, both are humans on the telly, one is male, one is female and both are called Baker. Looking like a walnut, but not tasting bitter isn't the greatest feat in nutland. Off with you, pecan nuts and your fancy yank ways.

The other disproportionately popular nut du jour is the macadamia. I did not know what a macadamia nut was until about ten years ago, when I went on a long haul flight. The air hostess gave me a bag of nuts and they looked like chick peas - rounded with slight bumps. They were very bland. Bigger than peanuts, with a texture somewhere between a brazil nut and a cashew, macadamias are not as creamy as the cashew and lack the slight, dirty, bitterness of a brazil. They are perfectly servicable nuts to eat, salted, with a drink. They are also sold in every airport in the world, covered in chocolate and packaged in boxes with "A present from (insert name of airport here) on them. I got slightly obsessed with the provenance of macadamia nuts for a while. My Australian friends told me they were Australian nuts, but the Chinese claimed they were discovered in China and sell them in boxes with pictures of pandas on. The Moroccans flog them in boxes decorated with camels and Berbers and I have seen boxes of macadamias on sale in the Harrods shop at Heathrow, complete with a little teddybear dressed as a beefeater painted on the lid. The one mystery for me is why anyone gives a fuck about them. They are very plain nuts -yes, I'll give you they have a versatility but they are just nuts. Nuts are for squirrels.
Noreen

Guided Rolling

2008-10-23T17:06:00.005+01:00

Crown Bowls and Lawn Bowls are boring, grass-based sports that old people play. I don't really see how old people can like playing them, because both sports require an element of lunging and knee bending, activities that most elderly people make an almighty fuss about, second only to "having a fall" and slightly above making pincer movements with arthritic paws. However - bowling is a great way for the old to get the ride, they do not have "My Single Friend" websites, and although time is not on their side, and they ought to be packing the fun into every geriatric moment, most old people wouldn't be able to get their heads around speed dating and would spend the whole of the date dithering, and wondering where to sit. So the Bowls is a fine way to get a look at some old lady or old man's arse as they bend forward, to roll a ball towards another ball.

People who are not old, should avoid rolling balls in straight lines, it is just weird. Non-French people, who play boules or petanque and look around themselves for approval when they pronounce the word with a bit of the old French accent, need shooting through the hole. French people who play boules and petanque are cunts - but we knew that anyway.
Noreen

A Disappointment of Belly Bars

2008-10-22T18:56:00.012+01:00

I massively prefer the company of English women in their early twenties, to the older hags that populate this island. The young ones are more fun and rarely have children - they seem to breed very late over here. When they do - English mothers spend all of their time talking to infants about the semantic difference between "Can" and "May" which is a spectacularly dull thing to talk to anyone about, especially a child - no wonder their children are so vile or autistic or have the ADHD - I would too, given that sort of yawny-fuck parenting conversation. But I digress.

Young English women look very peculiar - they seem to wear all their clothes and accessories at once - a dress over trousers, a belt, two or three scarves, a hat, earrings, necklaces, gloves, bangles, tights, socks, leg warmers, boots, six or seven rings, sunglasses concealing too much mascara and really enormous handbags that you could put a roadkill deer in. In Morocco the girls either wore big djellabas and headscarves, or tarty clothes about six sizes too small for them, and their figures were on the generous side - so I notice the eclectism and slightly scatty bagladyness of the English younger woman, as a less showy, female display tactic.

I got talking to some young English women recently, and they were telling me about the group holiday they had been on during the summer. A lot of fun was had going out to the clubs and sunbathing, and someone had bought some clothes and someone else had got the diarrhoea from eating a dodgy paella - nothing out of the ordinary. Anyway - as they were recounting the japes, a girl with vellous hair on her cheeks, furrowed her brow and lowered her voice. "Oh.My.God" she said "Nightmare, though". The other girls all gasped and nodded their heads in unison. "Becks, yeah. Becks had a shock errrr". Becks - a girl with a very straight, and slightly thin bob and large nostrils, looked confused: "What are you on about?" she said. The one with the furrowed brow shook her slightly-curled layers impatiently. "How can you have forgotten?" she said "Your belly bar - that's what!". Becks flushed a deep shade of aubergine. "Oh. My. God". She said "I think I blocked it out - that was a nightmare". The other girls all nodded their heads. "Becks lost her belly bar", they said, slowly.

I know what a belly bar is - I am not that old, and although I would never wear one for two reasons - the first being a dislike of gratuitous pain, the second that I have had three children and do not have the stomach I once did - so have no desire to draw the eye down there with a piece of metal wedged through my navel, I generously get that both men and women think this sort of jewellery looks hot. But this losing of the belly bar sounded horrendous - perhaps the piece of cheap metal worked its way into the abdominal cavity, an accident that could only be undone by a complicated procedure, requiring strong magnets to locate the adornment, and maybe the use of a great, big, sharp machete to chop the fucker out, ideally from a spot uncomfortably near to the spleen, or even snuggled up next to a kidney, making it touch and go whether a vital organ would be damaged in the removal process.

It was not nearly as dramatic as I would have liked - the girl with the purple face's belly bar had fallen out into her knickers, and then got lost in the sand. She then forced another friend (one who had recently had laser eye surgery)to hunt up and down the beach for hours, but the search was not successful. That is all.
Noreen

Father Kevin and the Djinns

2008-10-21T17:11:00.012+01:00

Sorry I have been away. I was talking to a priest. I like talking to priests a lot- clearly I have to tone down the language, and I do skirt generously around the many omissions and deficits regarding my personal pursuit of the One True Faith during priestly chats. But a good confession and a spot of extreme unction before I die, should square away any rampant promiscuity, erratic attendance at mass and my dislike of communion wafer texture (I have a sensitive gag reflex - although not when I have a cock in my mouth, which to me and to the men that have been in my life, should help to prove the existence of Our Lord). Yes, I do like talking to a priest - they have all had a decent classical education and have been around the block a bit - we have a lot in common, me and your men of God.

In any conversation, I like to take the helm - other people tend to choose tedious subjects to talk about -usually a glorified version of talking about themselves; wittering on about their children, or the price of stuff they have being buying recently, or where they have been, or would like to go on a holiday and I really don't care about any of those things at all. I spend enough time in my working life listening to people going on and on about themselves- in my free time I like to talk about more serious and philosophical things.

So I decided to talk about Djinns to Father Kevin, and to find out whether or not he would be prepared to kill a cow, in order to appease evil spirits. He kept on: "I don't believe that killing a cow would get rid of Djinns anyway," and I was saying "Even though I am a vegetarian I would kill a cow with my bare hands to placate the Djinns". So then Father Kevin was all: "I don't even believe in Djinns" and I had to point out that if people, perhaps as a result of the savage, uneducated, simplicity of their Non-Catholic lives, chose to believe that there were Djinns - then there were Djinns. It was a matter of these heathen folks' perception -something that might not feel like a problem in one person's life, could be perceived as a highly stressful event in another's. Catholics might not register Djinns as a threat to their spiritual lives - but if we are in a society where Djinns are perceived as a threat - they are a threat, it is as simple as that. So, therefore, in a society where the Djinn is a feared mental aggressor, killing cows to appease them is necessary, whether you personally believe in Djinns or not.

Then Father Kevin got out the trump card, and said that killing a cow to appease a Djinn would be an occasion of sin, which I think is bollocks, and he only said it because he wanted to talk about Tridentine mass and praying for the conversion of Jews.
Noreen

Arma Virumque Cano

2008-10-07T11:01:00.013+01:00

I don't mind that Twenty Major has got tired of blogging - after all the novelty wears off on most things. Maybe he has a VLOG now or is busy on twitter, or maybe he is just rubbing his cock against the manuscript of his next book, or perhaps he has decided to spend more time out of doors.

His last post was a guff of explanation, and a trail of bloggers (most of whom have been far quicker off the mark than me - Jesus, it's been a week or something) have been mourning and going on "Oh he has his reasons" and "blogging is not what it was", which is a monumentally gay thing to say. The "blogosphere", Irish or otherwise, is like the floor of a labioplasty operating theatre - littered with cunts (there Twenty, a terrible joke in your honour) - who cares if other bloggers support you, or don't support you or whatever - leave them be. There are more people blogging now than there were when I started, and that is great - good for them. I mean - most of the stuff, on most blogs, is pure liquid shite, but everyone is entitled to write their shite on the internet without some cunt editor telling them to be accurate or spell nicely.

The hardest choice for a blogger is whether or not to relinquish his freedom. Do you become your readers' bitch in order to get more of them on the stat meter, or do you ignore them altogether and write whatever you like? Obviously, if you get into the money side of things, this choice is removed somewhat, as you have to dance to someone's tune - get the gogglers on your blog, get the bums on the seats, whatever. But there you go,the choice may be tricky, but all outcomes are good - you can sell your writing, or not. Win, and, oh look! What is that? Another win.

And as for the idea of communities - well it makes me feel a bit dirty. It's like your woman who got obsessed with a man she "married" on that wacky game "second life" - you become a nutcase if you start getting dependent on the internet. The internet is a space beyond a computer - fill it with whatever you like, and use it to fill voids in your life, but don't let it stop any voids being filled with tangible things. Before any of the real soppy ones start up with that: "My internet friends are my real friends" bollocks - I am not suggesting that strong relationships cannot be facilitated by the internet - in fact - my relationship counsellor friend claims the internet has put a lot of business her way, as people are more frequently finding their real soulmates on the other side of the world through a computer, and parking their spouses- I am just saying that the internet should be used wisely. Remember the film Sleepless in Seattle? Well there you have it. The Man In It was in the same town as The Main One - was he not? She could have met him off-line, by being sociable in the Starbucks, the introverted whore -sometimes people do not see what is under their noses. The internet, although it broadens the mind and experiences on a virtual level, often replaces the need to discover what has been available all along in the real world. The nice distance a screen gives you is a useful tool for the shy - but you won't learn decent social skills, or get the ride off something other than your hand or a prosthetic genital, unless you haul your pasty arses out there and talk to peoples' faces. Anyway - I don't want to get into the great discussion of what is real or fake, and whether or not virtual life is actually more real than real life, if that is what we want it to be, because the next thing will be that someone will be talking about wormholes, and then that cunt Stephen Hawking will be on here, blarting away: "space-time continuum this and that", and someone else will pipe up about how modern life is becoming like The Matrix, only we are conscious and wired to computers willingly, and it makes me very feel tired and old.

So - and I've edited to add this in case I do not make complete sense (!), in short, to conclude, to sum up - blog communities - nice, but not necessary. Blog, or don't. If it isn't fun - then definitely don't do it. I'm not gnashing my teeth for Twenty, because I get that he is tired of blogging- if you don't like that, fuck off.

Virgil asked his slave to burn the Aeneid, when he was on his death bed as it "wasn't perfect" and writers have a habit of shooting themselves in the foot in order to be all dramatic and artistic. However, after long reflection, I have decided that Twenty Major did not want to emulate that boring old cunt, epic as the adventures of Dirty Dave and the other ones were.

I think the death of Twenty Major was an act of euthanasia. See, Twenty's lot were on their way to liver failure really, with all the drinking and unhealthiness. It is nicer to kill them off before we have to witness them vomiting up blood, turning yellow and shrivelling up (although I would watch) and if they were to take the pledge, the gap in each of their lives would be too great and their collective imaginations too shrivelled by absinthe to dream up anything to occupy it. They'd die of broken hearts.

So long Twenty, you old cunt.

Noreen

Don't Waste Your Time Kicking Love's Withered Carcass, Jonathan

2008-10-01T12:51:00.015+01:00

The death of love is a terrible thing for most people. They fight and struggle to keep it alive, wring their hands, furious and bereft, keening and weeping, until, finally, they embalm love's corpse, like a great big pickled communist leader, and there it stays, still indoctrinating from beyond the grave, lying in state before the world.

Love is a myth, like riches*, gods and ghosts. A myth, which, when acknowledged as a distant concept can enhance a life, when taken on as a full raison d'etre is just disastrous and embarassing.

Many people approach love as if it were a mystical, sacred thing - in fact Sting - who is a Big Cunt, called one of his albums "Sacred Love", the fucking eejit, playing that cretinous lute and chanting "sacred this, sacred that".

I hate sacred things- sacred is a pompous expression, as is faith, and I can't abide people talking about that either. Life is simply, mindlessly dull and love is invented to make people feel that they have done something spectacular, when actually they have just exchanged some cliches and removed their underwear. And as for people who come out with: "when you meet the one - you just know", which is utter shit, as one can meet the one, and then the next one, and then the one after that and then a whole load more ones, varying according to one's age, location, vulnerability, predisposition to agoraphobia, languages spoken etc - well people who say "when you meet the one, you just know" are the most awful, boring cunts in the world. I'd shoot them, but it would cut short the pain they suffer, which I rather enjoy watching, when "the one" turns out to be a mindless whore, or a borderline nonce, or just a really committed Ipsich Town Supporter, or a keen online shopper.

Most of my sceptism stems from looking at people and their "ones", and finding it difficult to see what is so magical about love's equation. I can always spot what it is that has caused the couple's connection - what the joint focus is, and this is often the cause of their undoing.

I think "love" is like taste or smell - although one person might think lemons taste the way they do on their tongue - another person's lemon might taste to them, like my sensation of the taste of walnut . Anyway - the point is that as long as both parties decide on a name for the taste and call it "orange" even though it is actually lemon to one and walnut to the other - the relationship will stand up for as long as they both agree that their relationship tastes of oranges, and they buy into the rebranding of lemon and walnut as "orange". The moment one party questions the flavour - the magic has gone. So, if love eludes you, or "the one" turns out to be "the cunt", that's just because you haven't persuaded someone to share in a collective myth yet, or the other person in your partnership has stopped believing in the myth. Not a drama - just a return to reality and there can be positives - take when my brother Francis told me the truth about Father Christmas. I had a shit Christmas that year, I cried and was disappointed - but by the next one I had grasped that I could get up for a pee in the night without worrying about bumping into Santy in the corridor, and I could behave like a little shite all year around and my parents would still have to get me presents, as they were getting the others presents too and needed to treat us all the same - see? Be positive - this is it.

But above all, do not go prodding around trying to revive tattered, old feelings, or obsessing about whether or not you actually have "love", it is really unimportant. Like the thing people in London go on about, about there always being a rat six feet from you - there may be a rat, there may not be. Whatever the truth actually is, if there is a rat, it won't stay there for ever - you can be sure of that, but then again, there might well be another rat a bit later - or indeed no rat at all. The fact is that you don't often actually see a rat. Or perhaps the truth is that you only notice the big ones. Did you see a rat? If you haven't seen a rat, is it a comfort to know that there might be a rat nearby? I don't fucking want to see one, thanks - and I don't really see how thinking about rats is that helpful. But there we go - for some Londoners it seems an essential thing to do.

People who "believe in love and think they have the one" get really angry with me when I tell them my thoughts on the subject. "You are like Richard Dawkins, but about love" this woman said to me recently. I had my own dilemma then, because I was quite pleased at being compared to someone famous, but also quite annoyed because I think Dawkins is a bit of a tit, and so then, was fettered by my own feelings.

Noreen
*Riches, Philip Challinor, are a myth. Don't argue with me about it, I am not in the mood.

Apple Made Woman Turn To Crime

2008-09-24T12:50:00.006+01:00

I met this woman who was trying to elicit sympathy about her life. She was a mediocre sort of girl, but talked about herself as if trying to sell a story to Take A Break magazine - probably because she had no imagination or sense of humour and lived from the purchase of one overpriced gadget to the next - measuring her success by the type of mp3 player she was currently able to afford and organising her future by planning the next one she would buy when a new model came out. Her life, at present, was reasonably on track - she had a decent job, relationship, kept herself in iPods, had just got the iPhone - but a little later than a few of her colleagues, which stung a bit, but then was mitigated slightly by her sister not having got one yet - you know the type.

Anyway, after talking about phones and music players this woman moved on to the subject of a previous boyfriend, who had hit her, and whom she had, very sensibly, left. She announced dramatically that, because she had left her boyfriend, she was "forced to become an escort". I asked a few more questions about the "forcing" of the issue - and frankly she wasn't "forced" into becoming an escort at all, she chose the career herself. Her parents were comfortably off and kind, and would have been happy to help her - she refused to ask them, saying: "I didn't want them to say I told you so, about my ex" -A bizarre choice, but nonetheless her choice, and not a result of force. I then asked her about claiming benefits - why she had not done that, and her answer was "I have certain standards to maintain". Presumably indulging in an illegal activity that often forms part of the human trafficking chain and can, therefore, be tenuously linked to international terrorism isn't as damaging to her personal moral code, as the thought of spending a bit of taxpayers money on herself while she sorts her life out - but again there was a choice and she chose the option to whore. I totally didn't bother asking her whether she had considered getting a job in a shop, or telesales, I could see her financial requirements were clearly beyond that. And I don't mean to be unkind, but really she was no great shakes to look at - so she wasn't forced into escorting the way some supermodels are forced into modelling - their exquisite beauty making it impossible for them to walk down the street without agents harassing them, no this one did not have the type of sex appeal that beats you around the head when you meet her, she was plain and dull and not especially dirty. But, I guess, even if one is paying to poke the fire, one may not necessarily look too closely at the mantlepiece - so her ordinary looks would be no obstacle to that career, they just would not have made it an absolute must.

No, she really annoyed me, this woman, for a number of reasons. I personally think there is nothing wrong with being a prostitute apart from the illegality/terrorism link, and if this woman had stood up for the independent decision that she had made to become an escort, instead of trying to elicit sympathy for herself for having made that particular career choice when there were other financial options open to her, I would have had some respect for her courage. By her whiny attention seeking "ooh poor me I had to sell my body rather than ask Daddy for a loan" shit, she simply denigrates other young women who are doing the job because they are illegal immigrant sex slaves who have been deceived and not had any choice in the matter, or because they are women with mental health problems, who have a serious drug addiction to fund, which in some ways has removed the same choice from them, or indeed young women like Belle de Jour who do the job out of choice, because it pays well and then you can make a film about it. What is more, she is taking the bread out of these coerced/ideologically motivated hookers' mouths, the selfish bitch - just to line Steve Jobs' pocket.

Just out of interest I asked her why her boyfriend had hit her. "Oh he was jealous". She said. "He used to accuse me of going with other men and being a whore". God, that must have really showed him then.

Anyway I hate people who tout for sympathy and attention from people in the pub instead of having a personality. And iPhones - I mean please. I wouldn't give a really bored hand job for an iPhone - they are great big lumps of bollock.

Noreen

A Challenge For David Milliband

2008-09-23T10:18:00.007+01:00

Situations that require exceptional diplomatic skills:

1. Accidentally squirting people with breastmilk.

2. Responding politely, negatively and effectively to: "It's bring a friend week at my local church/cult and I was wondering whether you would like to come along".

That's all I can think of at the moment. Further suggestions in the comments please.

Noreen

Invest in Misery

2008-09-17T18:17:00.018+01:00

As the Summer ends, and the first chill freshens the morning air - hollyhocks and foxgloves hang on to few, withering blooms and blackberries shrivel on their stalks, I start to feel the heavy weight of Seasonal Affective Disorder take its comfortable seat upon my shoulders. This season is hateful - I am aware that the year needs to die in order to be reborn, blah blah and that new life will spring from the rested earth, yielding tender stalks from beneath its winter blanket of rotting leaves, yet every year I dread the summer's departure. "It is fear of death," said the man at the Pound Shop. "You fear your own death, and the season's end reminds you that you now approach the Autumn of your own life."

I resent that - not least because at thirty six, I like to think of myself as in the early August of my life, or now that I have given up smoking, possibly even in the throes of a mid July seaside holiday. Cheeky cunt. To add to my misery, someone asked me if I was terminally ill the other day. At the time, I was holding forth in the sauna about visualisation, which, although a useful tool to help ease anxiety when death is imminent, can be used in a number of other situations - giving birth, for example, which most of the time is the opposite of death, or as a way to ignore men droning on and on and on about money or politics. I am not terminally ill, by the way, I probably just need to start wearing blusher and smiling more.

Autumn may be a bad time of year for me, but it's always a great time of year for relationship counsellors - traditionally the season of humdinging rows, as shared dreams and loving feelings are torn asunder by gusts of misery and drowned by pregnant clouds of frustration. This year more relationships than ever are in crisis, as a result of the credit crunch increasing pressures on couples. More and more people are finding the strain on their relationships too much to bear, and long to part, but don't have the money to separate. They can no longer afford for the woman to get a post-divorce makeover, or for the man to spend time at lap dancing clubs. Jointly owned property brings its own uncertainty - people prefer to wait before selling up. So miserable partners sit tight and return to old fashioned values, forced into fighting for their marriages, by the chilly precipitation of the current economic climate.

I was at a training course with a relationship counsellor just last week, she reeked of caviar. Her hands lay motionless in her lap throughout the seminar, weighted by oversized diamond rings. When she she walked, her thighs rubbed together, littering the floor with shavings of platinum. Dubloons and government bonds fell from her lips as she spoke of her forward investments: "I'm all about gas" she said. You heard it here first.
Noreen

That Is Not How I Roll

2008-09-15T17:38:00.010+01:00

I love long distance running - I am not especially good at it, but I adore being outside, runing through wind and rain and sun and snow and hail, through towns and countryside, roads and mud. To enjoy a long run, without having to give a shit about the traffic and crossing roads, and to have people serve me glasses of water at 5 Km intervals instead of having to carry my own, I take part in half marathons - my favourite distance, as I lack the attention span for a whole marathon but find 10 K races too short.

I take my training tactics from Usain Bolt - you know, your man who broke the 100m record at the olympics, by preparing for his race with a nice kip and a dinner of chicken nuggets in front of the TV. I know, I'm female, white, and old, and I run long distance, but when I go to races I am not one of those idiots you see in lycra, with the belts with little bottles of liquid carbohydrate solution, talking about PBs (that's personal bests, Homes), swaggering about lubing armpits and nipples with grease, or gassing people in a cloud of pre-emptive deep heat, eyeing up the competition, pushing to the front, jumping and stretching and running on the spot. No. I wear shorts and a t shirt and sit firmly on my arse near the start line, until the gun goes off - I do not waste a calorie doing any gay stretching or warming up, and, although, like all other humans who run a long way, I do feel sick and faint and exhausted after I have run about 11 miles, do you know what? I just fucking well get on with it, rather than pissing about eating strange stuff and drinking gay little shots of things and making a terrible fuss. It's not a fucking picnic, it's a run outside, oh, and it's voluntary - so if you are worried about feeling sick or getting the sun in your eyes, or being able to move a foot without a lucozade related product going down your maw - then fucking stay at home or go and run in a gym with air conditioning and blinds and a shop selling overpriced glucose crap. Yes, I love running but I fucking hate runners - especially the ones in running clubs: boring, self absorbed narcissists. I would rather spend time with those wife swapping, nickname -calling drunks, the Hash Harriers, and I would only spend time with them, if I were sure I could offer the experience up, to speed a soul through Purgatory.

For all that "I'm a purist" stuff though, I do like a bit of music to run to, and the last race I did appalled me by having signs up everywhere going: "Health and Safety - no iPods/MP3s".

I asked a marshall what the fuck that was about. "It's for your health and your safety," he said, sagely. "How?" I asked him. "If you are listening to an iPod - you will not be able to hear anything else," he explained.

Fuck me. That is the point of an iPod - is it not? To drown out unwanted sounds. Without an iPod in a road race, all you can hear is the slapping of millions of rubbery feet on concrete, concentrated panting, and sighing and inane chatter about carbohydrates, or people's ancient injuries, or their moronic "strategies" to shave 30 seconds off their "PB". Alternatively, men try and get the ride off you by asking stuff like "so - what brings you here?" when it is totally fucking obvious, by the fact that you are red-faced, sweating like a whore in church and running with a gaggle of idiots for miles along a road, that you are participating in the same road race as them. I could chant a mantra instead of listening to music, or think about stuff, but the very reason I run, is so as not to think about stuff, not to talk to anyone, nor to be asked anything by, or to do anything for anyone. I roll one iPod deep -and I'm talking an iPod primed with Floor Fillers and Power Ballads and some Phil Collins, bra. I think I prefer third world marathons, where, although they steal all the water and people jeer at you in the streets, you could run with a band of minstrels singing "Ride on Time" accompanied by horse fiddles if you wanted. Athletics Associations and Running Clubs fuck you.
Noreen

I No Longer Trust Ivana Trump

2008-09-08T18:05:00.011+01:00

A large, cardboard cut- out of Ivana Trump appeared outside my gym. That did not surprise me in the least, as the gym I attend is a fairly eccentric place. Mrs Trump was dressed in lycra and standing in a half squat, on what looked like a large pair of scales. Underneath her trainer-clad feet, was a list of names: Kenny Rogers, Karl Lagerfeld, The Olympic Bobsleigh Team, Des O'Connor, amongst others. I went in and smiled at the woman on reception: "You have a cardboard Ivana Trump outside". I said. "Yes" said the receptionist. "We are pushing the Power Plate - it is a machine that replaces gym workouts, creates bone density, removes cellulite, repairs injuries, treats arthritis and builds lean body mass". "And what about Kenny Rogers and Karl Lagerfeld ?" I asked. "Are they fans of the plate as well?" "Oh yes" said the receptionist. "They both use it. So does Matthew Pinsent". "Well then," I said. "If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me".

I had to be shown how to switch it on and off, by a designated instructor. It made a low, purring noise like a cheap lawnmower. There was a poster on the wall, with photos, showing a series of gyrations to be performed on the machine, helping it to send strong electronic currents through the body, twitching muscle groups and toning. I had a brief thought that it might even be an erotic experience up there on the vibrating platform, and that I might get to add density to my bones, whittle away flab and halt any nascent arthritis in its tracks, and get the cheap thrills alongside it. A treadmill with benefits. Not a chance. Fuck me, that jittering plate was the worst thing I have ever done. A juddering pulse of horror, banging through my head like the worse hangover of my life. Strange, shocking impulses, whipping up and down each leg. My hamstrings are fucked at the moment from running, as I am training for a half marathon - so I tried to contort myself into the pose shown on the picture for "deep hamstring massage". I nearly vomited with pain. The whole experience was quite disorentating, and as the strong currents raced through every cell, they caused a great wobblage, and the noise -dear God, the noise of the thing: roaring and grinding and groaning, I can only hope, as a clever way to mask the lowing and whimpering noises coming out intermittently, from between my rattling teeth. I groped around trying to turn the fucking thing off, as my skin started to detatch from its flesh.

I have given birth without pain relief, had a tooth pulled by a Chinese dentist, run a half marathon drunk and with no socks and I would do each of those things again, twice to avoid getting on one of those awful, awful machines. I don't care how good anybody is at bobsleighing, singing, designing clothes, rowing or having a lot of shoes, they have all plummeted in my estimation, for endorsing that fucking rattletrap effort. Ivana Trump - fuck you and your Power plate it is a great big vicious piece of throbbing shite.
Noreen

Flapping about

2008-09-01T15:30:00.008+01:00

There's a lot of whimsy about the butterfly and no surprise, really. A metamorphosing insect is bound to attract more attention than an ordinary earthworm, which, in turn, is more interesting than a flightless beetle - just by virtue of the worm being both blind, and a segmented tube that squeezes earth. So it is easy to see how a glamorous shape-changing butterfly is something that captures the imagination of little girls, spinsters, perimenopoausal women and men on the turn.

I have a recurring dream where I am a tattoo artist, and a twenty stone woman comes into my seaside parlour. She has a hard face, and her nose has a stud in it, housing a small, bright, turquoise piece of glass. And she is wearing a tight vest and a bra that is supposed to be invisible, the vast dugs are hoisted up by clear plastic straps that bite into the large doughy contours of her bare shoulders. Her trousers bisect her torso and create a waist by allowing pools of flesh to heap over her cheap belt and then hang down over her hips. The bottoms of her jeans are turn ups, chosen to display a suprisingly neat pair of ankles supporting calves that look like haggises, but for the delicate vine tendrils inked around them, creeping upwards inside the jeans. She has complicated acryllic toenails with patterns on - slightly too long, that peek out of a pair of wedge heeled sandals. Her second toe has a ring around it, set with a gem much like the one above her left nostril. "Surprise me" she announces as she descends into a leather chair that sighs, and images of dogs, cheap scent, ford cars, philandering boyfriends in fitted overironed shirts, a fleeting interest in white magic, large televisions, constant trips to the hairdresser, obsessive housecleaning, intense friendships that end badly, a warped self image with defensiveness to match, pop into my head. I tattoo a butterfly on the northern hemisphere of her great, wobbling right breast. A wing tip pokes out of the side of the see through bra.

I'm not sure why I told you that. Anyway - the thing that makes me shit most about butterflies, is the superstition that they are the souls of the dead. I've had a million fey idiots tell me stories of how a tiny azure butterfly landed on the coffin, at the funeral of a boy-child, or how, in a time of extreme stress, the appearance of a red admiral butterfly was the spirit of a courageous grandfather who used to be in the Navy, come to lend wisdom and support. Bollocks. Everyone who has seen that film, knows that a soul weighs 22 g, and I am delighted to say that there are no mammoth freak butterflies of that size around. The biggest butterfly is the Monarch at 0.5 g, which is still far too large for my liking, but definitely not heavy enough to be a soul. Butterflies are what they are - large flapping things which may or may not be colourful, used as a tribal recognition device by the innocent, ugly or unloved.
Noreen

Eight Things I Hate About Bananas

2008-08-30T18:16:00.006+01:00

I don't like the creaking noise bananas make, as you snap the stalk to peel them. I hate the cloying feeling on my fingertips of the sappy inside of the skin. I don't like the weird strings that shear off the sides of a peeled banana shaft. It makes me feel peculiar when there is a bruise discolouring that finely ridged, grey-white flesh. When you bite into a banana it leaves a slightly furry deposit on the outside of your teeth. The texture manages to be both greasy and powdery at the same time. Leave a banana exposed to the air for more than a nanosecond and it discolours to a dirty pale brown as the oils from the banana centre rise and react with the air. The base of a banana has a stumpy little tail with a small stick concealed within it, that clings on after peeling, like an projecting umbilicus.
Noreen

Taking The Baton From St John

2008-08-20T08:18:00.018+01:00

When I was in the sixth form at my English boarding school, the housemaster approached me about my forthcoming application to university. "Now Noreen", he boomed, looking at his racing green socks, "We need to think about your CV". "I've done it sir" I said smugly - and held out a dog-eared piece of A4. "Right" he said, glancing over it - "It's as I thought- nowhere does it demonstrate that you have taken responsibility for anything".

Now, my housemaster was as wet as a mackerel, and could barely control his own bowels, let alone a houseful of feral children - he devoted most of his working life to shirking his duties or shouting in an embarassing manner at House Rugby matches. He was pleasant enough, and given that I had once vomited on his shoes after drinking an obscene amount of wine at a school event, his lack of responsibility in writing to my parents was appreciated. I thought we were at an impasse, where he ran a loose ship, and we, the children, did not ask him for discipline. So this was some neck, I felt, giving out to me about responsibility. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir." I said. "I am in the second netball team and I turn up for matches - I think that is responsible of me. I'll give you that I don't go to all my lessons - but I'm only human. You wouldn't go to double German either if you had to put up with that moustachioed one breathing his halitosis all over the place". "That's enough O'Brien!" he said "The type of responsibility I am talking about, is being in charge of other people. Now remember the time you had to supervise prep for the first year boys?" I defended myself: "Oh come on now sir, that could happen to anyone!" "I have never heard a noise like it," said my housemaster "Bedlam. And the Sheikh's son was wearing your bra. I mean, you must have noticed that we didn't make you a prefect, and I hope you realised why".

Honestly? If they had made me a prefect I would have fallen down dead. Not only would it have shown a staggering lack of judgement, but I would have hated to be a prefect, loathed the thought of it. Wearing a gay little badge and trotting about "busting" people for smoking and "setting an example". I used to get these wan smiles and explanations from prefects explaining that the responsibility was worth the power it gave you- the special place you occupied there, that liminal position between child and adult, service user and serice giver, the great opportunity it gave for input and change - ah feck off.

"Noreen", said the housemaster. "I have been considering your strengths and weaknesses and I would like to offer you a position of responsibility for the religious welfare of the house - as House Sacristan". I stared at him, blankly. "Sir I am a Roman Catholic, This is a Protestant school. I don't know anything about Protestantism - I couldn't do it, I mean, thank you for thinking I am pious enough - but it'll have to be a no". I seriously thought the man had gone insane. How cruel, to make me forge a religious bond with a group of children whose faith would take them on a straight path to hell, regardless of how good they had been in life. And my mother, dear God, my mother, who had told me that it was a mortal sin to set foot in a Protestant "Place of Worship" - who had written, excusing me from the compulsory "chapel for the whole school" despite the fact that even the Jews and Arabs turned up for that one, my mother felt that the polluting atmosphere of the Protestant service would dampen my soul, like a morning fog. I was allowed to miss lessons on Holy Days of Obligation to wander down the high street to the Catholic Church and receive the Body of Our Lord onto my tongue, instead of gibbering foreign languages at a bunch of tweedy old men. If I took this role, it would kill her. I remembered a story one of the nuns had told me years ago, about a child, whose Protestant father hid her shoes, to prevent her from going to mass, so she just walked to mass in her bare feet, to demonstrate her unwavering devotion to Our Lord. I would need to show that kind of resolve, to get out of this corner.

"Nonsense, O'Brien" said the Housemaster "We are Anglo Catholics here - it's very high church, just like you lot, smells and bells, pongs and gongs, decent vestments, latin - you know. I mean good god, girl! It's all Christianity - we're all singing from the same hymn sheet - what?!

Anglo Catholic is one of those terms that makes me feel instantly tired, it is so frequently misused. The true definition of an Anglo Catholic is an English Catholic -one of those hardcore fuckers with a priesthole in their house, singing Faith Of Our Fathers, refusing to be set on fire by Protestants, withstanding centuries of pressure to switch to the other side -an entirely belligerent, English solider of the One True Faith. Anglicans, however, who describe themselves as "Anglo Catholic" are just fucking stupid. Having incense in your church does not make you a Catholic any more than it makes you a hippy. Are you frightened there is blood in your host? No? Then Fuck off, Proddy and stick your incense up your hole. And now, as a result of Anglican "Anglo Catholicism", I had a group of first year boys to occupy, for thirty minutes a week of religious discussion. How utterly, fucking appalling.

So I thought quickly, smiled sweetly and accepted the role with good grace. I remembered that people could baptise their kids in an emergency, to make sure that the innocents did not end up in Limbo, in event of their death before receiving the Sacrament of Baptism from a priest. Why then, I reasoned, could I not baptise the children for whom I was religiously responsible myself, using the BVM shaped bottle of holy water my brother had brought me from Lourdes? I had to be subtle about it, so I would just rest a wet finger on their heads and then silently to myself, I would say "I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" and during the course of our meetings, I would ask a leading question like :"would you say you agree with the devil, or would you be more inclined to renounce him and all of his works?" and you know what boys are like, they will agree with pretty much anything a woman says in order to get her to shut the yapper. By the end of my post as a House Sacristan, I had baptised forty thirteen- year- old boys. I'll see them in heaven.
Noreen

An Unusual Offer

2008-08-17T13:54:00.014+01:00

This old woman I met, was trying to get me to ride her son. That sounds bizarre, but it is not the first time it has happened to me - in fact most women in their thirties who do not wear a wedding ring, will have been approached by matchmaking mothers, a reasonable number of times. The mothers are usually panicking that their single sons are fruits, and figure that thirty -something women with no wedding rings on, will shag and marry just about anything in sight. So they get in there, these old ladies, and offer the ride, on behalf of their male children. I have two sons and will be doing exactly the same in twenty years time if they haven't got their lazy arses married - sidling up to the most flexible women in the yoga class, and going on about my boys, and how they have the largest mickeys in the world, or something. It is quite normal for women to lose the dignity in old age, when they are on a crusade for grandchildren.

The man I was being offered, may well have had the largest mickey in the world, however that was not the point on which his mother was trying to sell him. After explaining to me that he was astonishingly tall and handsome, she delivered the winning line: "He is an anaesthetist, you see". I really did not know what to make of that. I suppose the benefit in having an anaesthetist as a life partner would be that you could sleep through the dull parts of the marriage, which for me would include the wedding, as I hate weddings, and probably require me to remain under for many years and come around at his funeral, and although that would make the most of his professional skill, I think it would be a terrible waste of my life. As a couple, one half of whom was an anaesthetist, there could be some fun, I suppose- like, he could surprise me with an epidural before we made a trip to the supermarket, and it would be a great laugh to try and walk about and get the shopping, with the bottom half of my body all numb and wobbly, or he could lovingly give me a pudendal block, and then we could have sex and see how weird that was, but, no matter what anaesthetic tricks he had up his sleeve, I am sure the novelty would wear off fairly quickly.

Anyway - I did not want to be rude to the woman, as her motives were well-intentioned, so I asked "Oh really? Which hospital is he at then?". "Oh he is not at a hospital" said my suitor-to-be's mother. "No, he is a freelance anaesthetist". Sweet Jesus! What is the world coming to. People wandering about the streets, freelancing their trade: "Would you like a bit of a nap now?". "Count down from ten to one, that's the way", or touting themselves on the internet, selling numbness. So I spat a lot when I talked to her, and tried to make one eye look in a slightly different direction to the other, there is nothing like a cod eye to put off a prospective mother in law, and soon she was hovvering around another woman, talking about the famous people her son has put to sleep, the mental old hag.
Noreen

Suffer the little children

2008-08-14T07:37:00.014+01:00

My sister Maud takes her enormous child to a baby music class, where he can caterwaul and wallop drums and generally enjoy an atmosphere of singing and jollity. Unfortunately the fun is undermined by a bossy whore, who insists on trying to teach a bunch of infants less than a year old baby sign language.

I have nothing against adult sign language - why would I? It helps deaf people to communicate and because it is silent - there really isn't much to complain about. OK - if I were being really fussy, I have to say I am not a massive fan of the mouthing of words silently that goes along with some sign languages - and to be honest if I were deaf myself, I would give that a miss, as most people can have a stab at lip reading, but very few people can work out what is being said with the hands. No , sign language is cool, precisely because you can sit on the bus and talk to your mate about the gargantuan size of the woman's arse in front of you, without her or anyone else knowing how uncharitable you actually are.

Non-deaf children, and babies who are only months old, well the last thing they need is to be learning a language with their hands, it is enough just to concentrate on the business of growing larger and not getting meningitis. Having a secret language to talk about arse size is not a priority for the pre schooler, this age range should focus on learning to babble simple words, at their own pace. I've heard a range of mewling harpies on the subject of baby sign language, explaining how it "helps the child to be able to communicate better". Bollocks it does. Screaming until your face goes puce is an extremely effective way of making sure you get fed, or indeed anything else you fancy. Signing "titty" to your mother through the bars of your cot while she snores away in bed won't get you anywhere.

Seamus, my nephew, won't have anything to do with the sign language - he carries on warbling away and banging stuff with his great big hands along to the music, while this one, the sign language fan, is busy rubbing at her face and contorting her fingers into shapes. There might be something to be said for it, if the woman were actually teaching the children to sign useful words - but she is not. Last week she taught them the sign for "Bus Conductor" - fucking bus conductor! Bus conductors are like dial phones, they do not exist any more and even if they did, at seven months old Seamus is unlikely ever to need to buy a bus ticket from one

I understand that for some women with a high opinion of their intellectual worth, the mindless slog of child rearing is not enough for them. But this isn't reason enough to take it out on the poor little kids. No, pushy mothers - eliminate your excess intellectual energy in a different way! - go online and join a Wittgenstein discussion forum, or take an evening class in Cornish or Esperanto, or volunteer at your council teaching local offenders doing community service, to sign the words gramophone, Penny Farthing and toasting fork.
Noreen

How Very Fucking Unimaginative

2008-08-12T07:05:00.007+01:00

Before I start, I would like to get a couple of things straight. I have not been "thinking about the universe" and I still hate things in space and space generally. I am, however, concerned about the Earth.

Why does it have such a gay name compared to the other planets? See, I would get it if it had been named at the beginning of human life, when we were great grunting oaves, trailing our fingers along the dusty tectonic plates, lumbering, hairy beasts, with no ability for imagination, only a basic limbic system in the brain, capable only of fighting and running away from stuff. Under those circumstances, calling the extraordinarily resourceful home that we live in "Earth", would seem about right. But it was not until the Sixteenth Century, when people were busy painting and parading around in peculiar breeches, that the existence of the planet was recognised. I mentioned this to a man I was talking to in the jacuzzi at the gym and he said "Actually I think it should be called rock not earth, because it is actually made of rock". Well, hmm, yes Gary perhaps. But if that is the case, why is Jupiter not called "Gas"? Earth at least implies a level of fertility which is yet to be proved on the three other rock based planets in our solar system, and what the fuck are we supposed to call them? It would all start to sound like a series of boxing films and that would be even shiter than what we have now. I like the Gods and Goddess names for the other planets and thank god that whore JK Rowling wasn't around when they named them, or she would have had a hand in it: "Smallius Planetus" "Greatus Biggus Reddus" - the fucking meddling witch.

Don't you fuckers bother giving me: "Actually its name is Terra" because Terra is just latin for earth. It still means mud. And you hippies - fuck away off with "Gaia" and that "Mother Goddess" shit. No one calls the earth Gaia, no one apart from cunts. So I think we should have a competition to rename the earth after someone powerful and magnificent - suggestions in the comments please. Don't say Ball Bag.

Noreen

Your Self Confidence Is Touching, But In This Context, A Little Odd

2008-08-04T07:41:00.004+01:00

"Yeah". "Oh Yeaaaahh". "Mmm Hmm, Oh Yeah", sang the Backstreet Boys in their hit single "Show Me The Shape Of Your Heart". Well, that does not make me want to show the shape of anything other than one or two of my out-turned fingers, I'm afraid, and it is all down to the over confidence.

See, I get that if one is lost for words in a conversation, it is possible to buy time with a "Yeah" here or an "Mmm Hmm" there - I am not cruel. I think of a strategically placed "yeah" like a glorified "erm". Or sometimes, to give the air of poise, one might start a sentence with "yeah" as if confirming a thought, before actually coming out with it and telling the people around who do not dwell inside your head, what the fuck it is you actually want to say. A useful tool for the inarticulate, perfectly acceptable. Oh the shape of my heart is heart shaped in these circumstances, I can tell you. Where the shape of my heart starts to take on a few corners is when, in the course of a highly produced and no doubt costly song, the singers start dithering over the lyrics, giving it a "yeah, yeah" as if they are trying to gather the thoughts in the middle of singing - it is just fucking disrespectful- not only to the song writers, but also to the managers, and the people in the studio who are desperate to get the recording all wrapped up so they can go home and drink protein shakes, and to me, the audience, who starts to feel a bit miffed that the lazy fucking popstar hasn't got his thoughts into a logical sequence, before opening his gob and starting to sing in a halting way.

That said, I would actually like to see the shape of a Backstreet Boys heart, as yesterday on the MSN homepage there was a sequence of photographs showing the difference between diseased and healthy internal organs, so now, if I were shown the shape of a heart I would be able to make an educated guess as to the presence of arterial plaque, previous cardiac arrest or poor aortic funtion.
Noreen

According to Google, My Mother Is A Dirty Whore

2008-07-30T13:44:00.009+01:00

I have got a new dentist. He is Hungarian. Anyway - like all new dentists I have had before, he wanted to show what a good and innovative dentist he was, and so decided to find something remarkable about my mouth. The last one used to go on about my tongue and how long it was, which was annoying as it was a veiled way of complaining about the fact that, short of hanging it out of my mouth like a dog, I had to sort of bunch my tongue up when I was having work done, and it used to get in the way a bit. This one didn't mention my tongue, which was great, instead he commented on my wisdom teeth. "Ah you have your wisdom teeth", said the Hungarian dentist. "Yes," I said proudly. " I guess that makes me wiser than a lot of people does it not!". "Well actually" he said, "These wisdom teeth are rather odd, small, peg shaped ones, not like normal teeth at all". My heart sank, as I know what these cunt dentists are like - fucking thieves, always trying to get you to have work you do not need. "What does that mean?" I asked. "Oh it is just a birth defect - they are perfectly healthy, just smaller than normal, and slightly odd looking."

What any sane person does in a situation like this is Google. So when I got home, I typed "peg shaped tooth" into the search box thing, and read though the results: "Peg shaped teeth are a result of congenital syphilis" it said.

I got on the phone to my mother, who had spent most of my adolescence proclaiming the joys of being a virgin before marriage, and announcing triumphantly how she had only, ever, slept with my father in her whole life, and outlining the importance of marital fidelity. "Hello Ma" I said. "How are you?". "Oh hello Noreen", she said. "I was going to ring you, I have some very sad news". Now I have never had a phone call with my mother in which she has not mentioned the recent death of someone I barely know, and the gaping hole their departure will leave in the lives of their nearest and dearest, and frankly, it gets on my fucking tits. This time I was ready for her. "Did you have the clap when you were pregnant with me, Ma?" I asked, quickly. "The what?" she said, faintly. "Syphilis". I said. "My dentist is Hungarian and he says you had the syphilis when you were pregnant, and it gave me strange teeth". "Who is this dentist?" She said angrily. "Is it the O'Leary boy?- he was a very disturbed child. "No, I said patiently. "You don't know him. And the O'Leary boy is not Hungarian, is he? Anyway he is only doing his job,this dentist, he is not the one with social diseases, giving their offspring deformed teeth". "I don't like Hungarians" she said "Their recognition of the Pope is rather begrudging, for all they call themselves Catholics, and they have peculiar Byzantine traditions. Do you remember the boy at the convent who was always scratching his backside, Zoltan something? He was a very strange child, and that mother of his had no idea how to feed the children, always shovelling great big donuts into them and sighing and looking pained all over the place. They're a funny lot. Don't listen to a word he said. Syphilis indeed".

She was not to be drawn on the subject any more, and to be perfectly honest I believed her, and I even started to feel slightly guilty about poisoning her mind against Magyars. So I blame Google, those knowitall fuckers. How dare they call my mother a whore! And yes, I do know Google host Blogspot, and they might well decide to hide my blog because I have insulted them, but I say this to you Google bastards: No one calls my mother a whore! My mother deos not have syphilis. Fuck off, geek cunts.
Noreen

Into my hole

2008-07-23T22:41:00.005+01:00

I watched that film called "Into The wild" - an exercise in how smugness will bite you in the arse, where a talented and privileged boy, in a fit of misplaced empathy for his less fortunate brothers in the world, rejects his education and fortune to live a life of exaggerated simplicity - dallying in peoples lives, swanning about rejecting "material things" but always managing to find someone to sponge off, before slinking off into the wilderness to contemplate his navel, then finally dying as a result of his own mediocrity in recognising plants, but not before carving a breathtakingly simplistic tract on life onto a piece of medium density fibreboard about how we should, like, be nice to each other and stuff and probably have people in our lives to share the good times with. What a cunt!

I have very little idea of why we are on this earth or what anything means, and I have very little interest in finding out, it seems like an almighty distraction from the real business of living, so creating a contrived basic survival situation for oneself in a civilised world is just plain gay. In fact, it did occur to me that the real thing the silly kid in the film (unfortunately it was a true story) was running from, was his burgeoning sexuality, which if I were to put money on it, would almost certainly be in the "fruit" category.

The main thing that sets us apart from the simple animals with whom we share the earth, is our sense of the ludicrous. If we ever lose sight of our true path in life, which is always closer to farce than we would probably like to admit, then we lose our way. For living as we do in a world devoid of purpose, where people scratch around looking for something, anything, to give them meaning and make human lives seem that little bit more worthwhile, we miss the eternal irony that we, the ones with the consciousness, are nature's joke, and that to laugh with her is the best way to realize our potential such as it is. Into the wild can go up my hole.
Noreen

Cunts won't wear them

2008-07-21T19:48:00.002+01:00

The poignancy of a waterproof shoe with holes in, is accurately reflected in its tired sounding name with decrepit overtones - the croc. Cunts don't wear crocs, because they think they are too clever to fall for that one: "Oh the croc is a cunt's shoe" say the cunts. "Absolutely, only a total cunt would wear those splayed, ugly things." Not true. Crocs are worn by people with deep sadness in their lives, sinking their depressed and exhausted feet into the dependable yet ugly rubber, cheering themselves up by clipping little mascots into the great big holes where laces ought to be.
Noreen

Channelling Mr. T

2008-07-21T19:43:00.004+01:00

First name Noreen. Middle Name O apostrophe*. Last name Brien.

*Yes Philip Challinor, I know my middle name is actually Assumpta, but I am taking the artistic licence on this one.
Noreen

I Could Easily Have Lived My Life Without The Gipsy Kings

2008-06-15T11:02:00.007+01:00

Their successful yet unobtrusive existence, their strummy music, their bizarre interpretation of "My Way", their vigorous rhythms, all leave me entirely lukewarm, I could take them or I could leave them, that is the truth. On the other hand I hope I keep the Gipsy Kings awake at night, as they plot my death in acid.
Noreen

Driving a cart to music, a short film by Noreen.

2008-06-01T18:51:00.005+01:00

The Arrogance of Man

2008-05-26T19:12:00.005+01:00

Insomniacs are tiresome people - whining and whinging about their inability to perform a fairly simple human function - marvelling that they are so special and different to ordinary "sleeping" people and implying that, in some way they occupy a more important place in the world than people with regular sleep patterns, that their importance is what keeps them awake - the fear that if they were to shut an eye - the world would collapse around them into the hands of inferior beings. I find anxiety disorders equally tedious - the fretting control freak, a taut, nervy machine on constant alert - just fuck off and get over yourself.

Given the choice, many people would swap sleep (in return for absence of tiredness) to give themselves more hours to carry out the meaningless shit they do, or to add contrived purpose to their actions, be it a God, a sense of value in their work or an inflated view of their personal influence on the lives of others. Thankfully the option of extended yawn-free vigilance still remains at the mercy of chemicals - no one has yet invented anything safe to keep idiots alert for longer than the power of a few lines of coke or some pro plus.

Control junkies aren't special in their ability to be annoying - indeed most things about human beings are irritating - from the artist constantly trying to better nature when at best he can rival or imitate, to the person who yearns for more hours in the day - a slightly different soul to the insomniac, Philip Challinor, before you start, insomniacs are addicted to tiredness and wear it as a yashmak of superiority, the "more hours in the day" cunt is the man who has just lost sight of his own value, he may sleep well at night. Although being awake may mean that a person has more control over his actions, he makes choices when to move and how, what actions to perform, it does not necessarily make those waking actions any more pleasurable or impressive than those that take place in his sleeping life. Just as a constant background noise masks the respiration of the world and the paintings in the art gallery block the view of the sunset, so does waking life seem to overpower the sleeping brain. The opiate of control is such that we become stupid to the constant presence of control-free pleasure, going as far as to play bluff and double bluff with ourselves, controlling our lack of control with drugs and substances from those as mundane as alcohol, to exotically post- gap- year ayahuasca in order to relax our grip, and experience that which was there all along.

As we have little recollection of what happens in our sleep unless it is a night terror or a particularly vivid dream, sonambulism or other such showy behaviour, it does not mean that sleeping is any less enjoyable than being awake. If in the waking hours our memories were reduced to be extremely short term, it would merely mean that pleasures would be quickly forgotten, rather than absent. Too much is made of pleasure simply being the answer to an ache, the act of living is a pleasure in itself.
That is all
Noreen

Live Blogging the Eurovision Song contest

2008-05-24T20:31:00.045+01:00

Romania: Up where we belong in Romanian.

UK: Very eighties. Terrible dancing

Germany: Extruded spicegirls who can't sing for shit

Bosnia Herzegovina: I now understand why the former republic of Yugoslavia is divided up. A frightening pastiche of lunacy inspired by too many Gwen Stefani videos.

Armenia: it was like watching lebanese MTV - barking outfit, big hair, lots of emotion

Albania: relatively painless belly dancing tune

Israel: Yawny Yawny cunt cunt. Same old croony bollocks

Finland: Why would a heavy metal band want to be in the eurovision song contest?

Croatia. Genius old men in trilbies with a classic band name singing a eurotrash rip-of of I will survive. I hope they win.

Poland: Orange lady breaking in Shergar's teeth, who means well, but warbles too much.

Iceland: Oh fuck me, I think I am in hell. The lyrics make me want to shit. "This is my life, what will be will be". Fuck off. Please. And sing in icelandic for christs sake - I'm sure they have a vocabulary for trite nonsense, as well as three hundred words for hot water. Just fucking appalling.

Turkey. I normally like their stuff, but I think I might be in for a change. They've raided the magician surplus stores for the outfits. I like the melody but hate the guitars. No - it's alright I suppose.

Portugal: Ooh she has a nice voice. Clown makeup though, which undermines a rather serious and passionate song - but then they say that clowns have an air of tragedy about them. Alright if you are happy with a song that only uses four notes. I am.

Latvia: Jesus Christ. I don't know if you have ever watched childrens show the wiggles. The Wiggles are four creepy Australian men who cohabit with a pirate, and people dressed as dogs and dinosaurs, and they sing and dance in an exhausting, overenthusiastic manner. Fuck - I mean I hate pirates. We are supposed to hate pirates. Pirates are sea vermin, thieving, deformed cunts.

Sweden: Harmless easily generated bollocks about heroes. I like it. Well I don;t like it, but I don;t hate it as much as some of the others and she seems to be in tune.

Denmark: He's doing the lambeth walk - I swear. His singing is bearable but his dancing is just like a slowed down version of St vitus. There's a knee going all the time and an arm shooting out. and they are dressed like the cast of Oliver. And have a shave.

Georgia: Katie Melua is from Georgia and I loathe her. I think this woman is blind so I suppose I should give the big hand to them for wheeling out someone with a disability. It's pretty heavy going and yet strangely bland.

Ukraine: She's got the same dress as the Swede. But, accessorised with wonder woman armbands which are very cool. I like the song. I'd put it on my ipod and run to it - which is high praise as she'd be in the company of Power Ballads.

France: Some cunt in a golf buggy. I don't want to watch anymore. He's singing in English. What will the campaign for plain French - the anti le jogging brigade, have to say about that? It's typical of them, the fucking frog cunts - you go over there and they pretend not to speak a word of english and the Dordogne is full of people like my mother shouting slowly at po faced women in banks then on this contest they wheel out some beardy fuck who can sing in english. Je t'en prie.

Azerbaijan: Angels screaming. Their voices are horrible. it's all quite horrible. I hate operatic rock, it is so tiring to listen to and I want to give everyone a locket to suck. Oh - they are both men. I thought the long haired one was female but I spot a beard. Ghastly.

Greece: I like this, but she is frighteningly like Danii Minogue. Maybe they have the same surgeon.

Spain: Dear God. I don't know if it's the wig, the fisher Price guitar, the odd rap. I think he must be a Basque, or from Galicia. Julio Iglesias is Galician as is Fidel Castro and they have all this weird, witchy shit going on there. I went to a Galician party where they recited incantations over a lit bowl of moonshine liquor - it was foul. Like this song.

Serbia: At least it isn't the fat Lesley who started the show off. Heavy on the eyeshadow. Pleasant but drony.

Russia: I wish they wouldn't start songs all curled up on the floor. It's so tedious. He's in white, for Christs sake, all white, which as well as being very gay, is also not what you should wear for writhing on the floor. A more suitable writhing costume would be some hard wearing denim or an all in one.

Norway: It started well but then turned a bit euro on its arse. She has a good voice though.

That is all

Noreen

I fucking hate DVDs.

2008-05-19T17:27:00.000+01:00

The picture quality, as far as I can tell, is not better - and even if it is, so fucking what? The extra features they have on them are totally pointless - deleted scenes were probably deleted for a very good reason. I tried to listen to a director’s commentary once and lasted about 30 seconds before wanting to switch it off.

But what I really hate, what makes me fucking livid, about DVDs is the inability to fast forward through the copyright warning, or the stupid graphics of the company that made the fucking thing, or indeed any piece of crap that the makers of the disc have decided that you may not fast forward through.

How dare they? How fucking dare they dictate to me what I have to look at on my television! It is annoying enough when it is a DVD I am watching, but when you have a screaming baby and the only thing that shuts it up are the cunting teletubbies, the 10 seconds or so that the copyright warning is displayed, while you ineffectively jab at the fast forward button which only serves to make a little ‘forbidden’ symbol appear on the screen, feel like a fucking eternity.

These days, to enable me to be the winner, I switch off the television during the copyright bit, or shut my eyes and put my fingers in my ears. Ideally I would only buy pirate copies, which presumably don’t have that bit. The picture quality isn’t as good, but so fucking what?

Ball Bag

Recycling makes me want to shit

2008-05-10T18:27:00.009+01:00

I like Third World countries, for their daily rubbish collections. The places still stink to high heaven - it isn't as if moving small piles of rubbish around makes much of a difference to the overall stench- merely that ones own unnecessaries are taken off and don't have to linger in a corner of the property looking unpleasant and attracting flies.

In England people make a terrible meal out of their rubbish - fiddling around washing dirty containers, salvaging old bits of card, rinsing out plastic bottles and storing the lot in hundreds of different municipal bags. I heard someone use the word "triage", recently, to describe the act of throwing something away - what an obscenely cuntish thing to say - just fucking appalling.

I have taken bottles to the bottle bank before, and enjoy the noise of the smashing glass as I have a deeply violent streak - but the same frisson can be achieved by chucking bottles into my own bin and further improved by the thought that they might sever a fucking lazy, bimonthly- binman's artery into the bargain. Or I might smash the bottle into the bin and then remove a piece and use it to slice the face of anyone mentioning rubbish separation to me. Years ago, when I lived in Germany - the Krauts were crazy about recycling- and they got so competitive about washing butter wrappers and scrubbing out the last smegma of quark and dithering about whether waxed paper counted as gruene punkt or not that the resulting energy wasted by a recently reunified country in "Das Trennen", could have been used to do far more useful things like rebuild Dresden faster, or teach everyone to be nicer to Turks, or to dress less like cunts.

And what about compost? What the fuck is that? Horrible pots of decomposing kitchen waste - rat buffets stinking out back yards, people bothering over potato peelings, shitting their pants if a stray sliver of runner bean makes it into the black sack. If a carrot is capable of rotting in a bucket, then why can't it fucking rot in a landfill? What is the point of having millions of small rotting points heating up the country, instead of a few, nice, big, tidy, official rotting pits? And don't give me: "Oh organic waste gives lovely compost for the garden" - what if you have no garden? and besides, commercially produced compost is not expensive, not at all, to make your own would just be taking the food out of John Innes' mouth, although I am yet to meet someone who actually used their vile teabag, peeling and eggshell sump on their plants. Where I live, a lorry comes and collects bags of rotting vegetable matter - not on the same day as the ordinary rubbish, nor in a dustcart with jaws that can take masses of bags as it chews them all up to a small size - no a strange, large lorry, with wire sides and the engine of an American cadillac car, guffing out leaded fumes, takes the bags of "organic waste", on an entirely separate journey, and drives it miles and miles to a specially designated rotting station.

It is such a Protestant thing to do, fiddling with rubbish. I bet recycling was created by an Anglican clergyman, who, at a loss with what to do with his parishoners, decided that separating rubbish into diferent piles could fill up the time when normal people are saying novenas or making a special devotion to a saint, or confessing their sins. I hate compost and people, who save their vegetable peelings, should be fed to pigs.
Noreen

Noreen is Right!

Recycling is such a load of fucking cunt.

Not content with telling me want I can and can’t put in my own fucking bin, they are telling me that some of the things I do put in it have to be washed first. They want me to wash my fucking rubbish before I throw it away. I don’t fucking think so.

At first I sort of joined in with all this nonsense. The blue bin they gave me made a nice change, so I put my paper and milk cartons and things in it. Then a stern looking man came to my door and said he had been looking through my bin (the pikey fucker) and had found a windowed envelope and a cereal box in it, which was very much against the rules apparently. He said I could put envelopes in the bin, but not windowed envelopes and I could put cardboard in it, but not cardboard cereal boxes for some fucking reason.

After that I stopped fucking bothering, fearing another speccy cunt would knock on my door and tell me off for throwing away the wrong kind of rubbish.

Then they started collecting my bins every 2 weeks, presumably to force people to recycle (remembering of course to wash their rubbish before binning it). So now my bin is full a week before collection and I have to take what is left over to the local wildlife reserve and fuck it into the lake. Now how is that helping the bloody environment? If anything it is making it fucking worse.

Ball Bag

The Spider Seller

2008-05-10T18:10:00.005+01:00

A person who sells exotic spiders must be obese, with arms that can't lie flush against their side, as the triceps muscles are swollen pods of fat. And their eyes - the eyes of a spider seller would be flat flints, deep-set and round - just a little too small, begging the company of six more. And their hands would never be at rest, twitching, fidgeting, pulling and plucking at imaginary gossamer, and the mouth would be a lipless hole, set above a perfectly domed and very white and boneless chin. That is all.

Noreen

Foreigner

2008-04-25T12:04:00.005+01:00

Shopping

Noreen: Excuse me - do you have any pantyhose*?
Shopwoman: Yes, over there in the corner
Noreen: Thanks
Shopwoman: You're welcome
Noreen: Sorry, do you have any pantyhose* in a chocolate brown** colour
Shopwoman: Yes, I think we do. Excuse me, are you plus-sized?
Noreen: What?
Shopwoman: (slowly as if speaking to a retard) Plus-sized.
Noreen: What, like fat***?
Shopwoman: What size do you wear Ma'am?
Noreen: Well it depends entirely on the shop. normally a 6**** but in Marks and Spencers they cut large, so I can squeeze my lower half into a 4****. I've large shoulders AND big tits though so if it's a shirt - well I make a point of trying it on and I've arms like a monkey as well - so you can never be too careful. I can't go near a Top Shop shirt they are cut for ironing boards with slopey shoulders, but a Thomas Pink one has decent sized darts in that can accommodate anything up to a D cup, which is more realistic, as women with big tits are more likely to wear proper shirts, especially over a certain age. But you have to cough up for a Pink shirt - the thieving so and sos - I'm sure they make them in China and get orphans to sew them just like everyone else, but dear god do they make you pay for it! And what is it with assuming all women have stump arms - I mean some of us are more gangly and I don't want cuffs up round my elbows, I have a thing about wrists, those nasty bones that stick out give me the creeps - I dont want to look at that, a shirt should button just below the hand........ ****

At this point the woman was looking glazed so I stopped my shop chat and smiled at her - waiting for her to explain the plus sized thing or get my tights or something

Shopwoman: "This is a Plus-Sized Store ma'am". Avenue??*****
Noreen: Avenue? Ah, like a very large road.
Shopwoman: I don't think we have anything for you here - you'll find pantyhose in the drug store.

*Pantyhose is american for tights. I learnt it before I went.
** My mother would call this colour "nigger brown". I know better than to come out with that one in Yankland.
*** I did not lose my temper immediately because I have watched "The Devil Wears Prada" and the main one in that was told off for being a size 6 and called fat - For a nation of some spectacular lard arses, they are very peculiarly anorexic in New York.
**** These are American sizes, they are 10 and 8 respectively in the Queen's English.
*****People who work in clothes shops like to hear about unusual body types
****** said in that tone of voice as if I should fucking know it was a plus sized store

On the bus in DC

Noreen: Is it possible to get a one day travelcard and get on and off the bus for an unlimited number of times?
Bus driver:each ticket is valid for two hours
Noreen: That's great, but I was wondering if I could get a ticket that is valid for maybe eight hours
Bus Driver: Listen Lady,get this ticket then you can get off, and get back on before the time printed on it.
Noreen: So I can't get a ticket for all day then
Bus Driver (holding out his hand for money and offering ticket) NO
Noreen: Sorry, how much is that please
Bus Driver: rolling eyes and looking at me as if I were very, very, simple. ONE DOLLAR
Noreen: Here you go
Bus Driver: You expect me to give you change for a hundred dollar note?
Noreen: It's not my fault all your money looks exactly the same. I thought it was a one - let me see if I have it in change. Why do your coins not have the amounts on? how many of these coins make a dollar (hands over a pile of silver coins)
Bus Driver: Give me another nickel
Noreen: Which one is a nickel?
Bus Driver: A NICKEL
Noreen: I don't know what a nickel is. How many things, cents, is a nickel
Bus driver: Five
Noreen: Well there is no coin with a five on it so I do not have one
Bus Driver(reaching into my hand and triumphantly producing a coin): That is a nickel
Noreen: It doesn't say 5 or nickel on it though does it
Bus Driver (starts bus fast)

In a restaurant

Waiter: Can I get you any coffee?
Noreen: Yes two espressos please.
Waiter: So no coffees, just two espressos
Noreen: Espresso is coffee though, isn't it?*
Waiter (rather tartly and as if he was revving up to spit in whatever it was type of caffeinated beverage) I'll get your espressos for you right away

* I was starting to worry, as there are a lot of false friends in american english (the British and American Fanny are a perineum apart)- it was quite possible that it may be something entirely different to the short strong shot of coffee we know in europe.
I'm back now anyway and I did not get shot
Noreen

I bet you can guess what I think about New York

2008-04-17T13:37:00.009+01:00

I went to New York, or The Big Cunt, as I like to call it. What a fucking awful place it is. I blame the town planners and their shitty grid system, building the narrow, yet endless straight roads that form a windtunnel from one end of the water to the other, each street a dark valley, flanked by tall, gloomy, uniform buildings, and home to an icy breeze. Every walk in the city is a freezing cold, interminable bore, with tediously regular stops at pedestrian crossings, which, contrary to American television do not light up the words "Walk" and "Don't Walk", but rather have a big red hand and a green man, much the same as anywhere else. And you get stuck with the same group of dull people, all walking in the same direction for miles and miles, and people stare so, which I find immensely rude, and they have really loud conversations, and dart their heads around, hoping desperately that people are listening in, as they talk about stupid things like their therapist, and their dysfunctional lives and vapid relationships and how much everything costs and how they would, like, DIE if they had to move out of the East village and live in the nineties, perish the thought. I hated it.

I was not irritated by the way New Yorkers give directions, first and fourth, and all that shite, which, I thought, was incredibly big of me, but I really fucking objected when taxi drivers asked me for directions, when I asked them to take me to places, like hotels and museums. "Where is that?" they all asked, blind to the fucking enormous Sat-Nav thing in front of them. They only ever have to drive around three square miles in a grid, so it can't be that fucking difficult to know a few landmarks. New York taxi drivers are lazy gobshites, who drive like arses - zooming up other cars' backsides, sighing, slapping the wheel, saying "Would you look at that?" when they rarely, ever, look at the road themselves, as they are so busy holding forth about some shit or other, whilst gawping at other drivers, in the air, in the glove compartment,at their passenger, at the boring television thing in the cab, with a woman wittering about the weather (which, by the way, is always going to be cold, because of the stupid long straight streets being so near the sea). One taxi driver - a Latvian- harped on and on about how Churchill had given Latvia to the commies or something - and I just thought to myself "Churchill was right", which doesn't happen very often. And everyone I spoke to, without exception, had the absolute neck to exclaim "wow - you have an accent", when their own mangled vowels and brash, shouty, inflected sentences made my ears want to shrivel up and climb inside my head.

Most of all I hated the myth. I saw a bunch of try-hards living a collective lie - pretending to be edgy and achieving being abrasive and argumentative; shoving each other, making passive agressive remarks "would you look at that, God! And people complain about ..", posturing and showing off. New York is as egdy as its mainstream inhabitants in their market-stall-mixed-with-designer clothes, about as edgy as a boring digestive biscuit with wacky green icing. Each smart bar serving cactus snacks, with great trestle tables of edgy people, thrilled to be drinking vodka made in France, is rather unedgily plastered with posters explaining what to do if someone chokes, lists of dos and don'ts, waffle about drinking and pregnancy, and there are always a bunch of people on hand to quell any spontaneous dancing in bars that haven't been officially designated as dancing places, whilst the teams of miserable staff hover and glower and expect to be tipped for doing absolutely fuck all. I found it a very limiting place, full of people who thought they were being wild and free, but were actually fairly unimaginative squares, and that got on my fucking nerves. If you work at the UN and are busy trying to save the world and New York happens to be your head quarters -then fine, you may stay. Or if you are a hugely high earning banker who is funding all of those smart shops and the titty bars - then you may stay as well, (for now, until you lose your job in the next couple of months, at which point I suggest you shoot yourself or take an overdose). But if you are just some dull cunt from the sticks, who thinks that by moving to shitty New York, and doing some grunt job, you are suddenly going to inhale a spirited energy that will make you more interesting - please get back on your greyhound bus and fuck off home. That is all.
Noreen

The most irritating noise on earth

2008-03-18T13:21:00.006Z

Opinion is varied on the most irritating noise on earth. I get bored when people yip about fingernails on a chalk board - if the noise doesn't set your teeth on edge, and not all people are sensitive to it, then it is actually quite a quiet and unobtrusive sound. A road drill in operation, is irritating to all except the absolutely stone deaf. It is also popular to bleat about the music weeping out of the headphones of someone elses iPod - which, again is a mild annoyance compared to the racket of a fox screaming.

I went to the cinema on Sunday, which was nice. I watched "Juno" - this film about a teenage mother, probably because I was a teenage mother once- except, rather than give my child to an uptight yuppie with an immature husband, I raised it myself. Anyway - the differences between my and Juno's choices in outcomes for our respective teenage pregnancies made the film more thrilling as I could experience her choice without actually having to give birth again - winner. Less successful for me was the music of the film. It was that chatty, folksy, modern, minstrel shit, where the lyrics are a running commentary of a vacuous activity, sung in a major key, cheered along by the gasping respiration of my least favourite musical instrument, the harmonica.

I fucking hate the harmonica, it's a real cunt's piece of kit. Tuneless, horrible, sucky and blowy racket. The only good thing about it is that when the type of person who plays the harmonica, is actually playing the harmonica, they can't talk. The downside is, that the nasty music they produce is only marginally better than their conversation. Imagine John Lennon - enough said. And why do harmonica players feel the need to waggle their fingers in that gay way, masturbating an invisible cock glued to the side of the machine? No, please, don't tell me "It's for a vibrato effect", it is not - it is to give a full blown sensory assault - wanky actions to wanker's music.

In English shopping centres, as well as people in Lonsdale clothes shouting loudly at each other, sometimes there are one-man-bands, I think they are Morris Men who have been excommunicated from their local dance troupe. Anyway - one-man-bands usually have a bass drum strapped on the back like a snail and moving a leg bangs the drum. Chicken flapping arms quite often operate cymbals, stowed under the armpits, and the hands might play a piano accordion at the same time. The mouth has a choice between raucous singing or harmonica playing, where the harmonica is strapped on a stand on the top of the piano accordion, and the musician just needs to bob his head forward, like a chicken again, in order to ring the changes. When I see a one-man band, part of me dies.
Noreen

De rerum Natura

2008-03-12T14:39:00.006Z

When our whining, mediocre generation finally melds with the earth, as it misses the boat for cryogenic preservation by a decade and is forced to decompose, old-school stylee, we will pass our world into the asthmatic, allergic hands of our children. Many generation x ers, like a lot of parents generally, want to live vicariously through their offspring- a result of never quite having got out of life, the spice that should make them feel alive and worthwhile. For us lot, who were born in the seventies, have missed pretty much everything good that was going. As our mothers and fathers mutter about rationing, if they can remember it, and make a fuss about depressions and strikes and economic crises and unemployment, race riots, free love and Vietnam, we kids are left with the insipid doings of Mr Bush and his predecessors, "the rave scene" -which lasted five minutes, Robbie Williams, reality TV and the internet. You can see why some whimpering idiots want to hang on for ever in case it gets more exciting. I can tell you it won't.

There are terrible people of my age out there, who try and recreate our childhoods for the next generation - churning out those tedious "dangerous books" for boys and girls - encouraging children to hang around in railway cuttings, whittling sticks and giving the glad eye to perverts. Or those awful designers who try and foist old fashioned curtains and wallpaper onto kids who just want lasers instead of beds. Nostalgia is fucked-up nonsense. If the past actually had been that good - we'd still be doing everything we were back then. We are programmed to want more than we have - that is how progress happens - no child will want to regress to hanging about in the cold when all the excitement in the world is accessible through their keyboard. If I could have played grand theft auto instead of baiting the local flasher, I would have been there like a shot. Nowadays the flasher is internet savvy too and knows how to adopt a persona to groom a kid and maybe even get it to wank him off - a sure step up from being jeered at in the bushes. Advances in technology mean kids no longer have to contact their peer group crushes in person, through a communal phone sitting menacingly in the hall, in full earshot of all the family - nor are they required to pass a note through the hands of a third party in order to avoid talking to their loved one face to face - text and email has saved the blushes of many an adolescent - three cheers for that.

But progress costs, and here is where kids start paying - in stress. Higher tech means tougher streets and cleverer baddies who can use spyware and cheap shitty surveillance equipment to perve on kids and watch their movements. It makes fussy parents, who monitor and push and force extra kumon maths and drag their kids to shrinks as soon as they squeak. The internet has created a new way for kids to be bullied and although I have to make myself give a shit quite hard, when I hear of brats going doolally because of a spot on name calling online - compared to the ritualistic torture I saw going on in my boarding school, I can only conclude that as their world is more screen based, so are their feelings more screen sensitive, and one cannot judge another person's pain on one's own scale of tolerance. The weedy, vealy, palefaced, square eyed, little shites.

Noreen

Life, Art and American TV

2008-02-29T10:15:00.010Z

When I was a small child I knew three words of Spanish. This was thanks to American children's daytime programme Sesame Street. Now I am a grown-up I can say, quite truthfully, that everything I know about American Presidential Elections, I learnt from the TV show 24. I think I am not alone in this.

I am not grateful to 24 for teaching me about it - I have never wanted to know anything about American politics and Americans used not to be bothered whether anyone else knew either, twenty years ago they were quite self-contained about their internal affairs - rather like the Chinese - concentrating more on their own sovereignty and less on interferring in other peoples business and washing their dirty linen in public. Now it's a different story of course - a really long and tedious one, and their political motives leak into everything they fucking do - including making entertainment.

For me, the best bits of 24 were watching people die from biological warfare, close-up footage of a nuclear bomb exploding, torture scenes, showdowns between CTU agents and terrorists, all the many, many moles in the American intelligence services and the really impressive facial recognition software and satellite imagery used in counter terrorism. The worst bits of 24 were the Presidential Primaries and all the White House chat, tedious in fighting between administrative staff, worthy monologues about what is good for America and fatuous glimpses into the work-life balance of a Yank leader.I suppose there is some good in it, in that 24, showed the American people a black man as a good president, and this, perhaps, has gone some way to smooth the passage of Obama to his current witterings and ravings from podia around the country. In the same way that smoking in films encourages children to take up the habit, so the subconscious message of a man of colour doing a good job in the oval office may filter through to the dumbass, narrow, passport-free minds of a lot of the American voting public. However, if I were Mr Obama, I would sleep with a gun under my pillow because in series five, President Palmer gets shot through a hotel window. That is all

Noreen

Legalise Grafitti

2008-02-25T12:20:00.006Z

I am all for legalising things. I think prostitution should be legalised and tarts should be on a register and pay tax and have enforced disease screenings, and I think drugs should be legalised and dealers should pay import tax on their shit and junkies should be dished out what they need on the NHS, and screened and helped and I think grafitti should be legalised because it is pretty harmless just scrawling on walls that no one looks at anyway, and there is a lot more harm done with it being illegal.

The harm I am talking about is the "street" cool reputation grafitti has. It makes me want to shit. Don't get me wrong now, I admire the hand eye co-ordination one must need to make a picture out of colourful deodorant - I could not do grafitti art as I have the fine motor skills of a snail. And some of it really looks quite nice. When I am on a train, which I frequently am these days, the underside of a bridge is only enhanced by tags and squirly shapes, and as for the train carriage having some decoration inside or out - well why not? It can only be an improvement on the miserable colours and vulgar antimacassars and lame posters about art sported by provincial trains in this country. And the other day I saw a train that just said "Legoland" all fucking over it. I hate lego - it makes your feet hurt when you stand on it and the little figurines have square heads with a great bulbous wart on their scalps - fucking Scandinavian horrible shite it is. No - go on now, you grafitti artists and spray your phrases and shapes and pictures all over the trains - crack on with it, you have my blessing.

But would you all give it a rest with making a fuss about the monkeys who do the spraying! There is a constant stream of broadsheet newspaper writers, wide -eyed and wanking, spouting their brave, edgy thoughts on the artistic merits of one shadowy can-toter or another. Just fuck off to the Slade if you are a good grafitti artist, or Monmartre if you are shit and do art and sell it and stuff if you want to be famous,or just squirt paint on dirty walls if you have no talent but enjoy defacing things - I don;t care either way as long as you shut the fuck up about it. Quit trying to get "recognised", it is fucking tedious. I won't even broach the subject of those spod writers who promote underground culture,pretending to be coming up from the streets - one day the warm fuzzy street-cool feeling these cunt writers seek, will be provided by their own blood, as they drown in it, after being shot by a gangsta, irritated by nosey social tourism. There's no need for me to get involved- I'll save my ire.

When I lived in Beijing, the Chinese were busy pulling down all their shacks (the hutongs) and there was a song and a dance from all the tedious expats "Oh the heritage!" they moaned from their warm condominiums "Oh it's a part of history gone!" as the inhabitants of the hutongs were hoiked out of their damp freezing sheds and rehoused in tower blocks with indoor lavatories. "oh the quaintness the city is losing!", as Beijing prepared to build itself gaga, in preparation for the Olympics and the vast amounts of cash and employment opportunities a massive international event would bring to the city.

And one bloke who was against the hutong- pulling- down thing, used to go about and draw a picture of a face and an AK47 on the walls of the next area destined for the bulldozer. He became this underground hero - and all the shitty little expat magazines would carry stories about him, making a "point" with his pictures. I was quite fascinated by the stories and set out to find one of his artworks - and do you know what it was? It was a fucking chad - that is what it was, one of those simple looking faces, a chad with a vague outline of a gun. Not only was this secret hero a total fame whore, but he was no good at grafitti at all - utterly shite at it. And don't give me any "post modern" or "Irony" excuses please, the only non phoney thing that man was, was a genuine class A cunt. Self-promoting grafitti artists and other attention-seeking urban warriors - fuck off.
Noreen

Observations of a passenger

2008-02-16T17:19:00.008Z

Fat women may well like to wear high heels, as it gives an illusion of height and thereby the illusion of a lower BMI. However, fat bitches, if you wear heels and then spend fucking ages blocking my way, as you make slow progress up the tube stairs, with your fat arse wobbling on a pair of metal spikes, then you deserve to be tied to a chair, naked, on a circle line train at rush hour and made to eat quivering slices of your own porcine flesh, until you choke on your rancid blubber.

I am not going to give you my seat. Ever. I don't care if you are pregnant - give up working, you selfish whore and think of your unborn child breathing in all that second hand BO. Nor do I care if you are old and are staring at me with cod eyes - that sort of miserable face is the reason you are on the tube in the first place - because your family hate you too much to give you a lift anywhere, or you are a selfish loser, who failed to provide adequately for your children, resulting in them being a bunch of asbo toting chav layabouts, who punctuate their days with bouts of aggression and alcohol abuse, instead of working hard and saving up for a car to take you places. Or maybe you are so socially retarded that no one ever wanted to breed with you in the first place, and your miserable tube-seat bothering genes will die a lonely death, and be devoured by the worms that chew through your cold carcass, after making short work of a social security coffin.

Is that a fucking oversized three wheeled pushchair I can see? Aren't they for jogging off road? This is a train, you fucking slacktwatted brood mare, not farmer palmer's petting zoo. Get a sling, or a folding buggy if your child is large, and fuck off the rush hour train while you are doing it.

"Sneeze into a tissue" Fuck off you labour party cunts. I'd say, you'll be telling me how to wipe my arse next but I saw a sign saying "please wash your hands" in a public lavatory the other day. Sweet Jesus in Heaven.

"Chinese Poetry on the Underground". We all hated the English, gay poetry on the underground when it first appeared years ago. A few exotic squiggles on a tea stained piece of paper doesn't make "A vase with a flower, tumbles. White cranes cry in the darkness. For every mothers tear there is a baby's smile", or whatever the fucking trite bollocks it says on those things, acceptable, any more than a nice pair of chopsticks can make sea slug taste palatable.

Noreen

Foot Eater's Meme thing

2008-02-15T14:33:00.003Z

The one who pretends to be an undertaker, tagged me in a meme thing. I expect he thought he was being clever, asking me to name seven things that I like, as simplistic thinking morons would generally assume that I am only capable of hatred. But what is hatred if it is a lone reaction? Just as a cock can survive without balls, so can hatred live a life of solitude and survive. But to bear real fruit, hatred needs a little love. So here you go... here it is...seven things I like.

1. Foreskins. God put them there for a reason - to hide the hideous purple glans weeping fishy snot. Not only aesthetically improving, foreskins are also something to play with, and they generally mean you are in bed with a non american. Women who start up "Oh smegma, blah blah", Fuck off you frigid dykes.

2. Muscovy Ducks. Nails-hard, mute birds, with strange red matter piled on their beaks and around their eyes. Larger than gay, mallard ducks and happy to survive with the smallest amount of water, originally from Moscow these birds can't believe their luck, that they don't have to contend with solid rivers of ice. Particularly satisfying to watch those horrible middle class English mothers having to explain Muscovy ducks to their over-stimulated, priggish, little offpring at the local park: "Ducks go quack mummy don't they?" "Yes Jasper, but Muscovy ducks are mute and so don't go quack they just hiss" "Are they a snake then?" "No, Jasper, they are still a duck but they just don't go quack, instead they go hsssshhhhh hssssshhhh" "But how can they be a duck if they don't quack" etc etc.

3. Quorn. I dread to think what it is made of. "Mushroom" it says. I remember in biology at school learning about how one day we would recycle ALL of a poo - not just the watery bit, and there was a diagram showing how you could whirl your shite around in these great big drums, like the insides of washing machines and all of the protein and any decent bits left in the poo would whip out with the force of gravity and be collected and transformed into a new, fashionable and highly technical form of food. I have a terrible sense of taste due to years of smoking fags and to me, a quorn sausage is entirely the same thing as a real sausage and as for the faux ham stuff? Could be straight off a pig's arse. Genius, love it.

4. Facebook. I'm a pirate, a ninja, a vampire, I have hundreds and hundreds of hatching eggs, I poke people morning noon and night, odd men crack on to me on it, I can nose around and see who my friends have as excuses for friends, I can gawp at peoples' photo albums and all without having to crack a smile, feign politeness, speak to or get off my arse. Ideal for lazy sociopaths.

5. Peugeot Partners. They are french cars so I should hate them, but I don't. They aren't awfully well made and the seats make your arse ache after a couple of hours. They can't go faster than 100 km/hour. But the chunky square van shape makes me all gooey inside, and you can load masses of stuff into the boot. Not the ones with windows in the ceiling though - they can fuck off, poncy wannabe cars, and not the rear double door ones either, unless you like being wallopped on the backside by cheap french metal. Throw them away when they go wrong though - as Peugeot are shit for parts.

6. Baths. I love baths and it infuriates me how awful women's magazines make bathing out to be some kind of "special" me-time thing you do with horrible medium -priced dry white wine, bubbles, music, books, candles etc. Baths are for thinking in and should be got into, sat in - possibly for a very long time, and then got out of. People who read in the bath should have their nostrils slit. Baths with other people are OKay as long as the conversation is good and not tedious. Arguing in the bath is classic - it is hard to have a proper barney when you have wet hair, but always worth a shot.

7. Trains. I love trains and no I am not one of those autists at the end of a platform. Like baths, they should be treated as something to sit on, think in and then get off. I once met a living god on a train and his disciple assistant tried to get the ride off me - which was cool. I also had mumps on a train (the bad bit of mumps where you feel awful like you are dying of the flu - not the pumpkin face bit. And not the same train as the one with the living God). Sleeping on trains is the best because you are multitasking. Crossing borders is good. I once went all around Wales on a train. That was fucking crap though. Wales is a weird place.

Noreen

What would you say to this?

2008-02-12T17:31:00.001Z

So I have moved to England now. It is alright so far - I love the food. I ate a steak made out of mushrooms, a banana that tasted of apples and they have these things they are crazy about which look like red bogies - goji berries they are called. I did not eat them. The English like deceitful foods, and I am enjoying joining them in their deceit. They have a dish called dogs in blankets and a toad in the hole as well. Perhaps it is to keep the French out.

My sister Maud lives in England as well - she has just had an enormous child - I mean vast. He had hair on his legs when he was born, he was that grown up, and it is a fine thing to have a large child - they are hardier and look like they will survive a cold winter. I like large children. But she has to endure this shite from all these whores with small babies. "why is he so large" they ask her - I mean really, how the fuck would Maud know that? "He is large, your baby is a runty wee shite", is the correct answer

The non-baby conversation here is equally appalling though - I don't mean to be unkind but, fuck me, it is! Here is a transcript of a conversation I can only describe as having gaped at the other day and I would ask your advice, readers, especially any English ones, what the correct response to this tirade is. To set the scene - there are some women talking about stuff over coffee. Woman one says "Oh, Guess what happenned yesterday? You'll never guess". I looked blankly at her and said "I can't possibly imagine - please, go on, will you tell me what happened". "Well" she says. "Robert" (that is the woman's husband)"Robert came home last night and do you know what he did". "No" I said "I can't guess - do tell me". "Well" she says "He drove to the Chinese and got a take away, and brought it home, then he laid it all out on the table on our china and we ate it - and then do you know what he did?" "No" I said "I can't possibly imagine - please, go on do tell me - I'm almost going bananas here with the anticipation". "Well" she says "He took the things through and loaded up the dishwasher WITHOUT BEING ASKED".

I really didn't know what to say to this. I mean - it should not be a culture shock really - it should not - it's not far is it? I've lived in China, Germany and Morocco and come out the other side. I have been arrested in Uzbekistan and talked my lying arse out of custody, I am a professional gobshite. But this woman had me - I had no answer for her at all.I mean - reading between the lines, her man Robert must be an almighty cunt who rarely lifts a finger - and perhaps his normal behaviour on coming home is to back his car repeatedly into the garage door, whilst beeping the horn to the rhythm of Bohemian Rapsody - followed by a bin emptying session over their front garden, a foray into the kitchen culminating in a table dance with the pepper mill hanging out of his hole - but I doubt it. I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting Robert and his extraordinary domestic charm but I imagine he is as tedious and parochial as her.

Noreen

Utterly fucking useless

2008-01-16T15:16:00.000Z

Toblerone bars are horrible. They cheat you, by looking like decent milk chocolate, then after you have a mouthful, all the nasty, little, hard, chewy, papery, shitty bits appear and ruin the taste. The worst thing about a toblerone is that the ratio of nasty chewy bits to OK chocolate is very small, whereas other bars I hate, like bounty (coconut - vile) or Fry's Turkish delight (Turkish delight, in chocolate, yuck) have the greater proportion of the bar being the gopping bit - so the chewy bits of a toblerone must be like the poison on the back of a frog - you only need a small amount to kill the experience.

What absolutely makes a toblerone bar worse than a bounty, or a turkish delight, is the weaselling, sneaky nature of the bits - if they were nut-sized, one could pick them out and eat the chocolate, if they were massive - the horror of the bar would be revealed immediately and one could say: "Oh not for me, thank you, I have an ulcer" or some other excuse. I once thought about sucking a piece of toblerone until all the chocolate was gone and I would be left with a mouthful of gritty stuff to spit out - but it wouldn't work. Why? Because of the fucking stupid shape - a great big triangle - far to large to stuff in the gob in one go, and made of chocolate - so when you try and break the triangles in half the chocolate starts to melt and go everywhere and leave little pustules of gritty nougat all over everything.

I was in Heathrow Terminal 1 last week, buying magazines and sweets in the WH Smiths there, and the man behind the counter said to me: "You have spent more than five pounds - would you like a free toblerone?". "No, I would not" I said. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, it is just I absolutely hate them." "Me too", says the feller. "I don't see what the fuss is about - great big pyramid of a thing, with bits stuck in it". "I know," I said "And what about the name: Toblerone! I expect it is some horrible town in Switzerland where they eat dogs, at least I hope it is, as who would make up a name like that - it sounds like a cross between table and trombone". "You are right" says the man in the WH Smiths "And I am glad to meet a fellow toblerone hater". "Now a flake" I says "A flake is something else entirely - I would do a lot of bad things for a flake". At this point, the assertive thirty- something looking woman behind, with expensively dyed hair, wearing clothes that are too young for her, butts in: "Would you hurry it up there please, I've a plane to catch". Stupid cow - That line is ridiculous in the departure lounge, isn't it? "I've a plane to catch." If you aren't wearing a uniform, or at the very least an airside pass - you are also, clearly going to catch a plane as well. I fucking hate people who come out with that self important shit. I bet she likes toblerone, the miserable, fat cow.
Noreen

The Tao of my arse

2008-01-14T13:09:00.000Z

I am not much of a reader. I like celebrity magazines, lads mags (but not Nuts or Zoo - those are for utter braindonors) and the magazines with "real life" stories, where people at the lower end of the social scale, get paid for airing their dirty linen and bad judgement with nosey old whores like me. As for books - I can't fucking stand chick lit - all focused on falling in love with a fairly boring man after getting the ride off a wild one. No, the truth is, I hate novels altogether - they are usually about women who are piano teachers having a small crisis in their life and Dealing With It. I mean -I don't need a book to tell me that shite - in fact, as I have said before, that type of information normally comes to find me. I sit still for ten minutes, and there will be some poor soul, telling me their mediocre life story, and all the moderate hardships they have ever endured. It's my face - a magnet for people disclosing.

But the absolutely worst kind of books of all, are those pseudo intellectual ones, the layman's anthropology numbers called stuff like: "This is my tribe" or "Jawohl! Explaining Why Germans Are So Very Direct". God, they make me want to shit. And then there are the ones which poach a bit of eastern philosophy to try and make their tedious subject matter sound exotic "The Tao of Applied Mathematics" or "Zen Cladding". Fuckety fuck off.
Noreen

No it is not.

2008-01-06T18:14:00.000Z

If I had a pound for every time someone said "spying is the second oldest profession in the world" I would have about twelve pounds. That's quite a lot of times to hear something, but not as many as the number of times I have heard people say things like "I'm not being funny, but" or "Oh my god", which is literally millions and millions of times already in my lifetime and I am 35. When people come up with that spying comment - occasionally it is in the context of an intelligence related conversation, but most often it is a way of leading up to the "oldest profession in the world" - prostitution, so they can talk about whores.

I'm a terrible person to have either of those conversations with, for my interest in the intelligence services is faily small - I like all the torturing and rendition stuff, but when it comes to the collection of information in order to form policy - I just want a tiny lie- down. I do like talking about whoring - but I can't put up with that great fat lie about "the oldest profession in the world". What shit - it can't be. I would imagine the oldest profession in the world is hunting, and the second oldest profession in the world would be midwifery as we need to eat and deliver kids in order to keep the human race going. As hairy cavemen - I can't imagine there was much call for hookers - there was very little to do in one's spare time other than shag, and as a fan of the hairy alpha- male - I reckon the cro magnons and neanderthals probably got their hole fairly often and didn't have much time in between hunting bison, to go off whoring. And they couldn't have had role play in those days - there would have been no "you be the pilot and I'll be the air hostess", if you wanted to take your woman up the arse you just got on and did it without asking, so really there would not be anything you couldn't do with your wife, that you would have to sneak off and pay for.

I had an argument with a man about the definition of profession in this context. He argued, that hunting, or farming, or delivering babies would not have been a profession - merely a form of survival, and that probably the first profession would have been prostitution as it would be being rewarded, for a service. Bollocks, I said - that is also survival, as there would be nothing to reward the woman with other than food, which, therefore would count as survival in the same way. And anyway what about cave painters? - there is no need whatsoever for interior design at any stage of evolution of society - it is entirely a luxury - , and yet these primitive people had their own mincing nancy going around drawing animals and people hunting, on everyone's walls - so at the very least, the cave-whore would have had competition in the "providing a service" stakes. No - the survival argument results in the oldest profession, by definition, being banking and the invention of currency, which then creates the means to pay for your nookie, or pay your spies or the man painting the cave.

More than anything, saying: "the oldest profession" is a really irritating cliche - I hugely dislike the smug way that it avoids saying what it is - paying people to fuck them - and yet hints that the speaker is a little bit risque, alluding to the seamier side of life. Fuck off, you people who say that. The oldest profession in the world is either hunting or banking. That is all.
Noreen

Achilles cunt no.2

2008-01-04T15:26:00.000Z

A while ago I went to the family planning clinic, and I was asking the woman there about the really dumb types of contraception which I am sure no one uses, like the sponge (doesn't work, is v hard to put in, man can feel it) and the diaphragm (you have to fart around with gross spermicide cream, it's murder to get it if it hasn't pinged halfway across the room first, makes your minge taste of chemicals and the man can feel it). Anyway there she was, this family planning practitioner, explaining how marvellous this diaphragm contraption is but with one caveat: "If you lose or gain more than half a stone (that's seven pounds, yanks) you must come back and be fitted for a new one." "Why?" I asked, "How does gaining or losing weight affect the diameter of your vagina" "If you lose weight" says the nurse, "you also lose it from inside your box and so you will need a bigger diaphragm. If you gain weight, your clout will get fat, just like your arse and waist and all the rest of it - so you'll need the smaller size."

Jesus, Mary and Joseph - I had no idea that fatness or thinness affected my vagina. As if women do not have enough pressure on them from the media to be a size nought, or rather to worry about the ratio between their waist size and hips, or the thought that you could be thin on the outside but have your organs swathed in rolls of lard within and be choking each life-giving cog in the human machine to death with your fatty innards, or that if you are a size zero, your face will look like an old piece of chamois leather. Now we have a new neurosis - forget the "a lady must choose between her face and her arse" mantra when taking exercise, the choice we are making each time we scoff or refuse a cake,is about the square footage of our minges.

But then again, this could be a nice little bonus for the chubbier lady. Like - your average man is usually after tits on a stick - we all know that, but if a lardy girl were to want to get the edge on all those skinny minnies - it's easy. Fat arse = twat like a mouse's ear, and at the end of the day, all men are vag men. It's all very well having the face of an angel, but if your twat is a great, big, dry bucket, you won't get that many encores.

That said, it could be an evolutionary tactic to make sure that skinny girls are rewarded for their self control by getting to ride the men with really big wangers, whereas the peewee hung men are left with the fat girls - who are satisfied with a smaller helping at the gential end, than the portions they are used to consuming at the table. If you've got a small cock - you need to go large on the lady, everyone is catered for and you don't get people left on the shelf because they have midget cocks or are rotund females. But what I want to know is if a woman's weight affects her genitals does the same thing happen to men? Do your bollocks swell up after a particularly hefty Christmas dinner? Do they shrivel into tiny dried peas if you spend too long down the gym and avoiding carbs? I need to know this.

Noreen