Archive for February, 2006

big with teenage girls


Marvellous. More kittenwar PR hit the nation’s newstands today, as a double-page spread featuring the site appeared within the hallowed pages of Shout Magazine, a very popular read with teenage girls, or so I’m led to believe. I’ve put a scan up at Flickr.

And no, this is neither the good news or the bad news. It’s merely the interim news.

blogjam poll

By the way: I may let this run for a few days, just to prolong the agony. Or the excitement. Or the tedium. Depends on your point of view.

What would you rather hear?

  • The good news: 52% (210)
  • The bad news: 48% (191)

Total Votes : 401 – poll now closed

alone again

As it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m without a lady to entertain, I thought I’d check back through the years to see what else I was up to on previous versions of February 14, more than anything else to reassure myself that life hasn’t always been such a desperate solo career.

2005: Alone – reviewed some bread.
2004: Alone – Google mocked me.
2003: Alone – launched Sexpot or Despot. Hooray!
2002: Alone – site temporarily offline.
2001: Alone – linked to a site that isn’t really there any more.

Oh dear.

That hasn’t helped at all. It seems as though the annual celebration of all things romantic is a blighted no-go area, a grey and unhappy land of tortured solitude and bleak horizons here at chez blogjam.

Think I’ll whack some Leonard Cohen on the wi-fi, wrap myself up in my grubby, tear-stained duvet, huddle up with a bottle of Fronsac (Chateaux Vieux Ciron 2000) and work up a healthy stock of self-pity.

‘night.

peter reid

So today I’m walking down the street where I work, and I spot former England footballer and TV pundit Peter Reid. He’s dressed smartly, has a suit-bag slung casually over one shoulder, but otherwise looks a little flustered. He quite clearly doesn’t know quite where he is. I decide to get involved.

Me: Hey Peter! Are you lost?

Peter Reid: I am actually. Do you know where this is? (hands me a business card)

Me: St. Martin’s Court? No. But it’ll be over that way – St. Martin’s Lane is two streets ahead of you, and St. Martin’s Church is round the corner.

Peter Reid: Great, cheers.

Me: No worries.

I believe that this is the first time I’ve had to give a celebrity directions since I misled Princess Diana as to the whereabouts of Marylebone Lane in 1989, causing a delay in her journey which may ultimately have contributed to her death.

Please feel free to leave any casual celebrity encounter stories in the comments below. I’d be delighted to host them.

i hate memes

Disclaimer: if you’re not a blogger, or are unfamiliar with the ways of the so-called ‘blogosphere’, I wouldn’t bother reading this post. It probably won’t make much sense, and it’s a minute of your life you’ll never be able to claim back.

meme n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

Actually I don’t hate all memes. I just hate those that masquerade as blog content; those bloated, flatulent exercises in pointless fuckwittery perpetuated by idiots who don’t even have the necessary talent to fire up an anorexic paragraph of half-capable prose. Perfect example: The Friday Five. If honesty were at home, it would be called the “My head is completely empty, I have nothing to say, so here’s some pointless drivel that makes my hopeless shitsack of a website look up-to-date Five.”

The Tuesday Twosome? Once again, a more honorable title would read something along the lines of “The I’m incapable of sentient thought because I’ve spent the best years of my life engaged in a loving yet futile relationship with my computer. I am a witless oaf, and am not worthy of your pity Twosome.”

My god, there’s even a web page devoted to cataloging the damn things; a gleaming, rancid repository of hapless blog sewage.

It was with a heavy heart, therefore, that I received notice of being ‘tagged’ by two different bloggers, both of whom should really know much better, yet still requesting that I continue one such meme.

And because I can’t be arsed writing something that requires thought, and because I should probably let my few remaining readers know that I’m not dead, and because I’m a contrary old cock, I’m going to do so.

Four jobs you have had:
Salad-monkey, McDonald’s, Northampton
In charge of WWF catalogue shrink-wrapping machine
Personal assistant to rock star
Head of Music, Xfm radio, London

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Magnolia
Underground
Bladerunner
Hoop Dreams

Four places you’ve lived:
Johnsonville, New Zealand
Hounslow East, London
Hounslow Central, London
Hounslow West, London

Four television shows you love to watch:
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Shameless
Lost
M*A*S*H*

Four places you’ve been on vacation:
North Korea
Mongolia
Chile
Wichita, Kansas

Four of your favourite foods:
Vanilla ice cream
Steak tartare
Cheese on toast
Ham sandwich, white bread, no mustard

Four places you’d rather be right now:
Offline
Svalbard
Tuva
Between the slowly tensing thighs of a supermodel

Four sites I visit daily:
Last.FM
snurl.com
del.icio.us
b3ta

Four bloggers you are tagging:
Barbra Streisand
RuPaul
William Shatner
Jamie Oliver

Now let’s see how those fuckers get on.