According to yet another Guardian's girl-about-town, the type that gets ahead by giving head, men want women lobotomised. In short, this proto-typical Bridget Jones took it upon herself to go out cockhunting under the pretext of conducting a social experiment one which would divulge the all important answer depriving single-women of sleep the world over. The question being: 'What do men want?' The answer, at least, according to the omniscient experiment conductor is; a cleavage-exhibitionist who wears her skirt above her belt and pays to have her natural hair colour stripped by industrial-strength peroxide. Of course this might be true of some but Tanya made a point of generalising and blowing bubbles bigger than her own head. And yet beneath her flagrant postulations, she touched on something I’ve been mulling over myself namely the fact that some men seem to prefer a girl whose IQ does not surpass their own. The reason as to why this is probably varies but generally I believe it is because it contradicts stereotypical gender roles, feeds on the myth that intelligent women are lacking aesthetically and finally because some men subscribe to the view that modern women are like odalisques. Then again some women hold the same beliefs. So Tanya dearest if as you say some men out there would like us lobotomised, I say some women want the men to undergo the same procedure.

May this be regarded as a threnody for fallen heroes who after years of kicking the establishment in the nuts have finally succumbed to the evils they themselves lamented. The hypocrites, the cunts.

Firstly, Will Self who seems to have permutated in to a stuffy middle aged bore flagellating quietly and inoffensively about the carbon footprint, organic rhubarb compote and family holidays abroad. Yes yes yes Will’s soporific tales and supervacaneous self indulgent diatribes re foreign lands might be deeply revered among a certain insular mindset, namely that of The Independent, but personally I miss the Self of old who loaded with an arsenal of psychotropic chemicals power-drilled through minds and column inches affronting, offending and galling thin skinned fanatics and middle England by demonstratively lining his nasal passages with Colombian-best and setting new precedents in what is socially acceptable under the blanket of free speech.

The next to go down the proverbial plughole was Martin Amis who, once an infamous enfant terrible, has now become a virtuoso in arsus kissus. I am of course referring to his road-trip round Britain with former prime minister, still title holder of prime cunt, Tony Blair who Martin seemed to think a stand up chap. ‘It's a bit of all right, driving through town with Tony.’ He intoned, already on first name terms with the prime cunter in the opening paragraph. And it got much worse. At one point Amis alluded to Tony’s oneiric appeal, his baby blue eyes and even gave Tony's bicep a gentle squeeze. The praises rolled like coins and got more cringy by the paragraph. In the end I came to the conclusion that Amis, now a cross-breed between a housewife and a lovesick puppy, had lost his marbles somewhere between London and Uruguay because he seemed to pay no heed to any single one of Tony’s mass destruction scale fuck ups or take the opportunity to tear that stupid self-satisfied fucker a second arsehole, at least in print. And that I cannot forgive.

The last cat in the bag is Charlie Brooker, had high hopes for him until he went and pissed his galligaskins over Russell Brand’s pinkie-size-dinkie. It's only a matter of time before old Brooker gets together with Jordan – a born again virgin by then, develops an interest in teratology or something equally humanitarian, sets up a related charity, releases an exercise video, promotes a range of detergents, signs a publishing deal, freeze frames his gob in a petroleum jelly grin and announce his biggest ambition to be: world peace. It’s only a matter of time, I tell you.

So looks like I’ve only got one other person in the rich and shabby democrat* to hero-worship...YOU. (Cue shit graphics of ginormous finger pointing towards...yes you, Mr. Riskingham).

Haven’t done it in...hmm, let's see now...four days...though mostly due to illness not will power.
And yet, quite proud of myself.

Also, tried to drag myself out for a walk earlier but collapsed in to a heap of rubble before setting foot outside the door so crawled back in to bed and took another one of those pills which merges ceilings with floors until eventually; sleep.

Oh and incidentally, why do antibiotics have such unpronounceable names?

A few days ago Alec mentioned Austen on his blog, which got me wondering why I've never been able to read her or her contemporaries and it is possibly because that type of frigiddy, sesquipedalian, parlour-style prose cooked up by corseted muliebrity holds about as much appeal as ingesting emetic...then again, like someone once said, it may just be because I'm a deplorable book snob.

'Do they curl in the presence of the proletariat?'

...I have a sore throat, no inclination to unwrap either one of my two presents, no T.V to abate the loneliness and no way to get my hands on any booze until later this eve. Still, I have my warm cosy bed and several new books.

Merry Shitsmas and so on.

'I erected that monument in your honour now why don't you get on your knees and pray to it, hmmm?'

I know nothing about football, except that some teams have better kit than others, and generally am quite happy in my ignorance however Fabio Capello’s appointment as the new England manager has got me wondering why for the second time in a row the England manager is a foreign national. This to me is more baffling than the offside rule.

When I was a wee little bee of six all I wanted for Christmas was the Little Red Riding Hood cape, just like the one in the picture.

Of course I never got it. That beastard Father Christmas must have thought my caprice quite ridiculous and given me something else, something that escapes my memory completely but had I been given the cape I know for sure I would have remembered it till this day.

Do you know how many Indian kids have to be killed and dried in the sun just to make a single bag of tea?

'Dolly I remember the day of the big change, when you changed and got married. It was the biggest thing since the great war.'

I have a 2.7x1.1 inch bruise on my right wrist and no idea of how it got there.

Just one of life's little mysteries.

There is nothing worse than having nothing to read which is precisely how I found myself this weekend. My local library being closed I was left with the only option of re-reading something from my own diminutive collection. After a hasty perlustration of my recently acquired set of 25 modern classics and several old favourites I fell in to despair for I had read, re-read and remembered them all with perfect lucidity and then…there it was, buried under a a pile of tattered paperbacks, a book I hardly remembered reading at all. Excited by the thought of something to read I quickly plucked it out by its genteel spine and took it to bed.
It’s difficult to say how old I was when I first read the book or whether I could fully appreciate it’s prose or even grasp it’s subject matter but I expect not. I expect I read it with a certain adolescent abandon swiftly moving on to something else without a second though. And so as I progressed from page to page, I realised just how little I had taken away from the book and just how much it had to offer. Needless to say, I carried on reading until the early hours engrossed in a world quite different from my own, a world unique to the author. And as I reached the closing chapter with the light of paling dawn I began to sink in to flocculent slumber quite happy to share my bed with a long deceased author.