Wii!

My Wii Fit is here!
My Wii Fit is here!
My Wii Fit is here!
My Wii Fit is here!
My Wii Fit is here!

Of course the Wii itself doesn't arrive til Saturday (complete with Lego Indiana Jones - all my geeky dreams come true at once) but at least that means I still have 24 hours left of my social life.

The question now is how to make the most of it...

Bridget Jones goes Digital

Yesterday’s TechCrunch article sent me hot-footing over to Diary.com to take a look around.

For more years than I care to mention I’ve been an incurable keeper of diaries. Hidden under my bed at my parents’ house is a box full of the handwritten and badly locked diaries I kept as an angsty teenager; five plus years of LiveJournal and Blogger have shown that even having shed the angst I am still compelled to share every passing thought with someone else.

So what does Diary.com offer the compulsive diarist that Blogger doesn’t? To be honest, I’m still working that out. I can input my idle thoughts, pictures and videos into the main text box and out they come in my personal feed as a locked diary entry. Very simple and straightforward, no HTML sk1llz required – but then, you don’t have to be a genius to get the same result on Blogger.

In its favour, I can keep a number of different diaries for different people to see as well as the private one that’s visible only to me. I can Favourite the best entries in my own diary or one of the ones that my friends have Shared with me and track the comments where and however I want.

It’s interesting although at the moment I feel like I can do most of what it offers on LiveJournal too. And so far, with the beta test apparently quite newly under way, its Twitter-esque schematic make me feel rather like I’m talking to myself.

But maybe Diary.com will show its best side when there are a few more people there. TechCrunch thinks it will do well by attracting those people who don’t have the time, knowledge or inclination to set up a blog of their own.

Ok, so let’s find some nice people to explore it with. Any of you fine individuals care to join me? Don’t worry, I haven’t written anything compromising (yet).

No country for old men

Hey, internet community. Yes, you lot. I've got a bone to pick with you.

For months now you've been telling me how amazing No Country For Old Men is. You've raved about the plot ("amazing"), the villain ("terrifying") and the acting ("standout"). And yet when I finally sat down to watch it this weekend, what did I find? Nothing but a long and pointless film with half a plot and a lot of self-indulgence. As for the acting - well, it was fine, if entirely swamped by the deadly mantle of what-is-the-point-of-this-interminable-movie that enveloped me after the first 45 minutes.

What a waste of Tommy Lee Jones!

At first I actually defended the film from the Boy, who had it pegged as a waste of time from the start (or, in his more diplomatic terms, "not all that gripping") but when it ended abruptly at what I thought must surely be the midpoint I had to give up. I mean, really, is this a masterpiece of modern cinema? Compared to LA Confidential? Lost in Translation? Hell, people, Little Miss Sunshine?

To me, no. It was the pale and bloodless (in all senses except, of course, the literal) echo of someone's good idea. And are you really telling me that dropping the soundtrack is enough to make a film Oscar-worthy?

But enough ranting. Let it suffice to say that on balance, I rate this film some way below Hellboy 2, which I saw the following night, and from which I escaped only by chewing off my own arm and beating the usher to death.

'Nuff said?

Sporting Mad

Alright, I'm going to admit it: I hate sport. I hate it. I don't like running; I can't bear the gym; I am not a big fan of anyone's sweat, mine included.

But as the last year of my 20s looms inexorably into view I find that my metabolism, sluggish at the best of times, is grinding entirely to a halt. The evening glass(es) of wine are taking more of a toll than they used to on my expanding waistline and I fear that if I don't take action soon I will, one day, have to seriously consider giving up Champagne Thursdays.

Such horror is too great to bear!

So how best to reconcile myself to this distressing new development? Let's start by looking at the options chosen by some of my nearest and dearest:

Swimming - In a public pool full of small children's wee? Enough said I think.
Gym - Leads to inevitable sweaty expiration at the feet of the beautiful buff gym regulars. Also: v dull.
Karate - I'm mal-coordinated and not inclined to fighting fair.
Cycling - My sister borrowed my bike three years ago and let it get stolen. I'm too bitter to try again.
Running - Out of the question. I run like this.
Wii Fit - Easier said than done. Anyone care to point me in the direction of a stockist?
Rollerblading - Last time I tried this I ended up with my coat stuck in a car door driven by an acquaintance with a very sick sense of humour. I won't be going there again.
Dance - Hindered by the mal-coordination and the fact that if I'm going to do something I really expect to be excellent at it from the word go.

And so I find myself left in a rather difficult position. The way I see it there's only really one option left to me: I'm just going to have to give up food.

Now where's that bottle opener?

Putting it out there… Britain goes al fresco

Thank you to Dollymix for yesterday's hard hitting article on sex in swimming pools. The world needs more of this kind of journalism.

It made me think about a particular phenomenon I've noticed among my friends of late. You see, in about the last 18 months, everyone's gone a bit... al fresco crazy. Not since our teens have so many just-one-glass-of-wine-I-promise meetings opened with the whispered confession - "you'll never guess where I did it last night!"

So where on earth has this strange trend come from, and how has it infected a group of well-brought-up middle-class ladies in their late 20s?

On the whole I'm inclined to think it's a cultural affair. We are British, after all, and surely the entire point of a British summer is to take your clothes off in inappropriate places, whether the weather invites it or not - witness half the men of London proudly displaying beer bellies over their shorts, despite the torrential rain. (Why is it never the six-packs who choose to let it all hang out?)

Still, I hadn't expected the trend to go this far. My favourite recent stories, in no particular order:

-The back staircase in a Soho club
-Richmond Park
-The hard shoulder of the M25
-The changing room in John Lewis
-The car park at Hever Castle (you know who you are)

Is this happening to anyone else or am I just particularly blessed in my social circle?

(No, I'm not naming names, and no, I'm not admitting to any of those stories. Honestly, what kind of girl do you think I am?)

Why I don't read the glossies

Words of wisdom from the girls at Go Fug Yourself:

"I canceled my Cosmo subscription a long time ago, once I realized that there is a finite number of sex tips in the universe."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Purple!

It is a grey and miz'rable day in London town. I've decided to combat this dire state of affairs with a fetchingly tasteless pair of purple shoes and matching raincoat. But would a purple umbrella be over the top?

There's only one way to find out...

The internet is for... anonymous blogging!

Last week Beth Harte posted an article about companies using false blogging personas to promote their products online. It's underhanded, it's dishonest and the response when a fake blogger is outed is never good - as the likes of Walmart have learned to their cost.

But a couple of the commentors on Beth's article took the theory one step further by calling for the end of anonymity on the internet. And no matter how I look at it, I can't make this a good thing.

Where would we be without Belle de Jour? Girl with a one-track mind? Waiter Rant? Barmaid Blogger? Each one built a huge and loyal following built while their "real" names were still unknown, built on the basis of the open and often graphically honest writing that gave us an insight into a world we didn't know about before. There's a delicious voyeurism in being given complete access to someone else's thoughts and experiences, and I'm not sure that any of them would have been able to do that if they hadn't had the protection of their anonymity to hide behind.

Sure, most of the early-days anonymous bloggers have been outed now. For some of them it was a shitty experience (I could cite Girl with a one track mind again here.) But how different would things have been if they'd started off under their own names? Wouldn't their experiences have been different, the stories they told altered by the fact that we could spot them in the street, their ability to be honest tarnished, to whatever extent, by the fact that their family/friends/colleagues would be watching and judging? Come to that, how can a call girl possibly turn tricks when her john knows that he's going to be blogged about that night? (Although I realise that might appeal to some.)

Anonymity gives you the chance to write without constraint and to write from the heart. It gives people who feel constrained by their own lives the opportunity to be completely honest about their experiences and their beliefs - and to do so without being haunted by it for the next fifteen years. As Beth says, the internet is a small and permanent place! When I look at my own "long tail" I'm horrified by the things that my teenage self posted cheerfully on the 'net, old Geocities sites and forum postings that make me want to swallow my tongue with shame. Would I want a future employer looking at the picture of me standing on a table at the Turf in Oxford wearing a long black coat and a red clown nose and waving a Bacardi breezer in either hand? No. But do I want to be able to share my life and my opinions with you here today? Yes, I do.

And yes, you only have my word that I'm a real person and not a secret corporate blogger with a Hidden Agenda. (Eat Kitkats. They make you a better person.) But if you enjoy reading what a nameless blogger has to say then why would you want to take away their anonymity and risk losing the very thing that appealed to you in the first place?

I think it would be a shame to lose anonymity if anonymity can grant freedom. And if it means that I have to treat my favourite blogs with the same pinch of salt that I use to read the tabloid papers, is that really such a bad thing?

When Good Parents Go Bad

I saw a particularly nasty thing on the bus last night. It offended all of my bourgeois middle class sensibilities and it awoke my raging prejudice against parents with small children.

Getting onto a crowded bus on the way home from work I saw a little old lady trying to battle her way off. She had a pair of walking sticks that she leaned heavily on to help her walk and she was obviously having some difficulty. Most people at the bus stop noticed her too and we all stood aside to let her pass.

Yes, I said most. The exception to this was a father who can’t have been much older than 30 with his small child of 4 or 5 by the hand. He elbowed past us, pushing the child ahead of him with the words “come on now [Bobby]” and simply shoved the old lady out of his way. She stumbled against the side of the bus and another passenger helped her up again.

Without a word, the man and his child vanished into the bus, leaving only a closed mass of shoulders and backs behind them.

It reminded me of something I saw a couple of weeks ago in Giraffe in Clapham. (To be fair, I should have known better than to go to Giraffe, that haunt of spoilt brats and vile parents London-wide.) A waitress was standing by one of the tables in the crowded thoroughfare, taking the table’s order and blocking the narrow passage as she did. Into the restaurant walked a mother pushing a pram with a small child asleep in it. The mother waved at someone at the back of the restaurant and walked up to the waitress, who she’d have to pass to reach her friends. Did she ask her to move? Did she hell. Instead she gathered speed and simply rammed her pram into the waitress’s calves, not once – which might have been an accident – but twice. Twice!

Even if you haven't encountered the extremes above yourself I’m sure you’ve been pushed into the gutter by two parents with buggies stalking side-by-side along the pavement. Seriously, what is it with these people? Do they forget that there are other people out there in the world? Has no-one told them that having children does not give them the right to barge helter-skelter through the world without a single common courtesy? People have been having kids for a while now – it doesn’t make you all that special, my friend.

The whole thing makes me wish I could carry a cattle prod in my handbag. Then I, too, could be the bringer of instant karma.

Scalped!

My hairdresser is an agent of karma.

On Saturday I went to lunch with my sister, who called me several times over the course of last week to relate in hysterical accents the story of "the world haircut in the world ever". I arrived at our date prepared for the worst and armed with details of hair extension companies, head scarves, tips for waxing and styling, and - let's be honest - just a bit of morbid curiosity. Had she really managed to find a haircut that would dwarf her big blue eyes and destroy the man-dazzling effects of her toned and curvy size eight figure?

... would I leapfrog into the role of prettier sister?

It was only for a second that the ungenerous thought crossed my mind, but it was enough. By the time the gorgeous elfin waif swept up to the table and begged me to tell her it wasn't as bad as she thought, the damage had been done.

(Just in case you wondered, she now looks not unlike this. Which - as you can imagine - is by no means a bad thing.)

On Sunday I went to my hairdresser, only to find that my usual stylist was off sick. With hindsight perhaps I should have taken the hint. New stylists invariably try to crop my hair - I have no idea why, crops look rubbish on me - and even the most stringent instruction cannot stop them. My Sunday replacement was no exception. "Just an inch off the bottom," I told her. "It needs tidying up but no more."

So why is it that I find myself facing the world with a bare and chilly neck? Why am I greeted with comments like "new haircut? gosh, it's very... short" as I walk into the office?

I'll tell you why, my friend. It's karma. Instant bloody karma.

Bah, humbug.

Tales from a Russian spa

Lunching at the weekend with a female friend recently returned from a month of globe-trotting, we found ourselves exchanging tales of day spas we’d visited in far flung places.

“Monica and I found one in St Petersburg mostly through guess work,” she told me. “It took a couple of tries because they alternate male/female days and we had no way of checking before we got there which day was which. Eventually we walked into a reception room full of semi-clad women and realised we’d found the right place.”

It was an unusual experience.

“We didn’t have a word of Russian between us and the staff didn’t speak English. We paid our way in and walked into a locker room where a huge Russian mama frowned at us til we stripped off.

“No one else seemed to have towels so we went straight into the steam room where there were three or four other women. Each one was holding a birch stick and ritually slapping herself with it, up the arms, down the legs, up the stomach and down the back. They were giving us strange looks from the corner of their eyes and it didn’t take us long to realise that being without a birch stick was making us look a bit weird. But when we went back into the changing room the Russian mama had vanished with our locker keys! We had no choice but to go back out to the main reception and try to express through the medium of mime that we wanted two birch sticks and that towels would be quite nice too.

“I’m pretty sure they knew what we wanted from the start but who’d turn up the opportunity to laugh at naked charades?”

I retaliated with my tale of being rolled in black mud and having it washed off under a hose pipe by a Marrakesh woman who was almost certainly an army drill sergeant in her spare time, but it didn’t quite beat the Russian mimes.

“Were the birch sticks worth it?” I asked.

She looked thoughtful. “Actually, they were pretty good.”

Flagellation in the name of self-improvement: perhaps there’s something in it after all?

So you want to be a Superhero?

On Sunday night, idly flicking through channels in search of something low-maintenance and trashy, I stumbled upon pure TV gold. The SciFi channel is not my usual haunt but for this particular show I think I may have to make an exception.

It's the latest reality show to be exported from the glorious US of A, designed and hosted by Spiderman creator and comic book legend Stan Lee and titled - wait for it - So you want to be a Superhero?

Reality show? Superheroes? Surely there's a bit of a credibility gap here?

Well, yes and no. The show invites normal people like you and I (well, almost like us) to dress up as their own home-made superheroes and prove their heroism on international TV. Each week they face a Terrible Task, sometimes set by Stan Lee and sometimes by a wicked arch-villain (series 2 boasts the hooded Dr Dark as the Foe du Jour) to test their teamwork and separate Heroes from Zeroes. The series winner has their hero drawn in a special limited edition comic book by the master himself. What more could any wannabe world-saver ask for?

You might well ask what kind of person would enter this show. And yes, there are a few people to laugh at - I might draw your attention to Monkey Woman from series 1. But there are people to laugh with, too, like the delightfully ditzy Ms Limelight or camply spandex-clad Parthenon from series 2 (perhaps unsurprisingly, the show boasts a lot of spandex), and one or two people who you find yourself cheering for despite yourself. I'm thinking particularly of Fat Momma, the runner-up of series 1 and by all accounts a bit of a shock hit with the American public.

Hey, I can see you giggling into your sleeve back there. But let's be honest for a minute - who wouldn't want to be a superhero? (Or maybe a villain. I've always suspected that villainy might be a bit more me.)

So you want to be a Superhero?: Sunday night on SciFi. Be there, or it's Pow! and Blam! for you…

The mystery of the haunted phone

About nine months ago I upgraded my phone to the then-quite-fancy (if not totally new) Sony Ericsson k850i Cybershot. A nice chunky phone (although with a touch of "Grrr Manly" about it) incorporating a very nice 5 megapixel camera, it also boasted a partly touch-activated screen. It's been a handbag essential ever since - until this weekend, when it started to get a bit... funny.

It started on Saturday morning when I turned the phone on to find the screen flashing urgently. Apparently a ghost was pressing all the buttons on the touch screen at the same time; hmm, I thought, how curious. I cancelled the various text messages it was trying to send and deleted them, but no matter how often I did it, they kept reappearing. Curiouser!

Finally I managed to lock it (despite its best efforts to foil me) and watched it suspiciously for a while. Nothing changed so I stuck it back in my bag, only to retrieve it some hours later to find that it had autosaved 18 blank draft text messages to my lucky friend Al and had twice tried to call my sister in Latvia.

Even as I watched, it beeped with an incoming message - which I found myself entirely unable to access because the Invisible Presence was pressing buttons faster than I was. If I got even so far as the inbox screen for text messages it would start trying to delete things or asking me whether I really wanted to forward this message to everyone in my address book. And don't even get me started on trying to send a text; it's frankly impossible unless I want my contacts to receive a string of garbled half words from messages sent randomly partway through writing.

On the bright side, I can still make calls - barely - as long as I do it fast enough to prevent the poltergeist calling someone else while I'm flicking through my contact list.

I wonder if the o2 store staff can exorcise demons.