The New You

I’ve just noticed something. If you pick up just about any magazine type publication lately, it won’t take too much flipping till you are educated with “the new”.

Everything these days has to be labelled the new something or other. Forty is the new thirty. Kate is the new Diana. No reservations is the new only reservations. Beer is the new wine. Thyme is the new rosemary. Pale is the new tan (really??).Three quarter jackets are the new blazers. Croatia is the new Spain. Girls is the new Sex and the City. I could go on… but I really need to pee.

Would you like some brains with that?

Today I made another awful and all too frequent for my liking decision to attempt to go shopping. That’s twice this year. Uggh. But it was an emergency. I have my second photography job tomorrow and it’s a baptism, so I need to look respectable. Church respectable. Fark.

Anyway, excrutiating story short, of course the trip was not fruitful in any way that would help me tomorrow… but I did see this…

What the fugging fug? Ignoring the fact that it’s pink (vomit) is this what fashion has come to? It looks like a bath mat that someone has sewn a hood on and attached a zip to. Or should that be the other way around? Hood to, zip on? Whatever… who would buy this?

Now, at first I actually wrote that maybe these are the new uniforms for people who work in the toilets at nightclubs, that in a push for better tips they’ve taken to lying on the floor and literally letting people walk all over them. But then I had second thoughts. Too far you think? But what if I told you that I used to work in a toilet at a club, would that make it ok? Is there room for censorship in The Bum Diaries?

Oh you now what, it’s Friday. Here’s a silly fluff story instead. I probably deserved this for being in a McDonalds and I don’t know why it irks me so, but as I’ve said before customer service in the UK hasn’t been invented yet. Feel free to call me a hypocrite at this point though, because when I got treated badly in New York I wore it like a badge of honour, it made me smile, I gloated to my friends, hell I even wrote it on postcards “A New Yorker was rude to me, I feel like a native, I may move here!”

Weird stuff I done seen today #4

I was in Camden yesterday and whipped out my phone to take this snap in the Underground. Unfortunately my phone decided to focus on the shady looking bald guy in the back, but just so we’re clear, or fuzzy as the case actually is, this post is about the slightly overdressed couple in the front of the shot. What you can’t see unfortunately is that the guy’s suit was shiny satin type material and very rock n roll tight. Just use your imagination.

What’s this all about then? Is it…

a) Times are tough and weddings are expensive. You gotta cut corners somewhere.

b) There was a Tim Burton fest on and if you come in costume, tickets are half price. The guy in the back was obviously Uncle Fester.

c) Well… it was Camden… this is probably just what passes as casual dinner outfits for the goths.

There is a point to this, I think

I used to love the opening scene of “Sex and the City”, where Carrie would make some observations about men and women and then end with a question so you knew what the episode was going to be about, “Are relationships the religions of the nineties?” ” Are we simply romantically challenged, or are we sluts?” “Are men just women with balls?”. So helpful that. You’re not going to get that here. Hell, I don’t even know what this is going to be about.

So it’s a lovely London Autumn Monday morning. Is it? I’m sitting at my desk, trying to think of something to write, pumping out some stirring strings from the soundtrack playlist I’ve made on my i-pod and looking out the window to see… grey clouds, rain and miserable cold. Well, you can’t see the cold of course, but from the way my toes are curling down into the underside of my foot, I don’t need to see it to know it’s there, just like the wind or depression. Socks! Knew I forgot something. The kitten, who thinks I’m her personal step ladder to the mysteries of the world, is doing her new impression of the Tasmanian Devil and making it very hard to concentrate. Actually, at the moment my whole body is covered in so many scratches I look like I’ve thrown myself in a blackberry bush for some kind of masochist’s version of a body scrub.

The Design Experiment

The only designer piece I’ve ever owned came into my life today. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I managed to get my hands on an original, straight off the rack, one of only half a billion ever produced, special edition JPG soft drink cans.

I didn’t quite know what to do with him. I mean it’s designer, it’s high fashion, it’s probably had lunch with Madonna. I wanted it to feel relaxed, comfortable, in familiar surrounds you know? So I chucked Jean Paul in the closet. Stupid idea. Just awkward.

If I’d thought about it properly I would have realised how silly it was, I mean Jean Paul’s probably not been in a closet since the 70’s. So after some wrangling with the door people, I managed to get him a spot on the biggest shelf in the fridge. It wasn’t easy. The damn Feta nearly ruined it all by refusing to be parted from the Halloumi.It said it was degrading for the Halloumi to be put back on the shelf once it had reached door status. Bloody elitist salty cheeses!

But it all went wrong there too. The half finished cream confided in me that no matter how nice he tries to be, Jean Paul is just intimidating. He somehow makes the other fridge lodgers feel like supermarket trash, except maybe the cucumber, which is after all the food equivalent of a super model; long, thin and only a couple of calories.

I don’t know what I was thinking… me… designer labels?? Pfffft, no, even my food revolts from being fashionable. Pity though. I can see designer food really taking off and some Prada popcorn would have gone really well with that coke. Then again that would be too easy. If you slapped some poo in a pretty tin and put a designer label on it, millions would buy it and lather it on themselves without a second thought. Faeces for your facies???

But I must give Jean Paul his due. Even if he didn’t cut it in my frigidaire, he did once say “it’s always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting.” You’re alright in my book JPG. You’re alllllll right.

Weird stuff I done seen today #2

Well ok, it wasn’t quite today, it was the August bank holiday weekend, as in last weekend, ummm, but August last year. Sorry sorry. I’m not being lazy again, I had every intention of making this blog current, and I did actually go to a fun fair today, but I have recently moved to sarf London and the new area is very, errr, genteel, and they didn’t exactly produce the most interesting subjects.

So… here’s a picture. From a year ago.

Gives new meaning to the idea of pacifying the youth

Seriously, what the?? I can’t even begin to think of scenarios for that. No wait, yes I can, cough, ok, does this photo mean:

a) After a lecture from his much older brother about “holding onto his youth”, he went a bit outside the box in his interpretation.

b) In this world of ever widening social boundaries, there’s not much left for kids to do to shock their parents, so infantilism it is.

c) He’s just watched “Bugsy Malone” and gained a whole new vision of how to be a gangsta. He’s actually on his way to a giant cream pie fight in the tent behind the dodgem cars.

All jokes aside, I loved these kids sense of style, their intricate hairdo’s and slightly 80’s Electric Boogaloo fashion sense. I was at high school in the real 80’s and these guys would have put me to shame in a fashion contest. Then again, Ugly Betty in her woolly poncho would beat me in a fashion contest, so that’s not saying much.