Meeja Bore

It's come to my attention that I have 'gone a bit meeja' lately.

I think the tipping point came when my handsome comedy scriptwriter boyfriend handed me a scrap of paper on which a very nice lady actress had kindly written for me the title of a self-help book for panic sufferers.

While turning this piece of paper over in my hands, I noticed that it was a bar receipt from the Groucho Club.

Something needs to be done about this, before my lack of ability to keep it real surpasses even J. Lo's.

I know - I'll go to Finsbury Park to have supper with my good friend S. and her husband, who are both directors of a top London PR agency.

And if that doesn't work, tomorrow night I will issue forth to swanky West End eaterie Asia de Cuba, to imbibe elaborate cocktails and partake of some 'modern eclectic' fish dishes.

That should sort it.

OH DEAR LORD, WHAT HAVE I BECOME???

CBS Buys Last.FM: DO NOT WANT

News reaches Quinquireme Towers that my favourite online social networking site, last.fm, has just sold itself to American media behemoth CBS for £140m.

I don't know about you, but I'm not wild about an American media behemoth knowing all the details about what music I listen to and what gigs I go to. I have a feeling they will not use this information for good. Instead, I have a feeling they will use it to try to sell me things.

This makes me think that I - along with last.fm's 15 million other users - have just been sold to CBS as a tiny package of demographic data.

I feel used.

I have deleted my account, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other people do the same.

Cheerio last.fm; it's been fun.


Tags: last.fm | cbs

Chiswick Residents Struggle To Cope With Celebrity Restaurant Outbreak

INT. LADIES TOILET, CHISWICK HIGH ROAD BRASSERIE - NIGHT

A mobile phone rings. GIRL in toilet cubicle answers.

GIRL: What? I'm having a wee!

GIRL: I'm at Ant and Dec's! Having a wee! Where are you?

GIRL: I didn't say Frankie's! I said Ant and Dec's!

Girl exits cubicle.

GIRL (to friend): Tch - I told her to meet us at Ant and Dec's, but she's standing outside Frankie Dettori's!

FRIEND: Oh. So what do you want to do, then?

GIRL: Shall we just go back to All Bar One?

Lolwols

(Photo courtesy of the BBC)

Life Imitates Ghostbusters

I can't help but feel that the Fabulous New Business Division that LC and I have been setting up is an exact mirror of the entire plot of Ghostbusters.

A metaphorical spook appeared in a notional municipal library in January, and by March we'd become convinced that all hell was about to break loose. We've even made an advert. It starts running next week.

But for now, everything is very quiet. Too quiet. A typical conversation in the office might go like this:

ME: LC, any calls?

LC: No.

ME: Any messages?

LC: No.

ME: Any customers?

LC: No, Dr. Patroclus.

ME: Type something, will you; we're paying for this stuff!

Still, I'm pretty sure something wildly unorthodox is going to happen any day now. I've even armed myself with a new pair of Converse and the latest Husky Rescue album in preparation for the coming Social Media Armageddon.

Anyway, while we're waiting for Zuul to manifest in the spanking new office fridge, please help yourselves to our super tap-along theme song:


Ray Parker Jr vs Public Enemy - Bring The Noise (m4a)
[Buy from Amazon]


Now back to cataloguing my collection of spores, moulds and fungus...

The Spinsterella Memorial Post

Young Stalin...




*would*

Six Degrees Of Online Datin'*

Being as how I am living proof - along with Billy - that it is possible to find one's life partner via the noble medium of blogging, I must encourage everyone to go and investigate Great She Elephant's new enterprise forthwith.

The lovely Ms Elephant is attempting to harness the awesome connectedness of the blogosphere to find herself a suitable date, and you - yes, YOU - can help! Or rather, halp. No, halp. It's leetspeak. Or is it lolspeak? Anyway, just go there and see for yourself.

And if it works out, not only will GSE be blissfully happy, but we might all be in a book**, which might one day be reviewed by Baby Lumps!

Go to it!


* Sorry.

** I might have dreamt this bit.

Do You Experience Feelings Of Dread In Your Basement Or Attic?

Sometimes I get awful blogger's block, because there's only one thing I want to write about, and yet I have no earthly wish to write about that one thing. And yet I can't write about anything else until I've written about that one thing. And so on.

(NB This is how you got treated to the 'synaesthetic orgasms' post a few months back, for which I am sure you are all profoundly grateful, especially my dad.)

So for a few days I've been thinking that I *must* write a post about my terrible panic attacks, because having terrible panic attacks is taking up an inordinate amount of my time at the moment, and I thought maybe I could exorcise them by writing about them on my blog, and then I wouldn't have to go back on the medication.

I think the panic attacks are there to make up for the fact that by some idiosyncrasy of nature, I am never physically ill. I haven't been ill - not really ill - for almost as long as I can remember. I last had a day off work sick in 1995. This worries me, because it surely means that Fate has some terrible Dorian Gray-esque physical affliction in store for me which may strike me at any time, if I'm not super-vigilant.

But anyway. The panic attacks. It would be nice if just for once, just for one day, I could go out, go on the bus, go on the tube, go for a walk, go into a meeting, go to the pub, go anywhere where there are other people and no immediately obvious escape route, without panicking. Without getting tenser and tenser and more and more frightened until I think I'm going to collapse, or somehow melt, or throw up, or all my limbs are going to fly off if I don't get out of there really, really quickly.

I don't want to go back on the medication, but sometimes it seems inevitable.

Sigh.

Anyway. This post doesn't have a point, other than that now I've written it I can write about other things again. Like Ghostbusters. I'll probably write about Ghostbusters next. That'll be better.

Phew.

Greatest Décor Idea Ever

The search terms I get seem to be ten times duller than everyone else's*, so I don't usually publish them. But I just noticed that someone got here by searching for space invaders flock wallpaper.

Now I really, *really* want some. Sadly it doesn't seem to exist. Anyone know?


* But just as a quick round-up: no, I'm afraid I don't know where Danny Dyer lives, I don't know how to rob objects from other people's rooms in Habbo Hotel, and I don't know if Elliott Smith ever wore pink. But I am pretty sure that insects can't get into your brain through your ear, although I have a terrible irrational fear that a spider (which is not an insect) can**, and not only will it get in, but it will also MAKE A WEB THERE.

** And therefore so can Spider-Man (not Spiderman, sorry).

Overheard In The Office

'...and when I woke up, I found I was perched on the end of my bed, like Spiderman, staring at a sock on the floor...'

Punk

INT. QUINQUIREME TOWERS - DAY

ME: Ooh look, Tim Footman called me 'the Poly Styrene of the blogosphere'. I'm so punk rock.

MR BC: You *are* punk rock.

There is a pause, during which I sip Earl Grey tea and look at the Habitat catalogue.

MR BC: Of course, she went mad, you know.

ME: Yes, well, I went mad too, but then I took drugs and got better.

Cheek By Jowell*

Hot on the heels of Andrew Keen, it seems our Minister for Culture now also wants to 'civilise' the internet, by calling for British bloggers to stop being nasty to each other.

I'm already so sick of this government's apparent mistrust and loathing of the British people that I can't even really be bothered to get angry about this.

(When did you last hear Tony Blair say he was proud of the British people?** It almost makes me yearn for Margaret Thatcher, and I'm a woolly liberal.)

Among other things, Ms Jowell claims that until the blogosphere becomes a more civilised place, women won't 'feel comfortable' participating in it.

If she's under the impression that the blogosphere is a nasty place where women fear to tread, it implies she isn't terribly au fait with what actually goes on in here. Perhaps I'll invite her round to the Quinquireme for virtual tea and cupcakes on the poop deck with my female blogchums, and a nice chat about how it all really works.

It worked with Mary Dejevsky, after all.


* Sorry.

** This is a serious question, by the way. I don't really follow parliamentary politics, so I might have missed Tony saying he was proud of us, and I'd be very happy to be proved wrong.

Tags: tessa jowell | mary dejevsky

Infant Diary

One of the things that we brought back from France after my mum died was a collection of my primary school exercise books.

I spent a very happy hour last night reading my diary entries from when I was five and six years old. Even in my most formative years I was evidently completely devoid of creative imagination, preferring instead to make precise, economical and factual statements.

My favourite entry simply says 'I have two felt pens.'

Assiduous Quinquireme readers would be justified in thinking that not much has changed.