bamboozle
[this post is dedicated to our last remaining reader]
i created the “challenge the diva” competition so long ago that i don’t remember even why but what the hell, it’s a new year. so here goes…
1. to cheat; mislead
2. to confuse
[of unknown origin]
bamboozler n
bamboozlement n
i want to make a philosophical observation with this post (because that’s the kind of diva i am). life is weird. yep, that’s it. life is weird. as you know, dear reader, i am a working person now. strange as it might sound, i have joined the milling masses and now spend a 1/12 of my life (don’t forget the name of the band) on public transport, a 1/3 of my life slaving away for pocket money and another 1/3 asleep (well, that’s an exageration but i can’t do fractions). that leaves… about an hour a day to do things i enjoy.
people. we have been misled! we have been cheated. all the films we watch tell us to “seize the day”, to “embrace life”, to “live life to the fullest”. and how the f*@%ing hell are we supposed to do this in the one hour we have between the washing, cooking, cleaning our teeth, getting ready to go to work, winding down after work, shopping (boring grocery shopping not the good kind), staring into space unsure whether we’re actually still breathing and worrying about all the things we failed to do by not “seizing the f*@%#ing day.
life is a big fat bamboozler and i am full of bamboozlement.
there. it’s done. the silence is broken and i can breathe a sigh of relief that i’ve returned to the blog. and now i’ve used up 15 minutes of “seizing” time and you’ve spent 2 and half minutes of yours reading this nonsense.
enjoy!
and by the way…
a very happy new year.
commuting is crap
commuting brings out the very worst in people. there is a sort of madness that descends on that daily schlep to and from work. if i leave the house about 15 minutes before i really need to, my journey is not too bad. sometimes i can even sit down the whole way! sadly, human beings are not sensible and the snooze button on my alarm is a constant temptation. so i generally leave on time. and that’s the big mistake… to leave at exactly the right time to get to the office at 9am. oh my god! who knew such rudeness could even be thought of at that time of the morning.
everyone seems to think that they are a gift to the world of work and that somehow they would be missed (or even remembered) when they arrive 30 seconds late. this leads people to the very precipice of insanity. as if pushing on to the train that is belching people off onto the platforms, is going to somehow speed things up. that as soon as his or her royal highness has got on, the train will slam the doors closed and speed them to their destination without stopping at another station.
then there are those who seem to be oblivious to the fact that they are standing on your foot. how can you not notice that you are standing on my foot! and then when you pull your foot out from under their hoof and go “ow”, they either look at you as if you’ve gone completely barking or give you that look that says “how could you inconvenience me by jamming your foot under mine?”
then there are those who are all too aware of where they’re shoving their body parts. i always have my bag strap across my chest, with the bag itself firmly covering my girl bits. we run the risk of pregnancy and venereal disease with every journey. what is it about wht, wandering hand trouble, that has made men believe that it is acceptable in any way at all. are they not in control of their extremities in the same way as we are? do they imagine we like it!? females traveling on the tube should be issued with handcuffs and there should be special wht rails in every carriage. what a fine collection of pervs we’d have by the end of rush hour.
there is an urge to be individual and assert your unique and special personality at all times but it is not recommended while commuting. one sassy sex kitten can hold up the flow of traffic for hours. put your clothes on girl and get with the programme.
and on a final note, and i’ll probably get a deluge, well maybe one, of letters of complaint, please please please invest in some toiletries. a roll-on deodorant costs less than a kebab and will save you having a pong that a skunk would be proud of. thank you.
off to catch the tube…
ps no tube today or thursday due to national strikes… commuting is crap
silly, silly people
i am rather shocked today. i was innocently surfing about (wishing there was some actual sea involved) and came across several lists of stupid 999 calls and, of course, i immediately wanted to share this idiocy with my six readers. so here we go with my top ten in no particular order.
Caller: My wife’s left me two salmon sandwiches which was left over from last night… and I’m a sat in the chair here and she’s out there decorating. She won’t put any food on or anything for anybody, I don’t know what….
Caller: Hello… I know this is gonna sound stupid but a pigeon’s been run over… and I’ve got no money to phone the RSPCA or anything…
Caller: I want to know what year the internet first came out I can’t remember.
Caller: Hi. I’m next to the M32, city centre… there’s an M32 city centre sign. Can you inform Animal Rescue that there’s a grey squirrel with no hazelnut trees please.”
Caller: The emergency is… I am at Lockleaze… and I would like to get home…
Caller: There’s no emergency except that there are no buses in Crow Lane…
Caller: Well, I don’t know who to call. Can you tell me how to cook a turkey? I?ve never cooked one before.
Caller: I’m in Huntingdon, looking for Homebase and I can’t find it.
Caller: “I’ve dropped the remote down the back of the settee and I need someone to change the television channel.”
Caller:“I’ve had a dream that I was unconscious and I’ve just collapsed.”
while it’s generally very amusing to poke fun at the foolishness of people, i am disturbed that people with genuine emergencies often complain about not being able to get through to 999. what am i supposed to do next time there’s a spider in the bath?
stupid baby names
it’s been a while since i wrote any nonsense here and much has happened in the world. not that i noticed while it was happening. the big news was that chelsea clinton got married to some bod called marc. no idea when mark came to be spelled with a “c” or when it became acceptable to name your child after an area in london but there you go. people are strange. in other celebrity news, alicia keys married someone called swizz beatz and now we have a silly name competition on our hands. the prize used to be held by the artist formally known as prince who became this unpronounceable symbol
jordan and peter andre called their daughter princess tiaamii, poor child. life is hard enough for kids without inflicting ridiculous names on them too. but they didn’t start this cutesy nauseating trend. bob geldof and paula yates should be held partly accountable for fifi trixibell (and paula again for heavenly hiraani tiger lily with michael hutchence) but they are not the worst offenders. here’s my list of the worst of the worst:
shannyn sossamon (i had to look up who the hell she was!) called her boy, audio science.
geri halliwell settled on blue angel for her girl? boy?
arthur ashe’s boy(?) is called camera.
david duchovny and tea leoni skipped the thinking up names bit and went straight for kyd.
jermaine jackson continued the rampant insanity in the jackson family and called one of his kids jermajesty
but i think the prize has to go to mr frank zappa who cursed his children with the names moon unit, dweezil and diva muffin
i should point out that my name, cassi with an “i” is not to be included in this diatribe about silly names. it is a unique and rather beautiful name, befitting of a diva but if i was having to name a child these days, i’d go for something that would really stand out like george or mary. the naming equivalent of not having a tattoo or having real boobs.
what’s the silliest name you’ve heard?
put this in your pipe 2
in my post the other day, listing blogs i find amusing, there were no british blogs. not one. the internet is dominated by american humour blogs and our daily lives are often overwhelmed by american culture. there are quite a few blogs dedicated to the subject of british humour but they mainly focus on how incomprehensible it is to americans.
so that got me thinking… a dangerous occupation in this heat… why is so much british humour incomprehensible to americans? here’s my thesis on the subject in one word: class
so much of what we find funny is based on class. we like nothing better than to take the piss out of upper class twits or bumbling, incompetent peasants. most of my favourite shows were based on the “class struggle”.
dad’s army,
fawlty towers,
absolutely fabulous,
to the manor born
blackadder
yes minister
are you being served
the good life
citizen smith
only fools and horses
much of monty python
and so on and so on.
[aside: i’m afraid i’ve been out of the country so long, i don’t know any of the present popular comedies very well but things like little britain and the royle family fall into this category. but let’s face it, the old stuff was so much better]
the americans do have a class system but it’s very different to ours. it seems theirs is based on income and ours on birth. we brits are not fooled by an oik making lorry loads of money and we can spot a dressed down poshie half a mile off. no. in blighty, you are born into a class and there you stay. that’s why we find people’s pathetic efforts to pass as a toff so hysterical. because it’s impossible to do.
and sorry folks, but speaking in a fake “street” accent (see catherine tate for the lingo) is fooling no-one.
deep thinking over. here’s a quick pick of some funny british blogs.
The household is made up of myself, Zoe, an oasis of calm, Coralie, a 21 year-old stroppy little cow, her twin sister, Tatiana, who bosses the Twat and me around and winds up their brother Todd, a sixteen-year old with the attention span of a goldfish.
We have borrowed Big A’s baby names book, and I am bored with reading through it. It is basically just a list of names. Which is very useful and all that, but not incredibly interesting. All I can say is: show me a kid called ‘Aaron’ and I will show you some fucking lazy parents.
i am livid
I am going Speed Dating!!
Ostensibly I am accompanying a female friend who wasn’t keen on doing it by herself, but essentially I will be a contestant (they’re called contestants, right?). I tried this once before many years ago, but got very drunk, couldn’t remember people, and subsequently ended up going on a date with someone I really didn’t like very much. This time I intend on being sober for most of it.
a beautiful revolution
Girls. I am a complete catastrophe with them. The moment I fall for a girl I do stupid things like walking into trees or setting myself on fire in restaurants, and it just all goes terribly wrong.
take one woman with low self esteem, but quite good hair. add one moronic illness. stir in some medication which causes hair to fall out. mix it all up and this is what you get…
[two asides in one post! most of the popular humour blogs i’ve found in my travels have book deals. many are on bestseller lists. am i missing something? why would someone buy the book of a blog when they can read it for free online? where are the management™ when you need them?]
having an open mind
i often pride myself on being open-minded but i came across this quote the other day and it got me thinking…
if you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it
william ornton
the dictionary defination of open-minded is being receptive to new and different ideas or the opinions of others. this can often be detrimental to one’s health especially mental. it means that you actually have to listen to the ideas and opinions of insane people before you make up your mind what you believe about the issue. if you’re an opinionated git, you can skip that step and just stumble blindly onwards, knowing that you are right, regardless of what other people think.
take your good old-fashioned racists. how simple life must be for them. black people are less than human and don’t count and should be gotten rid of. simple. they don’t even have to argue their case or listen to alternatives because their mind is made up and that’s that. same for creationists. flat earthers. alien conspiracy theorists and sarah palin. the bliss of ignorance.
if you are, and i’m sure you are because you are reading this, like me, undecided on some things, curious about other people, willing to change your mind, open to being proved wrong, you will have to suffer being inundated with off-the-wall, crazy, stupid, disgusting and sometimes, downright dangerous thoughts and ideas of others.
for example, i had to actually go (forced to you understand) and look into the flat earth society, to find out what they’re on about. This is from the Guardian interview with the president daniel shenton:
The Earth is flat, he argues, because it appears flat. The sun and moon are spherical, but much smaller than mainstream science says, and they rotate around a plane of the Earth, because they appear to do so.
Inevitably, Shenton’s argument forces him down all kinds of logical blind alleys – the non-existence of gravity, and his argument that most space exploration, and so the moon landings, are faked. But, while many flat Earthers have problems with the idea of orbiting satellites, Shenton navigates the London streets using GPS. He was also happy to fly from the US to Britain, but says an aircraft that flew over the Antarctic barrier would drop from the sky, and from the planet.
according to conspiracy theorists, man has not landed on the moon, aliens built the pyramids, paul mcartney died decades ago and was replaced by a look-alike, the jews/jesuits/(insert group of your choice) are planning to take over the world. and so on, ad infinitum.
advice for myself: stop surfing the internet looking at other opinions on issues (especially lunatic fringe and right-wing nutjob sites). they are bad for my health. start thinking nice thoughts about harmony and rainbows and everyone just getting along.
have a good weekend…
divalicious
thank you, shooshoofication, for today’s word: divalicious
as anyone who is anyone knows, the word was actually invented to describe me. and i was pleasantly surprised and rather flattered to see that it has made an entrance into the urban dictionary. i was, however, somewhat dismayed at the references to beyonce in relation to being divalicious. i will be contacting my lawyers, if they ever recover from their seemingly endless hangovers, in the very near future.
being divalicious is not as easy as you might think. much thought and endless pampering goes into this state of being. one does not wake up in the morning looking as fabulous as a hot fudge sundae. no, dear four readers (my goodness, this blog is getting popular!), i am old mature enough to admit to having risen from my bed looking as if i’ve been dragged through several hedges. backwards and forwards. on more than one occasion. as you ab fab fans will know already, it’s not easy to maintain a divalicious life when you don’t actually do what the peasants call “an honest days work”. vodka and fags don’t come cheap.
celebrities are always whining about the paparazzi who follow them around wherever they go. they should be thanking their lucky, lucky stars. imagine being the original fabulous diva, spending hours getting ready for a trip to the supermarket, opening the front door and finding not a single photographer or screaming fan lying in wait. how far the mighty fall. i blame the publicity department for this obvious and devastating case of extreme laziness. you’d think that they could find one national newspaper, or even a local rag, who would be interested in my rubbish bin.
on the one hand, i can honestly say that i do enjoy the fact that i can now leave the house in plastic flip-flops and tracky bottoms that are a tad short but i would appreciate a little interest when i’ve spent 5 hours and several thousand pounds on myself. is that too much to ask? i think not.
i leave you with the words of patsy stone, who sums up the problems faced by us divalicious beings, who have been cast aside for the younger, talentless, gaudy versions of everything we hold dear:
she tried to crowd surf and the tide went out
autopsy of a gig
the gig came and went way too fast and i have left it for a few days, as usual, to comment on it. i hate to write anything about what went down straight away. i’m usually too caught up in the emotion and adrenaline of the night to be coherent. i also don’t want to do an autopsy, as the title suggests, because it’s not particularly constructive to obsess over what could have been or should have been.
i’m happy about what we did and i think everyone who made it had fun and that’s what counts.
which brings me to my gripe…
why so few people ? our lovely friends and fans, who wade through hell and high water to get to many of our gigs (if not all, amazingly enough), are fabulous. i am still amazed by the strength of their support and i thank you for making it all worth it. other people had very good reasons why they couldn’t make it. and this rant is not about them.
what i am utterly pissed off about is that not one person came to after dark on the off chance of seeing a good band. i know we were competing against european music day (free concerts in virtually every main square in town) and it’s june and people are almost pathological about going inside in the summer but really…
is it too much to ask for a venue to actually advertise bands ? i don’t just mean us. i mean send out listings to magazines/newspapers/online. when i was touring years ago, our publicity department (one person) used to send out the press release and venues themselves would flood the city with advertising. isn’t it in the interests of the venue to get punters in? we do a pretty good job of selling ourselves about the place but i strongly believe that the reason why good bands fail here is because they are totally unsupported. venues judge you on who you can personally drag into your gig. i felt like saturday was a prime example. we were (probably) invited because it was a difficult night. if we’d got a big crowd there, we might have been given more saturdays in the future. right now, i think it’s more a case of “well, you didn’t get people there last time, so why should i put you on again. i’ll give you wednesday (a notoriously slow night).
i’m not asking for anything than i would expect any business person to do. it’s not like many venues are thriving! there are hardly any left.
but i don’t want to feel used. to fill in for your popular cover bands. or to bring in a few punters on a difficult night. or to be blamed for not succeeding, having worked hard to get a gig together.
i know we’re not cool. we’re not the next big five minute wonder. our music demands a little work on your part. you can’t just come to our gigs and have a few drinks, nod your head and feel like you had a brilliant night. we want to make you think. to listen to the words. to feel those moments when it feels like you’re going to fall off a cliff but somehow you don’t. but if you do, it’s into a thrilling freefall. our music is not for kids… or sheep.
having said that, we know how to have a fucking great time.
rant over for now.
we have to come up with new strategies. obviously free porn wasn’t enough to get people through the door… 😀
supermarket exploits
i have been very impressed by the quality of my new readers (both of you) and one of them even showed an interest in reading about my divaesque outings to lidl. i know you find it hard to believe that someone such as myself would have any need to step foot in such a lowly store. the truth is that since i fired my personal assistant for utter uselessness, i have had to shop for groceries myself. far be it for me to look down on those who do this all the time but it really is a rather mundane and sad activity that really should be handled by lesser life forms.
i have a number of complaints about this particular supermarket called lidl, a ridiculously spelled name in my opinion. why isn’t it liddle? i suppose it must be some sort of slang, street word for peasant shop. which brings me neatly to my next complaint. it’s packed to the brim with people who seem to think it’s ok to venture outside wearing trousers that are too short paired with white sports socks and sandals. or hipster jeans designed for a twelve year old anorexic put together with a shiny/glittery/see-through top that barely covers their bra. or to allow one of their 15 children to open and eat a family-sized bar of chocolate before they’ve reached the till. or to actually pick up and handle your shopping simply because they’ve never seen a mango before and want to know what it is.
IT’S A MANGO, DUMBASS!
my next quibble is that lidl doesn’t provide baskets. you can have a giant trolley that has a mind of its own and can only be filled by throwing your shopping at it. or you have to get one of their flimsy plastic bags that splits if you put more than two tins in it. of course, being of superior intelligence, i purchased some proper environmentally friendly reusable shopping bags for using on these occasions. would it kill lidl to provide baskets? i especially like the ones that have wheels and a long handle. very convenient for a supermarketly-challenged diva.
onwards and upwards with my next complaint. vicious old ladies. i know they tend to populate most places that have things on sale but there is a particular breed that like to gather at the checkouts in lidl. firstly, they have to complain in very loud voices that there is only one till open. talk about stating the bleeding obvious. once they have summoned up a chorus of like-minded elderly shoppers, all croaking the same boring tune over and over “all these people and only one till?”, they simultaneously spot another cashier opening her station. they flock like gannets over to the new line and lord help you if you get caught in the stampede. other shoppers are ruthlessly shoved out of the way, stomped on or poked in the eye with a packet of spaghetti. there’s only one place where the older lady (and i use the word “lady” very loosely) is more deadly than lidl. and that’s the weekly street market. because there they have an extra weapon in their arsenal. the trolley. i’ve personally been run over by one of these at least 13 times and badly scratched by one particularly nasty specimen of the blue rinse generation.
my final gripe (for now) is the ugliness of the entire shop including the staff. i am fortunate enough to have one particular girl in my local lidl who is actually rather attractive (although the uniform is a challenge to even the most gorgeous of women). the rest are an utter mess especially the boys who seem to pride themselves on being the most slovenly staff on the planet. as for the products themselves, lidl is not a bastion of good design or layout. the mentality is stack as many cheap, gaudy, popular products as you can and watch the masses fight for them.
so why, oh why do i lower myself to go there ? well, it’s near to my house. it’s cheap. not something i would normally consider but the band has been affected by the financial crisis as much as the ordinary folk. i also get to experience something of real life when i visit, which is probably important to an artist who likes to keep her feet on the ground.. well, that’s what the media likes to hear isn’t it?
more on pleasanter forms of shopping later in the week. (probably)
disclaimer: this is my personal opinion and in no way represents the view of the management™
exaggerate the truth
so i asked our unscrupulous inspiring webmaster/bass player for a word as inspiration for today’s post. i was feeling a little overstretched (couldn’t be bothered) by my self-imposed “one post per day” regime. and he fired back with “mendacity“. thanks mate!
but as i sit here thinking about it, i have a sneaking suspicion that this was a rather well-disguised attack on your beloved diva. you see how he rather sneakily pretended that he was just throwing out the first word that popped into his mind, when the truth is that this has been brewing for a long time. he secretly believes that the diva is, perhaps, a little mendacious? no, no, no, i hear you all cry. the diva telling porkie pies? impossible.
as a genuine diva, it is my job to exaggerate the truth. to add spice to mundane things. i’m not going to sit here and write about my trips to lidl or cleaning the toilet, am i? i am trying to create the illusion of being a star and while it’s not exactly true in real life, it is in my head. and that’s not mendacity. it’s the nature of us suffering artists. we struggle and toil to bring our creativeness to the huddled masses. with very little thanks or recognition. so excuse me, mister barking mad charming bass player, i will continue to write my reams of wisdom for the lesser mortals who read this blog (both of them) and bugger to anyone who thinks of “mendacity” when i ask them to help me.
ps: please ignore the above brain fart. i just drank some very strong coffee and appear to have lost the plot for the moment. normal blogging will return tomorrow.
pps: good word though.
venue mistakes
i read yesterday that paul weller (he of the jam who i absolutely loved back in the day) played the royal albert hall. now i know it was mr weller’s show and not the jam and i actually like him on his own, but the royal albert hall? i know, i know, tons of famous bods (including hendrix, sting jay z and the kaiser chiefs have played there but i find it odd. for me the royal albert is for ballet and classical music and eric clapton. not for the bad boys and girls of rock and roll. call me old fashioned but i like my bands up close and dirty. i understand stadium rock even though i never go. i can’t see the point of paying hundreds of quid to go and see bands and only being able to see them on a big screen. yeah, yeah, it’s the atmosphere bla bla and there are so many fans that they wouldn’t fit in a normal rock venue. i get it.
but the royal albert hall? it’s sedate and polite and nice. all the things that music shouldn’t be. especially not for someone who used to be in the jam. i like my rock idols to stay on the edge, to remain rebellious. but sadly, they either go the way of bono and paul weller (and countless others) or they self-destruct by the age of 27.
i do take my hat off to bowie and the rolling stones who have managed to survive this gentrification of music and have stayed (in my opinion) as exciting as they always were.
ps: i have a particular hatred of the royal albert hall because of the last night of the proms. this is when the hooray henrys and henriettas, let the peasants into their inner sanctum to get pissed and sing land of hope and glory. gives me shivers just thinking about it.
pps: in mr weller’s defence, he did live stream the gig and bruce foxton joined him on stage for the first time in 28 years