Never has there been a more infuriating little frog. On the scale of wierdness, the Toad out of The Wind and the Willows was pretty strange -but he was a gentleman of sorts and certainly didn’t have his male genitalia hanging out.

The incomprehensible “Daa Daa Di Daa Daa” etc also adds to the perverse character that has infected several thousand mobile phones and disgraced advertising segments. The rising tone and urgency of this… song? is somehow psychologically engineered to induce panic and claustrophobia.

I will not even go into the gross overpricing of the polyphonic ringtones. That could take up an entire website alone.

As though the ring tone and the dark rimmed eyes of the grey cartoon character weren’t enough, somebody thought it appropriate to extend the several seconds of horror into an entire single released into music stores across the world. Evil knows no limits. I even saw the “music video”  in the pub the other night and I had to lie down in a dark room for an hour.

A friend of mine decided that it would be funny to download this particular monstrosity onto his girlfriend’s mobile phone. Understandably, she questioned her choice of mate and promptly put the phone onto silent until she could extricate herself from the tentacles of the phone company charging her by the second for listening to the harmonies of hell.

I wish they had banned the thing as promised.

Harry Potter gets right on my nerves.

I have no problem with something which captures the imagination, and also feel that anything that gets children to read more books is almost always a Good Thing. However, when things become faddy, overmarketed, over-hyped and generally overdone, they become shit.

Harry Potter is one of those things.

No, I don’t care what is in the next Harry Potter and the dark warrior of Azerbaijan book, and neither should you, you’re thirty for heaven’s sake!

It really astounds me how many adults go so nuts over a kiddies book. There are really talented authors out there in the world, producing great works by the dozen, which are deeper, more meaningful and importantly, a better read. But no, you want to read Harry sodding Potter.

Those godawful, endless movies

With the unlikable Daniel Radcliffe as the ever annoying child prodigy, Harry, the Harry Potter movies are the most hideous pieces of filmography. Far too many special effects, hundreds of precocious little stage school brats overacting all over the place, each with their own little Oxford English accent - which should belong to the annals of the past, or upper class boarding schools - not a little orphan boy who lives in a suburban semi with his uncle and auntie.

The stupid, stupid names - which are almost stolen from Lord of The Rings

Find out the latest adventures of Gumblebore, Bumblebee, Warbly Barbly and Buggeryluggs. Bloody stupid names.

Harry Potter lunchboxes, Harry Potter toys, Harry Potter computer games, Harry Potter snakes and ladders

There are two people who promote everything that is marketed at children in the world - and this is a fact - Shrek, and Harry Potter. The seal of approval from one of these two will see any useless old piece of tat sell to every kid in the playground. The problem with this is that it means the little bugger gets everywhere. We have Harry Potter everything now! Including Harry Potter overkill.

The smarmy little prodigal son, who’s brilliant at everything… including magic. Aspirational? Impossible. The annoying little turd.

The glamour and panache of working for an airline has slowly been eroded away over the years to become the stale smell of compressed air and lost dreams that the job now stands for today.

Few people can reach the level of thinly masked contempt that the average face-painted, dead-eyed air hostess seems to convey throughout every step of the travel process. In a way I can appreciate the discomfort of spending your days trapped in a flying box reeling out the same vapid statements to the holidaying masses. However, it is this feeling of institutional authority peering down at you throughout the whole process that makes it such a shitter.

The Air Travel Safety talk about crash landing at sea is, for me, the pinnacle of this insulting attempt to instil calm and authority into the ignorant herd of toblerone-carrying boarding-card holders.

The sheer comedy of the inflatable yellow sea-slides leave me feeling drained. Maybe I m wrong but have you ever seen a passenger plane successfully crash into the sea?

Dont forget your little lifejacket light and whistle, in case you need to attract attention. I would have the thought the flaming plane wreckage would do the job.

Picture the scene -

1. You’ve had a meal out in a restaurant with a large number of various groups of friends.

2. Everyone is slightly the worse for wear.

3. Someone asks for the bill.

4. The clucking and crowing begins followed by some rising screeching and ultimate claw scratching.

After a brief round of “How much is it?……Oof!…Ouch!” ’s from everybody the team leader decides to take charge of the situation and start organising various plans for payment. Depending on the level of integration, trust and financial situations throughout the group, the next 20 minutes can become a painfully frustrating debacle for everyone involved. 

You have 3 general types of player in this social game;

The easy-going drunkard -

 The most useful player in reaching a conclusion. This member will generally opt for the “split the bill by number of eaters” approach, which, basic maths skills allowing, would resolve the problem quite quickly. However, if this member has decided to undertake the role of Bill Manager, they are often not of resolute enough mind to withstand the torment inflicted by others such as:

The Haggler -

This member of the group often has an uncanny knack of remembering the prices of each dish ordered, down to the last .99 pence. They are often a quiet and sober eater during the meal but are ready for their perfected sneer of disgusted scorn, spitting out interjections such as, “Well you cant exactly compare a tomato salad to a bloody steak au poiv-reh, can you?”

The Dark Overseer of Ceremonies -

This member is often the most responsible for whipping up the bitter angst throughout the group. While refusing to actually take charge of the bill, they feel an intense moral duty to engage their superior intellect in questioning every proposed solution. Just when everyone seems content that their interests have been met, the Overseer pokes the boot in and the confusion resumes once more. Real shitter for everybody.

This phenomenon is pretty shitty. However, not to be forgotten is the inverse Bill Squabble, with fewer members, who this time are desperate to pay as much of the bill as possible. In a modern day interpretation of feather-flapping showmanship, the two alpha males of a group may butt heads over whose embossed Visa will get the swipe of honour. I have even witnessed illusionary toilet trips by ingenious men of dignity, so pumped with their own generosity they are literally bursting at the seams.

After my complaints of yesterday (see Telly Vision), this morning’s offerings from the great and mighty BBC Breakfast, a “news” programme were the following:

1. Picture of “reporter” still living it up in Playa de Luz, Portugal, outside police station yet again telling us there was nothing to tell us.

2. Interview with McCanns’ new publicist on sofa in soft pink shirt, saying there was nothing he could say, but that they didn’t do it. Every question raised was answered with “that’s evidential and I can make no comment on that, but I can say…” So no news there then.

3. Cut to weather girl in mac in Blue Peter Garden - oh, pleeeeease.

4. Shot of “reporter” on street opposite the gates of Chelsea FC to “report” on the sacking/parting by mutual consent of Jose Marinho and the Blues, telling us again that he could tell us nothing. Fascinating shots of buses etc passing behind him.

5. Shot of policital reporter in window bay of Brighton hotel making much of the non-news created by media that the LibDems want to get rid of “Ming”. Again, most fascinating joggers, cars, buses passing behind in front of the grey grey sea. We got no farther forward there, then.

6. Discussion of a paper on airline poisonous air in cockpits and cabins, two guests, one saying yes it was poisonous and had ruined her health, the other saying only very very few pilots and staff were affected. The problem with this was the paper was not to be published until 11am - and this was between 7 and 9, so again a non-story, as they were commenting on what might or might not be contained in the said paper.

7. Winsome story about fly fishing for women post breast cancer ops, very pretty story. Don’t know how much farther it took us on our life journey.

Gawd save us! what a waste of licencepayers’ money

What is more annoying than people braying on about how busy they are?

Not much.

Living in a city can be a demanding experience. There is an underlying feeling of running out of time that’s driving everyone to scurry around cramming in as much ‘Warmest regards’ crackberry sign-offs between crayfish and rocket sandwiches as is humanly
possible.

Maybe I’m just bitter due to the fact I am not as in demand as many of the people I seem to come across. I am not “absolutely chock-a-block”, “on 60 plus these days” or “missing holidays this year”. Some of these people are earning vast sums of money and will retire when they hit thirty, many are simply not.

I understand if you want to work yourself into the ground in the hope of promotion, good for you. If you’ve got an interesting job it would be good to hear what you’re doing. Barking out meaningless figures of how many hours you sit in a chair and stare at a screen surely isnt something to be proud of.

Comments that annoy me -

Q “Wow, you’ve had ANOTHER holiday?”
A “Umm, well yeah”
Q “Lucky old you eh? Alright for some!”

- Holidays are fun, why are you proud to not have any?

Q “Off home are you?”
A “Umm, well yeah”
Q “Nice of you to drop in and see us! Ha Ha”

- Well I’ve worked a full day and achieved a lot of stuff, but you’re right, you are going to sit here for another couple of hours, good for you!

Why on earth does every news broadcast use meaningless outside broadcast shots to fill up space?

For example, any crime story on the BBC has to have a reporter - or better call them commentator, for they don’t report - outside Scotland Yard (New Scotland Yard for overseas readers). There, the triangular metal signpost turns relentlessly: in the foreground, the “reporter’s” head in closeup, meaninglessly mouthing more mis-information and non-facts.

The same has been true of all the reports of the McCann case in Portugal. There, the police are not permitted to comment, but this does not stop the BBC (and other news teams) from posting a “reporter” outside the courthouse, the police station, the original holiday village, yet again telling us there is nothing to tell us.

What a waste of money.

And while we’re on the subject, why oh why do the news stations insist on putting their weathermen and women outside in a garden, on a roadway, up a mountain in the pouring rain/hurling wind/settling snow/whatever? What is wrong with a decent weathermap in a studio, complete with isobars, fronts and wind directions.

Get rid of puffy cloud-smiley sun graphics, please, and save money and time!

Being Emo is very 2005.

Emos are shit because of the contradictions that they represent: “I don’t want to conform, therefore I’ll become part of a group”… and hang around outside a train station, or in a park, looking sad.

Grow up.

Just because you are a teenager, and you have a thousand hormones racing around your body, does not mean that everyone is against you, or that you have a monopoly on being emotional.

This has all been done before - emos would be mortified to realise this - so it is NOT unique, or non-conformist. Becoming emo is, in fact, an action demonstrating a complete lack of individuality.

I can just see it now: “Emo Conference 2025″ where aging emos will meet to discuss the best types of black eyeliners for those entering their 40s, and will all have a cry together, causing their mascara to run.