The Shitopedia

Chipmunks Singing Hip-Hop

Speed up a good song and then rap over it. A timeless money-spinner. However, it sounds stupid and really gets on my nerves. Listen to this selection.

Leeds Underground Radio

One day, driving through Leeds, we came across some sort of pirate radio showcasing the most home-spun hip-hop you’ve ever heard. The funniest thing about it is, the backing tracks are always quite good - the DJ’s use the same technology as the best hip hop artists on the scene. All you need is some [...]

Gnomes

Unnerving, unnecessary and easily broken. Why would anyone want to clutter up their garden with these talismen of evil? Gnomes are a tradition of sorts, but their man-made ugliness always detracts from what could be a nice garden. Not only that, but they’re way below eye-level and seem to smash upon impact, leading to awkwardness [...]

Management Speak Invades Local Government

The Age has produced a fantastic report on the use of management speak in government. We’re quoting them here but click on this link to see the original report: British bureaucrats have been warned: no more synergies, stakeholders or sustainable communities. The body that represents the country’s local authorities has told its members to stop using management [...]

The Sydney Morning Herald

A simple biology lesson here: babies are brought forth from the womb, not the stomach - so why avoid the fact in a newspaper headline? The Sun devotes an entire department to catchy headlines and puns, yet the New Zealand Herald seems unable to muster any sort of excitement or effort in its reporting of [...]

Spam, Spam, Spam

Want some male enhancement? New blouse bunnies? Extend that schlong. Spam can actually be fairly amusing at times - that is if it hasn’t just shut down your server, e-mail account or got you in trouble with your boss. I’m amazed at the number of names for intimate body parts they’ve thought up in the [...]

Customers and Clients (”Stakeholders”)

The only way to truly ruin a day is to have to deal with an irate customer or hair-splitting client. In one weekend job I had an indignant customer who complained because the assistants didn’t know how to give a refund in pounds to a customer who bought an item in France - before the [...]

Radio Jingles

“1xtra, 1xtra, News, News, 1xtra News”. Anyone who listens to the radio all day will understand what I mean when I say radio jingles suck. They repeat the title, or parts of the title several thousand times in different voices as though we don’t get the point. Anyone who has seen Family Guy season 5, episode [...]

Kanye West

I’m impressed that Kanye West wants us to think he drinks Ribena, and would have believed his non-written rouse, if it weren’t for one thing… Please Kanye West, explain to me, how does one pronounce the word “rubbish”?

Usher

The evergreen pushy momma’s boy Usher is a perennial irritant: coming back year after year with his absurd lyrics and insanely catchy base-lines. Usher’s music is generally above average; the guy can sing; and he also, in his mother, has a built in maternal publicity/management machine. And this is where my questions begin to appear. Let’s take [...]

Will & Grace

Will & Grace has two qualities that none of us look for in a comedy: it’s turgid and unfunny. For some reason, team written American comedy is still huge, whether the producers are still churning it out or television schedulers around the world are still showing endless repeats in back-to-back episodes, we simply cannot get away [...]

April Fools

How very seasonal! How very wonderful! The day when we all get to lie to each other and call it a joke. April fools gags can be funny - wearing a sling to work, saying you won £5,000 on a scratchcard, or something equally harmless and witty, but when newspapers and tv stations feel the [...]

Faxing

“Er, could you fax those signed documents over to me by the close of business?” “FAX - HELL NO - ITS NOT 1985!”

The Latest in Misreporting

So-called Sudanese refugee gangs in Australia were consistently misreported as roaming and pillaging when closer inspection on an evening watchdog showed that, in fact, the videos shown on the news actually displayed white robbers watched by Sudanese shoppers. That was 2007. This year has fared no better with the boyfriend of Sally Anne Bowman, the murdered [...]

Is It News, Or Are You Making It Up?

Its time for a new Shitopedia feature. The first ever Shitopedia feature to be precise, after a raft of wholly unsatisfactory ‘news’ wends its way to us every day: on the television, in the newspapers and on the internet. Each day, I hear at least one story where I think “Is that news? Is that the [...]

Tom Cruise -what a nutter

Tom Cruise has truly gone nuts. I’m not one to believe everything I read at the hairdresser’s, but South Park must have hit the nail on the head. I didn’t know how warped his mind was until I saw this performance on Oprah. It doesn’t end there, though. David Letterman also felt the full force [...]

Andy McNabb

I don’t mind the old ex-sassers little reads but why, for the sake of all that is holy, can’t the man invent a character who DOESN’T “throw food down his neck”… At the very least, come up with another sentence to describe the act of eating.

Jeremy Kyle

Jeremy Kyle, and his TV show of the same name, have been out of these pages for far too long. For years, the unemployed and unwashed of Great Britain had the dubious pleasure of witnessing every social ill that faced the UK played out in the glorious technicolour of the Trisha show. Occasionally, we would hear [...]

Traffic Wardens

An obvious entry, but really, nobody likes them, do they? Traffic wardens per se are not a bad thing. The fundamental problem with a Traffic Warden is their inability to see anything other than black or white (or lines of yellow) - “I’m just stopping for three minutes to unload my car” - TICKET. Couple that flaw [...]

Deal or No Deal

Having been resoundingly lambasted for several of my recent posts, I’d like to make it clear that I actually like Deal or No Deal. As the title of this website suggests, though, even the best things in life can be shit. Deal or No Deal certainly has some shitty aspects. Infuriating, even. I’m talking, here, about the [...]

Otis the Aardvark

Surely the most annoying character that the BBC has ever come up with. Not cute. Not funny. Just really, really annoying. You’d have thought that the licence fee would at least cover some decent script writers.

Derren Brown and the Big Con - sorry System

Last night we watched Derren Brown, sois-disant Mentalist (mental might be the word) or illusionist, who had trailed his Channel 4 show, The System, as a foolproof way of beating the bookmakers. He purported to show a single mother, whom he had e-mailed anonymously with five horse racing winners in a row, then was to invite [...]

Banana Flavour

Banana flavoured foods are horrible. There are some flavours that simply cannot be replicated, and banana is one of them - think about it, banana milkshake, banana yoghurt, banana angel delight, and - my personal favourite - banana medicine. Imagine the scene - I, a seven year old boy, with a mild illness am being treated by [...]

Who’s Soulja Boy?

If one has been listening to the radio, they will instantly recognize an incredibly repetitive and aggravating song called ‘Crank That’ by some teenage rapper named ‘Soulja Boy’. This tune has inexplicably reached over twenty five million hits on YouTube as of December 15, 2007, and shows no signs of slowing down. It is [...]

PlayStation 3

Too expensive, I think so! Online gaming? Not easy. Sony’s PlayStation 3 has not been anywhere near as competitive as everyone would have hoped, and its release was put back time and again too. The PS3 is a resounding failure by all accounts. Still not sure, watch this promotional video. Well, not [...]