Here's one I made earlier

Can't believe that there are people out there who earn a bloody good living retailing cobblers like this, so I just HAD to share it with you! 

According to these people who claim to channel messages from alleged extra-terrestrial entities, ‘Shan’ is the name that some of the aliens give to the Earth (ie that planet that we live on, to quote Leela from Futurama).

Shan/Earth has got such a bad reputation that spaceships from other worlds are said to have come here in their droves, not just to protect the rest of the universe from our nefarious influence, but also to defeat the powers of Satan himself, while doing the best they can manage to reform us.  In other words, life on Earth is Borstal on roller-skates. 

Happily Shan made enough progress during the first half of the 20^th century to have been permitted to move from the third dimension to the fourth.  Now, do please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we already lived in both the third and fourth dimensions?  After all, modern physics defines width as the third dimension and time as the fourth – both of which have been pretty integral parts of our universe, at least ever since I’ve been here on this current go-round.

And who exactly decided that we could move up, anyway? Obviously not the Home Secretary or an astro-physicist.

Anyway, starting on 17 August 1987, the Earth was led (precisely how I don’t know, so please don’t ask me.  I am not one of those privileged to have a direct line to the rulers of the cosmos) no less than 13 million light years into an orbit closer to the Great Central Sun (of where?  The universe?  How do they know that the universe has a centre and where it is?  We should be told!).

Ah, sorry, hang on a second.  It says here (Extraordinary Encounters by Jerome Clark) that ‘millions’ of starships used ‘powerful magnetic beams’ to transfer Shan to another solar system in the Pleiades.  The process was completed on 15 December 1995.  The Earth is now the fourth planet in the orbit of the star Coeleno.

So how come nobody down here noticed anything funny going on?

Now this is where this blue-sky concept gets really clever.

The extra-terrestrials felt that we might find such a radical change of habitat a bit disturbing and bad for the nerves, so they went to great lengths to conceal their operation.  The sky around us has been specially arranged to look just the way it did before the move.  All the old stars and planets have been cunningly replaced by an enormous fleet of starships, hovering in just the right configurations.

A few very observant humans have, however, noticed that though the sun is now emitting more intense light, it still looks smaller than it did before.  This is because Shan is seven million miles further away from Coeleno than it was from Sol.  Of course, this also means that our new moon is brighter than the old one.

Before we get moved up into the fourth dimension, all the usual type of devastating cataclysms will sweep across the globe, cleansing the planet of undesirable influences, including Satan and his minions.  Despite being the undisputed evil overlord of creation, the Devil is still thick enough not to notice that the Earth has been moved by the space-men!  

So, we’ve got a lot to look forward to this December.

Terrestrial scientists, on the other hand, agree that it is safe to buy a diary for 2013 and start pencilling in all the important dates for next year, including your income tax returns.

Naughty rude words

Back on Monday, I decided to pop into Blackwells bookshop on the university campus during my lunchbreak.

Shortly after I'd got myself nicely settled in a comfy chair with a good book, the woman sitting opposite asked if I could help her.

"Yes, no problem," I replied.

"You see, I'm slightly dyslexic," she went on, "and I sometimes have a problem with certain words."

The book she was reading just happened to be Fifty Shades Of Grey.

"PLEASE don't let it be a rude word, PLEASE don't let it be a rude word!" I silently pleaded.

The word turned out to be 'anticipated'.

The one after that was the rude one.

I just happened to be reading about the deplorable private lives of the ancient Roman emperors at the time, so I suppose she thought I wouldn't mind.

It's all in the title

Insomnia has struck once again, so I've been waking up at 3 o'clock most mornings and worrying about the state of the country/world/solar system/universe/my bank balance.

In an attempt to divert my mind from such apocalyptically overwhelming (not to mention pointless) trains of thought, I have been working out some attention-grabbing titles for potential future posts.

Here's what I've managed to come up with so far:

*  A Gallonful Of Arse-Gravy
*  A Little Light Goethe
*  Frumpy Shoes For Frumpy People

Now I've just got to write the articles to accompany them.

Wish me luck, fans!

The crepe list continued

Yes, you can take it as read.  There are even more aspects of modern life that seriously get on my non-existent knackers.  And because I had neither the time nor the inclination to look at them in the original Crepe List post, I thought I might as well put together a follow-up now.  (Cheap, tacky and obvious move I know, but hey, flankers always sell well in cinemas, sweet shops and perfume halls.)

So here they are, again, in no particular order:

Drippy hippies running in slow motion through waist-high meadows of wild flowers against a soundtrack of sensitive singer-songwriters crooning fey paens to childhood friendship whilst strumming a single acoustic guitar – when the mobile phone network in question continues to send you computerised invoices carefully itemising every last text you sent to your ex when you felt ‘tired and emotional’ last Friday night. Don’t forget that these multi-national conglomerates intent on grabbing every last penny of your cash used to advertise themselves as looming behemoth Laputas mistaken for invading UFOs on RAF radar screens back during the Eighties.

Keep calm and carry on posters – why the hell have these Second World War relics from

the Central Office of Information’s attic clear-out become so popular of late? Presumably because they are easy to turn into mugs, tea towels and the sort of ‘ironic’ retro poster that Nathan Barley and co consider an absolute hoot to hang up on the wall of the office boardroom. No-one these days takes this sort of stark, stoical, uncompromising attitude to life at all seriously (hence the existence of such bleary miseries on the literary landscape as Liz Jones). The only variants on this theme that I like at all are: ‘I will not keep calm – and you can fuck off’ (have saved a copy of this on my mobile to make me cackle when times is hard) and ‘Now scream your head off and freak out’ (not managed to track down one of these for my mobile as of yet – though we live in hope)

David Cameron – ugly, moon-faced, ubiquitous windbag of an utter non-entity – yet somehow he’s managed to find himself in charge of our entire country. Just what is the point of his existence, apart from helping to pay the mortgages of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton? Bloody big mortgages to keep going in such financially straitened times as these, is all I can say. Move to a cardboard box on the Norfolk Broads. You know it makes sense!

Spray tans – so walking about drenched in stray off-cuts of reject caramel is supposed to make me more attractive to the opposite sex, is it? I know human beings come in a huge range of colours and finishes, but Tango-Dorito E-number orange is not exactly a Pantone I ever remember encountering in nature.

Pod being a hip, happenin’ sort of suffix for desirable new products (like state-of-the-art computer technology, cool coffee-shops on Islington High Street frequented by urban bike-riding Guardian readers, offices constructed entirely out of plate glass and steel girders so that the inmates end up feeling like tomatoes in a greenhouse every time the sun comes out) – ‘pods’ are what beans live in as they develop to maturity. It doesn’t matter whether they are coffee, vanilla or green. End of story.

Stacks of false eyelashes adorning women’s faces – sorry, but I don’t happen to be either a drag-queen or Ermintrude the cow from The Magic Roundabout. And while Scandinavian-style paper cut-out ones showing the outlines of birds perching on top of chimney pots might well be a work of art, they’ll still peel off and fall straight into your mug of skinny latte the first time you ever wear them, so I wouldn’t bother shelling out that £29.99 in Liberty if I were you.

Britain is great fever – in that case, why all the jokes about sending your rubbish to France? And how comes it was Roger Federer who won the Men’s Singles at Wimbledon for the seventh bloody time? (I’ll say this for him, though – if he hadn’t bagged the title, then it’s guaranteed that Andy Murray would have been given a knighthood in the next Queen’s honours list.) Plus we seem to have conveniently forgotten that, in normal years, some of the most vociferous advocates of bellowing patriotism are football hooligans, extreme right-wing Fascist nutters, Daily Mail readers – and punks taking the piss during tough times. Are you sure you want to be associated with any of these people?

Spanx knickers – aka ‘pull-you-in’ knickers. So you’ve been following the maple syrup and lemon juice diet for the past month and a half, yet you still haven’t managed to rid yourself of that last teaspoon of stubborn cellulite on your bum? Fear not, control underwear is here to hoist you into shape for that red carpet photo-opportunity. Now no-one but you need ever know your dirty little secret – you’re fat!!!!!!!! If someone like me pulls a pair of these vicious piranha knickers on, they simply redistribute the flab. The laws of physics state that energy cannot be created or destroyed – and neither can wobble. So your spare tyres are forced to migrate to sunnier climes – your neck and your knees. Aren’t you glad nobody has ever heard of you, so that no pictures of you appear on the front of Heat magazine with a circle drawn round the offending portion of blubber together with the accompanying caption accusing you of ‘letting yourself go’?

Tons of black eyeliner – in case you hadn’t already noticed, I’m not Amy Winehouse. And I’m not modelling cheeky little polka-dot prom dresses designed to showcase my ‘magnificent bangers’ in the after segment of a Gok Wan make-over, either. Nor am I sleeping with Don Draper in the office stationery cupboard when I’m not typing up letter after wonderful letter for him in the typing pool. Let’s get the photocopier on the case!

‘I’m going on a journey’ type formats for documentaries – always fancied a holiday in the Galapagos Islands or a cruise aboard the QEII, yet have never had enough moolah ready to afford it? All you need to do is get commissioned to write and present your very own documentary. All real-life programmes automatically triple their appeal to the viewers once they can offer a few pretty (and aspirational) backgrounds, so chuck your cute little knitted beanie on and start thinking of some nifty links between the death of neutron stars and a trip round the Galapagos Islands via the QEII. Hint to any glamorous lady intellectuals out there nurturing a humongous crush on Professor Brian Cox – just arrange to pass by a convenient glacier or iceberg whilst wearing your best padded parka – and he’ll get winched in by helicopter to join you. Guaranteed!

Knackered and clapped out

If anybody out there is wondering where the hell I've been and what the bollock I've been doing since you last heard from me, just give me a chance to explain.

Over the course of the past month I have:

1.)  Undergone an operation at the Christie Hospital
2.)  Passed my MA course with a Distinction
3.)  Finished learning the Georgian alphabet
4.)  Been stricken with a horrible virus
5.)  Suffering from post-viral exhaustion

I am afraid that I also looked up 'steam cleaning teeth' on Google - and discovered that that stupid old ratbag Liz Jones happens to be telling the truth about this rather esoteric sounding health and beauty treatment.  However, you'll be glad to hear that no way am I daft enough to actually sign up for a course of it.

And of course I haven't forgotten the lovely Dr Frogg.

So just relax and give me a break, would you?

Froggy is my darling

Or why we all love and worship Doktor Archibald Frogg from the League of Super Evil.

Find out more once I've finished writing it and posted it up here ...

The crepe list

In no particular order, a selection of the things that have been getting right up my schnonker (sp?) recently:

* Cupcakes - ponced-up fairy cakes with an inflated idea of their own importance
* Mismatched sets of vintage china - great way to charge triple for chipped pieces of bargain-basement crockery in balls-achingly trendy and eye-wateringly overpriced interior decorators called Carpet in Shoreditch (remember that shop in The Harry and Paul Show that used to part Trustafarians from their parents' hard-earned money?)
* Cake-stands - only useful for putting cupcakes on in twee teashop windows in Shoreditch
* Doilies - ditto
* Tea-cosies - what you make to pay your mortgage after you get made redundant from your job in the City
* Crochet - ditto
* Knitting - ditto
* Home sewing - something I am not very good at, due to being deficient in many of the more traditionally 'feminine' skills (so how I'm going to pay my mortgage during an economic downturn, I don't know.  Chutney-brewing, perhaps?)
* Owls - as signifiers of cute 'quirkiness', rather than ancient wisdom and knowledge
* Taxidermy
* Fancy cut-out silhouettes
* Bloody obsession with anything and everything Scandinavian - starting to wonder whether this hasn't all been secretly sponsored by the tourist boards of all these countries a la 'Carrots give you cancer - signed the Potato Marketing Board' campaigns
* Sara Lund's sodding jumper - she wears it because it keeps her warm in a cold climate and it's quick and easy to put on in the morning.  Proof - I have never seen her get snapped in it at the Coachella Festival
* Constant festivals - that all seem to be starring Florence And The Machine on the Jimi Hendrix Stage
* Assumption that I am meant to be at all arsed what all the female celebs are wearing at these endless festivals and who they have started going out with this week
* Twiglet-thighed female celebrities who don't ever seem to do any work, but only ever get papped on the red carpet/on holiday/at festivals, thus making you conclude that their definition of 'work' must be 'blagging designer clothes to get papped in on the red carpet/on holiday/at festivals'
* Constant twitterings in women's magazines about how 'lonely' and 'unlucky with men' Jennifer Anniston is meant to be - well, she doesn't seem to be doing at all badly from where I'm sitting
* Claiming that Prince Harry is 'handsome' - no, he sodding isn't!  Just look at him - a baked potato in fatigues jumping out of helicopters into the sea.  All these women only drool over him because he has a title, is loaded and appears in the papers every day.
* Liz Jones getting paid shedloads of moolah every week for writing total cobblers about her supposed 'fairy-tale' affair with a washed-up 'rock star' - generally referred to on Mumsnet, DigitalSpy, Gransnet, The Angry Mob et al as the 'FRS' (Fantasy/Fairytale Rock Star, rather than 'Former' RS) because that's what they have all concluded he probably is.  If Liz Jones longs to write novels with curlicued pictures of pink shoes and purple handbags on the front that stressed-out twenty-something women read on the Tube to take their minds off worrying about possibly losing their jobs during the current economic downturn, then why doesn't she just write up a synopsis of her idea and send it off to a few publishers for consideration?
* The media insistently banging on about how 'gorgeous' George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling are - don't you even trust me to make up my OWN mind about celeb men?
* Idea that it is intrinsically 'feminine' for women of all ages to absolutely adore pink sparkles on anything and everything - if I took this up at my age (44), the natural assumption would be that my husband had left me for his secretary and I was now attempting to drown my sorrows in chardonnay and male strippers
* Fake tits
* Tango tans
* Horrible dagger-like false nails - if I'm not working as a porn star, why the hell would I want to dress like one?