Love handles
London commuters on the morning train in to work (we’ll take as an example the 8:51 from Balham, which I affectionately describe as the Cattle Truck) are given a free comic to read, so they have something else to stare at instead of making eye contact with anyone. It’s very simply written, full of stories of little or no consequence, and is called Metro to make it sound grown up. The headline on today’s Metro, I kid you not, is something like ‘Love Handles Cause Impotence’. That sounds like a headline sponsored by Fitness First if ever I saw one. Obviously Metro would have covered the death of Steve Irwin by stingray if they’d caught the story in time, and we’d all have gone to work better educated about deadly sea creatures, not paranoid about our love handles.
The love handles headline is a classic news story for when there is no news – it’s usually something to do with food, and starts with ‘Scientists find…’:
- …coffee / tea / red wine is good for you. No, bad for you. No, it’s really actually good. No, it’s bad.
- …eating brie makes you more intelligent.
- …drinking warm pineapple juice causes a sudden interest in ballet dancing.
- …rubbing marmalade into your nipples makes you more attractive to stoats.
Now, Londoners are being treated to more dumbed-down, moronic pseudo-news about nothing in particular in the form of London Lite. This toilet paper with delusions of grandeur carries headlines about the contents of Kate Moss’s last bowel movements and the trendiest new fruit smoothies, so Londoners have something to assist them with avoiding making eye contact on the way home as well. What sticks in my craw more than anything is that the printed word is capable of so much more, that people all over the world are crying out for an education, for books about anything, and yet this bilge is being handed out free. I don’t know what’s worse with the London Lites and Metros of this world – the waste of paper, or the crap that is printed on it.
A Klingon Batleth has been seized by police in a house raid in Gloucester, the Sun reports. The sword was recovered by ‘shocked cops’, who said it ‘could easily take someone’s head off’.
You may well have heard about this. It’s a joy to behold. BBC News interviews a man who is reportedly a London cabbie under the mistaken impression he is a prominent media expert – he’s turned out to be a graduate who was at the Beeb for a job interview. Guy Goma gamely answers all the questions put to him, even though his answers are the utter cobblers of a startled man. Talk about a high pressure job interview – I hope he gets the gig.
Quite Random is the blog of Nathan Nelson, a human male who lives in the UK and is not entirely sure what he's going to do when he grows up but is interested in international development, photography, secularism, technology, music and movies and other things anyone of his age would be.
