What do Britney Spears and Jeremy Clarkson have in common?

…They both owned themselves today, to my great amusement.

Let’s start with that bastion of good decision-making, Britney Spears. Having previously appeared in critically-slaughtered movie Crossroads in 2002 and guested on Will and Grace in 2006 (insert your own “Oops, I did it again” joke here, I have better things to do with my time), she’s now gone and landed herself a guest role on another American sitcom, How I Met Your Mother (never seen it, sounds crap. I will accept that as fact for the purpose of this post). Now, surely the last thing Troubled Singer Britney Spears (apparently that’s her full name now) needs after much public embarrassment this last year or so is, uh…more public embarrassment. I’ve not seen Crossroads (sounds like I was one of the lucky ones), but I did catch a glimpse of her turn on Will and Grace, and I’m not saying her efforts had anything to do with that particular series promptly ending for good, but…

Speaking of voices I’m tired of hearing, occasional TV host and full-time prat Jeremy Clarkson, who for many people is the number one authority on cars (by “many people” I’m guessing he means his own family, and even they must be reluctant), decided recently that he’d just take a few minutes to make a call on his mobile while driving, and then drove too closely to somebody who both owned a cameraphone (84 million worldwide) and recognised his face (100% of the UK population, says the Ministry of Fabricated Statistics That Are Probably True Anyway) – what were the chances, eh, Jeremy? When asked about the photo that was taken of his law-breaking antics, Clarkson didn’t comment, probably because he couldn’t hear the question what with his head so far up his backside.

Much as I’d rather never to hear of either of these two ever again, it’s little things like this that help me get through the day. Looking forward to Clarkson’s next appearance as guest host of Have I Got News For You now (and I never thought I’d hear myself say that…)

MSN Screen Names: A Rant

Aloha, this is the first post on the CDB Desk blog. No need for an overlong intro, suffice to say that I’ll be running this in conjunction with my sport blog, the CDB Pod, which will launch this summer. I’ll be using this blog to comment on all the non-sport issues that I feel like talking about. Strap yourself in.

So, to get started, I thought I’d talk about a subject close to my heart (in the ‘keep your enemies closer’ sense) – MSN screen names. Those of you who don’t use MSN – sorry, but I’m sure you can relate to this somehow, considering you’re internet-literate enough to be reading this in the first place.

Basically, I keep seeing people using these ridiculous “deep” sayings that don’t look deep – they just make you look like a prat. Here are some great examples:

• <Name> What if today was your last day? I hope one day you will get the chance – to live like you were dying~
• ~Life is like a game of poker! U never know if u will win or loose!~
• I’ll make sure we survive

Here’s how I see it.

1st example: This is pointless, pratty melodrama. I mean, wtf? I know for a fact that this person is not going to die tomorrow. So how the HELL does he know what it’s like to ‘live like you were dying’? Why does he wish it on someone else? IT MIGHT BE HORRIBLE! It probably would be, thinking about it a bit…but that isn’t the point. To the person who wrote this, whose name shall be omitted – YOU. ARE. A. PRAT. Stop trying to sound impressive, it isn’t working.

2nd example: First of all, no. It’s not like that. There are times during a game of poker when you KNOW that you will win or you KNOW that you will lose, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And second – if we remove the poker part, life itself ISN’T always ‘you never know whether you will win or lose’! There are times in your life when you KNOW you will succeed at something or you KNOW you are going to fail. And there are also times where you don’t win or lose – how do you explain that? Furthermore, if it WAS like that, thanks for pointing out the bleeding obvious! WE WOULD KNOW! We don’t need you to tell us!

3rd Example: What are you, a freaking psychic? You know who you are.

So, in short, basically I’d like people to stop pratting about with all this nauseating melodrama and supposed ‘wise words’. They don’t make you look impressive or cool, and most of the time the ‘wise words’ aren’t even wise. THEY’RE NOT EVEN REAL WORDS! Case in point, use of ‘u’ instead of ‘you’. That’s not a word! THEREFORE it can’t be wise words. If you absolutely must identify yourself with something other than your name or a nickname, at least make it something funny. Seeing as most people on MSN are under the age of 30, I highly doubt that any of them have enough life experience to say something truly profound anyway.

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Note: If you’re one of the people I pressured into reading this blog, you may recognise the above. It is indeed taken (and modified, I hasten to add) from a post I made on my old Son of SPAM Palace forum (now defunct), as a way to get me started. From here on in, though, it’s all up-to-date material.