When I Grow Up

Is there anything more depressing than logging on to MSN and seeing 0/67 contacts online? Stop having a real life, people, get on the internet and entertain me! So in the absence of either human contact or anything resembling adventures to share, I'll just have a moan about something instead. Today's topic poses the question... is the Pussycat Dolls' When I Grow Up the single worst song in the history of recorded music?

“Now I've got a confession / When I was young I wanted attention”

That's perfectly natural – its called the Terrible Twos. Most toddlers grow out of it. Its most certainly not endearing to persist through childhood, let alone into adulthood.

“I promised myself that I'd do anything / Anything at all for them to notice me”

Yes, you became strippers. Oh, sorry... burlesque dancers. You take your clothes off for money. This is not an achievement or something to be proud of.

“Now I ain’t complaining, we all wanna be famous / So go ahead and say what you wanna say”

Well since you gave me free reign, OK. You're talentless whores who can't sing whose entire careers are based around almost – but not quite – getting naked. And that's just for starters.

“You don't know what its like to be nameless / -”

Actually I'll just stop you there before we go through the entire song lyric by lyric. Are you seriously suggesting that the majority of your audience doesn't know what it's like to be not-famous? Are you trying to paint some sort of picture of a bleak, horrible world where everyone is famous except you and are asking for sympathy for that fact? I admit we seem to be well on our way with your X Factors and Big Brothers, but until everyone in the western hemisphere has had their 15 minutes (which should be around, ooh... 2016 or so) you seem to be using some sort of backwards moon logic here. Or maybe they're just 'before their time'. But if you were going to travel back in time to a simpler world, before the Oil Wars and before every man, woman and child had been on reality TV, would the song you submit for recording as your own really only be THIS piece of drivel? Surely there will be some pieces of artwork in the future worthy of bringing back with you and claiming as your own genius beyond “When I Grow Up”, or Simon Cowell's got a LOT more to answer for for his assault on our culture than previously thought. And don't even get me started on the finer points of my time travelling 'songwriter' theories – I have my suspicions about Freddie Mercury, for one, but that's another topic for an equally boring day.

"But be careful what you wish for cos you just might get it"

Yes, this is a popular trope throughout our recorded history, but how is it relevant to this scenario that you've laid out for us? You've failed to put forward any sort of downside to receiving the fame and attention that you've apparently craved since birth, so what's the moral of the story? If you want something badly enough to take your clothes off for money, then... you might just get attention after all? While as a straight male I am honour-bound to applaud this example, as a staunch feminist (stop snickering at the back, you!) I can see more than a few minor holes to pick in it. Which I just have.

So yes, in conclusion, a group of strippers attempting to become popstars have failed to add significantly to our musical culture, and have annoyed me in the process. Who could have foreseen that?

Mayday Parade did a pretty cool cover of it though, from one of the 'Punk Goes Pop' albums. It's worth checking out, I suppose.

But still. Grr!

A Love Poem

Oh Ke$ha,
You are quite pretty
And you have wavy hair.
But I don't like your personality
Because you're quite slutty,
Even in an ironic way.
So it probably would never work out
Between us.
Also you can't sing,
But that's not exactly a dealbreaker
Because neither can I.

Beautiful chaos, logical pokémaths

David's Latias deals x amount of damage, using a move with 70 power. When it's finished its training, it will possess a move of 90 power, and have 50% higher base attack. How much more damage will an attack from this creature do?

Also, it's 2 o'clock in the morning, you're too tired to remember how to do percentages and you're on IM to your ex girlfriend, who doesn't realise that the maths problem you've just bewildered her with is Pokémon related and may attempt to stab you when she figures this fact out.

(The answer is “almost twice as much”, by the way. I finally figured it out at 3am after lying asleep for a while going over it in my head. I also remembered how to divide by fractions. She was not impressed to be informed of any of these points.)

We've got an extra brother around the house now, so 50% added chaos to be spread! In between the catch up on all the quality TV he missed in his 8 months away (that won't take long) and the Ally McBeal boxset marathon, that is. Apparently when he was at work in Vienna, he expressed a keen interest in the branded toasters that the hotel used, that burned the hotel logo onto the bread while they cooked them. In a wonderfully thoughtful gesture, as a leaving present, his co-workers managed to hook him up with one! Unfortunately, he had already packed his bags, so he had to attempt to take his brand new toaster with him on his hand luggage instead. It's interesting to note that the airport security at Vienna International had never seen a toaster show up on the scanner before, and by all accounts amused both him and them as they attempted to work out if any part of it was capable of being used as a weapon before allowing it onto the plane. And of course, since this was a European electrical appliance, it has a continental-style plug, meaning he had to grab an adaptor specifically for use on this one, sole toaster, that brands the corporate logo of his ex-employer onto his toast. It's nice to know that my capacity for creating beautiful chaos out of everyday life runs in the family!

In other news that will no doubt draw sarcastic comments as to my mentioning her AGAIN, apparently the infinitely wise and talented miss Ke$ha has been on record to say that the reason her songs are so shockingly slutty is because she's making a feminist point. You see, if a man said those things then they'd be seen as perfectly acceptable, so by drawing attention to the double standards imposed on men and women she's really just holding a mirror up to society.

I like this argument, a lot. If I ever say or do anything that annoys or upsets anyone, then I'm doing it to prove a point about how bad it is! Don't blame me, blame society for the unfair values that it attributes to doing that, whatever it might be. Flawless logic.

Culture Shock

Only a few hours in, and I've got some followers already! I like that. With Facebook (boo) it was just friends, MSN its contacts, but on here I have actual followers. Like Jesus! As it stands I've got 4... but one of them's anonymous! I wonder what this means? Is it someone who just found me on Google and thinks I'm interesting? A friend of a friend who doesn't know me? Even maybe an ex-friend who doesn't want anyone to know they care about the minutae of my life any more? Whoever it is, I'm very curious, I'd like to know what kind of odd circumstances mean you want to follow me, just... not publically.

Of course, it only shows those who are willing to reveal themselves on my front page, so I can just claim I've got a HUNDRED friends, they're just all anonymous and they go to a different school/are from Canada, so you wouldn't know them so don't try and look them up or anything but they're totally real and I'm going to see them next summer.

On the other point, I wonder what kind of people I don't know will stumble across this? Maybe I should try and push myself up the Google rankings by latching onto some pop culture. Twilight! High School Musical! Umm... Hanson?

As I've just unwittingly revealed, one of the side effects (or maybe perks) of my position firmly on the outskirts of society is that the term “doesn't get out much” applies very literally to me. I can usually be expected to be a solid 3 months behind any sort of trend, and case in point recently discovered what a Ke$ha was, putting all those MSN statuses that I thought were shockingly slutty at the time into some sort of context at least. I also have been reliably informed that Rihanna has a bangin' new choon called “Umbrella” that absolutely no-one is sick of yet.

Ella. Ella. Ella.