Big Brother-tastic

Apparently, today is the first day of the Big Brother of the month.

One of the candidates (Luke) is, well, 20, business student, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, wears suits all the time. I fully expect him to be pregnant and addicted to heroin by the end of it.

He is also annoyed by people who think he has a speech impediment; he says he doesn't. Erm, I'm not sure if that's the sort of thing that's for you to decide, dear.

Update: There's also a really horrendous gay. I may have to become a straight for a few months to avoid association. I mean, I'm all for tolerance, but he's sort of the gay equivalent of those straight guys who... well, actually I've never met anyone as extreme in the opposite direction. The gay equivalent of Paris Hilton, perhaps.

My Super Sweet 16 - oh, the horror

There's this horrifying show in MTV called 'My Super Sweet 16', in which a revoltingly well-off kid has an absurd birthday party, and make it very clear just what a horrible spoilt git they are. It's really shocking, but with that sort of train-crash, can't look away quality.

I wouldn't know much about the topic, mind you; I, regarding other kids as more objects of fear than companionship, never actually had any friends in school (those people who insist that school is the best years of your life are obviously dangerously insane), and in college (where people, in my experience, are rather more grown up, saner and less vicious) my birthday rather inconveniently tended to fall during end-of-year exams. Generally the day of a digital logic exam, by some bizarre, sick coincidence. In fact, this year will be the first that I can sensibly do something for my birthday, but the thought of being 23, horrifying as it is, is putting me off a bit.

Sweet 16's primarily an American thing, but MTV UK did make at least one series; one of the episodes is about Lorcan from Blackrock. That'd be Blackrock in Dundalk, by the way; I know, I was amazed too. He's horrible. It's really shockingly awful, and well worth a watch. I realise I'm a bit late here; it was a minor Internet sensation in Ireland a while back. Oh, well. For some reason, although all the other episodes are available to view on MTV's site, this one isn't out in the open; the first part of it is hidden away on their site here though.

He turns out to also have a bebo (knowledge gleaned from aforementioned Internet sensation), but I won't direct you there; you see, the young, well, they don't spell like us. My eyes still ache from punctuation used as letters.

The worst of it is, the very most dreadful of the UK/Ireland ones seem to be better than the US ones; in the US series, a fit of temper should be expected if the birthday present (generally a car or similar) is worth less than $50,000. Really. Welcome to the new, scary, consumertastic society!

And yes, I am watching a lot of crap TV this weekend, thank you for asking.

The Apprentice more embarrassingly stupid than usual

So, I'm watching the Apprentice; it's a guilty pleasure of mine. It's a show where people who incorrectly think that they are good businesspeople compete to win the approval of Sir Alan Sugar, the man who repeatedly tried to introduce overpriced, underspecced email consoles to Britain, at a time when people could buy a perfectly good personal computer for the same price. So, really, the person who makes the most absurd decisions should win.

The task was to buy a list of items in a Marrakesh souk; one of them a Kosher chicken. So... one team bought a dead chicken, then tried to have it blessed in a mosque. Because that's what Kosher means, obviously. I mean, there's stupid, and then there's, well, this.

Update: Alan Sugar was just as horrified as I was at their horrendous stupidity. The best bit; one of the members of the offending team was Jewish, and had put on the first paragraph of his CV that he was 'a good Jewish boy'. Now, I'm a not very good Atheist (of nominally Catholic background) boy, and I seem to have a better idea of what Kosher means than him. Admittedly, I do collect random information about nonsense, but still.