The northlondonhippy

Archive for August, 2007

Polly Ver­non, writ­ing in today’s Observer news­pa­per, claims that the cur­rent series of Big Brother, is the best one yet.

You can check out what she says by click­ing RIGHT HERE.

I know my out­put on BB hasn’t been over­whelm­ing this year, but it’s not because I’m not enjoy­ing the series. I’m still watch­ing and I am still dig­ging it too.

I haven’t had that much time to write about it. I haven’t really been that both­ered. I think, this year, is my last year of for­mally try­ing to blog about BB. I think, as a topic for me, it’s stopped being fun.

I’d rather write about things that inspire me more.

All that said, I’m going to do one last piece on this series of BB at some point in the next week or so. I owe you all that much!

In the mean­time, check out that link I pro­vided to the Observer. I agree with most of what Ms. Ver­non says. You might, too.

There’s some­thing lurk­ing in YOUR HOME that is a dan­ger to CHILDREN!

There is some­thing FREELY AVAILABLE in your work­place, every­day that could put YOUR CHILD in HOSPITAL!

Restau­rants, bars, cafes, all serve this evil brew and a CHILD YOU KNOW could SUFFER as a result.

Yes, my friends, I’m talk­ing about: COFFEE!

And NO CHILD is safe from this dev­il­ishly dan­ger­ous demon drink.

Don’t believe me? Check out this gen­uine arti­cle from a gen­uine news­pa­per: CLICK HERE, CLICK NOW!

I know some of you don’t click on my links, you lazy hippyfans…so for your ben­e­fit, I’ll sum­marise the story: A 17-year-old TEENAGER who works in her father’s café, drank 14 shots of espresso and ended up OVERDOSING ON CAFFEINE!

Here’s what YOUNG Jas­mine Willis had to say about this tragic inci­dent, in her own words, “My nerves were all over the place. I was cry­ing in front of the cus­tomers and had tears stream­ing down my face. I was drenched and burn­ing up and hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing. I was hav­ing pal­pi­ta­tions, my heart was beat­ing so fast and I think I was going into shock.”

Ms. Willis was so affected by this DANGEROUS DRUG that she had to seek hos­pi­tal treat­ment. She said the effects lin­gered for sev­eral days.

It sounds to me like a COFFEE TRIP can really MESS YOU UP.

KIDS, JUST SAY NO!

I should be hon­est and up front right now, as I always am, that I too have used this drug, though never to excess. I’ve only ever used it in moderation.

Sure, I’ve dab­bled in the DEVIL’S BREW, but today I limit myself to one cup of fil­ter cof­fee with break­fast and a cap­puc­cino if I’m work­ing, around 2 hours after I start. Any more than that, and I would not be able to sleep. I know my own caf­feine tolerance.

That’s the thing about me, I know my lim­its and I’m always care­ful not to overindulge, what­ever the sub­stance. And on those rare occa­sions when I have, I’ve made sure I’m in a safe, secure envi­ron­ment. Many peo­ple, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN, aren’t as respon­si­ble when it comes to coffee.

Cof­fee is grown in far away places, like Colom­bia and Ethiopia and our con­tin­ued depen­dence on it is keep­ing poor farm­ers alive. How dare we allow decent, hon­est peo­ple to get involved in this EVIL TRADE in cof­fee beans! Per­haps the DEA should start erad­i­cat­ing the cof­fee bean crops to spare OUR CHILDREN from this scourge.

I am not going to rest until ALL CHILDREN are free from the THREAT posed by COFFEE. I don’t see how any par­ent could allow the con­tin­ued con­sump­tion of this DEMON DRUG by any­one, even respon­si­ble, law-abiding cit­i­zens such as myself.

Think about how many crimes are com­mit­ted under the INFLUENCE of COFFEE. Like in the open­ing scene of the NEAR CRIME DOCUMENTARY, “Reser­voir Dogs”, where all those CRIMINALS are sit­ting in a diner, drink­ing COFFEE, to get hep­ped up to com­mit CRIME!

It’s the same in real life, too.

COFFEE IS THE ROOT OF ALL-EVIL!

Alright, enough of my satire, my social com­men­tary, my fuck­ing bull­shit. The fact is sim­ple: No one is going to con­sider ban­ning cof­fee because it is dan­ger­ous in large quantities.

Ask Tony Blair, the for­mer prime min­is­ter. Fol­low­ing his heart prob­lems, he had to cut down on his cof­fee intake. Don’t believe me? CLICK HERE.

From the fourth para­graph from the bot­tom: “Last year, when Tony Blair received treat­ment for his irreg­u­lar heart­beat and Bill Clin­ton blamed his friend’s hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion on ‘too lit­tle sleep and too much cof­fee’, Cherie Blair announced that she would try to reduce his caf­feine intake.”

Caf­feine is a strong stim­u­lant and is one of the most widely con­sumed drugs in the west­ern world. We’re all cool with that, even though it has risks.

I bet cannabis has less risk, yet it remains pro­hib­ited and on the verge of com­plete demon­i­sa­tion because of the cur­rent false media hysteria.

It’s not the first time this has hap­pened. Check out the film “Reefer Mad­ness”, if you haven’t seen it and make sure you are stoned when you do. What’s hap­pen­ing right now to weed, is exactly what they tried to do way back then.

Guess what! It didn’t work then and it’s not going to work now.

Why? Enough peo­ple have inhaled and enjoyed it by now to know the truth.

Cannabis is and will remain pop­u­lar because peo­ple have first hand expe­ri­ence of it. They won’t buy into the lies. It may get dri­ven a lit­tle fur­ther under­ground, but not that much and it will, of course, survive.

Weed is an accepted part of soci­ety and more so every­day, the next gen­er­a­tion is going to be even cooler about it and finally legalise it. I may not get to see that next gen­er­a­tion come of age to do the right thing, with you my friends, but I can assure you that day is coming.

For now, I’ve got to go meet my new bean dealer. I fig­ured it was bet­ter to have a ready sup­ply on the black mar­ket put in place, before they announce the ban on coffee…because YOUR CHILDREN COULD O.D. ON IT!!!!

(Click here to read the hippy’s “cannabis truth” series)

The above title is true.

My web­site is becom­ing less of a blog with each pass­ing day.

My posts are long, they are usu­ally quite focussed and I pub­lish them spo­rad­i­cally. I rarely men­tion what I’ve had for lunch. I rarely even eat lunch.

This has ceased to be a blog.

I don’t even feel like a blog­ger any more.

So what the hell am I?

Good ques­tion.

“I’m the hippy you all adore, because I am a total media whore!” seems a bit tired these days. I’m no longer “shroom­tas­tic” and haven’t been since they banned my beloved fresh magic mush­rooms around 2 years ago. The fuckers!

I’m still “a mes­siah for the new mil­len­nium”, only the millennium’s not that new now. I still am though, and I can prove it too. Look up at the very top of your browser.

I’ve never been com­pletely sure of what­ever it is I do here any­way, so I don’t know why I’m hav­ing this sud­den cri­sis of inter­net identity.

Part of it is there are a lot more of you around these days. My audi­ence has con­tin­ued to steadily grow and I have to say I’m quite impressed with the num­ber of you out there using RSS read­ers to keep up with me.

There’s a down­side to know­ing that so many of you are grab­bing the myr­iad of hippy feeds on offer: I feel like every time you hit your refresh but­ton, there should be some fresh hippy good­ness there for you to enjoy and that’s putting pres­sure on me.

I don’t like pressure.

Well, that’s not strictly true, but this site is sup­posed to be about me hav­ing fun. More even, than you, when you read it.

A lot more, probably.

Here, let me share of my kind of fun:

Ring up an old friend, some­one you like, that you haven’t spo­ken to in ages. After the pre­req­ui­site pleas­antries are com­pleted, try this for an con­ver­sa­tional gambit.

You: “Sorry I haven’t been in touch for a while, but I’ve had a bit of trou­ble. Look, I really hate to ask you this, but I don’t know where else to turn. It’s just, well, I need to bor­row some money. Actu­ally, a lot of money.”

Them: Ummm, ahhhh, ummm…

You: ”Oh come on, I’m jok­ing. No, the real rea­son I’m phon­ing is I want to invite you to the pre­miere of my first fea­ture film.”

Them: “Wow, really, your first fea­ture film? That’s amazing!”

You: “Sorry, no, this time I really am joking.

No, the real rea­son I’ve called is that I was won­der­ing if you would mind tak­ing a tissue-type test for me. You see, I need some­one who matches my very rare tissue-type to donate a kid­ney for me.”

Them: Click

Now, if that ain’t fun, I don’t know what is!

I’m avail­able for par­ties, bar mitz­vahs and funer­als and if you can com­bine all three into one event, I might even be able to do you a bit of a discount.

So here’s the bot­tom line: I’m just going to keep doing what­ever it is I do here, when I want, how I want.

As they say, you might as well “please yourself”.

I usu­ally do (and I lie about it when I don’t!).

(Click here to read the hippy’s “cannabis truth” series)

Yes. Yes, I am.

I haven’t stopped watch­ing it. I just haven’t writ­ten about it in a while. I’m a bad hippy and deserve a spank­ing, but don’t get any funny ideas about send­ing Jonty ‘round to do the hon­ours. This hippy don’t play that way.

Not that there’s any­thing wrong with a lit­tle bit of light spank­ing, I would just pre­fer that it were Chan­nelle admin­is­ter­ing my much deserved pun­ish­ment. As if she would even look in my gen­eral direc­tion while hav­ing one of her infa­mous strops, let alone smack my ass for all she was worth!

Ah-hem.

The res­i­dents of the house have cer­tainly changed since last I com­mented on it. We’ve had a fake house­mate, we’ve seen Chan­nelle walk and Charley evicted, twice! We’ve also got five new best-friends, though after tonight, there will be pos­si­bly two less of them.

It seems to this more than casual observer of BB, that the pro­duc­ers have had some clever gim­mick up their sleeves every week of this run. A lot of it has been enter­tain­ing and amus­ing, but all of it is feel­ing some­what man­u­fac­tured. I guess that’s what the for­mat has become, after so many years of it. It’s had to change and evolve, to keep us all watching.

I’d watch any­way, but then I’d watch paint dry, if it was smeared all over a dozen com­plete strangers!

It’s been a weird series for me, I haven’t really warmed to any of them, but then I don’t really hate any of them either. My reac­tion to them is as bland as a con­ver­sa­tion with the twins.

I find Gerry nice, but too whiny and moany. I like Car­ole, but she doesn’t really shine either. The twins are cute, in a very imma­ture way. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I bought the Ziggy and Chan­nelle rela­tion­ship com­pletely. No one would put them­selves through that much angst and bull­shit, if they didn’t really have feel­ings for each other.

I dis­agree with all of you who think Ziggy was using her. No, I don’t think she was the love of his life, but I think his inten­tions were gen­uine. He liked her; he would have dated her prop­erly out­side the house if he could have. He couldn’t, instead he had to live with her for 2 inten­sive months.

Chanelle liked Ziggy too, but I go back to what I said before. She’s the sort of girl who always has a boyfriend, and to her it’s like a cast change in a play. A lot of the shit she was tak­ing out on Ziggy was more than likely bag­gage from pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ships, redi­rected at him.

In real terms, a two-month rela­tion­ship in the house is prob­a­bly equiv­a­lent to a full year in the real world. It would be more intense then you could ever imag­ine. I don’t envy either one of them, not even the sex. I can’t see a self-conscious shag under a duvet and the gaze of a dozen cam­eras can be very sat­is­fy­ing. I’ll never, ever know.

I was glad to see Charley go, I think she out­lasted her use­ful­ness. She was amus­ing to watch at first, but her shtick grew old and tired, fast. How can some­one be like that, with every­one, all the time? It’s just so unpleas­ant. Would you spend time with some­one who behaved like Charley? I wouldn’t, unless I was empow­ered with the right to deliver a well placed back­hand to the chops, when it all got too much.

Bye, bye, Charley. It’s back to obscu­rity for you. Channelle’s well-timed walk has stolen your week and your thun­der, at least if the tabloids are any mea­sure. Oh wait, they are.

I enjoyed fake week, which I realise must seem like ages ago now. Thalia/Pauline was hot, the tasks were amus­ing and I loved how wound up they all got by the mis­in­for­ma­tion. The plane with the ban­ner about the other house was great!

I was impressed that Car­ole seemed to see right through each and every one of BB”s tricks that week. She’s a sharp one, sometimes.

I can’t say I’m blown away by the halfway house­mates and the twists that fol­lowed, espe­cially since it’s ended up with three of them back where they started, ready to be booted out the door. I think mainly, it was the appar­ent ran­dom­ness of the final twist, send­ing Ziggy, Liam, Amy and Jonty into the main house that ruined it for me. There was no drama, no sense of the unex­pected, it was just down to a whim of the producers.

Maybe this whim was pre-planned, but it had the feel­ing of dam­age con­trol. “Oh, shit, we can’t lose Ziggy or Liam, and the Jonty guy would be a waste if he left with­out a spank­ing. And if we’re going to keep Liam, we might as well keep Amy too, so he can have a sexy, buxom, canny lass to play with…”

You get the idea.

They’re will­ing to risk Tracey, but she doesn’t really bring that much to the show any­way, so it’s a cal­cu­lated risk. Near as I can tell, as it’s a dou­ble evic­tion tonight, she’s vul­ner­a­ble, so we could still see some drama and real tears.

David is a gonner tonight, peo­ple have taken an instant dis­like to him and his giant, over­con­fi­dent ego. Only Gerry will be dis­ap­pointed to see him leave, but he didn’t have a hope in pulling him, so its prob­a­bly for the best.

The other evictee will be either Shanessa or Tracey. I’d rather see Shanessa stay, as she is real com­edy gold and car-crash TV at it’s finest. I’ve never been a Tracey fan, though I should be because we both like to get off our faces. I find her dull and her rep­e­ti­tion of those innane catch phrases just doesn’t float this hippy’s boat. I might even feel the need to cast a few votes myself.

The real ques­tion is, what hap­pens to the two peo­ple left in the halfway house? Do they move into the main house? Do the two leav­ing tonight get to choose a 3rd to come with them, live with Davina?

How the hell should I know? I’m sit­ting here on my sofa, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, watch­ing it myself, just like the rest of you!

There’s only a month left, so I guess we’re around two-thirds of the way gone. Any­thing can hap­pen and it’s not 100% that Brian is going to win. It would be cool if he did, because he always makes me laugh.