The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘television’ Category

I’m going to be pay­ing more atten­tion to the US pres­i­den­tial race now that we are fairly cer­tain who the two main can­di­dates will be. It’s not that I haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion all along, I just haven’t writ­ten much about it so far.

I’m not actu­ally going to write that much today, but rather I am going to let one of the can­di­dates speak for himself.

This video was put together by Robert Green­wald of “Out­Foxed” fame; that’s the film that ripped the shit out of Fox News. It’s worth see­ing, if you haven’t already. Here’s his lat­est on pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, John McCain.

Seems to me this guy is not qual­i­fied to be the next pres­i­dent, if his con­tra­dic­tory state­ments are any­thing to go on. Of course, the cur­rent incum­bent wasn’t qual­i­fied to be dog catcher, never mind pres­i­dent and he got two terms. Though to put it in per­spec­tive, Bush the lesser now has the LOWEST APPROVAL RATING OF ANY PRESIDENT EVER.

If that many peo­ple really hate Bush now, how can McCain stand a chance? A McCain pres­i­dency would just be four more years of the same and I can’t see any­one vot­ing for that, can you?

I haven’t really weighed in on the upcom­ing US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions yet and I thought it was about time I did.

I think I was wait­ing for the field to nar­row to the final two can­di­dates and like most of the world and media (of which I play a small role), thought it would have been resolved by now. It just goes to show you what the media knows…sweet FA.

Except me, of course with my crys­tal balls and amaz­ing pre­dic­tive pow­ers of foresight.

I’ve always joked that news­rooms should replace their for­ward plan­ning desks with psy­chics any­way. Just imag­ine if some­one could tell you where to put a TV cam­era for the next big plane crash or polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion. Talk about a world exclusive!

And speak­ing of polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions, why are peo­ple so obsessed with some­one bump­ing off Barak Obama. You know, some wacko doesn’t have to kill the black can­di­date. It’s not a rule, or even a sug­gested guide­line. It’s actu­ally rep­re­hen­si­ble to sug­gest it, but the sug­ges­tion is out there, far more than you might expect.

My friends over at ANORAK NEWS, have been chart­ing the OBAMA DEATH CULT, thanks to pub­lic com­ments by for­mer Repub­li­can can­di­date Mike Huck­abee and now HILLARY CLINTON.

These are just the two most recent and high pro­file exam­ples, but there are more.

Why is every­one so afraid of an Obama presidency?

I think the answer to that is quite com­plex and any­one who says its just down to racism, is miss­ing the point. I’m not going to deny there is a racist ele­ment to it, because it is cer­tainly a com­po­nent and for some, the only rea­son, but there’s more to it than that.

Obama rep­re­sents change and a break from the past. He is, if noth­ing else, cre­at­ing an illu­sion, that he will take Amer­ica in a dif­fer­ent and more pro­gres­sive and dare I say, lib­eral direc­tion. Whether or not that is true, remains to be seen, but he is cer­tainly mar­ket­ing him­self that way.

So many peo­ple wouldn’t be talk­ing about some nut killing Obama, if they weren’t afraid of him.

I have a silly the­ory that he might be the anti-christ, but of course I don’t believe in that non­sense any more than I believe in the real one. It always gets a laugh though, except from com­mit­ted Chris­tians (and shouldn’t they all be?), who give me know­ing glances and a cou­ple of leaflets from their church.

When­ever I lis­ten to Obama speak, I actu­ally like what I hear. I realise that’s a politician’s job, but he does do it well. When he says he would talk directly with his ene­mies, I applaud him, when he says he’ll pull all the troops out of Iraq as quickly and safely as pos­si­ble, I com­mend him and when he says he’ll allow the use of med­ical mar­i­juana, I’d kiss him.

But would I vote for him? If he ends up being the demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date, of course I would, but it doesn’t mat­ter, because I am not a voter. Any­thing is bet­ter than another four years of McBush.

But back to the “kill Obama” sideshow…I found this clip from Fox News espe­cially dis­turb­ing. Actu­ally it really fucked me off. See what you think…

You can still win my bub­bler. Go on, take a chance, its not like it costs you anything!

I’ve just fin­ished a mam­moth run of work. I col­lapsed in a heap yes­ter­day and stayed that way for around 12 hours until one of my kit­tens woke me up around 4:30am this morn­ing. Hey ho.

My kit­tens are now 10 months old and the lit­tle boy is already huge. He is going to be a giant, mon­ster cat when he is fully grown. He was the one who woke me this morn­ing, by sit­ting on my chest and star­ing me awake. His lit­tle sis­ter was lay­ing on my legs at the same time, sort of rolling around, also try­ing to get my attention.

And that’s really all they wanted; atten­tion. There was plenty of food and water for them, they didn’t need me for that. They sim­ply required me to pay them atten­tion. That didn’t take very long.

Once up, I had to feed the older cats, a 3 year old and a 16 year old. The 3 year just needed me to pre­tend to feed her, so that she would think it was time for her to eat. Yes, she is slightly neu­rotic, but that’s OK.

The 16 year old, our old­est cat needs tinned food these days, as the dry stuff is a bit too hard for her to chew. She’s nearly com­pletely blind from cataracts, but still gets around the house very well. That’s not true out­side though and as of a cou­ple of days ago, I can no longer let her go out. She went under the fence into my neighbour’s yard and couldn’t find her way back — I had to go and res­cue her and she was car­ried home in my arms. She’s still quite feisty and is doing quite well con­sid­er­ing her age.

After sort­ing out the cats, I parked myself in front of my iMac and did some surf­ing. Between my RSS feeds and sites I visit reg­u­larly, I prob­a­bly vis­ited at least 30 of them before 6am.

I also down­loaded the lat­est episode of Lost. Yes, I know I could wait a few days and catch it on Sky One, but why would I do that? Then I would miss out on all the cool stuff on the inter­net that fol­lows, which is released at the Amer­i­can ABC pace.

I’m really into Lost, I think it is eas­ily one of the best pro­grammes on the box. It’s so com­plex and lay­ered and mostly it does my head in, but I know they are tak­ing it some­where. I am really look­ing for­ward to watch­ing the last 2 sea­sons play out, espe­cially as there are only 3 more hours of it left this series, before another ago­nis­ing 10 month wait for more.

I’ve also been watch­ing Mad Men, which I missed when it first aired and was eas­ily down­load­able, but thanks to BBC4, I’ve been able to see the entire series. Wow, its good and Don Draper has got to be the ulti­mate in cap­i­tal­ist anti-heroes. I’ve always liked anti-heroes and secretly like to think I’m one myself. You’re all root­ing for me, even though you know you shouldn’t.

After hang­ing out with the Losties, I made myself my first proper cof­fee of the day with my Vivi. I haven’t used it over a week, because of my erratic work sched­ule and sleep pat­tern, but I haven’t gone with­out excel­lent coffee.

My sec­ondary method of brew­ing fresh cof­fee is now a device called an Aero­Press.

It’s quick and easy to use and it cleans up in sec­onds. What’s not to love?

The cool thing for me about my Aero­Press is that I can use the exact same cof­fee I use in the Vivi, ground the exact same way, so no mess­ing around with the set­ting my grinder. The Aero­Press makes what I would describe as some­thing sim­i­lar to espresso, in strength and vol­ume, but not in tex­ture or com­plex­ity. That’s ok, because the Aero­Press costs sig­nif­i­cantly less than a proper pro-sumer espresso machine.

You can pick up an Aero­Press for as lit­tle as under 20 quid (email me if you want the site sell­ing them that low, they also sell the best freshly roasted beans in the UK) and it will make amaz­ing cof­fee for you too.

By far, the most impor­tant thing you need for mak­ing great cof­fee is freshly roasted, freshly ground beans. When I first started look­ing into cof­fee, this was the most dif­fi­cult thing to get my head around, mainly because of the cost of a decent grinder capa­ble of pro­duc­ing the qual­ity you need for a good espresso machine. Some peo­ple even say the espresso machine is an acces­sory for the grinder and that didn’t really make sense to me until I used my set-up for a while.

An espresso machine basi­cally has an on/off switch; you turn the pump on to force water through the ground cof­fee (at the right pres­sure and tem­per­a­ture) and then you switch it off when you’ve reached the required vol­ume or level of extrac­tion. That’s all the con­trol you really have, on and off. The grinder is what actu­ally gives you any say in how your cof­fee is pro­duced, the coarser the grinder, the faster the pour, the finer the grind, the slower the pour. You aim to pro­duce a dou­ble espresso in around 30 sec­onds, with the colour of the cof­fee stream going tan around that time as well.

Ok, this is tedious to you if you have no inter­est in cof­fee, but as you can prob­a­bly tell, I’ve really got into this in a big way. I’m drink­ing my 2nd cof­fee of the day right now and its every bit as good as my first. Con­sis­tency is what you aim for in mak­ing good cof­fee and I can pretty much repro­duce the same result over and over. That job in Star­bucks is look­ing more and more likely!

It’s just gone 8am, here in north Lon­don, the sun is shin­ing and its expected to be another warm day. I’ve been awake for 3 and 1/2 hours and I’ve pretty much told you every­thing I’ve already done. I’ve replied to a few emails and now I’ve writ­ten this post. You are fully and com­pletely up to date.

All that’s left to do now, is post this on my web­site and you’ll know that’s hap­pened because you’re read­ing it. I’ve got noth­ing left to share with you for now.

(you can still win my bub­bler, along with many other prizes, click here to find out more!)

Hey kids, I’ve got some­thing cool to share with you!

A friend of my has pro­duced, directed and edited a music video for her husband’s band and it is fuck­ing amaz­ing! This really deserves a wide audi­ence and I’m aim­ing to do my part by post­ing it here. If you’ve got a spare three min­utes, I implore you to watch the fol­low­ing video.

So with­out fur­ther ado, here’s the video for “Ah Woohoo!” from the band, Sushalini!

I’m blown away by it! I think she did an excel­lent job on a very low bud­get with a shoe­string crew. I hope you all liked it too…Tell your mates to check it out!

I grant you per­mis­sion to prod my neck or clasp my wrist. Indeed, I do still pos­sess a pulse for I remain alive and nearly well.

I haven’t been ill, not really. I’ve been suf­fer­ing from a mal­ady known as overwork-itis and I am the cause of this afflic­tion. I’ve worked 10 out of the last 13 nights, with tonight being my final night — num­ber 11. Go me. After that, I’m off for a cou­ple of weeks to catch my breath and catch up with you guys.

So much for my 100 post thing, you might pos­si­bly be think­ing. Well, I am here to tell ya that 100 days hasn’t passed yet. I can still catch up. How do you know I won’t snort a shit load of crys­tal meth and stay up for 6 days and nights, doing noth­ing but blogging?

You know this, because I’m telling you, I shan’t be ingest­ing any hor­ri­ble, crappy, man-made shite! This hippy don’t do class A drugs no more, anyway!

But I can still catch up. I haven’t counted to see how behind I am, but I’m sure its not an insur­mount­able num­ber. This hippy is a hippy that can do! And does! And will…!

Fuck, I might start buy­ing into my own hype. Naw, I’m far to cyn­i­cal and clever for that. Besides, its not like I’m actu­ally sell­ing any­thing. Every­thing I do, I do for you, for free! When’s the last time you got an invoice from this hippy?

I wouldn’t know how to charge for this shit, any­way. Just send me your credit card num­bers (and don’t for­get the 3 digit sig­na­ture strip num­ber too) and I’ll buy myself some­thing pretty, on you.

Wouldn’t you like to buy me some­thing pretty? Like a Porsche? Noth­ing says you love me like a finely engi­neered Ger­man sports car. And I’m going to be 45 years old in Jan­u­ary, don’t you think I’m ready for a mid-life-crisis mobile?

And speak­ing of gifts, I’m sure I’m not the only one who you’re shop­ping for because it’s Christ­mas soon. That means this hippy’s hol­i­day shop­ping guide will be com­ing soon too. As a fer­vent con­sumer of every­thing, I am well-placed to help you choose gifts for peo­ple I’ve never met…as long as they are cool peo­ple, but if you’re read­ing my blog, you must be cool and every­one you know is cool too. It’s sim­ple math, really.

Are you dig­ging it? Groovy!

Recently, I pur­chased a Sling­box Solo. I ordered it from Ama­zon and set it up a cou­ple of weeks ago.

For those of you who don’t know what a Sling­box is, please allow me to explain. A Sling­box is a device which you con­nect to your audio/video sources and to your home net­work and it allows you to place-shift your view­ing on a com­puter, in your home, or any­where in the world where you have an inter­net con­nec­tion and it also allows you to con­trol the source device.

I’ll elab­o­rate: I have a SKY+ satel­lite receiver and DVR (Dig­i­tal Video Recorder) in my liv­ing room, con­nected to my flatscreen TV. I’ve con­nected the Sling­box to the SKY+ and my net­work and the Sling­box takes the raw TV sig­nal and com­presses it, then streams it onto my home net­work, to be received by, say by my lap­top, wire­lessly in any other room in the house.

Are you get­ting the idea? In the­ory, I should be able to view my Sling­box out­side of my house, but I am hav­ing some port for­ward­ing issues which I’ve yet to resolve, because it goes through two dif­fer­ent routers before reach­ing the internet.

The Sling­box Solo is a very sim­ple look­ing device, with con­nec­tors on one side and some blinky lights on the other side. There are no but­tons or con­trols, the idea is to con­nect it, con­fig­ure it and for­get about it, every­thing else is done via the soft­ware you down­load, called SlingPlayer.

I con­nected my Sling­box Solo to my SKY+ via an S-video cable, as its the high­est qual­ity out­put sig­nal avail­able. My SKY+ is an orig­i­nal V1 Pace unit, feed­ing my TV via SCART, but the S-Video out­put mir­rors it. This means the Sling­box Solo only sees what­ever the SKY+ sees. If some­one is watch­ing the TV at the same time, you both have to watch the same programme.

I used a nor­mal RCA stereo phono cable to con­nect up the audio from the SKY+ to the Slin­box Solo and con­nected the power sup­ply. I also put the IR blasters above and below the SKY+ IR receiver as these pro­vide the remote con­trol functionality.

Finally, I had to con­nect the Sling­Box to my net­work. The Sling­Box only out­puts eth­er­net, there is no built in wi-fi, which is fine if your router is next to your tele­vi­sion. Mine isn’t, which meant using some sort of bridge.

My first try was an Air­port Express from Apple. They are nor­mally very robust and depend­able units and this was a cost effec­tive way to do it, but it didn’t work very well. I don’t know why.

I con­nected the AE to my net­work in WDS mode, con­nected the Sling­box Solo to it and within a minute, the Sling­box was con­nected to my net­work. I was able to con­fig­ure the Sling­box quickly and was watch­ing my SKY+ on all my Macs in fairly good quality.

It didn’t last, the band­with dropped dra­mat­i­cally, and at least once a day, the Sling­box would lose its net­work con­nec­tion, though it appeared the Air­port Express was still con­nected to my net­work. I had other net­work prob­lems as well, los­ing con­nec­tions to my dif­fer­ent com­put­ers and other Air­port Express units, used for music stream­ing, were hav­ing dropouts too. Reset­ting the Sling­box and asso­ci­ated AE unit restored my con­nec­tion and got the net­work work­ing again, but the same prob­lem hap­pened every day.

When I dis­con­nected the Sling­box and AE, my net­work per­formed fine, so I decided to con­nect the Sling­box another way.

I bought a set of Net­Gear Home­Plugs, which do eth­er­net over pow­er­lines and they are a total rev­e­la­tion. You plug them both into the elec­tri­cal mains and they find each other auto­mat­i­cally and cre­ate a durable and robust eth­er­net bridge between the two loca­tions. Once plug is con­nected to my Air­port Extreme, the other is con­nected to the Sling­box. Within sec­onds, they were con­nected and so was the Sling­box and its held the con­nec­tion con­tin­u­ously since I con­nected them. These things are very cool!

I’m still hav­ing slight prob­lems with my net­work; it grinds to a halt and loses the inter­net about once a day, but then comes back. I think I need to set it all up again, as my base unit is still look­ing for an AE in WDS mode and its not there any­more. When I have the time, I’ll reboot all the units and reset them up from scratch. That’s how it was before the Sling­box, so it should go back to being per­fect again.

I’m also deter­mined to sort out the port for­ward­ing, as it would be cool to watch SKY+ from out­side my home, either live TV or recorded pro­grammes. The Sling­Player soft­ware includes a vir­tual remote for the SKY+, which means you can dupli­cate any remote com­mand with a sim­ple click of your mouse. Very clever!

There are other mod­els of Sling­Box avail­able, some offer­ing more con­nec­tions for more devices, oth­ers offer­ing dig­i­tal and ana­logue TV tuners. For my needs, with one main TV source, the Solo was per­fect. I’ve got shitty free­view recep­tion here, so a tuner was point­less and there’s no need to con­nect it to a DVD player, because most com­put­ers are already DVD players!

If I wanted to watch SKY in another room, I could have a sec­ond box installed, which I would have to pay for and I would be charged a ten­ner a month for the priv­i­lege. It wouldn’t be con­nected to my main SKY+, which means it would only receive live tv. Also, it would be in one fixed loca­tion, like my bed­room. What if I wanted to keep an eye on the news, while cook­ing dinner?

The Sling­box is a cheaper, more flex­i­ble solu­tion, it offers great pic­ture qual­ity, at full screen res­o­lu­tions, any­where inside my home. When I can view it over the inter­net, which I am cer­tain I will do one day soon, it will com­plete the pack­age. It’s a wel­come addi­tion to my A/V arsenal!

Thank you for drop­ping by tech-geek corner!

This is the first year in the his­tory of Big Brother that I’m not feel­ing with­drawal after the series ended. I wasn’t as attached to the house­mates as I have been in pre­vi­ous years. I wasn’t as attached to the entire pro­gramme. I’m not really sure why.

Sorry I haven’t been quite as pro­lific as I could have been on the topic of BB. I did con­tinue to watch faith­fully though and now that it’s fin­ished, I thought I would share my final thoughts.

For me, Big Brother 8 was the most man­u­fac­tured, self-aware series so far. The for­mat has been around too long for it to be any other way. We all know what to expect, from the view­ers to the con­tes­tants, which means the pro­gram mak­ers have to work that much harder to con­found our col­lec­tive expectations.

This year, there were a lot of con­founded expectations.

“Fake Week” was a prime exam­ple of this as the pro­duc­ers twisted every­thing up into all sorts of point­less frivolity.

Except it wasn’t point­less, was it? It amused us. Ok, it amused me.

A lot this year amused me, it seems like the theme of “fun” really did weave itself through the series. Some of the fun was cruel and if I was on the receiv­ing end of the cru­elty, I would have a dif­fer­ent view of it.

Show­ing the Halfway-Housemates the entirety of nom­i­na­tions was a mas­ter­stroke of nas­ti­ness. Reveal­ing nom­i­na­tions in gen­eral inside the house is cruel, but there was a level of evil in this par­tic­u­lar move that sur­prised even me.

The quiz in the final week was also quite mean, as BB showed each house­mate some­thing both embar­rass­ing and pri­vate as part of the task.

All of this self-referential stuff is send­ing every­one a mes­sage: Noth­ing is off lim­its, inside the house. Any­thing you say or do could poten­tially be used to upset your stand­ing in the house. In future, con­tes­tants might be more care­ful and guarded about what the say in their pri­vate chats or even the diary room!

As much as I don’t want to admit it, Charley was the star of the show this year and it was less enter­tain­ing after her depar­ture. Or rather, there was far less con­flict in the house which I equate with enter­tain­ment. Charley’s prob­lem will be con­vert­ing this into some sort of media career. Good luck to her, but I think she’s a bit of one-trick-pony and they will strug­gle to find suit­able vehi­cles for her.

Chanelle’s depar­ture also left a gap in my view­ing. Aside from being nice to look at, her tantrums were pure com­edy gold. They say she’s made £750,000 already, which is astound­ing. Now that Ziggy’s out too, I expect they will both clean up even more. I sure hope they got a lot of money for their rather embar­rass­ing photo-shoot in the Star on Mon­day. If you didn’t see it, they were both pos­ing together, in their undies, in a hotel bed. Cringe!

Poor Ziggy. I liked him. He isn’t a bad guy; he’s just very neu­rotic. He gen­uinely fan­cied Chanelle, it wasn’t just for the cam­eras. He eas­ily had the rough­est ride of any­one in the house this year and doesn’t deserve our scorn. We should all chip in a fiver each, so we can pay for his long-term Jun­gian analy­sis, which after a cou­ple of decades might get to the root of his neu­ro­sis. Until then, he’ll just have to make do with shag­ging Chanelle and mak­ing money off their celeb-value.

I was glad to see Brian Belo win. He’s the Essex ver­sion of For­rest Gump and peo­ple always go for the thick-o. Except I don’t think Brian is that thick, he’s just not edu­cated well. He’s your typ­i­cal Eng­lish lad and prob­a­bly the world’s biggest BB fan! I think its great that a proper fan won the show, instead of some­one who claimed not to really watch it much. Well done, Brian.

I was actu­ally expect­ing a twinny-win, as Sam and Amanda are just so like­able. They didn’t put a foot wrong in the house which explains why they didn’t have a sin­gle nom­i­na­tion through­out the series.

I was glad to see Tracey go a week before the final and I’m even hap­pier I’ll never have to hear her inane catch­phrases ever again. She was like a char­ac­ter from a bad novel writ­ten about real­ity tv; a poorly sketched car­i­ca­ture con­sist­ing of one shal­low dimen­sion. Yawn.

As for the rest, well they’re all pretty incon­se­quen­tial really. The one I liked the most that I thought should have had more time in the house is Amy. Aside from being a tasty bit of eye candy, Amy seemed bright and gen­uine. She should never have become such a fig­ure of hate within the house and if she had bet­ter taste in men and ignored Liam, she might have gone further.

The one thing I noticed this year was the num­ber of peo­ple who I’ve spo­ken with who have taken great pride in pro­claim­ing that they haven’t watched BB this year and that BB was a fail­ing, dying for­mat. It was as if peo­ple decided they were too good for it this year. How wrong they are!

BB con­tin­ues to be annual event tele­vi­sion, fill­ing Chan­nel 4’s cof­fers with loads of dosh. The rat­ings were down this year, but the pro­gramme con­tin­ues to deliver the right demo­graphic that adver­tis­ers love and in the younger age groups, inter­est remains very high. Maybe I just only talk to aging media-types. I need to get some cooler, younger new friends!

And if there were any doubts over the future of the next series of BB, Davina promptly put them to rest last Fri­day night, when she opened the audi­tion call for BB9. If you want to spend next Sum­mer inside the BB house, be ready to daz­zle the BB pro­duc­ers, start­ing in Novem­ber. Good Luck!

I do want to thank all 23 house­mates who spent time in the house this year. One way or another, each of you enter­tained me in your own spe­cial ways and for this I am grate­ful. And thank you to my hip­py­fans, who have put up with my spo­radic out­put and stuck with me for my thoughts on BB.

This will be my last for­mal BB col­umn, I’m not going to do it again next year. I won’t say I’m never going to com­ment on BB again, but I won’t be doing it in such an organ­ised way. I hope you’ve all enjoyed read­ing it all as much as I’ve enjoyed writ­ing it.

But fear not, this hippy still has plenty of other inter­est­ing things to bring you, so don’t be a stranger, OK?

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.

It’s always inter­est­ing to see what words peo­ple stick into Google and other search engines, which lead them to my hum­ble, lit­tle website.

I receive a wide vari­ety of sta­tis­tics via my web­site hosts, but I always like check­ing out the search-terms sec­tion. It’s always good for a laugh.

This is the cur­rent list, for the month of July, to date, count­ing up from num­ber ten:

10) “north lon­don hip­pie” – my name, spelled wrong, with spaces. I’m glad it still leads to my site and I’m glad peo­ple search for me, even with the mistakes!

9) “billi bhatti” – him off Big Brother, evicted a cou­ple of weeks ago. As you will see, BB names are pop­u­lar on this list.

8) “pur­ple ohms expe­ri­ences” – a cou­ple of years ago, I had a bad time on these pills. I took too many, I had an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence. They’re legal highs and I think they are still avail­able, now in non-BZP form.

7) “northlon­don­hippy” – now that’s more like it, spelled cor­rectly, with­out spaces. I fea­ture twice in my own top ten, which means my brand aware­ness is high and get­ting higher. Just like me, I’m get­ting higher too, right now…!

6) “RooR Pocket Friend” – a fine pipe from my friends at RooR. I’ve writ­ten about mine a few times. Usu­ally, there are sev­eral RooR-related search terms in the top ten, but when I write about Big Brother, that tends to over­take it. Go figure!

5) “charley uchea tits” – Thus begins the breast obses­sion at the top of the list, nearly all BB related.

4) “vic­to­ria beck­ham top­less” – see, more tits. As if I would post pic­tures of that bean­pole with fake boobs!

3) “chanelle hayes mas­tur­ba­tion” — BB related, but not so breast-centric. Does any­one know if these pic­tures do exist? I wouldn’t post them, but I might like to see them myself, purely for research purposes.

2) “shab­nam paryani top­less” – I don’t really get this one, espe­cially as it is so high up on the list. Do peo­ple really want to see her top­less? I don’t even want to see her clothed! She’s scary!! Peo­ple have very weird tastes and inter­ests, but this is the inter­net, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

1) “expand­ing the­ory” – A while ago, I wrote up a silly lit­tle the­ory about what I thought the effect of the uni­verse con­stantly expand­ing would have on us. I was very high at the time and it was total bollocks.

Google doesn’t seem to think so, for if you put “expand­ing the­ory” into the world’s largest and smartest search engine, this is what you get as your top hit: CLICK HERE

Go on, check it out. My site is the top hit! Read it!

Do you really think I am an expert on the sub­ject? Should I win a Nobel Prize for inno­va­tion in science?

I should very much think not!

I don’t know if you found that inter­est­ing, but as always, I am inter­ested in what you have to say. I’d like to take an infor­mal survey:

Please email me with how you found my site. Did you stum­ble upon me via a search engine? Do you remem­ber what you were search­ing for? Maybe you saw a link to my site? Where?

How­ever you found me, I’d like to know. Please email me at thehippy@northlondonhippy.com — I won’t spam you or give/sell your address to any­one. I don’t even keep a mail­ing list. I’m just nosy.

I was really expect­ing not to like this year’s BB. I’d already set myself up for bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment at what was going to be a dull series. So far, it’s been any­thing but dull and I’m lov­ing it, already!

It doesn’t take much to draw me in; just a bunch of fit, but stu­pid young girlies and other assorted human odd­i­ties, a small, enclosed space and lots of cam­eras. I’m a sucker, what can I say?

There were rumours of an all-female house, but I didn’t buy into them. I thought it was a risk the pro­duc­tion team wouldn’t be will­ing to take. How wrong was I?

As I watched the house­mates enter­ing the shiny new house, for the first time, I felt pity for many of them. They all just seemed so small, so lim­ited and so myopic with their sim­ple goals of fame and for­tune, for doing sweet FA. The best exam­ple of this is 19 year old Chanelle Hayes, the Posh Spice wannabe.

Chanelle comes from a small vil­lage out­side Leeds and lit­er­ally aspires to be Vic­to­ria Beck­man. I find that very sad, for as role mod­els go, VB cer­tainly shouldn’t be one, unless you value stu­pid­ity, van­ity and under-eating to nearly star­va­tion as some­thing to be cel­e­brated. Appar­ently, the news­pa­pers do, for this if the woman some much as farts (as if!), it is splat­tered on the front pages.

Chanelle is much bet­ter look­ing than ol’ Posh Pish­face and can prob­a­bly sing bet­ter too.

The first thing I thought when I saw the ini­tial 11 women in the house is that there wouldn’t be enough Page 3’s to go around. Most of them are going to want to don a thong, fold their arms artis­ti­cally across their as-of-yet un-surgically enhanced bosoms and smile pretty for the cam­eras, with an accom­pa­ny­ing inter­view detail­ing their Big Brother hell! Ok, maybe not Car­ole, but then again you never know.

Car­ole Vin­cent was an early favourite of mine, with her left lean­ing pol­i­tics and bisex­u­al­ity, what was not to love? But has she put any creepy moves on any of the other women? Has she done any­thing other than clean the house and act as a ser­vant to the rest of them? Big dis­ap­point­ment so far, but it is early days.

And speak­ing of crotch­ety old broads, how about that Les­ley Brain, appro­pri­ately named because of her enor­mous intel­lect. She really fan­cied her­self as so much bet­ter than the rest of her house­mates. She’s used to get her own way, and walk­ing all over any­one who impeded her. I can’t say I was dis­ap­pointed when she walked out on Sat­ur­day. Small loss, she didn’t con­tribute much more than snarky com­ments and dis­ap­prov­ing looks. Yawn.

The twins, Sam and Amanda Archant, fall into the pity cat­e­gory. They’re ever so cute and ever so dim, but their Page 3 pho­to­shoot will be a double-spread. Every­one will buy a copy of what­ever red­top is lucky enough to print the pics that day!

And stay­ing with the pity party, may I draw your atten­tion to the deluded Shab­nam Paryani, who won’t be appear­ing on Page 3 any­time soon, though in her mind she is wor­thy of that, and more. She’s weird look­ing, obnox­ious and thick, which makes her a triple threat in BB terms. If the evic­tion hadn’t been can­celled, she’d be mak­ing a pub­lic appear­ance right now at the open­ing of a Pound Shop on my High Street.

And speak­ing of can­celled evic­tions, I couldn’t believe the bloody stu­pid­ity of that ultra-dim Emily Parr. She was des­tined for Page 3, but not any­more, unless the BNP newslet­ter has such a fea­ture. I wouldn’t know, I don’t sub­scribe and nei­ther do you, if you’re a proper hippyfan!

What was Emily think­ing? Was she even think­ing? Did she really know what the word meant as it passed through her lips?

I bet she sure as shit does now! This is girl who thinks indy music is brand new and sweep­ing the nation! She has the men­tal age of 7.

But Emily wasn’t com­pletely stu­pid, as right after she uttered the offend­ing word, she quickly men­tioned sev­eral cor­po­rate brand names. Why? So they would dip the sound on the live feed? Clever, eh? She might not know any­thing about race rela­tions, but damn, if she ain’t media savvy! Shame it wasn’t enough to keep it out of the prime time high­light show or keep her in the house, but you can’t blame a gal for trying!

Were they right to boot her out? After Shilpa-gate, they didn’t really have a choice. They had to be seen to be doing some­thing, and swiftly. If they acted this quickly last Jan­u­ary with Shilpa and the witches’ coven, they wouldn’t be apol­o­gis­ing so much right now!

And who are the 900 peo­ple who com­plained that it was unfair to eject Emily? She can’t have that many friends and fam­ily members!

Emily was an aspir­ing actress and I said “was” inten­tion­ally. With that one word uttered fool­ish­lyy, she’s pretty much kissed her glit­ter­ing show­biz career good­bye. I don’t see how she can reha­bil­i­tate her­self back from this one.

Sorry, Emily, I’m sure you’ll Google your way to this page even­tu­ally. That’s my con­sid­ered opin­ion, but remem­ber it’s never too late to learn IT and com­puter net­work­ing skills! You’ll never go hungry!

I know I men­tioned Chanelle ear­lier, but I want to come back to her. Along with Nicky Maxwell, Chanelle has a good back­story; they both do. Nicky was raised in Mother Theresa’s orphan­age in India, before being adopted by a fam­ily here in the UK. Chanelle’s mother was a pros­ti­tute who was mur­dered and has also been adopted. I’m a sucker for a sob story, so are the tabloids. Only, and trust me on this, the tabloids pro­vide a lot in the way of lurid details than I will.

Charley Uchea is a nasty piece of work. She’s the sort of girl your mother would have warned you about, if your mother could have ever imag­ined that such a woman even existed! My mother could never have pic­tured Charley!

Hot body, ugly face, even uglier per­son­al­ity! Another BB triple threat. Buy her a drink? She’d want the bot­tle, and trust me mate, it wouldn’t be cheap! Her cousin plays foot­ball, that’s why she’s spe­cial. Page 3 chances: High, high, high!

Wangers.

Wangers?

When I was a kid, “wang” was another word for your din­kle, so wangers is a new one on me. I’m old, I don’t always keep up with the lingo you kids are using these days.

What­ever hap­pened to tits?

Laura Williams, AKA “Wangers” has ginor­mus breasts and a Welsh accent. She wants to be a funeral direc­tor, which is code for under­taker, which is fur­ther code for peo­ple who pre­pare the dead. Yuck. I don’t even like to touch raw beef or pork!

I don’t really get Laura, but appar­ently you all do, as up until the 2 new guys went in, she was the book­ies’ favourite to win!

Tracey Barnard scares me. She’s the sort of intense per­son who would cor­ner you at a party, get really in your face and spout her pas­sion­ate opin­ions on one sub­ject or an other for an hour or more and at the end of it, you still wouldn’t know what she was talk­ing about. Tracey is a type we’ve not seen before in BB (unless you count Bez from the celeb ver­sion), but a type none the less. Go on any demo, attend any ille­gal rave, or visit your near­est squat and you’ll find a Tracey-type, bor­ing he shite out of someone.

You’d think an old hippy like me would like Tracey; you’d be wrong. I did like the rumour they were test­ing her rolling papers for drugs, but that’s stu­pid. If she were going to smug­gle in some blot­ter acid, she wouldn’t do it on the cig­a­rette papers, but on the packet – prob­a­bly the flap – you know the bit you tear to make a roach! It’s made of card­board and far more absorbent. I just hope she does some­thing fun with it, like put it in the stew, so they can all trip their nuts off.

If only Tracey brought in some dull, rusty knives, then my BB dreams would really come true. Click HERE and/or HERE to see what I mean!

That’s the girls all well and truly slagged off, now what about the guys?

For­mer boy­band mem­ber and male model, Zak “Ziggy” Lich­man seems nice enough, in an innocu­ous, inof­fen­sive way. He’s dull, but the chicks dig him and isn’t that what really mat­ters. They deserve some eye-candy too. And I don’t blame him for zero­ing in on Chanelle, she is the hottest lit­tle hotty in the house!

Big Brother’s big twist when they put in the next two men was to send him a pair of gay guys. Whoa! What a turn! Gay men on BB, who’d have thunk it?

I haven’t really seen much of either one of them, so I will save my ini­tial impres­sions until my next post.

I don’t hate every­thing about this series, there are things I do like, they just don’t hap­pen to be the house­mates, that’s all.

I like the new house, I think the design is fan­tas­tic. I love the colours, the lay­out, espe­cially the lit­tle entrance­way to the diary room, with the colour-changing light strips. I like the new graph­ics and the eye as well.

Mainly, I still love the for­mat, even with the twists and changes. Lock­ing peo­ple up in a small, con­fined space and film­ing their every move is still pure, unadul­ter­ated genius.

I only wish it was my idea; then I would be filthy, stink­ing rich! I bet that’s a good thing to be. I’ll prob­a­bly never know.