Faster than a speeding bullet

Boris leaping the NatWest Tower in a single bound... yeah I'd pay to see that.

Here is the news

Today's news... Paris Hilton is cheap and talentless, Workers are being exploited to make chinese olympic tat

Also, Vatican confirms the Pope remains faithful to the doctrines of the Church of Rome and a bear in the woods said "do you mind, I'm trying to have a dump."

Goatwatch

Virginia university mass murder, pound worth two dollars and still the "Sudanese man marries goat" remains in the top five.

And now I read that three of the top ten books sold in the UK at the moment are something called "Misery Lit" which appear just to be "waaaahhh! I was abused as a child, my life sucks like a convict at the gas chamber door¹, waaahhhh". Now call me odd if you like but I really cannot see why anyone of sound mind would actually want to read something like this; I can see why someone would want to write a book about it as some sort of catharsis (hey, I like to moan on this blog - makes me feel better and hopefully some of it is a bit funny) but who on earth would want to actually read page after page of someone describing how daddy used to come to their room every night and to keep what went on as "our secret"... hells teeth just typing that made me feel uncomfortable!

I'd like to think that it's mainly people who have less than optimal lives reading this stuff: "well I may never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair but at least my life wasn't the complete shit casserole hers was so that makes me feel a bit better."

However I rather suspect that, as Gary Feehily points out:

these books are popular because they flatter readers' sense of moral outrage while also secretly titillating.

i.e. the same reason that goat story is up there in the top 3 read news articles.




¹ Hat tip to my fellow grumpy mythological friend 2 Gryphon for that one.

Do I laugh or cry

Throughout the day (until someone went postal in the US) the most popular stories on the BBC news website have been one about a man having to marry a goat after being caught in flagrante, one about exploding lavatories in Japan and hovering around in third place either Richard Gere kissing somebody and all of India getting upset¹ or a study that says we prefer chocolate to sex.

I believe a lot can be inferred about the heath of the nation from that.


¹ Good job that there were no hamsters present or else they really would have something to get upset about!