The Royal Overkill

At the time of writing this, it is exactly 22 hours before apparently a third of the entire human population sits down, shuts up, and simultaneously stares at the magic picture-generating rectangle in the corner of the room (or the ceiling if you're one of those people from flatscreen adverts who lie in bed without the ability to crane their necks slightly upwards). Nobody's actually aware of it, what with all this hush-hush over one of the biggest TV events of, like, you know, ever... that is, of course, in any country that isn't Britain. In Britain, however, the results of a solid month of the Royal Overkill are about to come to fruition. Let's face it, anyone who hasn't heard of tomorrow's matrimonial ceremony is either (a) dead, (b) dead, or (c) comatose on the brink of death.

It's gotten to the point that people in the hypothetical realm of Facebook have taken to their blue-text abusing, third-party "like" sites to express how little they care about the latest member of the monarchy to sign his life away 'til death. Then again, the kind of people who really get into the obscene amount of random "likes" pretty much reaffirm my view of them as an en masse flock of idiots who read something as banal as "liek dis if you wake up and look at your alarm clock and go OMG cant be botherd today, FML FML FML" and instantly think to themselves 'ohmigod, I soooo do that!!!'

(I would like to use these brackets as an opportunity to stress the en masse description of such people as I do know people on Facebook [i.e. pretty much most of them] who do this and I would like to keep friends and not insult anyone's intelligence. Having said that, if any of you are reading this and your intelligence has been insulted, then might I suggest you go make a "dont you just hate it wen you get caled stupid and your rly not" link for other idiots to join you... with those exact spelling mistakes! Oh, and for the unitiated, "FML" is widely regarded as "fuck my life" which may seem a bit extreme considering the overall unimportance of the tiniest niggling issues not remotely having any affect on a person's life in general, but then again, we are dealing with people who can't tell the difference between "your" and "you're", and I mean if that was me I'd probably just stop altogether. [Oh my, those were some long brackets.])

Anyway, it's understandable that people in Britain probably don't give much of a crown jewel about the main event and are probably more excited about the live edition of Don't Tell The Bride later on in the evening. Just as well, chances are it'll be much more hilarious to see a happy couple get wed in a ceremony in the foyer of the Heineken factory in three-and-a-half minutes, where the bride produces enough tears to hold off a hose-pipe ban this summer and the groom swaggers about squinting, unsure if the woman in the big white dress is the same woman he asked to marry him. However, people around the world probably haven't had this kind of overkill, and if they have, they probably love it. Take the Americans, for example. They'll eat up anything regarding the affairs of the Royal Family over on this side of the pond, but then again, they'll generally eat up anything. But we Brits, as a people, manage to suck the living optimism out of anything and everything we can. Let's not forget, this is pretty much one of the biggest planned events in this still very young century; we're practically living through history right now. In the many years to come when people will ask 'where were you when the Royal Wedding happened?' and it'll be looked back upon with fond nostalgia, which I suppose is somewhat better than reminiscing over 'where were you when September 11 happened?' ...unless, of course, you're one of al-Qaeda.

I totally agree that the preparations for tomorrow's hoo-ha have been long drawn out and shoved down our throats so much that people are actually starting to crap out their own tongues, but regardless, we people should actually be looking forward to it with a cautious vague interest. After all, let's suppose, hypothetically, that the Queen, Prince Phillip, Charles, Camilla, William, Harry or your own choice of Royal affiliate falls onto the table with the wedding cake on, catapults it into the head chorister's face, the rest of the choir follow his lead chanting 'Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy...' down the aisle of Westminster Abbey, David Beckham starts clapping like a seal because he thinks it's a circus and Philip Schofield - in a disastrous scheduling mix-up - thinks he's presenting The Cube and demands to see a 360-degree Matrix-style shot of the wedding cake mid-flight. Just think in all those decades to come people will ask 'where were you at the Royal Fuck-up?'

I suppose everyone is aware of the scale of it though, and that everyone knows that they're ready to witness history in the making, but the build-up really has been too much and unnecessary. I guess, at least, that's what gives people that excuse-by-proxy for not liking something. This event is pretty much going be everyone's guilty pleasure where we say 'oh my God, this is so boring, what else is on' but secretly inside we're all screaming to ourselves 'I wish everyone would shut up so I can watch this!' It's exactly the same sentiment I've had (and therefore automatically assume other people have) with the likes of Masterchef and Eurovision.

The first of these I've mentioned before when I horribly likened Gregg Wallace's visual appearance to that of a baked potato, while I couldn't find anything interesting to say about the other one so just called him "an Australian man". I've now come to realise that they are, in fact, the human embodiments of Dr. Honeydew and Beaker of The Muppets, with Gregg being the baldy bloke with the big glasses and the other one being so dull that the internal censor in my brain automatically blanks out his speech with a high-pitched "mee-mee, muh-muh-mee-mee-mee". Anyway, it's over now, and the American-who-wants-to-be-Japanese bloke won it, so it you've been following it and haven't had the chance to catch up yet, might I introduce a spoiler alert about seven seconds ago. The other so-bad-it's-good guilty pleasure I assume nobody will ever admit to is Eurovision, with which I've become increasingly fascinated by over the years of technological development in the Digital Age (who knew that places like Latvia and Armenia were capable of epic light-shows?) but I'll probably come back to that next month, if I can be bothered. As far as I'm aware, this is the first post of April!

I've pretty much been busy for the last month contending with copious amounts of coursework (apparently this University wants to assess my knowledge before giving me a degree) and having my head royally stuffed with Kate Middleton's wedding planner. However, to make up for lost words, I've decided to grab hold of the idea of the website SomethingEveryDay (which is currently down, but can be found on Facebook here) where people produce... well... something every day. It first caught my attention when my former poetry tutor was made to write poems (quite possibly at gunpoint, but highly unlikely) every day for the whole month of February, and while I don't really check up on the happenings of SomethingEveryDay every day, I'd like to take the idea and at least attempt to make a blog post every day for the whole month of May. That's the plan anyway.

Then afterwards you can complain about my incessant ramblings as much as the wedding preparations.

Oh, Brother!

It's true. It's all true (apparently) that everyone's favourite 24-hour nothing-fest Big Brother shall be returning to tellyboxes everywhere just a mere twelve months after its self-proclaimed 'last edition ever!'

I think the main thing I should point out with this is that it's being resurrected on Channel Five: TV's dumping ground, the long-lost cousin of entertainment (I mean have you seen some of their output, like The Wright Stuff and Live From Studio Five? I haven't! But I have watched clips of each and desperately wanted to reach for the nearest katana or at least a length of sharpened lead piping, just so I could perform the Japanese ritual of Seppuku, right there in front of the TV).

According to the Daily Star (scoff, snort, scoff): 

"It will still have things like the Diary Room. The show's format will also stay the same so fans don't have to worry. It will still be the same programme that they've all grown to love over the years but with a bigger, brighter and sexier future."

Oh, brother! The simple minds of the public glaring into the magic, midget window in the corner shall not be sent into submission with grand changes, but they shall be fed with more manipulated twaddle about the boring, closed-off-from-reality happenings (ironic for a 'Reality' show to remove people from reality) of a handful of attention-seeking wannabes: half of whom will realise they can't hack it and walk out (you know, when thousands of others would've preferred to be there in their place) and the other half desperate to exploit themselves in front of millions so they could probably get a magazine deal afterwards. Far be it for me to judge - I am, after all, just a mere one in the approximate 61 million UK dwellers - but I found Big Brother to be quite interesting back in its heyday. The premise: take 10-12 people from all walks of life, put them in a monitored solitary confinement facility and watch them react to one another. Will they befriend each other? Fight each other? Compliment? Clash? It's an interesting psychologial experiment, I think. Over time, though, it evolved into a mad desperate rush to see if anyone would have sex or beat each other up or resort to cannibalism or something. And lo, people stopped living their own lives and began feeding off the lives of people they could see inside the telly instead.

Not surprisingly, Channel Five (or "five" or "5" or whatever they call themselves these days [message to Channel Five: Have you considered rebranding your channel as "The Dumping Ground"?]) want to get some young sexy thing to front the show in the absense of Davina. How about, someone like... oh, you know... Cheryl Cole? (You know, that one who's famous for being that one from Girls Aloud. What about the rest of Girls Aloud? Oh, they're too busy not being famous for being the other ones from Girls Aloud.) That's not a question posed by me though. That is actually who they're trying to line up for the part. I can't help but find it extremely surreal that every Friday night the country will be treated to renditions of "Big Brutha house, it's Cheral he-yah. Are ya all alreet? We're live on channal five, reet. Noo swearin'." etc. I somehow feel she'd be much more suited to the narration of the daily highlights shows since we're used to a Geordie voice telling us what people are doing as we're watching it, and as we've already explored, you can't change too much or people's simple brains will boil in their head and explode all over the place. At least this way, people might just mistakenly think that Marcus Bentley's had a sex change, or at least caught his balls in a vice.

I think the worst part in all of this comes from how our summers are affected. There was a time (although I don't remember it any more) when summer was a season of staying outdoors, enjoying time with fellow humans with whom we establish friendships, water fights, casual drinking and general merriment. Although, ever since Big Brother came along, summers have become filled with staying in, watching the TV and following the lives of the people on it as they enjoy time with fellow humans, establish friendships, have water fights, drink excessively and generally fuck about... because they can. We, as a people, had just got our summers back following the demise of Big Bro on Channel 4, and this, the first of those summers, is about to be cruelly snatched away by the same thing that took them from us in the first place.

I blame you, Channel Five! (or The Dumping Ground, as you are now known if you've heeded my advice from earlier on.) Still, I suppose now people will actually be watching the channel for once.