Friday 16 October 2009

Impeccable timing

I am no longer Hobnob tooth! Cue wild cheering and arm waving!

I am now the proud owner of 'silky-smooth-in-fact-so-much-so-that-my-other-teeth-are-jealous-front-tooth'. Hurrah. Unfortunately I wasn't able to rejoice in the day of tooth beautifying quite as much as I'd have wished.

Not only was October 15th Dentist Day, it also turned out to be school photograph day. Shudder. Now you could be forgiven for thinking that having left school a full 7 years ago I should not ever again have to face the horror of a school photo. I thought similarly. I was wrong. I (apparently foolishly) work in a school and at this school (which shall remain nameless) they like the staff to have their photos taken and stuck on a wall. This alone is enough to cause sleepless nights for an inexperienced admin assistant. But then imagine if you will, that said admin assistant has had a filling on her front tooth at 10am that morning. She has had a local anaesthetic and cannot feel her top lip nor half of her nose. She is finding it impossible to tell whether she's smiling or grimacing. Then merely an hour later stick that poor woman in front of a photographer. Gah.

They took two photos and asked me to choose which I preferred. Two?! In this age of digital cameras surely they could have given me at least 10 attempts to get it right!

Well I hope that they're happy with their mug shot. It's not my wall that it's going to gaze out from for the next year.

I still maintain that mine is a beauty that the camera cannot capture. Such radiance cannot be conveyed in the momentary capsule of time that is contained within a photograph. It must be beheld by the true eye of humanity in order to be discerned and appreciated. And even then you wouldn't believe the number of people who miss it...

Monday 5 October 2009

Louis shmooey

I know I'm being manipulated into writing this particular blog entry but unfortunately I just can't bring myself not to.


It's this man's fault:

Gah. Louis Walsh. Once upon a time he was something of a pop svengali - not so much these days mind. But he's still got his judging role on a little known talent show called The X Factor. The mute button is my friend when Louis is on screen but sadly the mute button doesn't prevent the muppet from making absurd decisions when it comes to his acts.

These two scary looking boys are John and Edward.



On Sunday Louis put them through to the final 12 X-Factor acts and as such they will be performing this coming week in the first live show. Let us all hope that it is a one night only affair and that the twins will be unceremoniously disposed of before the competition has really got started.

They are genuinely awful. It is a mystery how they got past the initial auditions let alone into the prestigious final 12. By putting them through Walsh has managed to erase any modicum of credibility that the show may ever have had. But put them through he has. I can't believe that Louis actually thinks that they have any talent - last night he compared them to a pre-fame Boyzone (in fairness this could be accurate but the pop music industry has changed in the last 15 years and you can no longer get away with launching an unprofessional half-baked outfit - which is what Boyzone started out as - and some may argue also finished as!). So unless Mr Walsh has actually lost his mind what is the other option?


Publicity.

And he's got it. TV, radio, newspapers, blogs (ahem)... all decrying his choice and heaping insults upon him. But it's exactly what he wants. A large percentage of people tend to stop watching X-Factor after the initial auditions are over because their motivation for watching is the cringe worthiness of the no-talent contestants. In which case taking John and Edward through to the live shows is actually a master stroke by the annoying Irish one. The no-talent contestant appeal continues! And the public are well and truly aware of it thanks to all this publicity. To which I have now contributed. Sigh.