The Fake Factor

It's that time of year again, homes across the UK snuggle up on a Saturday as the evening draws in, judging the latest generation of stage seekers, hard to believe that August is not yet over and the X Factor will be gracing us with it's presence until Christmas. With poor Cheryl struck down with malaria for many of the auditions, producers have thrown in ever more sparkly stars than before to fill her perfectly formed space.

Chin up chuck.

Talking of Cheryl, it hasn't been the best week for the nations favourite Geordie lass. The auto tune debacle of the first episode was met with defensive whimpers from little Louis, whose eyes are starting to look ever so slightly frightening. He insists that 'Every pop star in the world uses Auto-tuning.' Not wishing to go back on his words, when asked whether Ms Tweedy mimes he quipped 'you'll have to ask her.' Oh dear. To add insult to injury, when Cheryls mountain climbing chum Chris Moyles heard her Live Lounge rendition of hit 'Parachutes' he remarked that 'she might not need a parachute but she could bloody do with some singing lessons.' The icing on the cake was the re-ignition of long term feud with a certain Lily Allen who, on watching the first episode told the world ‘It’s s**t. FACT! It’s everything that I detest about modern western culture.' Glad to have cleared that one up.

Nobody's perfect...

So will this year be more of the same? Contestants with menial jobs, tough upbringings, and a long lost deceased relative whose last wish was for them to be famous. The freakshow set up that is often exploitative in its execution had its first victim in single mother Shirlena Johnson, who after performing her rather questionable take on Duffy's 'Mercy' aired to viewers in the first episode of the series, was deemed too mentally unstable to find her way to 'boot camp,' despite having had her paperwork and performance approved through preliminary auditions. Big Brother was put out of its misery this year, will the time come for the X Factor format to be extinguished like it's predecessors? One thing is for sure, the stars of tomorrow shouldn't need to be enhanced to sound like robots, and Louis's belief that 'Jedward' may have won last year if given the same auto-tune privilege only backs this up.

The World's Lost All Their (Virtual) Marbles

Those who know me, know I'm a bit of a technophobe. My mobile can sit under my bed for days, and I would prefer a letter over an e-mail any day. Although a friend pointed out that if we only contacted through letters, that cheeky spontaneous evening out would have lost any cheeky spontaneity. Anyway, I was idly watching that old piece of technology called the 'television' as I made a coffee when I nearly choked on my decaf. A cheery voice introduced a brand spanking new game for the Nintendo DS, Art Academy. The electronic game that teaches you to draw and paint… using a stylus. The press release states that you can learn ‘real-world art skills’ by using this clever piece of kit. Call me an old cynic, but what is wrong with actually getting a pencil and paper and doing it in real life? It’s just another one of those useless inventions that is supposed to make all those relatively easy parts of life, just that little bit easier, like all those apps.

Wow, I never would have known...

There are now apps to help you split the bill between friends, monitor the regularity of your monthly cycle, and even calculate how long it is till Christmas. The worst culprits though are the Nintendo DS ‘Imagine’ series. There’s ‘Imagine Babies’ where you can ‘Imagine’ that you're a student babysitter (because that is the most desirable position of them all), or ‘Imagine Cooking’ where, yep, you guessed it, you can imagine that you’re cooking, that's not going to fill the gap when you're hungry now is it. These used to be things one could do oneself, quite happily in the real world. I mean, what happens if you do a painting at your virtual Art Academy and you think ‘by George, that would look bloody marvellous in the front room,’ what do you do? Grab a couple of nails and jam it into the wall, hoping the batteries don’t run out, or is this when the 'real-world art skills' come in? I suppose you could take a canvas and some paints and copy it, or maybe, just maybe, you could take a canvas and some paints and do it without the Nintendo! Now that’s a novel idea…

This picture needs no words...