Checking in with Chat

It’s that time again. Time to see what entertainment Chat has for us this week. I knew it was going to be a good one when I saw this on the front cover….

False a-llama?! Amazing. So let’s start at the beginning. Page 8 is the ‘Chat to us’ page. People send in photos, which tend to be stuff like ‘This is me on holiday.’ Stuff that is of no interest to anyone apart from the people in the photo. Here is one example…

The caption basically says, this is my mum at M&M’s World in London. Great.

There’s also an old photo section, which tends to contain a black and white photo of someone – again, no interest to anyone but the sender of the photo.

Next we get a few stories of the sex-pervert and strange-disease variety. The health pages this week contain a puzzling ‘fact’.

Apparently women with gum disease take two months longer to conceive than other women. You’ve got to be kidding me! This seems like one of those odd things from years ago, that dentists used to say to make people take better care of their teeth. Like when you’re parents tell you to eat your broccoli because it will make you run faster.

“It will, honest. You’ll get loads of babies if you brush your teeth!”

How on earth did they come up with this fact? Ok, let’s find a focus group of fifty women trying to get pregnant, and as a prerequisite, we’ll have half with gum disease and half without. It’s ridiculous. Some scientific researcher must have been super bored at home to have thought up that experiment to do.

Then, a few pages later, comes the best story, in my opinion. A woman, 42, living in England has fallen in love with a man she messaged on Facebook. He is Indian, living in Delhi, and 29. Here’s how it all started.

She stumbled across someone’s page, who has Brad Pitt as his profile picture. She says she ‘followed her instinct’ and messaged him.

WHAT INSTINCT? Seriously… What instinct? What instinct can you possibly have about a profile picture of Brad Pitt? She even says that he doesn’t have any pictures or personal info on his Facebook profile. So what possible instinct could she mean? That they both like Brad Pitt and, as a result, could be a match made in virtual heaven?

Anyway, married English lady messages. Young Indian man messages back, “He’s such a great actor.” And from there, it goes from strength to strength. A quick text conversation with hubby whilst in the supermarket ends her 11 year marriage, so now she’s free. Free to be with the love of her life… O wait, apart from all those miles between them… But never fear, she is a woman on a mission! She is going to go and see him next Easter. Phew, because for a minute there I thought it was getting ridiculous. But no, she’ll be with him any day now (by now, I mean next year). She says she’s going to buy a one way ticket and stay there with him forever. Good luck to her.

Next we get a few weight loss stories, then the TV guide. A programme called Obese And Expecting promises to be interesting watching.

Lastly, we have the Facebook Photo Of The Week.

How is that a photo of the week? There are no unusual camera angles, no beautiful light beams breaking through, no high speed cheetah hunt, no nothing actually. Nothing of interest. The caption basically says, ‘This is my daughter, Georgia, smiling.’ How utterly ridiculous is that? If that deserves to be photo of the week then journalism as we know it has gone much further downhill than I’d realised.

P.S. The llama story from the front cover turns out to be a peice about a llama who’s not psychic and can’t predict football scores. Amazing.

A little game of Would You Rather

Ok, the rules of Would You Rather go like this. I ask if you’d rather do one or the other of two things. You pick which one. Simple. The answer ‘I don’t know’ is not allowed. ‘I wouldn’t pick either’ is also forbidden. There is a man with a gun to your head who will shoot you if you don’t choose one. There is no way to escape him. You MUST choose. If you need to ask questions to expand upon either choice, that’s fine. Ok, are you ready? Remember, you must choose one.

1. Would you rather… Have a five metre body and five centimetre legs OR a five centimetre body and five metre long legs?

2. Would you rather…. Have a perfectly spherical body, like an orange OR have skin that is the texture of popcorn?

3. Would you rather… Have hands that look like hooves OR hands that look like florets of broccoli?

4. Would you rather… Be made of paper OR be made of jelly?

5. Would you rather…. Be always too cold OR be always too hot?

6. Would you rather… Have a rare disease where you are allergic to everything except chicken livers so that’s all you’re allowed to eat OR have a skin condition where you have to apply face moisturiser made of drain water every day?

7. Would you rather… Bathe in the watery bit that you get on top of the mustard OR bathe in the water that chicken has been poached in?

8. Would you rather…. Have a nose like cauliflower OR facial skin like potato peelings?

9. Would you rather… Be gored in the stomach by a vicious bull OR have your face eaten by scorpions?

10. Would you rather… Have a disease where you always fall over and smash your face on the floor OR have a disease where you grow thick curly hair all over your entire body?