I can make you hate

Read I can make you hate for Free Online Page B

Book: Read I can make you hate for Free Online
Authors: Charlie Brooker
the cameras, sobbing with remorse while an entire Asian youth orchestra tramples up and down on his back.’
    ‘Great Yuletide fun on ITV now: hilarious reparations as Dannii Minogue performs a selection of the biblical world’s most hideous acts of penance in front of a panel of witheringly critical bisexual judges.’
    Crikey. Unless I’m mistaken, both those shows would actually provide record-breaking Christmas Day viewing figures.
    Now, on to business:
The X Factor
. The new format for the early audition shows (berks yelping in front of a massive screaming audience) left me wondering how the production team could possibly differentiate those instalments from the established format of the live episodes (berks yelping in front of a massive screaming audience). Saturday brought the answer: extra lighting.
    Loads of lighting. They’ve dismantled the entire Las Vegas Strip and glued it round the walls of the studio. Everywhere you look, an impossibly bright neon tube; pulsing, blinking, flashing, strobing, scraping your retina off with its thumbnail …
The X Factor
’s carbon footprint surely now dwarfs China’s. To beat this next year, they’ll have to scoop out the contestants’ eyeballs and replace them with megawatt LED baubles. Then make them perform live in the middle of an exploding firework-and-diamond-factory.
    But the galaxy of lightbulbs can’t quite distract you from this year’s thudding truth: there’s no one that astonishing, really. They’ve got Stacey, who comes across as the sort of goonishly endearing comic character Victoria Wood would create (and is correspondingly impossible to dislike), a smattering of prettyboys, and that’s about it. Even this year’s joke act (a pair of twirling, tweeting Cornettos called John and Edward), doesn’t seem massively grating, because we’ve seen it all before. Same difference.
    And thanks to the new Sunday night results episode, viewers can now enjoy the same samey show twice in the same weekend.Still, there are a few differences: last week’s offering debuted with an oddly atonal opening number in which all the acts simultaneously tried to out-flat one another. Fortunately for all concerned, Robbie Williams soon bounded on stage to wipe viewers’ memories by sounding marginally worse, repeatedly breaking off mid-lyric to squeal ‘hello you!’ and ‘ooh!’ and ‘get her!’ at random audience members. This after about two hours of sustained lecturing on the subject of what a world-class showman Mr R. Williams is courtesy of the judges the night before.
    But never mind that: check out all that neon in the background! And, ooh, they’ve got a searchlight! Etc., etc. Repeat till Christmas.

Sleep: a guide for the knackered
26/10/2009
     
    Sleep is underrated. According to experts, it is as important to your health as exercise, nutrition and not being set on fire. And it’s the easiest route to self-improvement imaginable, far more straightforward and achievable than 100 squat thrusts. All you have to do is lie around doing nothing for eight hours. So simple, even a corpse could do it.
    But not, apparently, a child. Concerned health campaigners want Britain’s schoolchildren to be given ‘sleep lessons’ to teach them the benefits of regular night-long slumber. This is an exciting development, because it raises the prospect of ‘sleep exams’ – practical snoozing assessments that even the thickest kid could pass with their eyes closed.
    It’s easy to sleep when you’re a toddler. Your mind and body skitter around all day until they burn themselves out, leaving you blissfully knackered when the sun goes down. You’ve only got two modes: on and off, like a blender. But once you reach adulthood, things are altogether less binary. You’ve got responsibilities and concerns, not to mention an alarm clock with a sarcastically oversized face sitting beside the bed mocking any attempt atshuteye. Chances are you’ve spent your day mumbling to

Similar Books

Soccer Duel

Matt Christopher

Hidden Depths

Ann Cleeves

Edge of Midnight

Charlene Weir

Runaway Vampire

Lynsay Sands

Sleepwalking With the Bomb

John C. Wohlstetter

Life Sentences

Laura Lippman