Why I'll Never Be A Music Journalist

Me: Who's the "big" rapper that's dead? Is it Biggie Smalls?

Sidekick: Nah. S'the Notorious B.I.G you're thinking of.

Me: (musing) Right. Right.....

Sidekick: There are other dead rappers, though. They all released songs about it - like O.D.B..

Me: What - Old Dead Biggie?

Sidekick: Er, no. Old Dirty Bastard.

Me: Right. Got it. Thanks.

40 or Bust

30 rushed up and grabbed Sidekick like a mugger, leaving no marks apart from an increasing level of general grumpiness. Now he's coasting towards 31 with nary a peep of complaint.

I can remember a time when 30 seemed like a distant country with no airport. Now I've been living there for a couple of months, having been forced kicking and screaming onto a direct non-stop flight. Only a few years ago, I was a called a lady for the first time - by a mother, instructing her tiny daughter to get out of my way. I wanted to pick the kid up and explain that I am a girl, dag nammit. A girl! No lady! Now that I am 30 I have to concede the point. I have officially passed the gateway.

However, I refuse to accept the encroaching decrepitude. Where will it stop? I have a vision of myself , wrinkled like a piece of perished rubber, wearing the same clothes I do now, but with the added support of a cast iron wonderbra, causing equal amounts of barely concealed horror and mirth as people see me hobble by.

My job forces allows me to regularly converse with people who are 17, 18 or 19. I sometimes feel like they have been brought up on another world and have travelled back to planet Earth to perform experiments of a social nature on me. This is, I reassure myself, perfectly normal paranoia. Isn't it?

One of them politely asked me the other day if I was going out at the weekend. He then stalled and looked slightly embarrassed, before saying, with a throwaway sort of gesture, "Of course not, you're too old to be going to pubs." I would like to state for the record that this is untrue, despite the perfectly acceptable argument that I cannot remember the last time I was in a pub. My memory, it goes without saying, is as good as it ever was (i.e. less use than a chocolate teaspoon).

All future birthdays are now cancelled. I will henceforth only be celebrating lustrums 'cos they happen less damn often.

Years are just numbers , right? Right? Good.

The Pwoer of Loev

"Do You have enough pwoer to provide your patrner high

quality SE-X on St. Valentine day?

Get a MON-STER pwoer, nothing can bring your ererction down!

Show your partner the PWOER of your LOEV and she will always remember You.

Loev will ALWAYS be associated with YOU!

Your order will be PRIVATE, nobody will know what You use.

Follow the link and get SSPECIAL DISSCOOUNT for that period."

Reading this email left me with several questions:

1. How did they know I was concerned about my ererction?

2. What's a DISSCOOUNT? SSPECIAL or otherwise?

3. Should I trust this complete stranger with my body?

The answers are:

1. The internuck knows all and sees all.

2. A small type of duck known for it's ability to fly remarkable distances.

3. Of course! I'd be a fool not to, considering the special duck and all.

If you'll excuse me, my order has just arrived from Gunter Schlong Enterprises.com. I'm just off to show Sidekick the PWOER of my LOEV, so that loev is ALWAYS associated with me.