So.  Today I got an email from a brand, who wanted me to write about their new product – leggings that help you lose weight just by wearing them.  Apparently these items contain “ingredients such as caffeine”, obviously, that break down the fat in your thighs purely by having them in contact with your skin.  If that’s the case, why not just pour your latte over your legs and then wrap them in clingfilm? Also what are the other ingredients?  Liposuction?  Another pair of thinner legs inside the trousers?  I’ve had it with leggings – first jeggings, now this.

Other useless inventions include:

The Breville Sandwich Toaster

This seems like it would be a really good idea.  When I was a kid I begged my Mum to get one, imagining the wide variety of exciting sandwich-based cooking I could do.  How wrong I was.

Firstly, you have to butter your bread on the outside to stop it from sticking to the roof of the toaster.  So if it’s a cheese toastie, you’re basically just eating lard and bread.  Then if you accidentally open the thing too early you risk ripping the top piece of bread, leaving you with the disturbing image of a ruined sandwich yawning open, half-melted cheese dripping onto your hand.  It’s basically a dairy massacre.  Plus it always trims off the crust, which is supposed to be the best bit, and if you don’t clean the machine properly – actually even if you do – you end up with a layer of fudgy gunge that will never, ever go away.  It just collects and collects, until it’s covering your entire kitchen, then your house, then people are picking bits of yellow crap out of your hair and then telling you they don’t want to see you anymore.  Slippery, cheesy, slope people.

Saying “My Partner”

I know you really love them, and I know you want a way to express that, and I know the playground term of boy/girlfriend just isn’t enough to really explain quite how conjoined your lives are, and yes I know you would get married if it wasn’t for political reasons, but please please please stop calling them your partner.  Unless of course you see love as a business and both wear suits whenever you hang out, and use pie charts and graphs to discuss your emotions, which is pretty weird.  Look, as soon as you say “my partner”, people spend the next five minutes wondering if you’re gay, and if you are gay, why your boy/girlfriend has an opposite gender name.  And that surely the only people who have cross gender names are models, so are you dating a model?  Surely not, you’re not that attractive, but then maybe you’re a really good person or something, or possibly a designer, perhaps of sandwich toasters.  And then they start thinking about their sandwich maker, and how their friends seem a bit distant at the moment, and then suddenly you’re shouting at them in the middle of Halifax about not being listened to when you really need a bank loan.  It’s just confusing for the rest of the world with our tiny little minds, our yellow gunge, and our inability to understand politically correct terms.

I Don’t Even Know What Those Shoes Are Called But I Don’t Like Them

My mum suggested I get some of these last year.  Apparently they tone your legs and improve your posture at the same time.  I am sure that they do, but then surely if you strapped two tupperware boxes to your feet and walked around in them all day they’d do something to your legs.  I don’t understand how people can become excited that badly designed soles – in this case curved ones – make your legs work harder and force you to stand up-right because if you don’t you’ll fall onto your nose.  Maybe I’ll cut open a plastic ball and start wearing them as shoes, maybe I’ll start hanging tins of baked beans off my coat like mittens on a string for the extra weight, maybe I’ll just curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep.  I just don’t get it.  And that scares me.

Rucksacks With One Strap

Two words: bicycle couriers.

Any Modern Invention That Tries To Help Women Be More Like Men Physically

I’m not a feminist, well, not unless I’m talking to Bob, but this stuff grinds my gears.  I’m sure there were women involved in the designing and making of these things, but I don’t really understand why.  Imagine a design company like the Advertising firm in the film, ‘What Women Want’ (which reminds me*) where that woman who was in that film with Jack Nicholson where she’s having a bath and that artist who was beaten up by his previous male model (called Sharon, probably) says, “wow the line of your back is so beautiful” and it’s really touching because she’s finally being seen as the glorious woman she is.  Yeah, her.  Well she’s up late, doodling and trying to come up with a campaign for women.  It’s stressful, she’s listening to Frank Sinatra, then BAM she realises: what women really want is a funnel they can pee into standing up!  That’s the dream, right?! No WAY.  If women wanted to do that we’d just start taking bits of baking equipment out with us in case we got caught short.  This baffles me, and don’t get me started on the Moon Cup.  WHY GOD?!  WHYYYYYY?

*Mel Gibson

See above.  Also: Tom Cruise’s laugh and air punching.

I Bought Grazia Today: I Think That’s What This Is Really About

I feel a lot better now.