Omens. Omens are what alarmingly superstitious people look for as they bounce eagerly from bad situation to bad situation. People who believe the old hokum about black cats and ladders invariably lay traps for themselves, only to be surprised when they fall into them, screaming in metaphorical agony. These are the people that don’t make jokes about Friday The 13th because they’re too busy wrapping themselves up in bubble wrap to protect them from the oncoming apocalypse of minor misfortune.

These people need us- the non-believers- to show them how good life can be away from omens, faeries, bad luck and fishwives’ tales. They need us to lampoon and mock the beliefs that they hold as fervently as an evangelical Christian holds onto a fading belief in a benevolent creator. We need to be out there, dancing jigs under ladders, crossing swords with black cats and breaking mirrors over the heads of Arch-Bishops.

We need to show people that you make your own luck and believing in omens and superstition will only lead you to dash yourself against the rocks of life! Unless they’re right of course. In which case, those of you who just threw your mobile phones at a mirror on my command might be in for a bit of a tough time.

The only evidence I can find which backs up the theory of ‘bad luck’ can be found in advertising. All the tales you’ve been told about the man who walked under a ladder only to have his house burn down at the same time are probably true but then again, he probably left the chip pan on while he went to clean his windows. All of these things are twisted and made into advertising gimmicks but what if there was one person who was the unluckiest person on earth. What would you turn their story into?

How do you twist the story of someone who is so monumentally unlucky that the cloud of bad fortune that hangs around them can be seen from Uranus’ orbit into something that can be enjoyed by all and sell a few of your shoddy wares in the process?

It’s easy!

Take Noah. He must be the unluckiest bastard in all of creation. Not only did he wake up one day to find that everyone on earth except him had been judged as unrighteous by bloody GOD himself, he was then forced to build an ark using only a flimsy set of IKEA instructions and an allan key. Does divine intervention and losing your local haberdasher to moral corruption qualify him as the unluckiest man in the world? No, probably not but having to fill his flat-pack boat with the world’s most dangerous creatures definitely bloody does.

The poor bastard was left to deal with the mountains of crap and carcasses left behind by the animals in his biblical supertanker without as much as a by your leave from the big bearded bastard in the sky. They’d have been eating each other, shitting all over one-another and generally making Noah’s life a living hell. So yes, he is the most unlucky person in history*.

Until now!

Advertising has jumped in and reminded us that while Noah may have been unlucky, at least his ark was fit for purpose. Unlike the poor git in the latest Lynx commercial.

You’re probably sitting there dumbfounded that I’ve managed to go through 600 words of a column about Lynx and not mention either the brand or the fact that it’s the sexist preserve of hormonal teenagers that have an innate desire to smell like vapourised cat vomit but that’s not the point! You all knew that anyway. I bet some of you occasionally walk past a group of teenage boys and make some flippant comment about the smell of Lynx and stale farts- and that’s okay.

Usually, I’d go for that angle as well but Friday 13th got me thinking about luck and how little luck this modern day Noah is having. There he is, given the task to build an ark and GOD hasn’t even given him any instructions, let alone the sacred Allan Key of Antioch that he gave Noah. He’s having to make it up with a rudimentary pencil carved out of the wood he’s being forced to work ON HIS OWN without the use of the flatpack Ark that Noah had.

It’s no wonder that he ends up with something that resembles an ocean-going pleasure yacht instead of a good, sturdy biblical ark.

The poor guy has done what any of us would do and modelled it on something he was familiar with. Will there be space for all the animals in there? Only time will tell. It’s not only that though, he’s clearly gone for comfort over substance with his tilled-wood interior and convenient fireman’s pole to allow him easy access between decks. He’s not leaving enough space to fit the animals in. No cages either. How will he keep the predators apart from their prey?!

I’m sure he has it all in hand. After all, this is GOD’s chosen man. The man who will lead all the creatures of this earth out of the darkness of the apocalypse and into a new world. A better world. A world populated by people descended from this brave but unlucky man. We should welcome the forthcoming apocalypse with open arms if this man is to make us better.

It’s no wonder he’s feeling a bit warm. He’s worked up one hell of a sweat working all that wood in time for the world ending. Having a spray of deodorant before the animals start to come isn’t going to make any difference, is it? Unfortunately for our plucky hero, all the shops had sold out of real anti-perspirant and he was forced to pick up a can of Lynx. Still, no matter. There will be no people to react to his smell of vapourised cat vomit where he’s going.

Here’s where our story comes to an end though, perhaps with the most unlucky element of all. It’s a well-known scientific fact that women cannot resist the smell of Lynx and will actively seek it out across continents if they have to. It’s not this man’s fault that he had to buy that can of Lynx. He’s going on to the birth of a new world, of course he needs some home comforts. Now his ark is suddenly full of beautiful women, attracted by the smell of his body tonic.

What is he supposed to do? Turn them away? The ark can very easily be converted to house people and the animals haven’t bothered to walk the lengths of themselves to join him. He tried to resurrect the world as we know it but was left with a giant wooden boat full of women that will eventually turn against him when ‘The Lynx Effect’ wears off and the can lies empty. He needed two of every animal but he didn’t get them. He failed GOD and when the waters subsided, he was left a broken shell of a man, completely ruined by his failure to create a new world.

The unluckiest person in the world stands, crestfallen, on the deck of that ark: make no mistake.

*Mythical history, that is. It’s a long-established fact that the unluckiest person in history is Adam Rickett.

Kittens, as everyone knows, are adorable. But then they grow up to be cats, and everyone knows that cats can’t wait to kill you in your sleep.

If only there was some way to capture the essence of a kitten and then trap it behind a screen so that it will never grow up with the desire to slash your throat with its razor-sharp cat-talons. Wait a minute! There is!

After the jump is a little downloadable app with a kitten on it. You can stroke the kitten with your mouse and it’ll react with joy instead of a vicious attempt to take one of your eyes out. Download it and it’ll do even more stuff. After the jump…

10 - Eight full minutes of Mortal Kombat fatalities. Don’t pretend you won’t watch…

9 - Here’s a cat doing an impression of hecklerspray – YouTube

8 - Insane oligarchs, why not pay $100m to punch Lennox Lewis in the face – Dailymail

7 - Once again, David Spade defies logic – Monsters And Critics

6 - Dear The Cheeky Girls, OK that’s enough now. Thanks. Love from the world – Holymoly

5 - By accident, William Shatner opens his mouth and says something that isn’t paranoid and angry – YouTube

4 - A lesson in rose-tinted nostalgia – Kontraband

3 – Ten fairly solid reasons why Kanye West in an idiot - Mamapop

2 - So, hey, drive-by shootings just got easier - Google Maps

1 - Turns out that bloke from Twilight is the boringest man on Earth. Who knew?  - Best Week Ever

10 – Remember Charlie the injured cat from a few weeks ago? The webcam’s still there. Watch the cat. WATCH THE CAT! – Yourcat

9 – Christopher Biggins wears some glasses. That’s literally the news – Popsugar

8 - Hey Terrence Howard! You’re not going to be wearing this any time soon - Slashfilm

7 - An unusually small dog. Go “aww” at this and you’re banned from here forever – I Am Bored

6 - ‘I Am Under 18′ Button Clicked For The First Time In The History of The Internet – Theonion

5 - Proof that God is basically Bansky, although He probably went to a less wanky school and is more imaginary – Environmentalgraffiti

4 - Are you following us on Twitter yet? - Twitter

3 - John McCain possibly does a bit of a swearword - Bestweekever

2 – And, for the sake of impartiality, a build-at-home paper Barack Obama! – Buildobama

1 - Do you think the Google Android G1 phone is cool? Watch this, you’ll change your mind within 20 seconds…

10 - Watch full episodes of Star Trek on YouTube, you friendless git – Lifehacker

9 - Transporter 3, the uplifting coming of age tale about a lost soul finding a voice in society - Moviemoron

8 – Alesha Dixon‘s new music video. It’s, um, sort of OK. Probably – Popjustice

7 - Swedish people touching an electric fence. Not as much death as you’d hope for - I Am Bored

6 – Apparently some idiots still leave tips for waitresses. Cuh - Consumerist

5 - A statue of an acorn – Geograph

4 - Anyone get the feeling that this cat only likes scuba because its legs can’t support its own weight on land…

3 – A bleak history of pubs – Newsweek

2 - Robots made of typewriters. We want one – Technabob

1 – 900-pound squid joins the cast of The View - The Onion

The internet in digest form. But with less pornography, sadly.

5 - Busuu.com – it’s like Facebook but you learn a new language doing it rather than get publicly ridiculed for the way you’re beginning to resemble members of bad 1990s American jam bands. So it’s better – Busuu

4 – It’s a hamster that looks like a cake. And it looks delicious, which is probably counterproductive - Gawker

3 - The hecklerspray IT department in full force

2 - Known Gary Glitter Aliases. From The Onion, so just as funny as you’d expect – The Onion

1 - How to make Spider-Man 4 not so awful that it makes us want to punch Tobey Maguire in the face as hard we can. Tough job - IGN

Starting today, here’s a blast through the stuff on the internet that’s been rocking our world over the last 24 hours…

5 – The all-time feline champion of What’s The Time Mr Wolf…

4 – The top 25 covers of Yesterday by The Beatles. And 23 of them are crap. Redux

3 – Boyzone‘s new single. We can tell if you click this, and we’ll hunt you down if you do. Popsugar

2 - Official Guitar Hero 4 set-list. Good news if you like Tool. Bad news if you have ears. AV Club

1 - It’s the world’s smallest man posing with the woman with the world’s most unforgiving hairdo. Best Week Ever

“The lines are closed. The votes have been verified. And I can now reveal that the first person to be evicted from the Big Brother house is… Stephanie!”

And with that went my chance of making any money out of Paddy Power this week!

I had my lolly on creepy Mario and his plastic wife Lisa. Surely that was a banker of a bet? But no – the voting public thought otherwise and ousted pretty young thing Steph, the only one to really stand up to the gruesome twosome and their childish bullying.

Apart from those two sad acts, she was probably the only one who expected her name to be called by Davina, too. The faces of the others told that story quite clearly.

But hey… who will remember Steph now? It’s a cruel game this BB one and the blonde 19-year-old looker will be forgotten just like all those other first-week failures.

It’s a shame, I know. It was fun while it lasted Steph. But them’s the breaks. Honestly, it wasn’t you, it was me.

I just want us to be friends. And that’s the last time I will see you… until we meet in an Essex nightclub, you picking up your £200 appearance D-lister appearance fee for two songs and a snog with Adrian from Crawley on his birthday!

So it’s time to move on and take a look at the odds for the outright winner again.

Cookie-mad Thai Teletubby Kat is 2/1 to beat the rest of the field – but how long will we be able to put up with that screechy voice and those missing Rs?

Kat’s sweet, yes, but only in the same way a stick of rock is sweet. Eat too much and it leaves you rotten, rotten to the core.

No, I can’t see her still being everybody’s cup of tea (with eight sugars) this time next month, let alone in week 13.

So who’s next? Well, it’s chirpy northern Luke (3/1), who I read this week is a wrestling announcer! It’s a strange, old world sometimes. I would have had him down for a white coat and hairnet in an Eccles cake factory in Halifax, but there’s nowt queer as folk, as they say oop north.

Then comes the rest of the field – and at this stage, it might be fun to stick your hand in your pocket and play that field a little.

There’s Blind Mikey (9/2), Albino Darnell (10/1), Straight-and-Narrow Rachel (12/1), Masterchef Rex (14/1), Dishy Dale (16/1), Top-heavy Becky (25/1), Flirty single mum Jen (28\1), Everyone’s mate Mohamed (33/1), Gay dancer Dennis (66/1) and Sultry Sylvia. But this bunch are surely going to be around for another week at least.

That’s because this week it will be between this threesome (and what a horrible thought that is!): undercover shaggers Mario (100/1) and Lisa (80/1) – and the vile (but entertaining) Alex (200/1).

One of these three will go this week to shake it up a bit more – and, of course, there’s always the possibility of NEW HOUSEMATES! Not that I know anything, mind! Honest

Paddy Power will be offering odds on the next eviction just as soon as the nominations are announced.

Story by Richard Hughes

Hey, cat owners! Tired of your pet basically ignoring you and dragging half-dead frogs into your house all the time? Well, why not cover them in sticky tape as a sort of freakish revenge ploy!

That seems to be the gist of this clip, anyway – it looks as if you can really bugger up a cat's ability to walk by strapping a load of sticky tape across its fur. We think – not being able to speak Japanese, we have no idea whether this is a specially-trained tape cat or whether you can make all cats walk around like wankers if you bung a strip of masking tape on their backs. You can always try it on your cat to find out, you know. And video it. And send us the Youtube link. 

And, no, this definitely isn't cruel to cats. Well, it might be a bit cruel. But it's funny. And isn't that more important?