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DEAR TRUSTED FRIEND,
I HUMBLY SEEK YOU ASSISTANCE AS A PERSON RECOMMENDED TO US AS BEING OF THE MOST HIGH HONOUR AND DISCRETION. ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF. I AM MS GINEVRA MOLLY WEASLEY, FORMER COMPANION OF THE LATE MR HARRY POTTER, WHO AS YOU KNOW WAS MURDERED BY HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED RECENTLY. I AM SEEKING YOUR ASSISTANCE IN RECOVERING A SUM OF 15,000,000 GALLEONS FROM GRINGOTT’S BANK OF DIAGON ALLEY, LONDON…
Chris’s post on how to inadvertently make the BBC say “fuck” reminded me of another instance when a well-intentioned and useful little bit of software managed to confuse the crap out of me with its unintended consequences. A little over a year ago, I was using a Firefox extension (or it may have been a Greasemonkey script – I can’t track down the exact one I was using then) that would automatically convert any money amount in the text on a web page into your local currency. Very neat, very useful.
The downside? My job at the time involved an awful lot of writing and reading about football. And as such, I was repeatedly and frequently confused whenever I read an otherwise normal article that would suddenly, for no apparent reason, make reference to a player who “looks a certainty for inclusion in the squad, despite his disappointing performances at £1,350 (€ 2004)”.
It normally took be about ten seconds to twig what was going on. And then I kept forgetting about it, and getting confused again the next time.
Let’s get one thing straight. Catherine Tate was, at least once upon a time, a very talented comic actress, with an impressive grasp of subtle character comedy and a flair for nuanced delivery. That was before she realised that she could become a lot more popular by turning into a shrieking, one-note catchphrase-spewing robot. Ever since then, she’s resembled nothing so much as a washing machine that’s got a bit of metal from someone’s pocket stuck in its workings, with the result that on every rotation it grinds out the same shudder-inducing, piercing metallic yowl at a frequency so horrifying that it leaves you with palsied fingers and a spine permanently bent into the shape of a normal distribution curve.
As such, it’s delightful news that we’re going to have to suffer her truly appalling, monotonous, charmless clot of a character, Donna, for an entire fucking series of Doctor Who. The dire Christmas special that she starred in wasn’t enough stunt casting, clearly. There’s no hope for respite, no faint glimmer of light on the character development front – it’s one of the two most striking flaws in Russell T Davies’s (otherwise wonderful) writing, that alongside his very poor world-building skills, he consistently seems to think that audiences will automatically find two-dimensional loudmouthed harridans utterly endearing. No, Russell. We don’t. Please stop.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuck. I don’t want to look like I’m over-reacting to what is, after all, just a television show – but shouldn’t someone be asking questions in Parliament about this horrific shit? Like, whether we can re-introduce the death penalty for crimes of completely dicking up much-loved TV shows? Shouldn’t there be protests? Mass civil unrest? Riots on the streets? Effigies burning in central Cardiff? Rivers of fire and piss and blood? Wanton destruction? Phonecalls?
Or something. I don’t know.
FUUUUCK.
A little tardy, this, but in addition to my photos from Glastonbury and my occasional Twitter outbursts, I thought I’d try to distill the essence of the experience into the appropriate format for our age – namely, the infographic. And here’s my results:
(Link goes to a genuinely rather large image file.)
Nearly two years ago, in response to the traumatic non-events of July 21st, I created this new version of the terror alert scale, to better reflect the nature of the threat we faced:
Now, as the country reels in shock from the recent incidents in London and Glasgow, I feel it is my civic duty to replenish the scale anew, once again so that it can fully encompass the sheer level of horror that confronts us. Remember – we are at war with people who hate our way of life. And by “way of life”, I mean they hate the fact that we can tie up our own shoelaces without assistance.
