Harrumph!

Charlie Brooker
The Guardian 220107

Never in history have there been so many opportunities to put your opinion across. You can print it in papers, shout it on the radio, text it to the news channels or whack it on the internet. And it all happens so quickly, you don't even have to think your opinions through; if you can't be bothered doing the brainwork, you can simply repeat what someone else has said using slightly different words. And poorer spelling.

Most opinions, however, don't really need to be written down at all. They can be replaced by a sound effect - the audible equivalent of an internet frowny-face. Imagine a sort of world-weary harrumph accompanied by the faintest glimmer of a self-satisfied sneer. That's 90% of all human opinion on everything, right there. Internet debates would be far more efficient if everyone just sat at their keyboards hitting the "harrumph" key over and over again. A herd of people mooing their heads off. Welcome to 2007.

Full article here

Sound familiar? Quarter-baked thoughts thrown into the ether with the self-asssumed portent of the Ten Commandmants but the intellectual rigour of the Cheeky Girls' lyrics? Repetition of inherited wisdoms/cliches that have had more wear than Cherie Blair's Nectar card? 'And another thing...' rants of the kind that Alf Garnett parodied to death four decades ago?
'Media will eat itself' instances of newspaper websites reporting on other websites reporting on newspaper websites?

Fantastic, isn't it? !

 

[/quote]

Sound familiar? Quarter-baked thoughts thrown into the ether with the self-asssumed portent of the Ten Commandmants but the intellectual rigour of the Cheeky Girls' lyrics? Repetition of inherited wisdoms/cliches that have had more wear than Cherie Blair's Nectar card? 'And another thing...' rants of the kind that Alf Garnett parodied to death four decades ago ![/quote]

Yes, I nearly choked on my muesli as the word 'Dilfor' screamed repeatedly in my head as I read today's Guardian.

 

Good heavens you read the Grauniad, it's worse than I imagined.

 

No-one actually reads the Guardian - you just bathe in the aura of its self-righteousness.

 

Well of course you do. It's best ingested soaking in a bath of essential oils surrounded by scented candles.
Does it for me every time.

 

Hmmm, you edited your post from toast to muesli? Why? There must be some kind of conspiracy in here somewhere.

 

The Grauniad website has suddenly become so popular after Dilfor linked to it that it has fallen over.....

Harrumph! Insert Smiley here....

Litotes

 

SLRBoy clearly has personal issues about becoming a walking, talking, falafel-eating, right-on stereotype. His earliest draft had him in sandals & kaftan at his North London home but he thought better about mentioning these.

 

I read the guardian sports section in a coffee bar the other day. Basic errors on the rugby correspondent's part which obviously showed that organ's lack of social and pokitical awareness is not confined to its news section.

 

Dilfor, I take it that you're still doing social work in your spare time?

Thought it best to keep the stereotypes going.

 

An interesting and important point you have (no doubt inadvertently) made there RFUK.
Editing can be both be a joy and a bane of life.

When they were editing the Intel to support the war (sorry to mention it - but I'm actually talking about writing here) they excluded the facts that didn't support the fiction they wished to portray.

From a writers point of view that alone is a gross misdemeanor.
In fact had I not been against the war for so many other reasons I could have been against it merely on the grounds of the appalling quality of the writing used to justify it.

I on the other hand edited my post and changed the word from 'toast' to 'muesli' in an attempt to portray more accurately how that most loathsome of lifeforms, the Guardian reader, actually breaks its fast.
In so doing I hoped to make my post, unlike your average JIC report more truthful and in a very real sense, more real.

 

SLRBoy clearly has personal issues about becoming a walking, talking, falafel-eating, right-on stereotype. His earliest draft had him in sandals & kaftan at his North London home but he thought better about mentioning these.[/quote]

Well of course I wouldn't mention the sandals and kaftan in front of squaddies, they'd mistake it for a jilaba and have me in their cross hairs in an instant.

 

Sport - Guardian?
Sorry it doesn't compute.

 

Well of course I wouldn't mention the sandals and kaftan in front of squaddies, they'd mistake it for a jilaba and have me in their cross hairs in an instant.[/quote]

Unlikely. They'd more probably think you were some hippy chick & spend all evening trying to bed you, before giving up, calling you a lezzer and then drinking rubbish lager til the next parade.