Happy 60th David Lynch!

Well I should have seen it coming with that last post. I stepped out of my glass house for a moment to throw a few large boulders.  An enthusiastic Corrector has already set about drawing attention to all of my own errors and my mum pointed out, as always, yet another rogue punctuation mark.

In my defense I should say that that last post was about three times longer, and therefore three times more boring, than it ended up. I banged on for ages about how I’m okay at spelling but guilty of typos blah blah etc. And I deleted all of that because, well, it was dull and just made me sound like a smartypants. So I posted it just at the point where I started going, Fucking hell, can’t anyone spell anymore? And that just made me look like a smartypants hypocrite.

Anyway, I refuse to apologise (who me?) but I should point out that, yes, I make a lot of typos. That’s because I write Burning Salad 1. quickly 2. in one take. And also 3. I don’t care if there’s the odd typo. It’s just words on a screen after all. And typos are exactly that- typographical errors. Hitting the wrong key, dribbling on the keyboard, have a minor fit, that sort of thing.

Like I said, I actually like Leet. (Just not for the same reason that all the lee7 K1DZ do.) And I am a big fan of teh. But anyway. The ire of the last post was directed at the people who are, well, just idiots really; I probably shouldn’t have focussed solely on their abstract mad spelling skillz.

I mean, I just Googled for my favourite word- ‘moot’. And I found an article titled, ‘Apple moots return to UK Mac show’.  And it was an okay article. Not particularly interesting, not particularly dull. The word moot in the title. And this in the comments: MOOT wtf is a MOOT YOU HOMO talk english not your sutpiD ENGLISH [sic]. Which did actually make me laugh. But still.

It’s people like that who should feel the icy cold grip of CORRECTOR. It’s more about the sport than the semantics. And people like that don’t need much encouragement to take the bait. It’s like punching a wasps nest. Or shouting the word moot at a wasps nest, to be more accurate. Very angry wasps with an irrational hatred of the word moot.

Anyway, considering the fact that this whole post is itself, more or less, moot, I’m going to stop now.

Fuck me, if I read another thing on the internet where someone is so bad at spelling that their putting the word they’re in the there sentence the wrong way three times in a row I’m going to cry and smash my computer.

I am so fed up of it it makes me want to explode. But everything has a context…

When I’m not reading Wikipedia (and occasionally laughing at it’s sometime questionable providence) or doing something else ‘worthwhile’ online, I’m surfing through, say, forums about videogames; something like that. Now I’m not going to make sweeping generalisations or jump to conclusions here- but you’ve got these kids who love to be all authoritative (and that’s fine if they have reason to be) but can barely string a sentence together. So you’re trying to talk about why Katamari Damacy is a genuine masterpiece and some grommet too young to know what a Commodore 64 is is either trying to prove that they know more than you (and proving that they don’t) or making a good job of saying not a single thing of any importance. And in both cases succeeding in using language like a chimp uses chop sticks to eat spaghetti.

Get a fucking dictionary you idiots! That’s right, you don’t read. Well book mark dictionary.com then. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

It’s not even like I don’t like Leet. I actually really like it and how it re-encodes language, but that’s a whole other story.

So I’ve invented a great new internet game. It’s really easy and you’ll like it if you’re like me and get really pissed off with bad use of language on the internet.

The game revolves around a few basic principles of internet forums:

1. Some members like to maintain an aloof persona.
2. Some members think they are really clever.
3. These people’s understanding of language is retarded. It really is. Retarded.

And the golden rule:

4. New forum members are not expected to rub anyone up the wrong way. In fact, if they do, all hell can break loose.

So, what I’m proposing is really just good old fashioned trolling. Here’s how to do it if you want to join in. And if you do, I salute you.

1. Find an internet forum frequented by smartypants.
2. Find a spelling mistake. It shouldn’t be hard.
3. Ensure that English is the mistaken’s first language. (This is important, it’s only fair. Obviously don’t ask them- check their profile or something.)
4. Sign up for the forum with the name CORRECTOR. (Depending on the atmosphere of the forum, you might opt for alternative spellings. KORRECKTOR, Correcteur etc.)
5. Draw attention to the spelling mistake in as few words as possible. This should be your first post. Subsequent post should only discuss language or correct mistakes. In both cases do so in as few words as possible, ignoring any hubbub the correction might have caused.

Okay, I’m going to go and do some corrections.

Prize for the funniest thing I’ve heard anyone say for… oh, months (at least) goes to Rob Churm. It is kind of geeky I suppose but I almost pissed myself laughing.

We were watching top evolutionary biologist and all round clever Richard Dawkins on Channel 4’s Root Of All Evil explaining to people who might not have realised it yet that all religion is nothing more than an absurd delusion. And a good program it was too. Anyway…

During one sequence there was footage of some chimpanzees doing chimpanzee things in that kind of half human, half comedy way that primates behave. We were laughing at the main chimp which was covered in bald patches for no apparent reason, when Rob turned round and said:

Monkeys are MS Dos… humans are Windows 2000.

It doesn’t look very funny now that I read it but at the time I almost fell off my seat. Maybe you have to be watching a chimp when you think about it.

Happy Friday the 13th. Enjoy it while it lasts, they don’t come around that often.