Month: October 2024

There are plusses and minuses to waking up with Frank Zappa’s “Evelyn, a Modified Dog” as an earworm, as I’m sure you’ve found, but at least it provides us with an opportunity to subtly indicate to the online community what sophisticated and eclectic tastes we have.

Especially, in my case, when it’s taken in conjunction with my Billy Joel / Adam Lambert quip from last week, and the fact that I quite enjoyed a recent bleak mini-series about Chernobyl. Is “enjoy” the right word? Probably not, although since all the characters inexplicably spoke English to each other throughout, there were, arguably, no right words in that show anyway.

There used to be a British woman in the (nineteen) nineties (I am not saying she was nineteen, although it cannot be ruled out without over-researching for what is meant to be a mildly amusing social media post, not a PhD dissertation. It’s bad enough that I keep spotting annd having to fiix new tpyos on every read-through) who reported having suddenly acquired a foreign accent after a brain injury. But even something like that, (and especially *that* itself (not the word “that”, the concept of people acquiring a foreign accent after a brain injury (The following two closing-brackets are not a typo and are entirely neccessary and appropriate. In fact we’re going to need a third one now to accommodate these (admittedly extravagant) words of explanation))) would not account for a whole country switching languages at least twelve hours before, and possibly (as far can be ascertained without once again adopting the methodology of a PhD candidate) anything up to 13.8 billion years before the start of the nuclear emergency.

We can only assume it was some sort of conspiracy involving either (a) the people of Soviet era Ukraine, or (b) scriptwriters at the tiny startup production company in either Scotland or Northern England (I can’t remember which and have too much respect for the reader for me to just “Google” it and then dishonestly pretend to be an authority on the matter) who created the series for HBO and Sky. If the conspiracy involves (a) above, it’s reasonable to assume that a sequel will be made about it, given the enormous success of the first series. This is less likely if (b) is the perp (perpetrator), as it might involve self-incrimination, or allegations of self-incrimination.

I assume self-incrimination is also a serious crime as it can cost your investors zillions in avoidable litigation, especially if you screw up even further by somehow managing to lose the case despite being innocent of the thing in which you managed to incriminate yourself, which is quite a talent, if you ask me, since I assume that when you sell-incriminate you are expected to testify for both the prosecution and the defence.

Not that I’m an authority on either Scottish or Soviet or Northern English law. Although I did once successfully demand a refund from the aforementioned Sky by conveying that I know a fair bit about the civil law tort of Misrepresentation. Which I did at the time, so don’t imagine you’ve caught me up in an admission of misrepresentation. F’ing smartass. 

First posted on Facebook, October 2019