Encore
So you’re watching a band. They’ve been on for a while and
they haven’t played their most popular songs.
What’s this? They’re walking off the stage? But...but...NO!
You must return! We, the audience, demand it!
What is the point of an encore? Everyone knows you’re going
to do it. Band - you are not spontaneously responding to the audience. You’ve
got a LIGHT SHOW sorted out for this bit, FFS.
Audience – you could all sit there in total silence and they’d still come back out and play the same three songs they intended to play all along. They're not going to waste that light show.
Audience – you could all sit there in total silence and they’d still come back out and play the same three songs they intended to play all along. They're not going to waste that light show.
Perhaps once an encore was a spontaneous response to
audience demand. Now – like most of the grammar of pop music - it’s a
ridiculous bit of play-acting nobody can remember why they do. Just don’t bother.
Outside Broadcast
Suppose there has been some big news event, with a political
element to it. Cue TV reports beginning:
“I am standing here outside Number 10 Downing Street...”
WHY? That is the last place on earth where anything relating
to this news event is likely to happen. Nor are we convinced by the presence of
a TV crew there that you are somehow at the heart of what is going on. You read
a press release (or whatever) and drove the crew over there, the same as
everyone else!
Why is it considered necessary to put a man in a coat in
front of a well-known monument or some building that has a bearing on the story
in question? Do you think we can’t grasp the idea of “politics” without a
picture of the Houses of Parliament?
The 9 to 5
OK, not everybody works those particular hours, but the vast
majority of us do. This is incredibly inefficient and detrimental to our
collective well-being.
Rush hour, peak time fares, lunchtime queues, “all our
operators are busy at the moment” – these are all side-effects of the idea that
we all trying to do the same things at the same times.
Couldn’t we all stagger our working hours to avoid getting
in each other’s way?
Yours sincerely
Perhaps this
valediction is in irreversible decline with letter-writing heading for
extinction, but I for one will not miss it.
Firstly, at 37 years of age, I still struggle to spell it. Secondly, the whole
sincerely/faithfully thing is a tiresome pinhead for pedantic angels to dance
on.
But thirdly and most important, what the hell does it mean?
In what sense am I claiming to be “yours”?
“I
remain, Sir, your obedient servant”...? Is that what it’s derived from? If so,
that’s not really how I want to sign off a letter. Because I don’t.
Parliament
Ha ha! A pun on the word “convention”.
But seriously, in what way is (i) the ability to get
selected by a party machine as a candidate and (ii) the ability to make
lawyerly speeches in the big green debating club in any sense correlated with (iii) having ideas about social and
economic organisation that are likely to do any good and (iv) being competent
to implement them?
It may have been suitable for a 19th century Britain
run by gentlemen for gentlemen, but it looks pretty preposterous today.
PLEASE BE ADVISED - The convention that the photo and the text should be in some way related has been bypassed - this is a picture of a pelican put through Glitche.
I was looking for a 'like' button to press to minimize feedback effort, but I wrote this instead.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on another blog!
ReplyDeleteI just like beating the 'are you a sincere human rather than an Internet crawler bot?' test...give me another one to copy!
ReplyDeleteYes, three out of 3.
ReplyDeleteAnd another. Back of the net!
ReplyDeleteI thank you. Five semi-readable combinations of numbers and letters copied without error.
ReplyDelete