The Boiled Egg of Infinity

To Whom It May Concern at GAME:

(and believe me, it should concern someone)

My name is Douglas and I want to let you know about the level of customer service I received tonight at your Sauchiehall Street branch. I’m trying to think of how best to sum it up. “Disgusting” seems too cliché, too Daily Mail for my liking. “Awful” is ok, “Terrible” gets more into the line of the things I am looking for. I’m probably going to settle for something between “shocking”, “appalling” and “horrible”.

So it’s the 8^th of November as I write this. Modern Warfare 3 is upon us all. I go into your Sauchiehall Street branch at about 5:45pm –after work – with a preorder for the game. I’m met by a nice fellow at your front desk called Kenan, who pointed out (after a bit of opening banter) that I couldn’t get the £5 off the price through the preorder because I hadn’t brought along the two bits of the preorder, just the larger receipt. It seems there’s a big receipt and a wee receipt, and the smaller bit of paper is the actual preorder, as it turns out. I’ll admit to being unhappy about this – the receipt clearly has enough reference numbers on it (including the date / time of transaction etc) to surely find the preorder on the system. Kenan says no, and goes to get his manager.

(Kenan was, I should point out, polite and courteous at all times. I was a (very very) tiny bit irritated at what I thought was a pretty minor issue, but I assure you I was calm and nothing at any point got out of hand. I was just asking questions as to why the receipt couldn’t satisfy the function of the preorder. But Kenan did the right thing – tell the customer no, then if they don’t accept, kick it up the chain of command to the manager.)

That is when things took a sharp turn in a southward direction.

The manager (and we’ll come to his name in a moment, that gets its own little spot in the story) immediately took a belligerent and aggressive tone. Even his body language was confrontational. There was nothing about this man that suggested he was there to manage the situation, explain matters and possibly find a solution. This was a man who had decided in advance to say “No” and had got himself keyed up into an aggressive state to get that point across.

When I said that I thought the receipt would surely contain all of the information needed he repeated Kenan’s point that the smaller slip was required. When I asked why, he said that without it there would be nothing to prevent me “…presenting it tomorrow at another shop and claiming the £5 there too.” So, for those of you keeping score, that’s aggression and accusing the customer of trying to defraud the shop. I tried again, mentioning that the receipt would surely have a reference number to tie it to a specific pre-order, which would mean the system wouldn’t accept a second submission for another £5. Without a moment’s thought (this guy, I thought, must know the system inside and out) he said that there weren’t any common reference numbers and that I could – and this is a direct quote from someone who has been promoted up to be a manager in one of your larger stores – “…take it or leave it.”

I’ll admit to being shocked.

By the way, the large receipt and the smaller slip have tons of similar reference numbers on them. Tons. I have circled them in red and counted. The barcode numbers are different but there are 5 areas with the same reference numbers, numerical codes, date and time references, loyalty card numbers etc. OK, 5 might not be tons, but it’s more than the “none” given to me by the manager. So can we add lying out of hand to the customer to the aggression?

I then asked to speak to this man’s manager. I was told that it was his shop and that he was in charge. When I asked to speak to his superior, he repeated this sentence. I asked for his name and got “Craig” spat at me. When I asked for his surname, I got “Craig The Manager”. Assuming, of course, that his name isn’t “Craig Themanager” we can now add to aggression, lying to the customer out of hand and accusing the customer of trying to defraud the shop with refusing to give his name so that I can refer this matter on to customer services. Several times at this stage the “Take it or leave it” offer was repeated. He even said that it wasn’t his fault that I didn’t follow the instructions I was given when I made the preorder.

At this point – speaking as someone who is also a manager in a workplace that deals with customers – I asked if he thought it was acceptable that he was speaking to me in this way. He said that he was speaking to me the way I was speaking to him. At a query from me he clarified this, saying I was speaking to him “pompously and arrogantly”. When I disagreed with this he repeated the claim and again called me pompous and arrogant. When my wife (oh yeah, the wife was there too, meant to mention!) pointed out that I wasn’t being any such thing, he snapped, “We’ll just have to agree to disagree Madam!” at her. All of this, by the way, is with an increasingly raised voice and a stance that was far more “you’ve spilled my pint” than it was “how can I help you?” Still loving the bit where he snapped at my wife. That makes me tingle.

All I could do at this point was to repeat that I was shocked that he, a manager, found it ok to speak to a customer in that tone. He agreed that I was shocked because “…you’re not used to someone talking back to you, are you?” I mentioned I was going to report this issue in a complaint and was told that I could get the details of customer service “…from the door when you leave.”

Oh, and the raised voice? Still there. When I asked him to please not raise his voice at me, I was told that was how he chose to speak, how he would continue to speak to me and that he would not change it because it was his shop and he was the manager and in charge. He might have gone back to his old favourite of “Take it or leave it” at this point, I don’t know. The sound of a kettle boiling was ringing in my ears like one of those old Sylvester and Tweety cartoons by now. I asked Kenan if he felt I had spoken to him badly, which I do feel bad about – it seems this was Kenan’s first day and in retrospect it probably wasn’t cool to ask him to voice his opinion with his (aggressive, shouting) manager right beside him.

Upshot of it all is, I left. In the parlance so favoured by Mister Themanager I “left it”. I bought the game somewhere else where the staff used words and phrases like “Can I help?”, “Here you go” and “thank you”.You can imagine what I was like. It was like one of those war movies where you see glassy-eyed victims of some terrible battle fetch up in some temporary place of safety. Saving Private Themanager, perhaps.

I resolved to contact your company through email, Twitter and write this letter. I’m even going to go all 21^st century and stick it up on my blog. I’m incredibly angry at the treatment I received. This man, this enigma, this Craig Themanager, is in charge of one of your big stores in Sauchiehall Street. That’s a BIG street. Lots of people shop there. I wasn’t being loud, I wasn’t being aggressive, and I wasn’t being abusive. I wasn’t even being pompous or arrogant, though I’m now worried that it’s both pompous and arrogant to say so. I wasn’t happy with the answer I was getting – to be honest I think a lot of shops and businesses get away with variations on “computer says no!” far too much and aren’t prepared for someone to ask questions like “Well, why does it say no?” and not just accept it like The Written Word Of God Almighty. But you know what? Customers are allowed to be unhappy. As long as they’re polite, which I’m pretty sure I was being. My dear wife usually lets me know quickly enough if I’m not, and fairly directly too. Customers are allowed to be unhappy and that’s why companies put managers in to…well…manage.

If Craig Themanager had calmly explained the situation, I would have accepted it. Had he told me that I could bring back the smaller receipt and claim my £5 back within 28 days of release (which one of your store staff confirmed to me tonight on Twitter) then I would have accepted that. Had he said, “Sorry sir, you’ll need to pay full price but if you bring the smaller receipt tomorrow I’ll give you £5 credit to your next purchase” I would have even gone for that. I would have gone for ANYTHING that didn’t involve being aggressive, raising his voice and treating me like something that kids usually stick in a paper bag, set fire to and leave outside someone’s front door while ringing the bell and giggling.

Oh, and one thing – if the customers need to bring along the two slips of paper to get a preorder, you know what you should do? STAPLE THEM TOGETHER. Nowhere on either slip does it say, “You need both of us”. Staples. Seriously. I use them all the time. Go into any shop, you really can’t miss them. End on, they look like really thin space invaders. They’re brilliant for sticking important bits of paper together.

So, here’s what I would like:

 1)    A response to this letter from GAME.

2)    A written apology from GAME head office.

3)    A written apology from Craig Themanager, paragon of GAME customer service.

4)    The £5 refunded – not in store credit. I’m sure you understand.

5)    If possible, a meeting with the member of GAME staff who has overall responsibility for the shops in the Glasgow area. Craig Themanager is, I think, an aggressive, abusive liability who either needs intensive retraining or a move to a non customer-facing role.

Given that Saville has gone and carked it, I’m hoping you’ll fix some or all of the above for me. If you could possibly do it while wearing an inordinate amount of gold, yodeling “now then, now then” and handing out badges, so much the better.

But I’ll settle for some emails or a letter.

Yours sincerely,

Douglas Theaggrievedcustomer

When asked, or if it comes up at all in conversation, I always describe myself as “not much of a pet man, to be honest”. Up to today, I would have thought that was the truth. But then today we had to put our dear old cat Zut (above, in a rare moment of quietness that wasn’t anything to do with eating) to sleep because she wasn’t well, didn’t have the quality of life she once had, and seemed to have reached the conclusion that she had had just about as much of all this business that she could stand, thank you very much, where’s my coat, call me a cab, see you around etc etc. My wife was, understandably, upset, so I went into the entire affair determined to be the rational one, the strong one, the clear voice of reason that could take over and help out while my wife cried.

What. A fucking. Pile. Of shite.

You see, what I hadn’t realised was quite how deeply pets worm their way in to your affections. Aside from the occasional dog when I was young, I didn’t really come from a family of big pet people (note to self – try to write a movie called “Big Pet People”) and when I found myself too afraid to escape the clutches of some wild-eyed madwoman met my future wife I just sort of “inherited” her cats when I moved in. They were never, I was quick to say, my pets – they were hers. This was especially handy when one of them needed feeding / threw up / killed something / dragged a particularly dirty arse across a particularly clean patch of carpet.

Except of course they were my pets. Zut was my pet. And when push came to shove, it was my wife who was the strong one for me. She was the one who saw through my well meant but essentially self-serving arguments of “She’s fine”, “We aren’t medical professionals”, “Maybe she just needs some medication” etc etc and correctly identified them as expressions of a selfish desire to keep a loved pet near to me for just a little bit longer. She was the one who saw the kindest thing to do was to preserve the old bugger’s dignity and let her go, quietly, peacefully, loved and at the right moment rather than drag out another few weeks or months that would start to cross over that fine line from “life” to “existence”. She was the one who, frankly, saved a poor old cat from a rather miserable time of it and at the same time saved her (by now bawling and appallingly snot-ridden) husband from being a complete and utter hypocrite who would loudly proclaim to others “It’s the kindest thing to do” while avoiding that course of action himself.

All of which really means that Zut went, in the end, extremely peacefully. All of her accumulated aches, pains, grumbles and signs of wear suddenly didn’t matter. She lay down, had a last hissy swear at the vet when she got the first injection (because let’s face it, at the end we’re all entitled to a last “Fuck you!” aimed at the world) and nodded off. That was it. She got stroked, talked to and she just slept through the whole thing. She slept so deeply she didn’t even notice the two humans pawing at her ears in that way that always drove her mental. She even managed, for something with a distinct lack of facial muscles to accomplish the act, to look quite relieved at the end.

So there we go. My first ever experience of losing a pet as an adult. I think overall I get an A for effort, F for ability. An old cat I loved went to sleep and didn’t hurt any more. My wife once again demonstrated that while I do a good line in fundamentally pompous good intentions she does a far better one in actually getting things done and being compassionate. All that’s left to do is remember the good times, take comfort in the fact that the right decision was taken at the right time and look forward to the point in the future where there might be the chance to give another wee cat a chance at a spoiled life of eating, throwing up, killing things and dragging arse across carpet.

Goodnight Zut. You were great. And in the end I turned into one of those fucking people who write on the internet about their cats. Touche, old cat. Well played.

Too many times I think a conversation like this one happens when people are developing computer games:

Person 1: “Right, so as they go from level to level, things get gradually tougher. Harder puzzles, stronger enemies, that kind of thing. Right?”

Person 2: “Right. Except for this point right here, where we’re just going to jack it right up to ‘impossible’ and see what happens.”

Person 1: “What, with no warning? No gradient? Just a sudden leap from manageable to impossible? What do you call that?”

Person 2: “Ah, you see, we call that a challenge. The users will love it.”

Now it would be very easy to assume that this is sour grapes because I am playing a video game and can’t get past a particular section* but I have played enough games, and experienced this phenomenon enough times, to think that such a conversation might well take place during the game development process. A game builds up an enjoyable level of challenge, gets gradually tougher to match your increasing level of comfort, and then BOOM – unkillable enemy / neverending swarm of enemies / puzzle that fucking Einstein would have to have looked up on YouTube to get a walkthrough. Or, even worse, a game that is unbeatable at level 10 if you make the wrong decision on level 7. Didn’t save at the right point? Upgraded the wrong thing? Didn’t buy that ammo / map / health pack when you had the chance? Well that’s you bucko, might as well go back to the start.

Or, even worse, a maze. I always think that a maze is a game developer’s way of telling the player that he/she would much rather get to the pub and have a drink. Need to extend the game a bit? Whack in a maze. Because nothing makes dropping 40 quid on a game feel worth it than wandering around a fucking maze. If I wanted to do that, do you know what I would do? PUT OFF THE CONSOLE AND GO TO A MAZE. Then there’s the selective agility issue – I’ve lost count of how many times in a game I have controlled a character who has beaten up bad guys, leapt from roofs, pulled off all sorts of superhuman stunts and then can’t climb a waist-high wall to get to an objective. Why? Because the game developer wants you to go over there and fight a bad guy. Never mind that the thing you are looking for is two feet away over a garden fence and your character has so many muscles on him that from a distance he would just look like a particularly threatening penis, you can’t get it. Go do what you’re told.

All of which tells me that it’s time to get out a book and read for a while. Feel free to laugh and point.

* Easy, perhaps, because that’s pretty close to what it is. I never claimed to be a saint. But I will say this: FUCK YOU, DEAD SPACE 2. FUCK YOU.

So, I have been mucking about with my blog and have installed a new thing – a little toolbar over to the right, that shows the book I am reading at the moment, and my progress through said book. I am currently 95 pages into “The Evolutionary Void” by Peter F. Hamilton, and it’s very good. I bought it when I was out picking up presents for my wife’s birthday. When she asked me that night what I was most pleased with, it’s a testament to her good nature that she didn’t hit me when I blurted out “The new Peter F. Hamilton book!” in a moment of selfish, but unguarded, honesty.

Anyway, as if my occasional blatherings here weren’t enough to bore you to tears, you now get to follow what I am reading, too. All through the power of the internet. You’re welcome.

For a while now I’ve been toying with the idea of reviewing a TV show, just to see if it’s something that I enjoy doing. After all, I like watching TV and am unfortunately very talented when it comes to being judgemental and passing comment on the efforts of those more creative and driven than I am, so it seemed like a good area of overlap for me to explore. Then the question of what to review arose – a show that has been running for a while? Random episode of something? A show I am a fan of? Something completely new? When I read about “Outsourced”, a new sitcom starting in the US, it seemed like a good opportunity to get in at the ground floor on a new show. So here I am.

The premise is simple: young, up-and-coming, handsome all-American salesman Todd Dempsey (Ben Rappaport) works for a company that sells complete and utter tat – sorry, novelty items – to the good men and women that people the United States of Merka. Said company undergoes a bout of downsizing and Todd’s entire department is outsourced to a call centre in India. Instead of being fired, Todd is offered a promotion if he will go over there to run the operation. Can you see the comic potential? Anyway, Todd makes the move, finds out that India is chock-full of brown-skinned people with funny customs and hi-la-rious accents, and gets to show that Americans are the best. Fuck yeah!

Believe me, I wish I was joking or exaggerating in some way. This is my first review, after all. I’m not. I’m really, really not.

This is a show so offensive, so full of lowbrow, obvious jokes, so lazy in its frankly insulting ethnic caricatures that if he were alive today even Bernard Manning would be squirming in his seat and looking a bit nauseated. Hell, I think that even Nick Griffin would probably wait until the commercial break and turn over, his wonky eye spinning wildly like the Fourth Reich’s version of Mad-Eye Moody. The overall impression that you get from watching “Outsourced” is that a stray signal from a TV station in 1973 has somehow slipped through a time-space wormhole to emerge in 2010. This is a show that would have to tunnel upwards for three days through bedrock to hit the bottom of the Jim Davidson level of humour. Now I know how Sam Tyler felt having to deal with Gene Hunt.

What’s that you say, entirely made up voice that signifies one side of a fictitious conversation to enable me to move from one section of the review to another, you think I must be exaggerating? Oh no, gentle fictional person, I am really not, trust me. Examples abound:

• When he first moves to India, Todd looks out at the busy streets and comments that the roads are like “…Frogger, but with real people.” Ha! Ha!
• Todd’s assistant manager Rajiv (Rizwan Manji) introduces the staff and explains that he has hired a woman of a “lower caste” in order for Todd to fire her, thus demonstrating his fearsome power. Ha! Ha! Because caste systems are something to laugh at, aren’t they? Fear him, tiny Indian woman! FEAR THE POWER OF THE AMERICAN! Ha! Ha!
• When Todd meets one of his salesmen, Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan) he can’t help but laugh that his name sounds like “Man meat”. You know, like “penis”, right? Ha! Ha! They say a week is a long time in politics? It is nothing to 14 seconds of that joke being rolled out on screen*. If you close your eyes, you can almost see the writing on the page that says, “Wait for audiences to stop laughing.”
• This is the same Manmeet, by the way, that later has to have it explained to him by Todd that in America, land of milk and honey, you’re allowed to date a girl before you marry her. A prospect that Manmeet treats as unbelievably fantastic. And who wouldn’t? This is America we’re talking about here! Ha! Ha!
• Of course, Todd makes a hilarious joke about all the funny hats people wear in India. Man in Turban immediately stands up and leaves. Woman wearing head-dress just looks uncomfortable. Can’t say I blame her. But Ha! Ha! Because they all wear funny stuff over there, don’t they?
• In that same meeting, of course there’s a cow looking in the window. The cow, Todd has explained to him, is sacred to the Hindu religion. To which Todd, of course, asks what time lunch is. Because he’s thinking of burgers! Ha! Ha!
• At lunch, Todd meets fellow American Charlie Davies (Diedrich Bader) who runs a call centre in the same building. He warns Todd not to eat the Indian food because “…if you eat that, you’ll be crapping yourself for five days.” Because all Indian food is poisonous slop, isn’t it? Ha! Ha!
• The above happens seconds before Charlie calls over a member of his sales team and makes him speak in an American accent, to show he is one of the “A team” – that is, a desirable employee because he can sound like he’s American. Because who wants to talk to an Indian guy, right? Ha! Ha!

You know what, enough with the examples. You get the idea. Surely the fact that I have been able to put together a bulleted list should point to some fairly glaring problems.

The thing is, there is genuine comedy potential in a sitcom that examines cultural differences. One that pokes fun at both sides of a divide (be it ethnic, social, religious, class based or cultural) and finds things to both send up and admire in both. However, where potential exists, it is counterbalanced by the temptation to be lazy, to not stretch and to rely on stereotypes. This is the trap “Outsourced” doesn’t so much fall into as jump, eyes wide open, shouting “Geronimo!” Instead of finding something funny to say the writers instead settle quite quickly into a tired old groove that mainly rotates around laughing at Indian people because they’re Indian, have funny accents and say things like “You are most perceptive. As they say in America, your elevator goes to the penthouse.” ** Oh, and they eat funny food that gives you the shits (which is the final joke of the pilot – yes, the final joke. The last joke of the premier episode, and that’s how they choose to bow out.)

As a genuine fan of American comedy this show annoys me – American TV sometimes gets a bad rap and is immediately dismissed as appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is rubbish. Look at “Seinfeld”, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, “Arrested Development” or the US version of “The Office” to see what good American writers can do with comedy. As a human being living in a multi-ethnic society, this show just made me plain uncomfortable. Poking fun at ethnic differences is one thing. Showing the American swanning around with a shit-eating grin condescending to the natives is quite another. As a fan of TV in general it positively enrages me, because something that might have been actual quality probably got bumped to make way for this dross.

So all in all, I think I could probably have picked a better show for my first go at this whole reviewing lark. Just one final point, a little bit of advice should you ever have the misfortune of having to watch this crap: at the end of the last scene, when the screen fades to black, you’ll probably notice that you have a nagging sense of something being missing. No, it’s not the ability to get those 22 minutes of your life back. It’s because you’re half expecting a reedy voice to start singing out “Land of Hope and Glory” in an Indian accent before Windsor Davies bellows out “SHUUUT UUUUP!” You’re welcome.

“Outsourced”. Give it a miss. I wish I had.

* Believe me, 14 seconds. I timed it. And cringed.

** Word for word quote. Honest.

Couldn’t help but laugh reading an article on The Scotsman website today. Our wonderful First Minister / Sontaran lookalike Alex Salmond was quoted today defending his party from attacks because it has skipped on including a referendum bill in it’s last parliamentary session before the elections. For a nationalist party elected on the promise of…well, I suppose…nationalism, it’s a bit of a glaring omission. However, this was elevated by First Minister Potato-Head’s brilliant defense. Aaaaaaand I quote:

However, Mr Salmond claimed there was no point bringing the bill forward when it was clearly about to be voted down.

“If the arithmetic of this chamber denies the will of the people, then we shall take our case to the country,” he announced, stating his aim to put the referendum at the heart of next year’s election campaign.

The report did not mention whether or not he opened a hatch on his back and pulled out his angry eyes at this point. I know where my money is going.

Now far be it from me to point out something to one of the leading political minds of our generation, even if he does look like someone grew a really huge root vegetable and taught it to wear a suit and tie, but wasn’t it the will of the people that determined the arithmetic of the chamber he has to work in? We did have an election, didn’t we? That returned party members based on votes cast by the people, right? Well in that case, Eck old son, don’t try to blame the makeup of the parliament for you not getting to do your “hoots mon” song and dance routine. Maybe if you presented a more convincing case in the first place, that arithmetic might look a bit different.

But you didn’t.

So it doesn’t.

Welcome to democracy.

Without wanting to sound too much like a cut-price, Tesco own-brand Larry David*, I am very bad at the goodbye section of a phone call. I just can’t seem to get the timing right for toffee, and the more I think about it the more I come to realise that it’s actually a very delicate balancing act. One I am monumentally bad at.

Depending on how it goes during a phone call, I usually end up at one of the following two scenarios:

Scenario 1: outstayed my welcome

This is when I ramble on, missing the cues from the other person that they want to end the call. As I ramble they go from sending polite signals of “I really should be going now” down the line until they descend, drooling and raving, into the realm of “I will crack my own teeth with a toffee hammer and shit myself in public if it means you will hang up.”

There then follows an awkward series of “umms” and “ahhs” as the sensibe part of my brain tries to grab the controls and point the conversation in the direction of the exit, and the phone handset in the direction of the cradle. Scenario 1 is most often encountered when I am using a desk phone.

Scenario 2: you’ll have had your tea then

And then we have the other extreme, where I end the call quickly and then think of about five things I meant to talk about with the person. Is usually followed by a sheepish phone call that falls under scenario 1, or repeats scenario 2 until I implode with embarassment and just email the person instead.

Quite often I end a call with “That’s great, cheers now!” but sometimes it just seems to get out of sequence and pop up in what should be the middle of the call. Scenario 2 tends to rear its head when I am using my mobile. I think that this is because the terrifyingly short time it takes to heat up against my ear causes all sorts of scary thoughts about dangerous radiation to go through my head**.

Very, very rarely do I get it exactly right, and end up at the right point in the phone call in the right order, at the same time as the other person. Well, when I say “very rarely” I mean “never”, of course. I don’t consider myself to be that socially awkward, I’m usually good enough at picking up on conversational cues (if anything, in person I tend to be reserved) but put me on the end of a phone and I’m suddenly helpless, cast rudderless on a sea of conversational turmoil with waves of potential embarassment crashing across my fo’csle***. I’m not an idiot, really. Pity me. Just don’t phone me to say so.

* I say this because I am sure there is an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” that deals with the offense Larry causes by not knowing how to end a phone call properly. Can’t remember the name of it and I would phone my wife to ask, but you know how that goes for me.

** Funnily enough, much like radiation actually would go through my head.

*** Sounds more painful than it is, don’t worry.

Me and my wife have certain clearly defined areas of responsibility. As she is a passionate and committed maths-phobe, I handle bills and stuff that involves any number crunching. As I am a fat, lazy, work-shy bastard with about as much creativity as a paperclip, she gets to plan and look after the garden. Right now it’s just grass but she wants to make it something nicer. I’ll do the heavy lifting and dig as required, but as in so many areas of our lives, she’s the brains of the operation.

So with that in mind, when my missus asked to go to a garden centre at the weekend I happily obliged (driving? that’s under my name on the list too) and off we went. Inspiration was sought, ideas were had and we even managed to grab a cream cake too (otherwise I would end up a skinny, lazy, work-shy bastard, which just wouldn’t be right). We were just about to leave when we spotted this beauty for sale:

And just in case you want to, you can click on the image above to see a larger version. You know, just to really get the whole feel of the thing. So we had a bit of a laugh, wondered who would buy such a thing, took a picture to show friends and post online and prepared to be on our way. It was all going well, right up to the point where a woman from the garden centre staff walked past us, picked it up, looked past us and said “Right sir, I’ll just leave it at the cash desk for you.” to the man who had been standing right behind us the whole time.

OK, so we got our comeuppance for maybe being a bit snobby and had to make a bit of a sharp exit, with appropriately reddened cheeks*. That said, what sort of garden theme does that guy have in mind? “Well Phoebe, I know you just wanted somewhere nice to relax, but I thought it would be nicer to blend pastoral with the terror of the zombie apocalypse.” Or perhaps, “Oh that, Vicar? Quite a piece, isn’t it? Makes you think about that whole rapture thing, what what?”. I think the thought process runs a bit like this:

We didn’t get a chance to see if there was a switch that made the eyes light up like the Hood from Thunderbirds, but if something like that hasn’t been included then it’s a missed opportunity. Maybe some speakers to allow the keen gardener / weaver of nightmares for a generation of children on the street to record their own moans of the undead? A hose in the mouth to spray viscous green fluid, Exorcist-style, over any cat or dog trying to piss on the herbaceous border? You know, now I think about it, it has possibilities. I wonder if I can get the missus to swap and develop a new appreciation for numbers…

* Make of that what you will. I do not judge. Well, except if you buy a fucking zombie for your garden, obviously.

Right, how many modern TV shows adhere to the format below? How much of the output from how many stations starts at step 1 before plodding the weary, well-trodden path to the end? And how many of us, just looking to relax after a hard day at work, are caught in the gradient of inevitability that surrounds such televisual masterpieces? Ten points and shiny prize* if you can identify some yourself.

So, how many did you get? With some slight variations in format, I can pick up the following just off the top of my head:

Parenting: Supernanny

Makeup / dressing: Snog, Marry, Avoid

Cleaning: How Clean Is Your House?

Cooking: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

Work: The Business Inspector

Hotel: The Hotel Inspector

Surviving: Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum

It’s late, I’m tired and am about to go to bed, but those just flew off the top of my head. I’m a massive Star Trek fan so am no stranger to formulaic TV that elevates “variations on a theme” to an artform (Enterprise visits planet, encounters threat, Kirk kicks the crap out of alien man / pumps** alien woman, Enterprise flies off with bridge crew enjoying hearty laugh) but this assembly-line TV is just insulting. And boring. Boring boring boring boring boring***.

* Prize may not be shiny. Terms and conditions apply once I make them up.

** Yes, pumps. I could have said “shags” or something else, but I went for pumps. Blame Irvine Welsh, my recent re-reading of “Glue” and “Porno” has obviously warped my innocent mind.

*** Boring. Booooooring. And I don’t mean entertainingly boring, like Last Of The Summer Wine for the last billion series. I mean Nick Clegg boring.

So here’s a funny thing – just at the end of last year, I wrote about how I managed to completely mess up a WordPress installation and lose my blog’s database, posts, comments, the whole shebang. I quickly rebuilt what I could but the damage was done. In that post (you can, if you’re interested, see it here) I whimsically used an image of an angry Malcolm Tucker for two reasons: to illustrate my mood (not good) and because it actually mirrored the expression I had on my face when everything went so terribly, badly wrong.

Since that fateful day all the comments I have received here at the Boiled Egg Of Infinity have all been spam and all but one have been directed at that single post. Now, assuming that spammers haven’t all been charmed en masse by my writing skills, what could explain the attraction? Seriously, all the spam for my blog has been going to that one, single post. I have come to the conclusion that the spammers have all been attracted by the image of Malcolm Tucker who, as we all know but I’m going to say it anyway because it’s my blog and my rules, is played to perfection by Peter Capaldi. Or, to give him his full title, Peter Capaldi, Lord of Spam.

Now, to follow that bombshell in a logical and sensible manner, there are a number of possibilities to explain this link, all of which have worrying implications for us all:

1. That Peter Capaldi has achieved this level of devotion because he is responsible for sending all of those emails that plague us so much (“Please help, I am the unwanted stepchild of the King of All Oil and Gold and want to smuggle money out of the country using a total stranger’s bank account.”).
2. That Peter Capaldi’s spammer legions owe him fealty because he spends all of his money from the BBC on phishing scams, thus making him their “go-to” guy on the internet. Did his wages from the excellent 3rd series of “The Thick Of It” get wasted on paying expenses for having won the Internet Lottery?
3. That Peter Capaldi has in fact managed to upload his consciousness to the internet and has become a transcendent data-based lifeform, existing only as a pattern of energy moving from network to network, and the imprint of his thought patterns on the ever-flowing stream of digital information has inadvertantly brought about this Capaldi-Spammers connection.

Now I’m just one guy, no expert and have never once met Peter Capaldi (who seems like a lovely man / physical-avatar-of-a-next-evolutionary-level-distributed-artificial-intelligence) but accepting the terms of my argument one of those possibilities has to be true. That’s just logic, that is*.

* Please note this is not logic. Terms and conditions apply.