There is a bit in an episode of Friends where Ross, having stayed up all night reading Rachel's letter detailing how he is to blame for everything that went wrong in their relationship, flies into his standard "we were on a break" rage. The funny thing about this is when he says "oh, and by the way, Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E spells YOU ARE. Y-O-U-R spells YOUR!"
If you are a warp spasm person, you understand how this feels.
Today's warp spasm is brought to you by the good people at some stupid Irish advertising agency, who currently have an ad running about how you should buy glasses if you can't see (no, really?). The ad goes like this:
JULIET: Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
ROMEO: Eh, I'm right in front of you. In fact, you're standing on my foot.
ACCENTMONKEY (not actually in the ad as such): OHMYGOD! Wherefore means why, you fucking morons, not where! Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name or, if thou wouldst not (wilt not? I can't remember), be but sworn to me, my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet. WHY! Not WHERE!
Exeunt, pursued by a bear.
8 comments:
I think those are different level Warp Spasms, though. An awful lot of people (hopefully still most) understand the distinction between "You're" and "Your", but knowing that wherefore means why is pretty obscure (results based on a sample set of me)
Ah-ha, but if you expanded your sample set to include everyone who did R&J for their Inter (which is quite a lot of people)...
Sigh. Am I really the only one who knows this? I can't be.
This warp spasm level thing, is it like Mean Machine going up to 2, or is it more serious than that?
Warp Spasm! Slaine!
You're the last person I'd thought would need the reference explained...
No, I think Ian was questioning Andrew's suggestion that there could be levels of warp spasm. There are no levels. There is only warp spasm. That is kind of why I use it, because I can summon the same level of rage whether I'm talking about the injustice of villagers in Kenya being forced to hand over to bus drivers the money that the tourists give them, or people who don't know how to spell "its" and "it's" correctly.
I realise it's a failing.
I'm amazed the ad made it to the public. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan and part-time drama student but even I knew that long before I read R&J. Very poor work. Apparently at no point during the creative process did anybody stop and think 'hummm, are we sure that means what we think it means?'
advertising - creative process are not friends. Also Billboard campaigns are the Maths Club of the Advertising world. Worthy but boring.
"Exeunt, pursued by a bear."
Or as it always was in our house "Exit, bear behind."
We made our own entertainment in those days.
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