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Monthly Archives: October 2014
Subtitle Failure
I enjoy the stationary bikes in the gym. They’ve got a little telly built in, and I normally watch subtitled BBC news for half an hour or so whilst pretending to pedal hard. I don’t know the science of how the subtitles work: I have no idea if it’s automatic, or there’s a little man frantically typing, or what, but there are some epic fails. Here’s some that’s just happened. You shouldn’t laugh, really, as some of the topics are so serious, but the macabreness of it is what makes it funny in a way (Oh non-existant God, forgive me!)
We were told how a mother is coping with her “thick little boy” who is sick in hospital with “rain cancer”…
On a beheading of a journalist by a grisly terrrorist group, we were told that the scene was “offal — — offal — — terrible“.
“The clear message that President Obama Dave Rahm Moscow was … Dystonia is a member of NATO…” So back off our dear friend Dystonia, Mr. Putin! (or our Prez, Mr. Rahm, will get you!)…
A company was referred to “as the biggest employer in the area with around 1000 Mormons in the pipeline — — more in the pipeline”
And that was just the really stupid ones in the last half hour! P.S. Google “bbc news subtitle fail” for t3h lolz. Also see here!
featured image from http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2014/02/03/1226816/430688-813609d4-8c58-11e3-836d-02ea2adb9f0a.jpg
© 2014 Bryan A. J. Parry
FILM REVIEW: The Secret
FILM REVIEW: The Secret
2/5 Bryan A. J. Parry
I don’t normally review films that aren’t new. But I just saw a film that was so outstanding, so unbelievable, and which moved me so profoundly, I just had to share it with you. I had to share… The Secret.
To coin a word, awfulsome: awesome in its awfulness.
Wow. Just… wow. Incredibly bad. I mean, what the heck!? I watched this at the behest of a colleague, and, sorry — WTF????? The fact that I’ve been reduced to the untermensch language of initialisms should show that no human words can express what this “film” is. A bestial scream of agony would probably articulate it well.
Firstly, how on earth did they manage to stretch literally one sentence into an entire ninety minute production???? “Whatever you think about will happen”. I kept expecting them to follow this sentence up with something, anything, but by the fifth minute I had already given up hope. Unreal how little substance there was. A 90 minute exercise in paraphrase. But people vehemently swear by The Secret, claiming it really works. Perhaps they believe this garbage because they’ve been brainwashed by hearing the same phrase, paraphrased, around six thousand times. Simple psychology; repeat the same thing over and over (and over) again, and you tend to start to believe it.
Secondly, how has this become a “phenomenon”? It’s very badly made, and totally ridiculous. I mean, where do I begin?
- Laughable special effect “whoosh” flourishes every five seconds. Twinkly sounds, soft lighting that looks like it was added on Windows Movie Maker.
- Talking heads/Experts who all look beyond insane: wild stare-y eyes, incredible haircuts, ridiculous teeth, and so on. It’s like the guests are meant to be a spoof. I’m surprised they didn’t just get Armando Ianucci, Peter Serafinowicz, and that guy from Garth Merenghi to play the parts instead.
- And who are these guests? I mean, Google some of them and you’ll see what I mean. What. The. Eff!??! Crooks and fringe lunatics.
- And what is with those titles: “metaphysician”, “visionary”!?!?!
WTF!!?! Sorry I keep saying that, but — WTF!?
The writers are surely having us on and rolling around in laughter behind the scenes, rubbing their diamond-encrusted ring-wearing hands, and spluttering “schmucks!”.
Some additional lowlights:
- If you visualise cheques in the mail, you will literally receive cheques in the mail. No need to set up a business or get off your arse at all! But just so you don’t get carried away, the film-makers sagely advise us that we may still get the occasional bill apart from the cheques.
- Medicine is useless. But chanting “cancer, cancer, go away” will surely destroy all metastasized growths.
I mean, sorry, The Secret was so cheap, so badly made, so idiotic, so ridiculous in every respect, the only thing this “film” deserves is the following sentence from me: whatever you do, please do NOT use “the secret” to attract free copies of “The Secret” to you…. (‘cos then they wouldn’t make money out of you) Deary me.
One fellow reviewer (on Netflix) said the following, and I think it’s hard to argue with him:
Sadly I wasted an entire 4 minutes of my life watching this utter tripe, before my own senses started to shut themselves down. Licking wasps or poking a massive bear in the face would result in less pain than having to sit through anymore of this new age, mumbo jumbo, hippy hokum. To Netflix: Can we introduce a rating system which allows us to score garbage content lower than 1 star? We could use this waste of hard drive space as a bench mark. For example, a terrible film would awarded 3 “The Secret” Turd Piles??
So why not one star, why two? Because it was so genuinely insane in every respect that it was actually marginally entertaining. And, despite the triteness of it, there is a nice core message: positivity of mind breeds further positivity. But it’s still turd.
featured image from http://www.bevanjameseyles.com/storage/post-images/thesecret.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1408047178455
© 2014 Bryan A. J. Parry
Rationalisation Measures
The company that runs my workplace is changing. The new company recently sent a document through to all staff. This is such delightful gibberish that I just had to share it.
Restructure
CENSORED* will be a clustered model which may result in the requirement for less staff to undertake certain jobs where rationalisation can be achieved by combining roles and responsibilities or due to the terms of the contract resulting in the requirement for less staff in certain areas.
Wow. I mean… wow. Words fail me. There’s so much wrong with this sentence — and yes, check it out again, that is one sentence! Some lowlights:
- 46 + word long sentence
- “…clustered model…”
- “…where rationalisation can be achieved…”
And the document just goes on and on.
But to be fair to my (new) company, this type of language is standard. But standard or not, it just isn’t on. There was a genius quote in the Evening Standard** by Lucy Tobin recently. She’s slagging off email etiquette, particularly that of employers(!) I want to share one of the zingers she comes out with:
This is what happens when managers who learned “how to deal with people” in a two-day module at business school are released into the community.
!!! Brilliant! And I’m keeping a clipping of this article for future students (and bosses!): yes, I’m an English teacher.
So, back to where I began. Instead of the, frankly, offensive drivel that my new employers splurged into my inbox, how about this?
Restructure
We will group CENSORED*. We may lay some people off in some areas, if we can, because it is cheaper to get two people to do three people’s jobs.
My version isn’t the pithiest or the best you could come out with. But that’s the point: I just splunked that off, but it is still shorter and makes far more sense. It also doesn’t patronise people with nonsense euphemisms like “rationalisation” and “combining roles and responsibilities”.
So there we have it. In other news, here’s the Plain English Campaign’s website.
This article first appeared in slightly different form on 14th August 2014 on my language blog Wrixlings
Notes:
*Company and work location deleted.
**Tuesday 29 July 2014, p15 Comment.
© 2014 Bryan A. J. Parry
The Doggerelizer 
