<![CDATA[Points Of Clarification]]>1. Why does Blogger’s word verification function, despite being a self-proclaimed word verification fuction, not use actual words? Because last time I looked in a dictionary (which, if anyone’s interested, was earlier today, when my husband challenged my use of the word trinary, as in a trinary star system, saying it should be ternary, when in fact they’re synonyms, and anyway trinary sounds better), neither mandesh nor gyzate were present, despite their sounding like reasonable descriptions of the kind of wound left by aggressive dentures and a flegeling newspaper, respectively. Tres Douglas Adams. Now there’s a man who would’ve appreciated the word trinary, Zarquon bless him!

2. What, exactly, does ‘optioning’ mean, as per the sentence: Peter Jackson has optioned Naomi Novik”s Temeraire books? Because, three years old though this news may be, it was mentioned again in this week’s A2 section of the Age, in a demi-review of the latest volume, Victory of Eagles. (Which I haven’t read yet. So anyone who has: shut up.) Point being, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing Hollywood types say when expressing their opinion outside the holy sanction of a studio greenlight. Like rogue priests preaching radical doctrine, any director, producer or studio executive who enjoys a work of adaptable fiction is ultimately subject to a higher authority, their statements reported through ever-murkening channels until men in red capes with an excess of expensive jewelery summon them to the Holy See (Las Angeles) and there demand a reckoning. Bastards.

3. Jesus toast? Good gravy, world, I thought we were past this. The bread in question looks more like a lopsided scrotum than the son of God, and even when you factory in its edibility, that’s still not saying much. The fact that someone was willing to trade for, and I quote, “a sack of onions that looks like Madonna” (oh, New Idea, where is thy sting?) should be a dead giveaway. Personally, I’d  take the twenty bucks, have done with it and run cackling into the night. But that’s just me.

4. The new Mother energy drink ads. Am I the only one, or is there something bizarrely post-modern about the idea of an energy drink manufacturer making a product which, only belatedly and thanks to complaints, did they realise tasted like complete arse, prompting them to make  a new version, which they then marketed with a series of quasi-violent ads, which specifically mentioned the previous complaints, which they then subsequently retracted and redrew with stick figures on the basis of yet more complaints? And, yes, that was a hideously long sentence, but just think of it: an energy drink that apologises for sucking while trying to sell itself to a demographic which, according to the same marketeers who produced a bad product in the first place, respond best to violence and aggro? Send for a philosopher. (Or, you know, maybe someone at Mother could try the thing before selling it. Just an idea.)

Here endeth the lesson.

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