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The collected opinions of an august and aristocratic personage who, despite her body having succumbed to the ravages of time, yet retains the keen intellect, mordant wit and utter want of tact for which she was so universally lauded in her younger days. Being of a generation unequal to the mysterious demands of the computing device, Lady Bracknell relies on the good offices of her Editor for assistance with the technological aspects of her journal.

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Location: Bracknell Towers

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

The ones that got away....

Sharp-eyed readers of both this and the Ouch team's blog will be aware that the editor (who has been granted permission to assume her employer's name as a nom de plume for the purpose in order to protect her identity) contributes items to the Ouch blog from time to time. Something which may, Lady Bracknell suspects, have some bearing on the fact that the editor's enthusiasm for transferring her ladyship's own pearls of wisdom into an electronic medium is not always what it might be.

On occasion, the editor suggests items for coverage within the Ouch blog which are turned down as falling outwith the BBC's policy guidelines. She has requested that Lady Bracknell permit her own blog to be used, just this once, to publicise two of these items which, the editor believes, merit a wider audience than they might otherwise receive. Lady Bracknell, whilst priding herself on being a firm employer, is also of the opinion that staff should occasionally be permitted to cast off their yoke of subservience in this modern day and age. She will therefore turn her attentions to other things and permit the editor temporary free rein. She trusts, however, that the editor will desist from abusing this rare privilege...


Karma (or, The Hind's Revenge)

Thomas Harn is sixteen years old. He lives in a trailer park. His favourite thing in all the world is slaughtering innocent deer (sorry, "hunting"). Thomas fell out of a hunting stand and broke his spine. Thomas is now a wheelchair user. Has he fully appreciated the irony of his situation? It would appear not:

"I can still go hunting," he said. "They make deer stands for people in wheelchairs." Read more about Thomas' "inspiring" story here.


Industrial Injury

(This one was deemed to be too rude to be published on the BBC. So you may want to bear that fact in mind before you read any further, or follow this link.)

Anyone who works on a telephone helpline will be aware of the potential for them storing up musculo-skeletal problems for the future. That, after all, is why we have headsets. But it's not just the dialling and the poor posture which can cause permanent damage. Well, not if you work on a sex-line, anyway....

Now, maybe I've been labouring under a misapprehension for years, but I was always given to understand that the women who work on these phone lines were just pretending to be aroused whilst actually doing the crossword, or working on a nice piece of needlepoint, or something. After all, the sad blokes who phone up can't actually see what you're doing.

I'm reminded of what Laurence Olivier famously said on the set of Marathon Man to Dustin Hoffman who had stayed awake for three days and generally put himself through hell to ensure a realistic performance: "My dear boy, why don't you try acting?"

2 Comments:

Blogger Katie said...

Miss katie has fully read both articles and can see the resemblance in bith articles, they both contain stories of getting back to life, but Miss katie seeing why the second may be rude for the Ouch weblog. But can see in both articles the use of the dreaded H-word, that americans seem to like using a lot!!!! GRR!

Miss katie regularly visits websites which are Americanised and sees this word that she finds discrimatory lots of times, because of the nature of miss Katie's charity she works for they would agree with her entirely.

10:29 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If the employment caused carpal tunnel syndrome in the hands, one shudders to think what nature of injury it might have caused to the nether regions.

5:53 pm  

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