John Sutherland: “The piece was, I believed, mildly sarcastic. YouTubers were not amused. For a day or two, I was YouTube-famous. The contents of their video responses – which at the time, could all be summoned instantaneously from the Wikipedia entry – are bruisingly abusive. ‘Die! You asshole!’ rants one paunchy YouTuber, jowls quivering with homicidal rage. ‘Your head is so far up your arse you can see your tonsils,’ offers another, with a show of that less-than-Wildean wit for which YouTube is justly famous. (They seem for some reason to be obsessed with the rectal tube.)”

Associated Press: “An astronaut drove 900 miles and donned a disguise to confront a woman she believed was her rival for the affections of a space shuttle pilot, police said. She was arrested Monday and charged with attempted kidnapping and other counts.”

And that’s only the beginning.

(via MeFi)

I learned tonight that I have mispronounced “omniscient” for years. Pay no attention to that linguistic bumbler at the gates.

John Freeman now seems to be fighting his peers. (Read the comments.)

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes repeatedly stapled together by an Arrow T50, and your earholes sodomized by a dominatrix’s sex toy collection, with a blindfold — a big throbbing blindfold as impenetrable as onyx — tied round it, goddammit goddammit, in the dark, the cold frightening dark where imaginary leopards gnaw upon your ankles and Fleet Street hacks bang out really fucking fragmented ledes magically syncopated to their inveterate pill-popping and flask-swigging, you surely haven’t failed to notice the latest expression of mass culture rage authored by Charlie Fucking Brooker, which has inspired a Metafilter thread, taken over the Guardian‘s column inches and, blimey, the internet (no capital letters for you, you damn evil bloggers!) in a series of crudely written sentences that come across as incoherent bloviating aimed at — well, I’m not sure exactly.

The point is this: Charlie Brooker is an angry man. Or he wants us to believe that he’s an angry man. Well, I can outdistance this Charlie Come Lately in a few paragraphs.

Charlie Fucking Brooker (hereinafter referred to, as I see fit, as “CFB”) needs to step out of his flat every once in a while. He needs to get out right now so that I can beat him up. Or maybe someone else can beat him up. Or maybe Mac enthusiasts can beat him up. Because he just doesn’t understand. And because he doesn’t understand and we cannot comprehend his rambling column (three word summary, folks: he hates Macs) and he feels compelled to declare a technological jihad, there is only one solution: a bunch of scrawny geeks, at least six thousand of them, attacking Charlie Brooker at Wembley Stadium. Someone needs to charge admission. Someone needs to provide chainsaws. And somebody needs to film it.

Charlie Brooker may hate Macs, but I hate Charlie Fucking Brooker. I have always hated Charlie Fucking Brooker even before I knew who he was. Even before I was aware that he was a columnist. Even before I knew his name. When I was a boy, I asked several of my friends who I might hate in my adulthood and they suggested that it would be some English guy named Charlie. I did not know who this Charlie would be. Oh, but now I know who he is!

I hate the people who read Charlie Fucking Brooker, and I hate the people who think they read Charlie Fucking Brooker. I even hate the people who even considered reading Charlie Brooker. I will go on hating Charlie Fucking Brooker, even if we have a crazy night and he proves okay in the sack. Even if he turns out to be a good guy and he buys me a lager.

There can be no quarter! Charlie Brooker must be stopped. But more importantly, he must be hated!

This has been a cultural commentary.

This week: Ed spent an uninterrupted sixteen hour period contemplating several ways to murder Charlie Fucking Brooker (on his PC). He went to the gun range and fired about thirty-two rounds of ammo into targets that he named Charlie Fucking Brooker. He read Charlie Fucking Brooker‘s latest column and realized that the UK finally had its own version of Chuck Klosterman.