While I put off writing anything that actually has any substance, here are some memes to keep everybody ticking along. The Misplaced Consonants started well and then sort of stopped, so after a six-month hiatus, we’re back with round three. Clicking the category tag for this post will show you the other stuff I’ve done in this thoroughly pointless series.
9. The Warm Machines
10. Statue of Decay
11. The Nice Warriors
12. The Creature from the Spit
I’m on holiday at the moment, but to tide you over, here’s a scheduled post. If you don’t know what on earth this is all about, have a look here.
5. The Chaste
6. The Park in Space
7. Furry From the Deep
8. The Steeds of Doom
“Bah,” said Gareth. “Why does ‘The Steeds Of Doom’ not have John Steed?!” Well, maybe next time.
We were talking just the other day about the Biblical creation story, and this reminded me of something that happened a few weeks ago: a Facebook discussion I was reading included a comment from a pastor who said he’d once heard someone read (by mistake, one assumes) about “the spirit of God hoovering over the surface of the waters.”
“You make the jokes,” I said, “and I’ll do the pictures.”
“Graham Rawle,” said another friend of mine, “is twitching in his armchair, and preparing to lawyer up”. To which I responded “Look, I don’t take any credit for the gag, just its visual execution…”
Anyway, it occurred to me that Doctor Who is full of similar silliness, if you have a list of story titles and a good dictionary to hand. This entire blog was built on a pun – I’ve talked before about possible alternatives for its title, and remain convinced that a good deal of the weary travellers who stumble in here (welcome to you, weary traveller; mind the dog poo) are those who have been searching for ‘Brain of Morbius’ and just got their litters in a twest. Meanwhile, those of you with a few minutes to kill could do worse than check out the Unused Monsters entries. (If anything is liable to provoke the oft-heard and generally loathed remark that I have too much free time, it’s stuff like that.)
But today on Brian of Morbius we launch a new series, which shall be updated as I do them. (There is already a queue, and I haven’t even touched the post-2005 episodes yet.) Rules are simple: the addition of one (and only one) letter to a given word. This is the exact opposite of Graham Rawle’s series, of course, but that’s partly the point. Suggestions are welcome, although I am not short of them for the time being.
1. Pyramids of Marks
2. The Leisure Chive
3. The Wedge of Destruction
4. The Twine Dilemma
I sent the last one to Colin Baker, who tweeted back “Pedant alert – misplaced vowel?”
“Indeed it is,” I said. “It’s just that calling the series Misplaced Vowels made it sound like a set of medical blunders…”
Brian of Morbius 