5.09.2007

Look.

If you write anything about yourself more than around three sentences in Microsoft Word - which maybe around 2 billion people have - the hugely frustrating animated paperclip will suggest that you're being too egotistical, that maybe you want to change some of those 'I's to something else.

The "It looks like you're writing a letter" paperclip.
The "Flesch reading ease" paperclip.

That paperclip makes me feel self-centred. All my 'I's underlined in a green, wavy line. Yeah, it looks like I'm writing a letter, and mostly, the letter is 'I'.

I've not written in a while.

Sometimes I'll change those I's to "He"s or "One"s or "Our correspondent says". Mostly, I'll just delete the whole file and go look at photos of Japanese robots on the BBC technology newspage. In three years I've never once seen a robot in Japan. Only salarymen, who are similar. I've lost faith in the BBC.

When Kurt Vonnegut died, I wrote a paragraph and sent it to the BBC. With the time-difference, I was only the third person to submit to 'Have Your Say' - the Kurt Vonnegut dies edition - in the whole world. I was the first person to quote 'So it goes', in the way I did, on Earth. In the whole solar-system. In this reality.

They rejected my comment.

What did for me, I think, is that I mentioned, in passing, the sad suicide of Kilgore Trout. I think I may have come across as something of a weirdo. Me, with the Vonnegut referencing email address these past many years.

I've not written in a while.

So it goes.

There are 20 uses of "I" in this entry. The Flesch reading ease is a 74.4.