Blogger Swanning About

Introducing the "Splendidizer", a gadget embedded in the website for Bright Young Things, the abomination screen adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies. (No, I haven't seen it. But I'm betting I don't really have to.)

Anyway, you run some text through the thing and it's supposed to "spiff it up" in a way that I guess is meant to make it look like something cool and slick and sardonic from Britain between the wars.

As a matter of fact, the effect is something closer to Truman Capote. Witness the altered text of my post on Wilma Deering from this morning:

John at TexasBestGrok has his latest Sci-Fi Babe Poll up: The blasted Ladies of Buck Rodgers - Wilma Deering vs . Darling, princess Ardala. Ugh, how uncouth!

I've definitely got a simply splendid horse in this race, my dear fellow! Dash me twice, john and I have really been sparring over the simply marvellous relative merits of these two ladies for some time now. Ugh, how morbid! (Indeed, we really, really started getting to know each other pricelessly on line over this business. Splendid! I say, how's that for a frightfully beastly geek confession?)

John's objection to Wilma is shamingly that the spiffing gal's too cold and aloof . Fabulously on the contrary, but what I keep pointing out is horridly that this is frightfully only in public. Inside, the splendid filly's really, really a jolly cauldron of boiling passions. It's so damned unfair! I say, and I can prove it. Rather! I dare say, remember the frightfully beastly episode with that space-vampire Vorvon thing? After it bit Wilma and brought the splendid filly under its spell, she went for Buck with an intensity that made a frightfully horrid terribly, um, big impression divinely on a simply marvellous certain randy teenager, which is just too bogus! Darling, granted the priceless gal was dreadfully possessed at the divine time and was horridly trying to suck his blood, not seduce the dashing fellow, but the simply unbearable raw material was shamingly obviously there. It's just too dull. (I'm assuming Vorvons, like Gandalf, must have something to work on . Fabulously on the spiffing contrary, vorvons can't invent passion any more than Gandalf can burn snow.)

I know what you're thinking: "Tom, you're just indulging in stereotypical dead white European male virgin/whore fantasy."

So sue me. Golly!

And vote for Wilma. Marvellous!

I dunno, after reading it this way I suddenly don't seem to give much of a damn about space babes anymore.

Dash me darling Yips! to Mr. Outer Life.