Charles on… anything that comes along

You may have heard that, now Parliament has risen, that it is what newspapers refer to as the “silly season”, meaning that any old bollocks will find space awaiting it in the paper. Or so some people hope, it would seem.

But can it be so? Let’s look at some email titles culled from my inbox at work:

• “Rage Against the Machine - PC rage overtakes road rage”
• “Text Message Injuries (TMI) - The Solution - Interview Opportunity”
• “Wireless broadband to exceed two billion customers by 2015, says Analysys Mason” (OK, not particularly silly, but completely fits the standard analyst prediction: far enough away that nobody will call them on it, large enough that people say “Oooh, 2 billion!”)
• “Northeast Blackout Anniversary Pending - Experts Available for Comment” (an anniversary of a blackout? Now that’s desperation)
• “Bebo tries to beam messages to Earth-like planet” (transparently pointless. Sigh.)

Update: ooh, another one: “Research published today shows that men are becoming more domesticated than technical and find it more difficult to set up a PC than follow a recipe or assemble flat packed furniture.” I so completely believe you. (Except when was there ever a time when setting up a PC was more complicated than today? It’s a complete pain - home networking, user vs admin accounts, secure passwords, and all the rest.)

And that’s before we get onto “makeup for men” (© every paper, courtesy of some PR agency for some cosmetics firm which is trying, as it does about every, oh, December and July, to persuade us that guys will wear slap). Uh-uh. Ain’t gonna happen (reason being: women wear makeup to look young, which is an evolutionarily determined attractant; for men to look young isn’t attractive in evolutionary terms). Sorry, but the cosmetics industry is not going to double its turnover overnight. Or at all.

So, got a favourite silly season story so far? C’mon, share. At least I didn’t name the PR firms involved here..

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Tis the season to be tweaking.. Paul Thurrott (27 August 2004; score: 33.08%)
• Being polled for the US elections? Do us a favour and lie (6 September 2004; score: 25.85%)
• That's funny, I thought the answer was 'an iPod' or 'Robosapien' (7 December 2004; score: 24.32%)