Have you seen Tin?

Um ... hello there. It's Mr Rumpus here. I was just wondering: has anyone seen Tin? It's been a few days now and I'm starting to get a little worried. I know that he's an adult now and can obviously look after himself, but a phone call would be nice, just to let me know that he's safe and that he's doing OK.

 

The irony, of course, is that there are now quite a few companies who seem to have rapidly come round to Tin's groundbreaking ideas about newsletter production, newsletter efficiencies and newsletter streamlining... it would be nice to share a laugh about these Jonathan-come-latelys over a warming glass of Drambuie back at the Blottcave.

So. Tin. If you're reading this... please come home. I miss you.

Have you been affected by this post? Don't worry – help is available.

Shot through the heart...

... and you are to blame! You give love a bad aim! Ay caramba, romance lovers! Tin Blott here, with a pulsating look at what quickens my heart not just at this particular time of year but the whole annus through. For me and Mr Rumpus, it's the chance to apply our blood pressure-increasing ideas to the whole outmoded model of newsletter production. 

In truth, a goddess lives here. Her name is Victory. And it's about time we produced for her a daily newsletter that doesn't involve so much darned manpower. So to that end, I have composed a concise sonnet, the better to serenade the deity to which I, and many others, happily kneel:

P is for Pisces, a sign that I hate
R is for Robbery at which I am great
O is for Oh what on earth has Tin done?
F is for what the F***ing f***ingest f***?
I is for "In the future, things will be better."
T is for "acTually, I'd rather ditch newsletters."

What say thee, readers?

You have been targeted for termination...

Apologies for the alarmist headline, content seekers! It's just my way of saying greetings from a terrifying alternate future! Tin Blott here, positively aglow with the news that none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger himself has accessed his historical data banks, realised the historic importance of my newsletter group and promptly signed up to follow my epochal "tweets" on "the twitter". At this stage, I can't say whether I have an important role to play on the side of the freedom fighters or their ruthless mechanical overlords but feeling the Governator's enhanced infra-red gaze pass over my musings gives me a certain shudder. And as far as I can tell from sifting through the - um - 13,500 people the man who created the role of the T-800 is following, neither Stephen Fry nor Jonathan Ross is among them. There's a storm coming...

Official Vocab Guidelines 2

Guten tag, fellow vocabulary enthusiasts! Tin Blott here. You may remember my New Year's resolution to get to grips with the inspirational poetic majesty and unrealised potential profit locked somewhere within our beloved American English language. So what word is under scrutiny today? 

Let me tell you now: the word is "inconsistent". 

Hmmm...

Let's crack open that big book with the gold writing on the spine that I usually use to wedge my office door shut: 

inconsistent adj 1 not in agreement or accordance with it. 2 said of a single thing: having contradictory or incompatible elements in it. 3 said of a person: not always thinking, speaking, behaving, etc in accordance with the same principles; not consistent in thought, speech, behaviour, etc; changeable.

Wow! A lot of that vocabularial data is boxfresh for me, and I fully intend to take it on board, just in small packets rather than all at once. I just hope that it can somehow be as useful to you, dear readers.

Meanwhile, my latest poll has run its natural course... so it's time to come up with a new Tin Blott's: A Total Content referendum topic. Any ideas? (Currently, my thinking is to ask which pre-mixed liquor-based beverage readers would prefer to "brought back" from the 1980s, like how they've done with Wispa. Would it be Mirage or Taboo?)