This is just getting silly

I have just spent another very long day behind the microphone recording listening practice exams, a day made to seem even longer by the sudden degeneration of the latter portions of the script into absolute gibberish.

It would appear that the publishing houses are rushed off their feet by the current demand (it's probably a last-minute frenzy of preparation for the national College Entrance Examination, or gaokao, at the beginning of next month), and, while they are able to fill most of the requirements made of them by following the tried and trusted method of rehashing the same old scripts we use every year (though with the occasional bizarre evolutions: today we had one where the 'hotel guest calling room service about something or other' scenario suddenly morphed into a man asking a woman about her recent long weekend holiday - the latter, one we've had so often that my partner DD has come to loathe it like the screech of fingernails scraping on a blackboard, is traditionally located in Snowdonia, but today, for a change, happened in the mythical township of Snowton); but it was evident that a shortfall in some of the scripts was being hastily filled by junior employees with only semi-competent English trying to transcribe past tapes without the benefit of being able to see the scripts for them.

Hence, of course, the 'Snowton' for 'Snowdon' substitution. And, quite regularly today, 'Wow' for 'Well' as an opening - but often alarmingly inappropriate - filler. A train crash outside Rugby was today situated in 'Lagby', while the train was said to have originated from 'London Austin' (a strange combination of bad listening skills and poor spelling in these transcriptions!). A set of directions for central London was full of such extravagantly inept guesswork: Greshroom Street, Luidgate Circuits, The Mention House.

Later, a reference to the well-known Florida tourist destination of 'Oraldo' caused us particular hilarity (Oral do? Fnnaaargh, fnnaaargh!!).

My personal favourite, though, was when the opening greeting "Hi, Jennifer!" became transformed into "Hi, General!"

DD occasionally gets miffed at my obsessive streak when it comes to weeding out unsuitable names (my zeal for this in the classroom is generally repeated in the recording booth). "I wanted to be a general! Why can't I be a general?" she pouted.

And this latest salvo of studio-inspired merriment is......... (pregnant pause)......... well, believe it or not, it's actually Post No. 1,000 here on Froogville.

The milestones are flying by thick and fast just at the moment. Only four days ago, my junior blog, Barstool Blues, reached the ominous 666th post, and then, this weekend, clocked up its 10,000th officially recorded visitor. When I first sat down at the computer to record some of my brain-spillage one morning back in September 2006, I little imagined it would ever go this far.....

How much more of this nonsense do I have in me, you may well ask. I have no idea.