I have mentioned before the quaint habit the educational publishing houses here have of cheaply generating "new" English practice tapescripts by randomly grafting parts of one stock scene on to another.
This unfortunate short-cuttery has apparently just produced a new nadir in the catalogue of dada-ist non sequitur (and sheer bad taste) we sometimes have to labour through in the recording studio.
Lately, you see, science fiction has been very much in vogue: there have been endless little dialogues and short passages about UFOs, space flight, labour-saving robots and the like.
Also, in the last week or two, we've seen a few topical pieces on the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake.
And then last week (so I'm told by my occasional microphone partner, Cath - I didn't witness this one firsthand)....... well, two young students were discussing the relief operation in Sichuan, and one was lamenting the fact that there are still 250,000 people homeless there because of the earthquake.
His companion then responded brightly: "I know! We could send them all to Mars!"
A eureka! moment indeed!!
I probably would have just rolled my eyes to the ceiling, and read the line with a note of heavy sarcasm in my voice. But our Cath is a woman-of-principle. She refused pointblank to read it, protesting that this latest scripting ineptitude was downright offensive and insisting that the studio call the publishers right then and there to explain why this dialogue would have to be excised from the book/tape. Way to go, Cath.
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