Download the audio version of today’s Dollop here
Some days are harder than others when it comes to writing the daily Dollop. Today is one of those annoying ones where I feel really tired and devoid of any creative thought. I’ve been sitting at the computer for ages, having not written a single word.
Although I wasn’t feeling at all creatively inspired to write anything, my brain was having no problem being creative when it came to procrastination exercises. I think I must be one of the most creative procrastinators out there. Seriously. At one point I became aware that I was absent-mindedly reading my computer’s desktop icons and counting them. There were eleven. I decided that some of these weren’t necessary and so I went through them again and got rid of three of them. Then I decided to see how many files were in my various folders on the computer. In order to give this exercise a bit of added spice, I pretended that each folder was taking part in a competition, and the winning folder would be the one containing the most files.
First up, Documents vs Downloads – what an epic battle this was going to be between these two heavy -weight folders. As I clicked on to the computer icon, the proud roared excitedly as the list of folders presented themselves and the Downloads and Documents folders came into view. I clicked onto the documents folder, and a hush descended over the crowd as the counting commenced. 118 files.
“Well, it’s a good number, but is it enough,” intoned the commentator.
“Yes, Well, it’s very much a game of two folders, and we’ve currently only seen the one, so it’s not over yet,” added one of the expert pundits, who used to compete as a My Music folder in the days of Windows XP.
The roar of the crowd once again died down as the Downloads folder was opened and the counting commenced. It was evident that it was going to be close. The crowd held their breath. 110 files. The downloads folder lost out to the Documents folder by just eight files. The Documents folder’s supporters went wild.
“Well it was a close game, but at the end of the day, the Downloads folder just didn’t have enough files in it to win,” remarked the other expert pundit, a retired My Received Files folder from the days of MSN Messenger.
“Next up, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” came the voice over the PA, “it’s the battle of the file types. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing two heavy-weight contenders, it’s word documents versus MP3s.” Naturally, the crowd went crazy. Then came the walk-on music, which played as the two opposing file types came out into the ring. There was a bit of jiving from the MP3 supporters, who mocked the Word documents for the fact that their chosen walk-on music, which was playing over the PA, was an MP3 file. The MP3 brigade all thought that this was very funny indeed, and there was much taunting. This riled the supporters of the Word Documents, and a bit of a fight broke out among some of the fans. The Stewards waded in, and the fighting soon stopped. After all, no one wanted to be escorted off the premises, and miss such an epic battle as the great head-to-head between the MP3s and the word documents.
First up, MP3s. A hush descended over the crowd as the count commenced. The count took some time, due to the number of files, but then the results were in. 316.
“It’s a nice high number, but will it be enough? If there are more Word Documents, then the Word documents will win. It’s very much a game of two file types, so it’s not over yet” said the retired My Music folder.
Then came the count for the Word documents. 145. The MP3 supporters went wild, but there was dissension amongst the Word Documents, who were remonstrating with the officials about the rules of the game. The officials had only counted .doc and .docx files, and had failed to include .txt (plain text files) and .rtf (rich text files). The Word Document team were arguing that these were valid Word Documents, given that they are files that can be saved and read by Microsoft Word. But the officials weren’t having any of it, and refused to back down.
A massive fight began to break out between the Word documents and, the MP3 files and the officials. The Word Documents were coming off much worse in the fracas, until the Microsoft Office paperclip waded into the fray and began laying waste to all who came in its way. The MP3s and the officials lay sprawled on the floor, flat out and defeated. The Office paperclip then triumphantly popped up onto the stadium’s big screen, displaying the results of the game, which just so happened to be in a Word Document. The paperclip replaced the MP3 files’ score of 316 with a zero, put the word “winner” in a big bold font next to the Word Documents’ column, and then riled the MP3s’ supporters even more by writing “hahaha,” in a massive evil looking font. It then saved the file as a read-only document, to avoid the result being changed.
And then Ben walked in my room, handed me a cup of tea and asked me what I was doing, whichbrought me back to reality. I checked the time. I really needed to stop this ridiculous procrastinating exercise, and get on with actually writing something for this Dollop. So I did, and you’ve just read it. Whether you’ve enjoyed it is another matter altogether, but in fairness, this challenge was merely that I did a blog every day for this year; I never stipulated in the rules that what I wrote had to be any good, so I am still a winner.
If there is anyone who works in film and TV who is interested in turning my epic file types battle into a film or TV drama, then feel free to get in touch. Naturally, I don’t come cheep, but it’ll be worth it. I have some great ideas for a showdown between XL and PDF files. Let the bidding war commence.
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