It's always nice when a Warming Up idea makes for a good Metro article (or even a bad one - it's not easy coming up with something every week) and it's enjoyable to take a hastily written blog and try and work it up for the paper. I haven't been particularly inspired since the holiday, but thought
the Airplane settings blog might make for an interesting piece. So last Monday with the deadline fast approaching I had a go at expanding on the ideas and just four days later
commuters get to read it.
This one seemed to resonate with a lot of people and of course attract a fair share of pedants!
@lothos said "Surely the true pedantic point with the joke is that in Airplane mode she wouldn't be able to send the tweet #geekpedantry"
But I was more than a match for him replying "No because the phone refused to go into airplane mode and called her Shirley, thus allowing her to tweet #outpedanted".
I was amazed that the Metro printed the word "Fruunkflaat" because it really means something incredibly filthy. I have not told anyone what it means and nor will I ever, but it's astonishing that a family newspaper would print it in full. I expected them to pring "Fru*nkflaat" to protect tiny children from such dirt (I mean some might argue it's also blasphemous, I can't comment). I will leave the fall out to the Press Complaints People, but I expect a heavy fine. In fact I am writing to them to insist upon it. It really is an awful thing to put in print. Use the word at your peril. You might think it's funny to use an expletive that you don't know the definition of, but it's not. Please don't spread this. You have no idea what you're saying.
Yet despite all this, it's a word you can say on children's TV, in church or just shout out repeatedly in the street and nothing bad will happen to you and no one will even chastise you. Only God and I (perhaps the same person) will know what atrocity you have committed. It certainly says something about the random nature of offence at profanity that this is the case. People who get upset about the words "fuck" and "cunt", which are merely just indicators of perfectly natural (and I would say not only inoffensive but rather wonderful) functions or body parts, wouldn't even bat an eye-lid at Frunnkflaat, which believe me would make the most disgusting internet troll blush if he (and let's face it he's a he) knew what it was describing. I suspect some youngsters will start bandying it around, thinking it makes them cool that they don't care about what they're saying. I hope they enjoy eternity in Hell. Though I think there's a chance that they wouldn't even be let into Hell. This word is so disgraceful that even Satan draws the line. He hardly gets offended by anything. He enjoys rape jokes on an unironic level and spends most of his day superimposing the faces of pleasant academics on to female gentialia and yet he'd still be a bit sick in the back of his mouth if you said "Fluunkflaat" to him. So please don't make this a thing. Even though, as long as I keep the secret of what it means, no one can reasonably be offended by it. They'd be just guessing as to what and why it was offensive and would have to whip themselves up into a fury about something they had imagined. They'd be right to be offended because it is offensive and yet they'd also be idiots to be offended by something that they couldn't possibly know about. It's sort of beautiful. Only a real Fluunkflaat could be upset by the word Fluunkflaat. And yet only a terrible Fluunkflaat couldn't be.
