trahern

Declaration of Revocation
by John Cleese

To the citizens of the United States of America, in light of your
failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern
yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your
independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories, except Utah, which she does not fancy.
Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the
97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world
outside your borders), will appoint a Minister for America without the
need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any
of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency,
the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Then look up "aluminium." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be
amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and
'neighbour'; skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on
your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping
half the letters.

You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not
'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."

You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g.
Edinburgh. You are welcome to re-spell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you
can't cope with correct pronunciation.

Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look
up "vocabulary." Using the same thirty seven words interspersed with
filler noises such as "uhh", "like", and "you know" is an unacceptable
and inefficient form of communication.

Look up "interspersed."

There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're
not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat
shows. When you learnt to develop your vocabulary, you won't have to use
bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know
on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take
into account the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents.
It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney,
upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier).

You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents;
Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with
subtitles.

While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such
place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If
you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become
"shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as
the good guys. Hollywood will be also be required to cast English actors
to play English characters.

British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not
be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who
can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The
Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you
to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football." There is only one kind
of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very
good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your
borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You
will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper
football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It
is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed
to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not
involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar
body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US
Rugby sevens side by 2005.

You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event
called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside
America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond
your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you
will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders," which is
baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or
hotdogs.

7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no
longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than
a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to
handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you
wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new
national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive
Day."

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap, and it is for
your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we
mean.

All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will
start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you
will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of
conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand
the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call 'French
fries' are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian
though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in
Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you
insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips
are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to
chips is beer which should be served at room temperature and flat.

Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to
all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to
be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling "beer" is not
actually beer at all, it is lager . From November 1st only proper
British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of
known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "lager." The
substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred
to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," with the exception of the product of
the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as
"Weak Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine." This will allow true Budweiser (as
manufactured for the last 1000 years in the Czech Republic) to be sold
without risk of confusion.

13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or "gasoline," as
you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices
with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the
former USA and the former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices
(roughly $6/US gallon -- get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,
lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and
therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns
should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort
things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then
you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you
shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to
1776).

*

Rant alert. Rant alert. Awooga awooga. Rant alert.

I've been commenting on sets in monthly spurts this year because I spend more time talking to SGs than looking at them. This reminds me of my time playing SWG, which in the end had turned out to be little more than a glorified and graphically gorgeous chatroom. And then everyone I talked with left, as did I, because the eye candy had finally worn off and we'd realised we were paying for something that was essentially shit.

Fate likes moving in circles. I think I can see the end coming. Let's see if I can chronicle this aright.

I was lucky enough to join up before the "golden age" of this site came to an end. Then a bunch of the original girls left or were kicked out, to this day I'm not sure which. What I have since become aware of is that Apnea and Lithium Picnic were kicked out for putting together the former's website. I haven't read through all the legal waffle, but apparently their contracts with this site had a bit that went something like "Thou shalt not draw money away from SG" and the SG lawyers decided Ap and LP were doing just that.

Have you seen Sash's website? That's what they were doing. There was another bit in the contract that specifically said that doing specifically that was okay. Barring evil lawyer fiddlery, SG cannot win this case if and when it comes to court. Why are they pursuing it? They seem intent on ruining LP financially. That is extremely uncool. The sets he shot for this site were, frankly, the best out of all of them.

Following the afore-mentioned exodus of many of the original SGs, the website went on a new girl set-accepting spree. Four a day is too many. The whole thing became... impersonal. The days where I could see any face and remember their name were gone forever. This was the first indication to me that SG had become a business. This rarely bodes well for something that was originally set up on a foundation of ideals. I'm left to wonder what level Sean's participation was before and after this happened; when a woman sets up a porn site, it's hard to imagine her starting to take advantage of "her" girls.

The next big problem I heard about was SG selling sets to other websites. Maybe this prompted a second exodus, or maybe I just think that because the... zotting or whatever it's called, began at around the same time. I'm already familiar with negative opinion being deleted, posters banned; on this website it also meant SGs archived. That was happening a lot more at this point. I don't know the ratio between leaving or getting kicked out, though.

Meanwhile, I thought the new second chance for rejected sets thing was a great idea, because we members got to voice our opinions rather than some git in a room that accepts sets many of us never would. It never occurred to me, until someone else brought it up, that this stuff is essentially free content. This may or may not be against the contracts SGs sign with the website, because the girls who put their sets in there can't take them back out, and since SG hasn't actually paid for them yet... why do they have the SG logo and copyright when they haven't been bought by SG yet? Eh?

Which brings us to the current bout of crap. A bunch of SGs go do a Blair Witch Project ripoff and the effort to promote it goes awry, because this is a website, not a cinema. This isn't a one-way big screen. People give a damn about each other around here, they talk, and some are bound to worry about others when they tell tall tales of whatever horrors they've recently encountered. In short, the whole thing was handled poorly.

That becomes secondary when netiquette goes out the window. Personal attacks are frowned upon in pretty much every forum across the internet. It's crass, and it's only trumped by groups forming specifically to bitch about specific people. I'd say those involved should be ashamed of themselves, but they probably won't be. Meanwhile, being legally required to lie to your compatriots and customers should raise a bloody big warning flag.

I'm gonna go put my SG opinion thing down to "I hate it" now. This was the icing. When someone puts the cherry on top, I suspect my subscription will come to an end.