This ‘news’ article was originally published on MediaWatchWatch back in 2009. I’m on a mission to dig up some of the stuff I’ve had published across the internet and collect it all into one place.
I was dead chuffed when Ariane Sherine, founder of the original atheist bus campaign and editor of The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, tweeted about it.
This satirical article was originally published on UnNews back in 2007. I’m on a mission to dig up some of the stuff I’ve had published across the internet and collect it all into one place.
For those who don’t remember the original story: basically a teacher in an Islamic country let her class name a teddy bear, so a lot of Muslims felt it only fair she have her head cut off. No, I’m not kidding. [Story here]
OXFORD, ENGLAND – Hordes of enraged Atheists have swarmed the walls of the Sudanese Embassy in Oxford in retaliation against an act of unforgivable heresy in a local primary school earlier this week.
The act is believed to have occurred during a Darwinism lesson, taught by Sudanese supply teacher Muhajiin Fatwa, when it is alleged a pupil produced a teddy bear from his rucksack. While this in itself is not normally a punishable offense within the United Kingdom, controversy emerged once the teacher asked the bear’s name. According to witnesses, the boy replied “His name is Richard Dawkins. I named him out of respect for Dawkins’ condescending attitude towards religions which take insignificant events far too seriously and are thus detrimental to the progress of the human race.” Astonishingly, and out of blatant disrespect for the religious rights of Atheists, Ms Fatwa neither confiscated the bear nor beat the child savagely, both of which any true British person would have done immediately.
While naming a boy Richard Dawkins is considered respectful among Atheists, allowing a woman to live after she has learnt the name of a teddy bear without interjecting is strictly forbidden and, as decreed in Chapter VI of The God Delusion, “punishable by rape, beheading and being crushed to death by Salman Rushdie novels.”
Atheists have already begun beheading people who may or may not have had any connection with the incident. Fundamentalist A.N. Wilson, wielding a burning torch and clutching the head of an infidel, made the following remark: “BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT FREE THOUGHT.”
The case continues.
As the pupil in question was male, the boy was alleviated of all guilt and is expected to receive Ms Fatwa’s possessions if the demands for her execution are met.
Sources
P.Mohammed “Some bloke named Mohammed, commenting on the day’s events“. Jesusandmo.net, Nov 30, 2007
Tolerance Teddy “ToleranceTeddy.com”. toleranceteddy.com, Dec 01, 2007
The manager squinted in my direction.
“So… what exactly is the problem, sir?”
“The apostrophe button,” I repeated, more firmly this time.
“It’s broken?” he enquired.
“It isn’t there.”
He stared intently at the telephone, a baffled expression crawling across his face. After a few moments of careful scrutiny his eyes returned to me, nervously.
“Just to confirm, sir, when you say apostrophe you mean…?”
I sighed a little and raised my hand.
“The little flying comma thing,” I elaborated, tracing its outline in the air with my index finger. The manager relaxed a little, foolishly thinking we were now on the same wavelength.
“Ohh, you don’t need to worry about those anymore; this is the new model. Much easier to use. Just click on ‘symbols’ and it brings up a list of all the different faces…”
He’d lost me completely.
“Faces?”
“Yeah, you know… ‘emoticons’.”
As he said the last word, his thumb and outer fingers balled up while the remaining digits formed those cringe-worthy animated quotation marks, and I wondered if my earlier display had made him think all punctuation had to be acted out for greater emphasis.
He held the phone up to demonstrate. The screen contained a disjointed amalgam of brackets, commas and hyphens which – if you craned your head in the right direction and closed at least one eye – faintly resembled a set of faces.
“So you see,” he continued confidently, “there’s nothing wrong with it; they’ve just phased out the apostrophe key because the faces now come pre-assembled. You can have animated faces, audio and picture messaging–”
“Do you mean to tell me that the only way to type an apostrophe on this phone is to insert a smiley face and then delete its mouth and eyes?”
“Well,” answered the man, puzzled as to why I was so insistent about this matter, “or nose and mouth. Depends if he’s winking.”
There was a long silence.
“I’m afraid I need a phone that will let me use apostrophes for more than drawing smiley faces.”
“But…”
I gritted my teeth and dreaded the words I somehow knew were coming.
“…why else would you need one?”
*
So this is me: emissary of the downtrodden apostrophe; Grammar Nazi; pedantic prick. I’m that guy who holds you up in the queue because he feels the need to tell the checkout girl that, technically, the sign on the express lane should read ‘Ten items or fewer’. The precocious little sod who berates you for saying ‘could of’ instead of ‘could have’ or who just can’t keep it to himself when he spots a lowercase ‘i’ or a hyphen where there should clearly be a dash. My ideal job would involve travelling across continents with a red marker pen, thwarting linguistic injustice wherever it lurks, be it billboard or subtitle. I place linguistic ability above every other quality I look for in my companions, and could not even consider dating a girl who doesn’t read or can’t spell properly. And while it may seem so, it is never a masochistic decision to become hated by those around me; it’s a compulsion that has gripped me since the day I learnt to read, and has shown no sign of relinquishing its grasp ever since.
Let me tell you how it started.