The adventures of a bored journalist
Like many jobs, journalism can be very exciting. But it can also feature long stretches of tedium. People deal with that tedium in different ways.
One of the things my mother taught me was that, if you’re bored, you can try making up a little game to help you with your task. It never worked with the dishes, but I think the key is to make your game somewhat subversive.
That’s what Top Gear star James May did, when he used to work for Autocar magazine. He was fired in 1992 for his little game, which came to him when he was faced with putting together a ridiculously boring supplement.
The game? Using drop caps to spell out a hidden message:
If you add the right punctuation, it says “So you think it’s really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up. It’s a real pain in the arse.”
Which, I’ll bet, is true.
Confession time: I’ve done the same thing myself. Although never with drop caps.
You can read a little bit more about the episode on his Wikipedia page, from which I got the image.
(thanks, Andrea!)
I used to do that sort of thing frequently at the Quill and . . . well, somewhere else in Brandon.
And here I thought that it was only newspaper photographers that were capable of such crazy hijinks.