Not In My Backyard

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Zeitgesiters, part of this hamburger rant is written up on my new site - mrtrivia.net. It, like me, is a work in progress. Please travel there often to check out a site that I hope will win online awards for the most inert and least changeable and most infrequently updated site in all of cyberspace.

So they’ve named the MacDonald’s “nameit burger”. They’re calling it the Backyard Burger” . I was all set to enter the comp. I even had a name. The ‘Besty’ Burger. In my heart of hearts I always thought the winning name would be something pretty poor. And therefore my “Besty Burger” was deliberately naff and ordinaire - "Besty" meaning that it's your best friend and it's also a burger. I felt my concept represented the paucity of imagination that would break through the excellence and originality that was sure to sully the contest otherwise.

Why? The answer, Dr Phil, lies in my childhood.

When my brother and I were kids, the Perth Electronics Show was held one year at the old Perth Entertainment Centre on Wellington Street. One of the prizes was a cool fibreglass robot mascot –and you could win it just by naming the little (actually quite large) guy.

My brother and I sweated over various names now forgotten in the mists of time. Or perhaps I’ve wiped them all out of my memory because of the emotional pain caused by the absolute sh*tness of the winning entry. It was (wait for it) PEC - Perth Electronics Clone.

Clone.

If you’re reading this, kid who won what shoulda been me and my brother’s fibreglass robot, then you were damned lucky. How is a robot, even a fake one made of non-kid-friendly-fibreglass, with red LED eyes, in any way, shape or form, a frickin’ clone? How was it biologically reproduced from anything else? A ROBOT CLONE?! (Interrobang). One thing is an electronic and mechanical entity and the other thing is biological one. Really.

You might have got away with Perth Electronic Cyborg, if, as is the case for one of Doctor Who's Cybermen or Daleks, the metallic shell was a housing or transport for an organic being within – hence a cybernetic organism, hence a cyborg. But you said CLONE.

Frickin’ CLONE. And you still won. Not that I’m bitter. (Not at all...) But that’s why I couldn’t enter the hamburger name-y contest. I guess I'm still more scarred by the robot thing than I fully realised.

Elevate the Insignificant

Mr Trivia

P.S. The above makes me sound like a bit of a geek, but really I’m a media savvy hipster.

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