Spoilers
[Idiots, since man learned to communicate]
Rating: 2.3
I loathe spoilers. Even good ones. Spoilers are super-nasty. Yet they’re everywhere. I can’t walk down the street these days without catching a few spoilers on the way. Indy goes on a fucking spaceship? Spoiler! That guy in Prison Break gets stabbed? Spoiler! Those two humps in that movie with the doo-hickey where one of ‘em turns out he’s the other’s dad but he isn’t really cos he already died? Spoiler! Spoiler! Spoiler!
The first recorded spoiler was in the 7th Century BC, when a lowly Greek cutlery merchant was overheard explaining to his wife that Odysseus (star of Homer’s oral poem, The Odyssey, which was a big hit the previous century) didn’t die in the Trojan War, but actually went back to find his missus, who thinks he’s de…
Shit. Sorry, I should have written SPOILER ALERT in front of that, shouldn’t I? Damn. I’m really sorry. I guess dishing out spoilers is easier than I thought. I was gonna come over all 0.7 out of ten for spoilers but I guess I’m going to have to amend that. Well, it’s not like you were ever going to read it, is it? Hell, I said I’m sorry. Yeah? Well, fuck you.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, so this merchant was explaining to his wife what had happened in the poem he’d just listened to, and a passing nobleman overheard the shit about Odysseus not dying. Thing is, this nobleman had tickets for him and the wife to go see a reading of The Odyssey that weekend at the local ampitheater, and he’d been holding out on not hearing what happened in it. So that screwed that. The nobleman flew into a rage, things went fuck-shaped, and there was an almighty scuffle. See? No good can come of a spoiler.
Other notable spoilers since then include: the drunk guy who came out of the cinema at London’s Marble Arch after a screening of The Sixth Sense yelling, “Woooo! I’m a big scary ghost Bruce Willis!” to horrified on-lookers; the drunk local radio DJ (who can’t be named here for legal reasons) who live on air gave away the ending of Melville’s Moby Dick to a horrified Norwich listenership one windy 1987 afternoon; and the time my dad told me not to bother getting married cos it’s “a fucking disaster, son”. He sure gave away the ending there.
Anyway, spoilers are annoying and I seem to spend two thirds of my life covering my ears trying to avoid them. It even spoils my enjoyment of something if I know a potential spoiler could ruin it. Cos then I’m just trying to figure out what the spoiler could be. I spend a whole season of Lost trying to avoid hearing a spoiler about the season finale. That can’t be healthy. And for what? Just to find out XXXXX’s dead? Hey, who blanked that out?
Rat Banjos, June 4, 2008
