How To Properly Flame

If you're gonna do it, you might as well do it right. This then is my brief, incomplete guide to making the Flame of the Week.

Leave your reason at the door. You must NOT have any form of conventional logic in your flame. If you're thinking then you're not writing a flame. This is possibly the hardest aspect of producing a flame and that is why we start with it. Unless you are suffering from a mental illness, you will have spent most of your life following a complex set of social rules. These are a hindrance when attempting a flame. You must create your own world and speak from there. There is no single way to do this, although tired and tested methods include illegal drug intake, sleep deprivation, compulsive masturbation and listening to Marilyn Manson.

Don't make it too long. This is an immediate signal that some form of reasoning is going on. A true flamer has at most three paragraphs in him/her before the sheer fury and hatred overcomes them and they pass out on their keyboard - hitting the send button with their forehead.

Pick a topic to rant about but for God's sake don't read anymore than the first paragraph. And don't read this very carefully either. There are jokes and smatterings of sarcasm and irony in here but these aren't for you. Everything you (don't) read is the literal truth as I see it. Once you haven't grasped the story you can start to twist the words into whatever makes you most angry.

Tie in your hatreds/prejudices. This goes with the previous point. Remember, a flame is not about responding to a story - it is merely the vehicle by which you can tell the world what's wrong with it. You must however pay the story lip service before you start to explain why kids/dogs/Indians/George Davison/women/socks/voodoo3 are the most useless and evil things in existence.

For god's sake, don't start using correct grammar. Apostrophes, capital letters, full stops do not exist in your world. And why spell a word correctly when you can write it phonetically and still get the meaning across? If possible, try to make the flame one long sentence (this is not to be attempted by first-time flamers though). Also, try to write the flame as fast as possible and you'll find many mistakes just create themselves.

Be deeply and personally abusive to the person you're writing to. Try to imagine them sleeping with your partner and laughing at you at the same time. Use all the blind hatred that the government has piled into you to help it start a war - for example, repeating the word Saddam, Slobodan, commie, or spy plane over and over again, louder and louder. Then throw out whatever comes into your head.

Word of warning: don't use too many swear words. Odd one this, but while true flamers will not let a sentence slip past without at least one profanity, imitators put in too many. You see, the flamer will - somewhere deep deep down - have a point to make. Swear words are only to be used when the struggle to explain just how wrong the world is becomes too much to bear and a good "f*ck" relieves the pressure in their skulls - briefly.

Do not reread your flame. Tell yourself you will send it as soon as you think you have finished. This will give you the element of spontaneity and will not give your rational mind time to interject.

Celebrate a successful flame by killing something. Many compulsive flamers keep a jar of insects next to their desk just for this reason.

The wrath of Paul

St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, this Paul wrote to his cable provider...

Dear Cretins,

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone.

During this three month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.

Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.

My initial installation was cancelled without warning or notice, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive at all, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.... how?

I alleviated the boredom to some small degree by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After several further telephone calls (actually 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks) my modem arrived ... a total of six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it.

I estimate that the downtime of your internet servers is roughly 35%... these are usually the hours between about 6pm and midnight, Monday to Friday, and most of the useful periods over the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 telephone calls on my mobile to your no-help line this week, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers.

I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman.... and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum - incompetents of the highest order.

British Telecom - wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you.

I suggest that you do likewise, and cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief - although these feelings will quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps a small measure of bemused rage.

I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you, and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become dessicated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and it's worthless employees.

Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twats,

Yours psychotically,
Xxxx Xxxxxxx
Paul --

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