Sony Playstation 3 Hype 2005-2007

The Sony Corporation's hyping of its Playstation 3 Console (the European version of which is not dead, contrary to foolish and wholly erroneous reports to that effect) has finally expired, trampled under the feet of the hordes of up to five or six sad and lonely nerds early adopters who gathered outside stores last night desperate to be the first - outside Japan, North America, Canada, Hong Kong, China, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Italy and South Africa - to own the new gaming machine.

Sony Playstation 3 Hype was born on 16 May 2005, delivered at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles to a beaming Sony Corporation and a bemused gaming press, all of whom politely refused to remark on the console's George Foreman "Lean Mean Grilling Machine"-styling or the hideously deformed, banana-shaped appendages which served as its joypads - at least until they got outside the conference hall.

While The Hype's proud parents were quick to praise its every move, others were more doubtful. While other "next-generation" consoles like the Xbox 360 delivered a diet of car-jacking and shooting to alienated teens across America or, like the NIntendo Wii, were flying into the screens of the worlds TVs, the Playstation 3 seemed to have difficulty even taking its first step. Soon rumours were circulating that the oversized machine was in fact the product of a nuclear accident and that it had first emerged from the Pacific Ocean intent on destroying Tokyo ... or at least that part of it owned by the Sony Corporation.

Despite the attacks, the Hype struggled on as Sony pointed to its new machine's exciting network functions, which weren't as remarkable as the Xbox 360's, exciting motion-sensing controllers, which weren't as remarkable as the Nintendo Wii's and exciting Blu-Ray functions, which weren't as remarkable as its sky-high price.

Even The Hype's best efforts were to no avail. As it crawled from country to country it left in its wake shelf after shelf of unsold Playstation 3 consoles and red entry after red entry in Sony's balance books. When it finally arrived on Britain's shores it was greeted, not with the love it craved from the news and gaming media but with a wave of apathy and the odd appearance as a filler item on BBC News 24. Starved of support, it expired on the floor of London's Virgin Mega Store - with even its death failing to garner any significant publicity or sales.

Sony Playstation 3 Hype will be buried at St Mario's Church. The service will include The Hype's favourite hymn, number 378 "Jesu, lover of my console". It is survived by a pile of unsold Sony consoles and some very happy rival manufacturers.

Gordon Brown's Budgets 1997-2007

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, yesterday buried his last Budget under a waving of order papers, a cut in the basic rate of income tax and Mr Brown's Prime Ministerial ambitions.

The first of Gordon Brown's Budgets was born in 1997, the offspring of Mr Brown's first love, a shy and retiring model of fiscal rectitude called Prudence, and the golden economic legacy passed on to the Chancellor thanks to either (a) Conservative predecessor Kenneth Clarke's brilliant economic management or (b) the change in monetary policy forced on the nation following the UK's humiliating ejection from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 and the country having finally got over the Lawson-boom-induced recession of the early-90s*.

Year-on-year Mr Brown and Prudence set about the business of running the economy in the manner of a respectable Victorian couple. Each year Prudence would lie back and think of Adam Smith while Gordon whispered sweet nothings about post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory into her ear and each year she would give birth to a new model of fiscal rectitude. Like any proud father, Mr Brown celebrated each new birth by detailing the many fine qualities of his offspring to anyone within earshot, in speeches which have recently been released on tape by the National Health Service as a cheap alternative to Mogadon.

Hardened in his moral certainty by the encouragement of his inamorata and the praise of the International Monetary Fund, each day Mr Brown would stride through the streets of Britain in his top hat and frock coat, unmoved by the piteous cries of impoverished single mothers, the hideous smell of the non-functional lavatories of Britain's decaying schools and the disturbing sight of nurses flogging their kidneys to support themselves. All the while he satisfied himself that he was merely seeking to bring his budgets up properly by keeping to the spending limits imposed by his predecessor Mr Clarke, apparently unaware that - as Mr Clarke welll knew - the only tight restrictions members of the Major government could be expected to stick to were usually made of PVC and metal and provided by specialist shops in Soho.

What it was that softened the Chancellor's heart we may never know. Perhaps it was a visitation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, perhaps merely the prospect of Labour being turfed out of office by all those public-sector workers still with strength enough in their bodies to drag themselves to the polling booths. Whatever the cause, by the year 2000 Mr Brown, whilst still paying lip service to his relationship with Prudence, had begun an affair with the charming Charity.

Under Charity's influence the Chancellor abandoned his old ways. Eager to impress his new love he lavished his money on the good causes he had once passed by. As their affair became more and more passionate Mr Brown threw caution to the wind, fathering a series of bouncing budgets, the apple of every teacher's and doctor's eye, while borrowing ever more heavily to fund his new, and expensive, devotion to Charity.

Yet, however delighted Charity may at first have been, all was not well. However much Mr Brown spent, he was always met with cries for more, while about him those who had once praised him for his severe and upright manner now lambasted him for his fond indulgence.

It is perhaps fitting that, in what is expected to be one of his last acts as Chancellor, Mr Brown chose to set Charity to one side - just as he had once done Prudence - choosing to impress the nation with a cut in basic-rate income tax while bamboozling them with fiscal jiggery-pokery, as he fathered the last of his Budgets with a new love, Political Self Interest.

Gordon Brown's Budgets are survived by Gordon Brown's Premiership Ambitions, George Osborne's hopes of moving into long trousers and a lot of puzzled economists staring at the Chancellor's figures and exclaiming "Whothewhatnow?"

*(readers are invited to select the reason they find best accords with their political prejudices)

Best of British Blog Awards

We at As A Dodo Towers are proud to announce that some kind - and possibly deluded - soul has nominated us in the Politics category for the Ask.com/Metro "Best of British Blog Awards".

Nominations close on 22 March 2007. Given As A Dodo's nomination our readers may well feel that the site should sweep the board in all categories but, given the remote possibility that they feel that there are other sites worthy of equal recognition, nominations can be made here.

Gravity c. 13,700,000,000 BC-2007 AD

Gravity (or, as its friends in the physics community knew it, "Gravitational Force") has gone to join the ether, phlogiston and Victoria Beckham's tan among the choir invisible of scientific no-noes, following the inauguration of the Grand Canyon Skywalk – a glass-bottomed horseshoe-shaped construction which allows visitors to stand in mid-air 4,000 feet above salivating coyotes, rattlesnakes and personal injury lawyers shouting, “Jump!”

Gravity was born roughly 13.7 billion years ago with the formation of the Universe. From the moment of its arrival, the heavy child set to work on its even heavier task of forming stars and planets, keeping celestial bodies in orbit and ensuring that when you place a cup on the coffee table it’s still there five minutes later and the scalding coffee hasn’t floated up and burnt the underside of your chin while you’re reading the newspaper.

Despite this seemingly useful physical property, Man longed to slip his earthly bounds and float free above the Earth or, in Daedalus’s case, let his son Icarus take out those new wax wings he'd invented on a test run, "you know, just in case" …

When Isaac Newton was brained by a Cox’s Pippin and began preparing for his lawsuit against Gravity, he accidentally stumbled across the three gravitational laws that (quite literally) underpinned its lifelong purpose. Though the subsequent court case failed Gravity’s secret hold on Earth was fatally loosened from its fingers.

Soon, Man was clamouring to rise up, up and away in his beautiful balloon and dreaming of faster and higher trips into the blue. The Wright Brothers early beach-hopping experiments inspired Wernher von Braun to design the rockets that destroyed much of London during the final years of World War Two allowed Man to finally escape earth’s atmosphere and put Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin et al on the Moon.

For those of us not fortunate enough to make the grade as NASA graduates or have the necessary millions to join Stephen Hawking on the so-called "Vomit Comet", ordinary earthlings' only chance of escaping Gravity was to take their lives in their hands on an amusement park rollercoaster or take their lives in their hands on a short-haul low-cost flight.

Inspired by the mid-air back-pedalling of Wile E Coyote, construction began on the Grand Canyon Skywalk in 2004 – the ingenious addition of a glass walkway ensuring that visitors would not plummet earthwards – leaving a visitor-shaped hole in the canyon floor below… before being flattened by a loosened boulder… a falling grand piano… and an ACME anvil…

As Buzz Aldrin stepped out onto the Skywalk with the immortal words, “It’s one small step for man, one giant step for… Buzz Aldrin…! Yeah, that’s right…! Buzz F**kin’ Aldrin…! In Your face, Neil Armstrong!” Gravity was done for and let slip its grip on the world.

Gravity will not be buried but released directly into the heavens to drift slowly upwards into the wide, blue yonder – if it doesn’t collide with a plethora of 747s, spy satellites or Professor Stephen Hawking.

The VHS Tape 1976-2007

The VHS Tape has unspooled for the last time, its glossy surface ripped from its plasticky exterior by economists at the Office of National Statistics, who have extracted it from the shopping basket of goods and services used to judge the rate of inflation and thrown it into the bin alongside brie, vegetable oil and sprouts.

The Vertical Helical Scan System, known to millions simply as "the VHS" or (every time it unaccountably failed to record the whole of one's favourite programme) "that bloody thing" - was born in 1976. From birth it was to have a hard life. Even as it emerged from the womb of the JVC corporation it was to find rival mother Sony standing over it, pillow in hand, as it prepared to smother the child in favour of its own offspring, Betamax. Fortunately, the errant Japanese corporation was dragged away to a quiet room and, despite its inferior picture, VHS was ultimately to triumph over its rival after impressing the public with the size of its recording capacity. Thus began VHS's popularity as millions marvelled at their ability to record TV programmes while they were out… and then leave them unwatched until they were taped over a few days later.

The VHS was to prove a major stepping-stone in the life of many a child. Not only did it give the average 5-year-old their first opportunity to triumph over their parents by being able to tape hour after hour of Battle of the Planets while the adults could only manage a recording that ended halfway through Bullseye, it also gave millions of impressionable adolescents the chance to broaden their cultural education by watching fifth generation pirate copies of Driller Killer and recording subtitled films on BBC2 or Channel 4 in the hope of a fleeting glimpse of arthouse nudity (hopes which, thanks to the technological precision of the pause function, were inevitably crushed).

With the birth of its younger sibling, the VHS camera, the Tape enjoyed amazing commercial success enabling people to video their own weddings and birthday parties – and then send the oh-so-hilarious results to Jeremy Beadle’s You’ve Been Framed - and later allowing unknown micro-personalities such as Abi Titmuss to become very-well-known micro-personalities when recordings of their most intimate moments somehow found their way to the desks of every newspaper and PR agency.

It was the introduction of digital technology which saw the Tape facing its final rewind. Its binary relative, The DVD, stole the show and viewers’ affections by being able to provide movies with a sharper picture, surround sound and a commentary from the director’s chauffeur’s uncle’s sister at the push of a button.

The Tape deteriorated rapidly – stretching and distorting the picture and losing its sound quality in a gale of white noise – at which point the ONS consultants agreed that it no longer had a sustainable quality of life and, for the last time, gently untangled it from the playback heads and replaced it in its tired and worn-out cardboard sleeve.

The VHS Tape will be buried at car boot sales and charity shops across the country. It is survived by The DVD-RW, Hard-Disk Recorder and accidentally recording over that episode of The Persuaders on ITV4 you really wanted to watch.

Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff's National Hero Status 1998-2007

Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff's National Hero Status was born in 1998, the child of a press eager to build up any cricketing all-rounder as the new Ian Botham before condemning him to ignominy as the old Derek Pringle and the precocious skills of a cheerful, 6'4" cricketer from Lancashire.

Even at such an early stage it was apparent to many that the man the nation would come to know as "Freddie" (a nickname granted by his fellow players in memory of either German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche or - more probably, given that Mike Brearley wasn't on the team - yabba-dabba-doo-ing cartoon character Fred Flintstone) possessed many of the skills of a great all-rounder. As a bowler he could inspire fear in batsmen, as a batsman he could inspire fear in bowlers and as a drinker he inspired awe in such greats as Jeffrey Bernard, Oliver Reed and George Best.

With such unique attributes at his command it was inevitable that Freddie would be granted National Hero Status. Over the years there were many heroic achievements, two wickets in the vital final over in a one day match against India in 2001-2 that led to a shirt-ripping display, centuries against South Africa and the West Indies along with 5-wicket hauls in 2003-4 with many more to come, not to mention showing such extraordinary resolution in the face of the massed forces of pints of bitter and tins of Fray Bentos that he actually looked as if he could fit through the cricket ground turnstiles.

Freddie's National Hero Status was to reach its zenith in 2005 when his feats of cricketing excellence during the Ashes Test series (and drinking excess after it) succeeded in winning him the admiration of a whole nation, not to mention an award from the National Brewers Association for services to the industry. From such a peak, however, decline is inevitable.

In the following years, Flintoff found it hard to repeat the feats of his youth - whether on or off the field. With fame came responsibility and with the failure of Michael Vaughan's knee to survive anything beyond a shuffle out of the armchair to grab a newspaper came the responsibilities of the England captaincy. When England lost the Ashes to a resurgent Australia, Freddie's National Hero Status began to show signs of frailty.

It was during the Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean that the last innings was to be played. Over several hours in St Lucia's Rumours nightclub, Freddie - cheered on by his team-mates - worked steadily, first grabbing a few singles before moving on to doubles, pints and chasers, with the prospect of an extra spicy goat curry on the way home and some serious runs later. It was not to be. Determined that his legend should live on, Freddie took the unfortunate decision to grab a pedalo and set out into Rodney Bay, where he capsized and his England vice-captaincy sank without trace.

Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff's National Hero Status, along with the prospect of him ever captaining the England cricket team again - barring every other England-qualified human being capable of holding a bat being struck by lightning - was buried at sea. It is survived by David Gower's Tiger Moth, Mike Gatting's reverse sweeps and Geoffrey Boycott's selfless team-spiritedness.

But Not Forgotten: Week Ending 17 March 2007

• Jack Gaster 1907-2007 - Lawyer and civil rights campaigner
• Gareth Hunt 1942-2007 - Actor, New Avengers star and bean shaker
• Betty Hutton 1921-2007 - Hollywood actress and singer
• Lucie Aubrac 1912-2007 - Hero of the French resistance