"My eyebrows shot up..." (Good day, Mr. Cummings)

"My eyebrows shot up"

Science fiction writer William Gibson, @GreatDismal, says Downing St adviser Dominic Cummings might want to go back and read his books again before recommending the govt employ more people who resemble his characters#r4today | https://t.co/vFkbBqZyfV pic.twitter.com/U6MV3aLh6I

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) January 20, 2020

 I haven't read William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition", but as an Oxbridge Humanities graduate I bet you anything that when Dominic Cummings refered to its heroine Cayce Pollard as "that girl hired by Bigend" in his horribly-written call-out for "a sort of personal assistant to me for a year" he was comparing himself to Gibson's bullshitting brainiac very consciously. Showily even. He knew exactly what he was doing in that respect at least. But...

Brazil. Charles McKeown (eyebrows shot up). Jonathan Pryce. Magic.

 I also bet you that in not actually naming Cayce Pollard, Dom unconsciously betrayed something far more telling: a deep-seated, adolescent fear of being teased for admitting knowledge of any woman's name because that means you must fancy them. I honestly think the Gove-ian, a-human, legislation-free future the man currently running this country as much as anyone is attempting to spearhead will be this pathetic. I would really like to see which self-styled "weirdoes and misfits with odd skills" do end up responding to his call nevertheless, because I suspect a lot of them will more closely resemble that boy not hired by Kubrick:

 Also, I bet he does fancy her.
 (Also, what Cummings is really after, it seems, is another William Gibson, who got 5 out of 150 in his mathematics SATs. There's a great piece here on how Gibson had to repeatedly postpone finishing his latest book because reality kept overtaking it, which is also my excuse for not writing more Time Spanner.
 [Also, should I apply?
 {Also, "[M]uch"?}])