Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Why?:Become a Butcher (2nd entry)

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Why?:Become a Butcher

Thanks(:in rememberanz of all teh siggies 03:59 October 31

The three oldest things in this queue at the moment are something about football, something about the superbowl, and this. I was trying to remember if the superbowl was a football thing, realised my lack of knowledge in this area meant that I should focus my efforts in looking at the men who play with their meat all day. (Masturbation joke - means I must be about to review this). Pup

Issues - may go a little over 24 hours. Pup

Prose and   Formatting: The writing style, spelling, grammar, layout and overall appearance.	6	Breaking it down Format and writing Writing style I am a salesperson in my other life, as well as having managed sales people for a long time. One of the things that I have trained someone to do before is sell a set of knives. The fact that I'm now going through the same thing again, over a decade later, astounds me. You have a significant proportion of the patter down, and it works. It sounds like a pushy door to door salesman trying to sell me a knife. I got to the end of the electricity section and I started to think to myself if he doesn't try and sell me a knife as part of this, I'm going to be upset. You didn't upset me there. The second person style works here. If it were a main-space article I would be annoyed, but in here it works. The only thing I would suggest to declare that from the start is change the title to Why? You should become a butcher. Automatically you're setting up the second person perspective in the reader's mind. I am going to come back to the voice of this further in the review (I hope) because your humour in this really links into the salesman's voice. I'll also end up teaching a little about sales. (Uncyclopedia. Fun and educational. Donate today!) Spelling revalation Wayy similiar jobe Thats revelation Way (or way-y to stretch it) similar job That's (without the apostrophe you're trying to pluralise it, which would be those.) Grammar Yet another long day This is not a complete sentence, and also not the best lead-in. I'd probably start with I'm here to tell you why you should become a butcher. Has it been yet another long day for you? Why be a butcher? as a header - isn't that the premise of the whole article? if you decide to leave this header in here, change it to Why should you be a butcher? those kind of people is plural - singular - preposition - plural. It should be plural - plural - preposition - plural. those kinds of people is one solution, but as you are stereotyping I'd be tempted to use those types of people There's a few more, but I'd mainly suggest using UN:PROOF on this one once you have your content where you want it. There are places where you will want this to be grammatically incorrect thought, being it is a sales pitch. Layout Layout is what it should be. It doesn't make me fall off my chair, but I have no issues with it. (That being said, it is a poor writer who uses layout to make his articles appear to have more depth than they really do. Overall appearance. It can do with a little more work with images, but it reads well, needs a little corrective work, touch up here and there, but overall it flows well, and is a well written piece. The next question is doesn't the concept hit all the right buttons?
Concept: How good an idea is behind the article?	8	Concept So you have a clear understanding of the way I review, I tend to have a huge crossover between concept and humour. Concept relates to the topic but also the meta-joke Why is this as a whole funny? where humour is a more detailed What makes that one-liner funny? In the case of this article, the delineation between concept and humour is pretty clear. This is is not a good thing or a bad thing, but it has advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage is that it is a very clear type of writing, and the humour is well telegraphed and obvious. This means your reader will find the humour a little more accessible - more in your face. Where it may cause a problem is if the meta-joke doesn't mesh well with the one-liners. I have no issues with this potential issue when reading this article, except that I would expect it to come back to the knife at least once more in the body of the article. My thought was actually in the being someone special area, and it's actually based on real life experience. I used to catch the train home on a daily basis, and the trains are generally crowded - standing room only. If you're 5 foot tall you get the opportunity to smell what's happening in other people's armpits type of crowded. Now this guy got on the train one day who I would have guessed was an apprentice judging by his age. He opened up his bag, and pulled out a HUGE knife, and started to sharpen it. When he'd finished with the first, he'd pull out a second. It was amazing the amount of respect he had. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near his personal space. People tend to be scared of people carrying big knives. Fear is a type of respect. One other thing which is a little more subtle is to play with the price. People won't quite register the numbers that you quote - they'll see it's expensive but they wouldn't be able to walk away and repeat what the price was later. This allows you to add a subtle manipulation of price. In the first section I'd quote the value as being $4,369. About halfway through I'd quote it as $4,639. At the end I'd quote it as $4,963. The larger value I wouldn't put in there the way you have. There is a marketing technique where you quote the special price to get someone interested in the product, or the range of products that you have to sell, and then you offer them a package where they pay more and get more. Basically the idea is the more that a person says "yes" to something, the more likely they'll keep saying yes. So in this instance it would be getting them to agree that this is usually $5,135 for this knife, but today only as a special offer for you it is only $4,963. That's nearly $200 back in your pocket. Would you like to have $200 in your pocket? So we have a yes, and then And wouldn't you love to be able to save time in your day for the things you enjoy? Yes. Don't you want to have the respect and admiration of all your friends? Yes. So I'll put you down for the GongGong™ advanced premium package now then? Only $4,963 per month for the next 24 months? At this stage the sucker customer has been nodding and saying yes so much it makes it harder to say no. It is also an assumptive sale, meaning that as a salesperson I assume that you've already said yes, and I leave it up to you to try and argue out of it. By the way, this actually works. It is scary how easy it is to con sell to people.
Humour: How funny is it? Why is it funny? How can it be funnier?	7.5	Humour Now I am coming back to complete this, but I haven't got the opportunity to right at the moment, so I'll leave the partial review here for you to have a look at, and see if this helps, and hopefully have this done for you over the next 12 hours. Okay, I'm back finally. The humour is good. As I've said above it doesn't always fit in with the concept, but it works. I'm going to break this down a little as well and have a look at it section by section. Intro I have no issues with the humour here, as it's really more about setting up the rest of the article and grabbing the attention then anything else. I read this and have the voice of an infommercial presenter in my head. I do have an issue with the Goat/You thing. I don't mind if a link goes somewhere other than where it indicates if it is for direct humour (ie. Microsoft Support linking to the apple site) but where it is almost random in nature it is a little... Well, random. Save electricity This makes a major gaff here. One aspect of a sale is to make people feel superior and righteous. If you are making someone cry you are hitting emotional triggers, but not selling to them. Again here you should start off with the yes questions. Are you aware of the greenhouse effect? Did you know that electricity contributes to the destruction of the planet through greenhouse emissions? Don't you want to be a hero to the whole planet? Beyond that, which I may just be a little sensitive to that given my sales training, I like it. I just realised that most of this section got deleted while I was still working on it. I'm sorry for the oversight, but having said that I think that there is enough for you here to work with. I will just add a couple of points. cheddar doesn't really suit this - we're talking about a butcher so shouldn't this be a meat pun? Maybe bring home the bacon? scrabble - you can't actually have H falling on a triple letter and the word falling on a triple word score, but you do get 50 points extra for using all seven letters. Not that you should change this - the fact that the person who is saying it is acting like an authority on something of which he knows nothing makes this more authentic. Train your biceps - Watch an infommercial about some kind of exercise machine thingy. They follow a basic pattern of putting the person down, and then telling them their life will be a better thing if they just spend a few minutes day with this device, it really burns off calories, fun and exciting, new you, testimonials, easy, no more diets or weight-loss pills, blah blah blah. Use this format for this section. This is a bit of a goldmine area of your concept but hasn't been worked out enough. And all the stuff above I mentioned in concept.
Images: How are the images? Are they relevant, with good quality and formatting?	5	I hate the images. Pictures of butchers, meat, knives, these would all work. The image of the newsreader - I like this image but it really doesn't suit this article. The cash relates back to the article, but it still doesn't quite mesh with everything else. Okay, so a minor rant here. There is a difference between text images and images of text. If you have a logo, or an image of an error screen, BSOD, etc. These are text images, and they make sense. If you have simply made an image of bland text, this is an image of text. I actually am awarding negative points to this image. Also, it is an in-joke. Also, it doesn't fit.
Miscellaneous: The article's overall quality - that indefinable something.	7.5	Overall score
Final Score: How much can it be improved and what are the most important areas to work on.	34	Huge amount of promise. A little more work. A proof read. VFH is beckoning.
Reviewer:	Finally! Pup