Way back in the mists of time, my chum Jay Dowling introduced me to DUST, which is an interesting science-fiction brand that presents thought-provoking visions of the future. The way he did this was to point me at the Future Boyfriend video on YouTube.

 

I’ve been meaning to share this with you for yonks, but now I fear we must first explain the concept of a yonk. Actually, that may prove to be a tad difficult, because the noun yonks comes in its plural form only — one never talks about a single yonk lest one be considered to be a drongo.

Yonks can be taken to mean “a long time,” “a very long time,” or “a much longer time than expected.” I’ve heard different origin stories for this term. One suggestion is that it’s an acronym of “Years, mONths, weeKS.” But the one I like best is that it’s an abbreviated version of a spoonerism: we start with “donkey’s years,” which is spoonerized to “yonkey’s dears,” which is abbreviated to “yonkeys” and then to “yonks.”

But we digress… If you visit the DUST Channel on YouTube, you will be presented with a cornucopia of incredibly good science fiction shorts that don’t just revel in special effects, but actually have plots and good acting as well. Suffice it to say that, once you’ve fallen into this rabbit hole, you won’t emerge for yonks.