To those who insist that there is such a thing as a literal reading of text, I offer a headline posted today by the BBC: Virgin Alerts Infected Customers. When I first read this headline, my zombie-biased brain immediately assumed the Mother of God had caught a case of rabies or was the bride of Nosferatu, and after a rampage by the light of the full moon, felt enough remorse to approach those she had bitten and inform them of her condition. The article’s opening line came as a disappointment: “About 1,500 customers of internet service provider Virgin Media have been warned that their PCs are infected with a malicious virus.” This illustrates yet again that context, not content, is king. Anyone who thinks the meaning of words is apparent on their face, without reference to anything else, is what we call a “naïve reader”.