h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I much prefer the Necrotelecomnicon, the phone book of the dead, alias the Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, the Book of Yellow Pages. But as always you need to know about the origins to really appreciate Pratchett's wit.

Oh, sorry, posted the same gist without checking; should've expected someone would beat me to it.

Reminds me of "Sub-Internet" - a personification of the internet, beast of a thousand processes and deliverer of viruses...

(Ugh!)

You've lost me.

Shub-Nigurrath is 'the dark goat of the woods with a thousand young' and represented some kind of fertility godess in HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.

According to Eric Raymond's Jargon file (which used to live at tuxedo.org, but sems to have moved, so this is from my (probably out of date local copy)]..

Shub-Internet /shuhb' in't*r-net/ n.

[MUD: from H. P. Lovecraft's evil fictional deity Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young] The harsh personification of the Internet: Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of MUDders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good connections. To no avail -- its purpose is malign and evil, and it is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed by users of the Web, FTP and telnet when the network lags. The dread name of Shub-Internet is seldom spoken aloud, as it is said that repeating it three times will cause the being to wake, deep within its lair beneath the Pentagon. Compare Random Number God.


It probably helps if you've played Call of Cthulhu at some stage.

Strangely enough around here (Portsmouth) many of the old Polytechnic folk (circa 1986) have a ritual saying, performed on many odd occasions in a similar manner that it said that when two or more are gathered together they shall perform the parrot sketch:

It goes like this...
"On the conveyor belt tonight...
A set of saucepans...
(continue with whatever is to hand..)
A fondue set..
A Great Cthulhu!"
(everybody screams in horror)

I have absolutely no idea why we do this. I guess we're just wierd.

I always feel comfortable amongst wierdness such as this.
I'm sure it's a side effect of being a geek.