Seek and Ye Shall Find
Created | Updated Jul 15, 2004
The Hootoo archives contain many weird and wonderful bits of writing, which don't always get the attention they deserve. Unless they enter the Edited Guide, or are unearthed by the Underguide, The Post or CAC, they may lie unread and unloved for years, while their authors go out for a sandwich or even permanently Elvis1. The best way to find these gems is undoubtedly through the search engine, having ticked the box marked no Edited entries. The infinite improbability engine and searching conversations provides too much dross: searching unedited guide entries is the way to go.
Blue
This week I have pre-masticated a search for the word blue, spat out the grisly bits and left these prime cuts for your perusal.
Blue, not just a colour but a feeling, you might expect the Hootoo archives to contain tonnes of stuff on feeling blue, but no, not really. We must all be happy researchers - just look at this little poem on U197006 's personal space...
There is one...
a sailor by trade who spends his days standing on the high decks...
leaning on the rails wondering at the world speeding by underneath...
he is mesmerized by deep blue...
deep blue in the sky broken with white clouds...
deep blue in the ocean broken by white froth on a windy day....
There is one....
A sailor.
Of course, blue is also the colour of goo, a fact that is essential to bear in mind when you look at A148420
. Five years later, and no matter what skin you look at it in, it still has the following ringing endorsement hanging off it:Pepper you rock! This is a lovely piece of conceptual neo-hegalian anti-artwork. You go girl.
Yesss. Is it even more of an artistic statement in Brunel or Alabaster? If you don't like that one how about A45433?
Like the background color of this page there are many shades of blue. Luckily, on some monitors this blue is perceived as a very intelligent shade of blue. If you have nothing to do try talking to it some time. (DO NOT DO THIS AT THE OFFICE, some people might not understand!) If your monitor display a slightly less intelligent shade of blue or, god forbid, a dumb shade of blue, there is only one thing to do: BUY A NEW MONITOR!
Combines Goo and THGTTG2 references, very indicative of the early days there...
Or some more factual stuff that never quite made it into the Edited Guide?
- A697629 is an unfinished future gem on moons of a very different kind to the ones at Hootoo meets, fortunately.
- A2194797 is a very thorough and pyschedelic entry,
- and A691229 is a nice entry on a vegetarian caff. Maybe Cakewalker will come back and finish it some day?
- If you're not vegetarian, you might prefer A236215. Tasty.
And then this masterpiece on Blu-tac, containing handy hints on not eating Blu-tac and other counter-intuitive stuff. If you've read this, you might be ready for the how to get blu-tac out of belly buttons conversation, but I'll let you find that one yourself. This tip, for Blue Peter fans to try at home, is attached to the entry:
Incidentally, if your Blu-Tak 'dries out' completely, a tiny drop of lighter fluid (petrol!) will revive it... As it can be dissolved completely in petrol, it has been theorised that if you got a large amount of really dirty Blu-Tak you could dissolve it and run the resulting solution through a coffee filter or somesuch to remove the detritus, then evaporate it back to the original consistency. This has two drawbacks - first, it's an explosion hazard, and second the petrol involved would cost more than replacing the Blu-Tak. Still, it's a nice theory...
As Hootoo is a website, there is inevitably quite a bit about computers on it, and the next two entries show that blue is no exception to that rule. The first one is the dread of any computer user - A505694! It doesn't try to give you helpful specialist advice, cos there is none to give. It feels your pain though. I'm not sure I really understand A1138204, but given the title, so I couldn't really leave it out could I? It's a video game film site thingy, and it nearly but not quite made it to the Edited Guide.
Finally, there was only one entry on the first page of the search that is just entitled 'Blue' - my heart pounded as I clicked on this, would it be the definitive entry on Blue? Well sort off, it is in fact arrant tosh, but none the worse for that! It also is evidence of a time when people would comment on 'ordinary guide entries' which doesn't happen now unfortunately. It's got red text, not blue, perhaps surprisingly.
All this was just from the first page of the search, so imagine what treasures might lie beyond... Happy searching!
The Seek and Ye Shall Find Archive
