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

It's a game I've been playing for years.

Here's the basic concept:

http://bonoboworld.blogspot.com/2007/03/those-invisible-green-ideas-are.html

Obligatory Question:

Any more?

I have lost many a chapati to the skirting board. It's not a game, you know.

This is a real quote from someone in the office.

"I don't know where Q is in the alphabet, but it's got to be near the end."

I feel like we've been playing a similar, if not the same, game on the Non Sequiturs thread for a while - F2137311?thread=240274


Geggs

For those of us restricted by work firewalls from accessing blogs, care to summarise?

Ta

Righhhttt...

Chomsky's Generative Grammar. We have an (innate) grammar that we use to construct sentences. This enables us to generate a huge number of 'valid' sentences off the cuff without ever having seen or heard anything similar before. It is even possible to generate gramatically valid but odd sentences as...

'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously'.

We can recognise this as perfectly correct but meaningless English.

Chomskyan Bingo is my game of spotting or uttering a sentence that nobody can possibly have said ever before, such as...

'Somehow the chapatti had become lodged behind the skirting
board.'

Or, as I once said in (almost) German:

'Ich bin nicht Mitglied dieser Konferenz, doch ich möchte ein
Pinguin' (I am not a conference delegate, nevertheless I'd like a
penguin)


*But you have to be sincere*. No making them up for comical effect.

I once swatted a wasp with a copy of Heidegger's "Being and Time."

To answer a question that you ask in your blog: Noam Chimpsky.

Close. Nim.

I just did some googlying. That should be Nim Chimpsky.

Indeedly. Swot I meant.

For Beatrice:

>>>
I have a private game called 'Chomskyan Bingo'. Noam Chomsky put forward the idea that language works as a generative grammar. A relatively small set of rules can be applied to a vocabulary to generate a vast array of possible sentences - some of which are very unlikely indeed, but are nevertheless recognisable as 'valid' sentences.

Anyway, I collect the unlikely ones - those sentences that you can be fairly sure have never before been uttered since the dawn of creation. From a recent discussion elsewhere:

"Put it on top of the fridge until it becomes suitably pudendal."
and
"...the ammoniac tang of woman parts."
Another one I like is:

"Somehow the chapatti had become lodged behind the skirting
board."

I've even been known to do them in German:

"Ich bin nicht Mitglied dieser Konferenz, doch ich möchte ein
Pinguin" (I am not a conference delegate, nevertheless I'd like a
penguin)

"Gibt es Damenbinden für einer Frau mit viel Blut?" (Do you have sanitary towels for a woman with a heavy period?*)
Got any more?

btw - this is another in my "Guess the relevace of the accompanying picture" series.


Giving 'Poddage to:

Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position. (A most joyful noise!)

Bryan Ferry - Dylanesque (Certainly shows he wrote some excellent songs. But let's face it - nobody can do them quite as well as Bob**)

Big Star - Sister Lovers

Yoko Ono - Yes, I'm A Witch***

Dylan - Desire

*Literally '...a woman with a lot of blood' - It was my spur-of-the-moment translation that makes it collectable.

** Then there's Van Morrison's comment on The Waterboys' cover of 'Sweet Thing': "It wasn't a patch on the original, was it?"

*** Q: What is yellow and wrinkly and lives off a corpse?...
<<<

http://bonoboworld.blogspot.com/2007/03/those-invisible-green-ideas-are.html


Ed, any chance you can give permission for that in case the bbc think it's copyright theft?

I was reminded recently of a good 'un I came out with one time:

"I fail to see why the only alternative is a cat with eye-shadow."

It made perfect sense in the context...

@kea

I refuse to give copyright permission for anything. I don't hold with the idea of copyright for blog posts (and I've already said that I'll choose to ignore the BBC's/noohootoo's copyright for my own Guide Entries).

If they Yikes it, they Yikes it. If it stays it stays. It's not my decision to make.

If I weren't on pre-mod, my post where I've summarised the gist would be visible by now, shorn of the superfluous crap about what I was listening to four years ago.

Meanwhile, if Beatrice is reading now, she'll be able to see the link. Or if she waits until tomorrow, she'll be able to see my precis. You'll probably see this at around the same time.

for your efforts all the same.

Seen it, read it, ta.

I'm pretty sure I come across one of those most days, tbh!

I'll send any I spot your way

(Yesterday morning, when I was failing to get my radio app to work in the bedroom, Dai suggested it was because broadband found it difficult to go upstairs.

Oh, so broadband's a bit like daleks then?)

Ed.

Hmm. Seems my precis was Removed after all. Most odd. I have no idea why and can't be bothered.

It was the German.

Lots of ones in my Inbox. The joys of pre-mod.

I fully see the s point. I'm making lots of unnecessary, tedious work for them. I'd take the easy option in their position.

Blame lies...elsewhere.

>>... I'd take the easy option in their position.<< (Ntm)

... until it becomes suitably pudendal?

Yes, but they may not have even bothered looking at that because it won't have popped up in the pre-mod queue. Or possibly they don't know the word 'pudendal'.

In any case, they haven't reacted to the fact that it has even more German (or approximation thereof), nor to its uncertain copyright status.

Alternately...less risk-averse people may be on shift.

Ha!

awaiting your latest, Ntm...