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

It is said, and by reasonably authoritative (though not necessarily terribly honest) sources that the original name for the Bonzos was "The Bonzo Dog Dada Band," which was changed to "The Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band" because they got sick of explaining Dadaism to the ignorant but curious.

It is true - you do learn something new every day!! One point about the DADA movement - they were horrified when people started wanting their works and paying huge sums of money - the whole point was to poke fun at the established order and to mock the art world. DADA's credo was impermanence.

Does this mean that the Police song "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" (apologies for misspellings) is infact a convoluted reference to a desire of the band to participate in the principles of the Dada movement, and is confirmation of the old proverb "That Sting bloke, he's dead clever he is"

According to the narrative in "Cornology" you are right about the name, though they don't say why exactly it became DooDah, and according to the CD, they arrived at just "Bonzo Dog Band."

There's lots of hype about the origination of "Dada" to name the movement, but I like this from Jean Arp: "I hereby declare that Tristan Tazara discovered the word Dada on February 8, 1916, at six o'clock in the afternoon; I was present with my twelve children when Tzara for the first time uttered this word, which filled us so justifiably with enthusiasm. This took place at the Cafe de la Terrasse in Zurich, and I was wearing a brioche in my left nostril."

I like that. Just the right tone, pudhing the boundaries of credibility right to the last.

Hey Just zis Guy I think you have invented a DADA word PUDHING (cross between pushing and pudding?)

If you look down your modem I'll hold up my left hand and you'll see why I can't type worth a damn

This issue gets all the more curious when you apply it with the actions of buddhist monks who slave for days placing one grain of colored sand at a time onto a mandala. The mandala is usually a depiction of the eight-fold path, the ethos of buddhism, and is often quite elaborate and detailed (kind of a stone age dot matrix). They dress in full ceremonial attire and perform chants and prayers all throughout the days of eye-blurring labor. Often crowds gather to watch the spectacle in awestruck (or perhaps respectful) silence. When the mandala is "complete" the monks dispassionately scrape the sand into Hefty bags with corners of cardboard boxes and leave.

From the similarities between the gatherings to the end products of creation and destruction I submit that Dada was the first of a string of intellectual movements that began the Easternizing of Industrialized consumer culture. (Are we turning Japanese yet?)

Interestingly enough, I see your hand blurrily through 12 modems, and they're all descending a staircase. Are you a readymade in motion? Or made ready through descent? Or, more importantly, are you a multiple? This has possibilities.