From the upcoming family musical "The Mi-Goh King"
Gabriel Gentile
Malcomson.
"Cthulu Ftagn"
To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
Cthulu Ftagn.... What a maddening phrase
Cthulu Ftagn.... It will make ya crazed
It means a padded cell for the rest of your days
It's your worry-free.... insanity plea
Cthulu Ftagn
When he was a young cultist
WHEN I WAS A YOUNG CULT-IIIIIIIIIST
He found his rituals could improve by far
He just didn't have that jene-c'est-qui
I'm a sensitive soul, though I seem thick-skinned
Thought of making some friends, but found it was a sin
And OH, the shame
(He was ashamed)
Thought of causing some pain
(Oh, I feel your pain)
It's like being on Venus
(Not Uranus)
With an Elder God's-
BROTHER! Not in front of the neonates!
Oh, right.
Cthulu Ftagn.... What a maddening phrase
Cthulu Ftagn.... It will make ya crazed
It means a padded cell for the rest of your days
It's your worry-free.... insanity plea
Cthulu Ftagn
--
Gabriel Gentile
Spook...@earthlink.net
"Tragedy is if I cut my finger,
Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die."
-Mel Brooks
pbri...@unreality.nortelnetworks.com
<spook...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
>Malcomson.
>
>
>"Cthulu Ftagn"
<SNIP>
>When he was a young cultist
>
>WHEN I WAS A YOUNG CULT-IIIIIIIIIST
>
>He found his rituals could improve by far
>He just didn't have that jene-c'est-qui
Linguistic heads-up:
I'm not sure if you mean the traditional "I don't know what" - "Je ne
sais quoi", or "I don't know who" - "Je ne sais (pas) qui"
(sais = "know", c'est = "It is")
<SNIP>
>Cthulu Ftagn.... What a maddening phrase
>Cthulu Ftagn.... It will make ya crazed
>It means a padded cell for the rest of your days
>It's your worry-free.... insanity plea
>Cthulu Ftagn
Brava! Brava!! 'Scuse me while I wipe the green slime from my ears...
Paul B. =:o}
(Discard unreality before replying...)
Arthur Levesque
GG>Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
GG>Malcomson.
GG>"Cthulu Ftagn"
GG>To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
GG>Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
I had a very similar idea a while back...
CTHULHU FHTAGN
Lyrics by Arthur Levesque -- b...@boog.org -- http://boog.org
(To the tune of the "Kahuna Matata" from "The Lion King")
[This educational song is a favorite with the kids in Innsmouth,
Massachusetts; and is often performed on special religious occasions...
in this particular case by the cultists Timon Gilman and Silas "Pumbaa"
Waterly, with child Simba Scott participating.]
TIMON
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Chant it from all the deeps
PUMBAA
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Means our master sleeps
TIMON
And when he wakes up
The whole world's his for keeps
TIMON & PUMBAA
He'll wipe the world free
Of humanity
TIMON
Cthulhu fhtagn!
[Spoken]
SIMBA
Cthulhu fhtagn?
PUMBAA
Yeah, it's our motto.
SIMBA
What's a motto?
TIMON
Amato? One of our brethren in the US Congress! [laughs]
PUMBAA
You know what, kid?
Someday Cthulhu will take away all your problems...
TIMON
That's right! Take Pumbaa for example.
[Song resumes]
TIMON
Why, when he still looked human...
PUMBAA
When I still looked humaaaaaaaaaaan!!!
TIMON
Very nice.
PUMBAA
Thanks!
TIMON
He found that his species lacked a certain appeal
To just clear the whole planet was his whole ideal
PUMBAA
I know that it's evil, not what I oughta
So I left all my friends, moved underwater
And oh, the shame
TIMON
He was ashamed!
PUMBAA
Wondered what was to blame
TIMON
Don't blame it one the rain!
PUMBAA
I moved into the muck
TIMON
How did you feel?
PUMBAA
Went to rituals and...
TIMON
Pumbaa! Not in front of the kids!
PUMBAA
Oh... Sorry.
TIMON & PUMBAA
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Chant it from all the deeps
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Means our master sleeps
SIMBA
And when he wakes up
The whole world's his for keeps
TIMON
Yeah, sing it, kid!
TIMON & SIMBA
He'll wipe the world free
PUMBAA
Of humanity
ALL
Cthulhu fhtagn!
--
/\ Arthur M Levesque 2A4W <*> b...@boog.orgy =/\= http://boog.org __
\B\ack King of the Potato People <fnord> "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!" (oO)
\S\lash Member of a vast right-wing conspiracy (-O-) Urban Spaceman /||\
\/ I was a lesbian before it was fashionable "I hate rainbows!"-EC
Eloise Beltz-Decker
> Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
> Malcomson.
>
> "Cthulu Ftagn"
> To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
> Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
I had the pleasure of hearing this performed live last weekend at
DucKon, and I must say it's even better in person. Way to go! :->
--
Eloise Beltz-Decker elo...@ripco.com
http://pages.ripco.com/~eloise/
"He's having a cheezure! Quick, get the de-fromagulator!"
- John Mason, in a fit of silliness in the airport
on the way home from FilKONtario 11.
Gabriel Gentile
wrote on 5/21/01 6:07 AM:
> Gabriel Gentile (spook...@earthlink.net) wrote:
> GG>Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
> GG>Malcomson.
>
> GG>"Cthulu Ftagn"
> GG>To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
> GG>Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
>
> I had a very similar idea a while back...
>
>
> CTHULHU FHTAGN
> Lyrics by Arthur Levesque -- b...@boog.org -- http://boog.org
> (To the tune of the "Kahuna Matata" from "The Lion King")
>
> [This educational song is a favorite with the kids in Innsmouth,
> Massachusetts; and is often performed on special religious occasions...
> in this particular case by the cultists Timon Gilman and Silas "Pumbaa"
> Waterly, with child Simba Scott participating.]
<SNIP>
Okay, Levesque...
I know when I'm licked!
Arthur Levesque
GG>Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
GG>Malcomson.
Arthur Levesque (b...@boog.orgy) wrote:
BS>I had a very similar idea a while back...
GG>Okay, Levesque...
GG>I know when I'm licked!
Nah, I reposted mine to show a *different* take, not necessarily
a better one. There seem to be some ideas (I got a CD of B5 filks
from a group in Scotland who'd done "In The Psi Corps" TTTO "In The
Navy" which was different from the version I did; at least one other
person here did "Turning Minbari" TTTO "Turning Japanese" after I did)
that just seem obvious to multiple people operating independently.
Sandy Tyra
Arthur Levesque wrote:
> Gabriel Gentile (spook...@earthlink.net) wrote:
> GG>Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
> GG>Malcomson.
>
> Arthur Levesque (b...@boog.orgy) wrote:
> BS>I had a very similar idea a while back...
>
> GG>Okay, Levesque...
> GG>I know when I'm licked!
>
> Nah, I reposted mine to show a *different* take, not necessarily
> a better one. There seem to be some ideas (I got a CD of B5 filks
> from a group in Scotland who'd done "In The Psi Corps" TTTO "In The
> Navy" which was different from the version I did; at least one other
> person here did "Turning Minbari" TTTO "Turning Japanese" after I did)
> that just seem obvious to multiple people operating independently.
>
Like "MacArthur Park" = "Jurassic Park." Heck, even *I* started writing that
one, about a month before the movie premiered. But I never got very far, and
my chorus was only a tiny bit different from Weird Al's. Let's see if I can
remember it:
Jurassic Park is scary in the dark,
All the dinosaurs they tromp around,
Someone let T Rex out in the rain
And now I think he's going to eat me,
Is that anyway to treat me?
I don't think I'll ever come back here again. . . .
At least I *think* that was it. Like I said, VERY similar to what Weird Al
recorded. But I was singing it to myself for several months before his
record was released.
Sandy
David G. Bell
sa...@sa-tech.com "Sandy Tyra" wrote:
Some ideas are incredibly obvious...
I don't know about the one rattling around in my brain, because the
title is a bit at an angle to the possible sources.
Tenchi, Prince of Jurai.
No, it wouldn't be the sort of plot found in any other Shakespeare play
about a Prince of anywhere but...
Much Ado About Nothing -- there's just the scene for Kiyone and Mihoshi.
Then again, some obvious ideas are very culture-dependent.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
If I were to go back to my schooldays, knowing what I know now, I would
pack cheese sandwiches for lunch.
Martin Julian DeMello
> Like "MacArthur Park" = "Jurassic Park." Heck, even *I* started writing
> that one, about a month before the movie premiered. But I never got very
Or 'Scanned to Argo' - I started on that, was looking for a 'Bastard
Children' songlist to help finish it, and found out someone had already done
one.
--
Martin DeMello
Michael Liebmann
news:3b098128....@news.cis.dfn.de...
> Nah, I reposted mine to show a *different* take, not necessarily
> a better one. There seem to be some ideas (I got a CD of B5 filks
> from a group in Scotland who'd done "In The Psi Corps" TTTO "In The
> Navy" which was different from the version I did; at least one other
> person here did "Turning Minbari" TTTO "Turning Japanese" after I did)
> that just seem obvious to multiple people operating independently.
>
Michael
Michael Liebmann
news:20010522.19...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk...
> --
> David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
>
> If I were to go back to my schooldays, knowing what I know now, I would
> pack cheese sandwiches for lunch.
>
I'm doing just that now, save I'll take the components and assemble them at
work, then use the toaster oven to make toasted cheese sandwiches. Ah, what
memories.
Michael Liebmann
news:9eh47s$f9f$2...@joe.rice.edu...
>
> Or 'Scanned to Argo' - I started on that, was looking for a 'Bastard
> Children' songlist to help finish it, and found out someone had already
done
> one.
>
it.
Michael
Arthur Levesque
BS>There seem to be some ideas (I got a CD of B5 filks from a group in
BS>Scotland who'd done "In The Psi Corps" TTTO "In The Navy" which was
BS>different from the version I did; at least one other person here did
BS>"Turning Minbari" TTTO "Turning Japanese" after I did) that just
BS>seem obvious to multiple people operating independently.
I seem to recall that Luke Ski wrote a version of "Gump" (TTTO
"Lump") before Weird Al released his, and gets defensive when people
accuse him of ripping off Al...
Michael Liebmann (m...@aps-law.com) wrote:
ML>COPY COPY COPY!!!
Of? All of my songs are on http://boog.org/writings.html -- go down
to the Babylon 5 section for the songs cited above.
--
Filksinger
("David G. Bell") wrote:
<snip>
>
>Some ideas are incredibly obvious...
And some seem incredibly obvious, but nobody actually does them,
apparently. At least, nobody I've asked has ever heard that someone
did "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Klingons".
Annoyingly enough, one song I thought was incredibly obvious was
undone for years. I finally decided to knuckle down and do it, and Tom
Smith tells me he wrote it a couple of years earlier. ("Lord of the
Filk")
Filksinger
AKA David Nasset, Sr.
Geek Prophet to the Technologically Declined
Arthur Levesque
FS>And some seem incredibly obvious, but nobody actually does them,
FS>apparently. At least, nobody I've asked has ever heard that someone
FS>did "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Klingons".
So why haven't you?
--
Filksinger
>Filksinger (VRULWI...@spammotel.com) wrote:
>FS>And some seem incredibly obvious, but nobody actually does them,
>FS>apparently. At least, nobody I've asked has ever heard that someone
>FS>did "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Klingons".
>
> So why haven't you?
Because I have the world's laziest muse. I've been filking for about
13 years, and have written one song, "307 Hell".
Harold Groot
(Filksinger) wrote:
>>Some ideas are incredibly obvious...
The last time this came up, it was noted that there were apparently 4
separate independently created versions of WHO PUT THE TRIBBLES IN THE
QUATROTRITICALE (ttto Who put the Overalls in Mrs. Murphey's Chowder)
>And some seem incredibly obvious, but nobody actually does them,
>apparently. At least, nobody I've asked has ever heard that someone
>did "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Klingons".
Well, how many variations on a theme do you want? A quick (not
exhuastive) check of my files didn't find a version for Klingons, but
did find one for
1. Jedis
2. Starfleet "... to join Starfleet"
3. DIs (Dorsai Irregulars)
Granted, you =could= do this for every race on every show, but unless
you have something that is =particularly= clever, it gets to the point
where it's better to try something else.
Terence Chua
que...@sjm.infi.net (Harold Groot) wrote:
> Well, how many variations on a theme do you want? A quick (not
> exhuastive) check of my files didn't find a version for Klingons, but
> did find one for
>
> 1. Jedis
> 2. Starfleet "... to join Starfleet"
> 3. DIs (Dorsai Irregulars)
Psst. Lawyers.
----------
Terence Chua kh...@tim.org
WWW: http://www.khaosworks.org
KhaOS@TinyTIM: telnet://yay.tim.org:5440
"Love ain't a dying art as far as I can see..."
tomboy ISO tea party
> On Sun, 20 May 2001, Gabriel Gentile wrote:
>
> > Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
> > Malcomson.
> >
> > "Cthulu Ftagn"
> > To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
> > Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
>
> I had the pleasure of hearing this performed live last weekend at
> DucKon, and I must say it's even better in person. Way to go! :->
Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
for that matter.
--Rose, superstitious
--
I want to do my own mending.
Why? { http://i.am/rwp * r...@i.am }
Because, she said, I want to. { MKIOK }
--Judith Tarr, _The Golden Horn_
Lee Gold
>
> In article <3b0e1f3c...@news.sjm.infi.net>,
> que...@sjm.infi.net (Harold Groot) wrote:
>
> > Well, how many variations on a theme do you want? A quick (not
> > exhuastive) check of my files didn't find a version for Klingons, but
> > did find one for
> >
> > 1. Jedis
> > 2. Starfleet "... to join Starfleet"
> > 3. DIs (Dorsai Irregulars)
>
> Psst. Lawyers.
Filkers. By Duane Elms. Appears in Xeno #8.
Gabriel Gentile
wrote on 5/25/01 12:36 PM:
> Eloise Beltz-Decker <elo...@ripco.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 20 May 2001, Gabriel Gentile wrote:
>>
>>> Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
>>> Malcomson.
>>>
>>> "Cthulu Ftagn"
>>> To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
>>> Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
>>
>> I had the pleasure of hearing this performed live last weekend at
>> DucKon, and I must say it's even better in person. Way to go! :->
>
> Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
> repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
> for that matter.
Yes.
Filksinger
wrote:
Good enough for me. I didn't know about the Jedi or Starfleet
versions, and only vaguely heard about the Dorsai version. I started
thinking about it again when I heard Terrence Chua's version about
lawyers.
Joe Kesselman
> in article 1ety5j8.46sg37ku0f3aN%r...@i.am, tomboy ISO tea party at r...@i.am
> wrote on 5/25/01 12:36 PM:
> > repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen?
It seems a bit unusual to be afraid of an invocation of an
_invented_ mythos... unless you assume that all such
references are inspired by someThing or that the act of
publishing/reading creates a reality (in which case I
presume you don't read dark fantasy either?).
Of course I'm an agnotic theist, so I don't expect
_anything_ immaterial to respond to an invocation. Cats
sometimes respond to their names, but they only think
they're gods.
(I'm reading Merritt's _The_Moon_Pool_ right now, which has
a somewhat cthuloid flavor to it.)
Joe Kesselman
> Psst. Lawyers.
Given some of the counselors I've run into, and some of the
cases I've heard of them defending, maybe it's time to
reverse that one:
Mommas, don't let your lawyers grow up to be babies...
> "Love ain't a dying art as far as I can see..."
More a living art, or an art of living...
Terence Chua
r...@i.am (tomboy ISO tea party) wrote:
> Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
> repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
> for that matter.
>
> --Rose, superstitious
You obviously haven't attended any filk circles I've been in then. :-)
(me, who sang "Do You Hear the Pipes Cthulhu?" at Ozziecon 4 times due
to demand over as many nights until I was actually worried I might
summon something)
----------
Terence Chua kh...@tim.org
WWW: http://www.khaosworks.org
KhaOS@TinyTIM: telnet://yay.tim.org:5440
Chris Meredith
>>And some seem incredibly obvious, but nobody actually does them,
>>apparently. At least, nobody I've asked has ever heard that someone
>>did "Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Klingons".
>
>Well, how many variations on a theme do you want? A quick (not
>exhuastive) check of my files didn't find a version for Klingons, but
>did find one for
>3. DIs (Dorsai Irregulars)
We don't seem to have this one on our "Dorsai Songbook" page at the DI website - www.di.org -
could I trouble you to transcribe and send it to me so that I can start the process of tracking
the author and getting permission to post it?
We would welcome seeing any DI, Dorsai or Gordy Dickson related filk - new, old, non-North
American etc.
Chris Meredith, DI - WebKahuna - DI.ORG
Aaron Davies
> Arthur Levesque (meist...@boog.org) wrote:
> BS>There seem to be some ideas (I got a CD of B5 filks from a group in
> BS>Scotland who'd done "In The Psi Corps" TTTO "In The Navy" which was
> BS>different from the version I did; at least one other person here did
> BS>"Turning Minbari" TTTO "Turning Japanese" after I did) that just
> BS>seem obvious to multiple people operating independently.
>
> I seem to recall that Luke Ski wrote a version of "Gump" (TTTO
> "Lump") before Weird Al released his, and gets defensive when people
> accuse him of ripping off Al...
>
> Michael Liebmann (m...@aps-law.com) wrote:
> ML>COPY COPY COPY!!!
>
> Of? All of my songs are on http://boog.org/writings.html -- go down
> to the Babylon 5 section for the songs cited above.
I know someone (Batya Wittenberg) who did a Star Wars filk to "American
Pie" before Weird Al who has the same problem.
--
__ __
/ ) / )
/--/ __. __ ________ / / __. , __o _ _
/ (_(_/|_/ (_(_) / / <_ /__/_(_/|_\/ <__</_/_)_
Mark A. Mandel
: Eloise Beltz-Decker <elo...@ripco.com> wrote:
:> On Sun, 20 May 2001, Gabriel Gentile wrote:
:> >
:> > "Cthulu Ftagn"
:> > To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
:> > Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
: Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
: repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
: for that matter.
Reminds me of a fellow I met in my freshman year in college (one of the
three people in the entering class who were younger than me, as it
happened). We were talking about the Lensman series and he referred to the
chief villain, either omitting or (imho) mangling the name. I said
"Gharlane of Eddore", giving the "gh" the proper somewhat gargly effect
that the spelling implies to me. (A voiced velar fricative, like Modern
Greek gamma. I'm a linguist (language scientist), OK?) And he jumped and
stared at me: "You dare to pronounce that name?"
Of course, I think he was just doing shtick.
-- Mark
--
To reply by email, remove the obvious spam-blocker from my edress.
Mark A. Mandel
: Terence Chua wrote:
:> que...@sjm.infi.net (Harold Groot) wrote:
:>
:> > Well, how many variations on a theme do you want? A quick (not
:> > exhuastive) check of my files didn't find a version for Klingons, but
:> > did find one for
:> >
:> > 1. Jedis
:> > 2. Starfleet "... to join Starfleet"
:> > 3. DIs (Dorsai Irregulars)
:>
:> Psst. Lawyers.
: Filkers. By Duane Elms. Appears in Xeno #8.
Mundanes. By me. (But it's not based on that song.)
Harold Groot
wrote:
>>3. DIs (Dorsai Irregulars)
>
>We don't seem to have this one on our "Dorsai Songbook" page at the DI website - www.di.org -
>could I trouble you to transcribe and send it to me so that I can start the process of tracking
>the author and getting permission to post it?
>
>We would welcome seeing any DI, Dorsai or Gordy Dickson related filk - new, old, non-North
>American etc.
Margaret Middleton might have an attribution. I know she has sung it,
and might have the words handier. I'd probably have to find a tape
from the 80's and transcribe it. I'm pretty sure it was on one of my
ConFusion tapes (or maybe my one set of RockCon tapes??), that narrows
it down to a couple of dozen...
Chris Croughton
<VRULWI...@spammotel.com> wrote:
>>Well, how many variations on a theme do you want? A quick (not
>>exhuastive) check of my files didn't find a version for Klingons, but
>>did find one for
>>
>>1. Jedis
>>2. Starfleet "... to join Starfleet"
>>3. DIs (Dorsai Irregulars)
>>
>>Granted, you =could= do this for every race on every show, but unless
>>you have something that is =particularly= clever, it gets to the point
>>where it's better to try something else.
>
>Good enough for me. I didn't know about the Jedi or Starfleet
>versions, and only vaguely heard about the Dorsai version. I started
>thinking about it again when I heard Terrence Chua's version about
>lawyers.
I've also heard versions with various other parts of fandom mentioned
(Trekkies, filkers, etc.) as well as generic 'spacers'. Yes, 'Klingons'
are obvious but they are so obvious that it wouldn't be interesting.
Just like my puns. Either so obvious that no-one thinks they're funny,
or so obscure that it takes several pages to explain them...
Chris C
Chris Croughton
<r...@i.am> wrote:
>Eloise Beltz-Decker <elo...@ripco.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 20 May 2001, Gabriel Gentile wrote:
>>
>> > Here's on I co-wrote with a fella from Arizona by the name of Scott
>> > Malcomson.
>> >
>> > "Cthulu Ftagn"
>> > To the tune of "Hakuna Matata"
>> > Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft
>>
>> I had the pleasure of hearing this performed live last weekend at
>> DucKon, and I must say it's even better in person. Way to go! :->
>
>Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
>repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
>for that matter.
What, the title? I wouldn't mind that (I'm not fond of the mythos in
general, but I don't believe in it).
On the subject of "Am I the only?", am I the only fan who when going
through a corridor at work starts worrying about how to get out if the
gravity goes off? It's not something which worries me outside, but in a
coridoor where without gravity there woudn't be enough traction to push
the doors open, I get worried...
Chris C
Chris Croughton
<kh...@tim.org> wrote:
>(me, who sang "Do You Hear the Pipes Cthulhu?" at Ozziecon 4 times due
>to demand over as many nights until I was actually worried I might
>summon something)
We could have used you at Pentatonic and HarmonIX (British filkcons #5
and #9), where we needed to summon the lift (elevator). Several of us
were doing more and more complex rituals to summon it <g>...
Chris C
Benjamin Newman
> > On Sun, 20 May 2001, Gabriel Gentile wrote:
> >
> > > "Cthulu Ftagn"
>
> Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
> repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
> for that matter.
> --Rose, superstitious
It means "Cthulhu is sleeping."
I find that much more encouraging than, say, "Cthulhu is awake."
-- Ben Newman
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
Who will go down to the shady groves
And summon the shadows there?
And tie a ribbon on those shelt'ring arms
In the Springtime of the year?
-- Loreena McKennitt
Mary Creasey
Chris Croughton <ch...@keristor.org> wrote in message
news:slrn9gvklg...@ccserver.keris.net...
Any smokers left in Brit filkfandom? I've seen Leslie use lighting a
cigarette as an elevator-bringing charm...(over here, one cannot
smoke in elevators).
Mary
Aaron Davies
The Sirius Cybernetics corporation apologizes for the delay.
P.S.: You could try a rousing chorus of "Share and Enjoy" (sung a
flatted fifth out of tune, of course).
Chris Croughton
<cre...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Any smokers left in Brit filkfandom? I've seen Leslie use lighting a
>cigarette as an elevator-bringing charm...(over here, one cannot
>smoke in elevators).
A few. Mostly they are pretty polite and don't smoke around non-smokers
(some will ask if anyone minds, some will just assume that people will
mind and go elsewhere). As I recall, this hotel was non-smoking
throughout though (it certainly should have been, all the coridoors and
stairways were really small).
Chris C
tomboy ISO tea party
> Gabriel Gentile wrote:
> > in article 1ety5j8.46sg37ku0f3aN%r...@i.am, tomboy ISO tea party at r...@i.am
> > wrote on 5/25/01 12:36 PM:
> > > Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
> > > repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen?
> > Yes.
>
> It seems a bit unusual to be afraid of an invocation of an
> _invented_ mythos... unless you assume that all such
> references are inspired by someThing or that the act of
> publishing/reading creates a reality (in which case I
> presume you don't read dark fantasy either?).
It's the tone of that particular mythos that makes me slightly antsy.
It's usually fairly easy to distinguish between someone describing
something imagined and someone describing something experienced. With
Lovecraft, it's disturbingly difficult. And why tempt fate? *shrug*
Though of course that hasn't stopped me from, say, doing things the
Bible says will send me to hell just in case it's right. But I think I'd
rather be stuck in the hell of Revelations than subject to Lovecraft's
Elder Gods.
--Rose
tomboy ISO tea party
> On Fri, 25 May 2001, tomboy ISO tea party wrote:
>
> > > On Sun, 20 May 2001, Gabriel Gentile wrote:
> > >
> > > > "Cthulu Ftagn"
> >
> > Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
> > repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
> > for that matter.
> > --Rose, superstitious
>
> It means "Cthulhu is sleeping."
>
> I find that much more encouraging than, say, "Cthulhu is awake."
That's an excellent point. *) I wasn't aware of the translation; thank
you.
--Rose
Terence Chua
r...@i.am (tomboy ISO tea party) wrote:
> Benjamin Newman <new...@cs.swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 25 May 2001, tomboy ISO tea party wrote:
> >
> > > > On Sun, 20 May 2001, Gabriel Gentile wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > "Cthulu Ftagn"
> > >
> > > Am I the only one here who would be slightly nervous at someone
> > > repeating that phrase in a roomful of fen? Or in a room that _I'm_ in,
> > > for that matter.
> > > --Rose, superstitious
> >
> > It means "Cthulhu is sleeping."
> >
> > I find that much more encouraging than, say, "Cthulhu is awake."
>
> That's an excellent point. *) I wasn't aware of the translation; thank
> you.
>
> --Rose
Actually, to be exact, it more properly translates to "Cthulhu waits" or
"Cthulhu dreams."
The full phrase is "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,"
meaning, "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
----------
Terence Chua kh...@tim.org
WWW: http://www.khaosworks.org
KhaOS@TinyTIM: telnet://yay.tim.org:5440
"The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars."
Joe Ellis
<kh...@tim.org> wrote:
<<snip>>
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,"
Gesundheit!
You really ought to see a doctor about that...
--
Joe Ellis € The Synthetic Filker TesserAct Studios
| W W | W W W | W W | W W W | W W | W W W | W W | W W W |
| W W | W W W | W W | W W W | W W | W W W | W W | W W W |
|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
Filk € Fly Fishing € Model Railroading € Digital Photography
Mark A. Mandel
: It's the tone of that particular mythos that makes me slightly antsy.
: It's usually fairly easy to distinguish between someone describing
: something imagined and someone describing something experienced. With
: Lovecraft, it's disturbingly difficult.
In Sharon McCrumb's 2nd (and probably last) Jay Omega fandom mystery,
_Zombies of the Gene Pool_, there's an exchange something like this (badly
paraphrased from memory):
"That was tragic. [...] He wrote extremely detailed, closely plotted tales
of demons plotting to take over the world and controlling people's minds.
They were quite successful in their day and still have considerable
literary merit."
"I don't understand. What's so tragic about that?"
"He was writing non-fiction."
-- Mark A. Mandel
Mark A. Mandel
: Actually, to be exact, it more properly translates to "Cthulhu waits" or
: "Cthulhu dreams."
: The full phrase is "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,"
: meaning, "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
Ahhh. I'm gonna save that to memorize... the same way I freaked out some
college friends with my accurate (well, believable, and accurate if you
know how to follow JRRT's descriptions) rendition of the Ring-rhyme.
Aaron Davies
> Terence Chua <kh...@tim.org> wrote:
>
> : Actually, to be exact, it more properly translates to "Cthulhu waits" or
> : "Cthulhu dreams."
>
> : The full phrase is "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,"
> : meaning, "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
>
> Ahhh. I'm gonna save that to memorize... the same way I freaked out some
> college friends with my accurate (well, believable, and accurate if you
> know how to follow JRRT's descriptions) rendition of the Ring-rhyme.
What, you mean in the original language? (I forget what it's called at
the moment.) I'm fairly sure all of us could do it in English.
Mark A. Mandel
: Mark A. Mandel <m...@world.std.Take.This.Out.com> wrote:
:> Ahhh. I'm gonna save that to memorize... the same way I freaked out some
:> college friends with my accurate (well, believable, and accurate if you
:> know how to follow JRRT's descriptions) rendition of the Ring-rhyme.
: What, you mean in the original language? (I forget what it's called at
: the moment.) I'm fairly sure all of us could do it in English.
Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
"Ash nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
"The change in the wizard's voice was astounding..."
-- Mark
http://world.std.com/~mam/
Rob Wynne
>Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
> "Ash nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul,
> ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
>"The change in the wizard's voice was astounding..."
*frowns disapprovingly* It's been a LONG time since anyone dared to
speak that tongue on this newsgroup....
ElRob
--
Rob Wynne / The Autographed Cat / d...@america.net
The best original science-fiction and fantasy on the web:
Aphelion Webzine: http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/
Gafilk 2002: Jan 11-13, 2002, Atlanta, GA -- http://www.gafilk.org/
"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV
series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and
cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith
nyma...@netway.com
: Ahhh. I'm gonna save that to memorize... the same way I freaked out some
: college friends with my accurate (well, believable, and accurate if you
: know how to follow JRRT's descriptions) rendition of the Ring-rhyme.
College friends, your *children's* college friends....
Ny
still shivering :)
________________________
Nyani-Iisha (Ny) Martin
May you live in internetting times.
-Modern Chinese curse
nyma...@netway.com
Joe Kesselman
> Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
word.
'''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
(I've occasionally considered trying to learn a basic vocabularly
therein, mostly to make the occasional umop-ap!sdn phrase a bit faster
and easier to type.)
--
------------------------------------------------------
Joe Kesselman, http://www.lovesong.com/people/keshlam/
On May 12, join Walkabout and many of our favorite
performers as we offer a musical tribute to Woody Guthrie!
http://www.WalkaboutClearwater.org/coffeehouse.html
Daniel R. Reitman
<m...@world.std.Take.This.Out.com> wrote:
>Aaron Davies <aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com> wrote:
>: Mark A. Mandel <m...@world.std.Take.This.Out.com> wrote:
>:> Ahhh. I'm gonna save that to memorize... the same way I freaked out some
>:> college friends with my accurate (well, believable, and accurate if you
>:> know how to follow JRRT's descriptions) rendition of the Ring-rhyme.
>: What, you mean in the original language? (I forget what it's called at
>: the moment.) I'm fairly sure all of us could do it in English.
>Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
> "Ash nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul,
> ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
>. . . .
But what was it in the original Klingon? :-)
Dan, ad nauseam
Filksinger
<kes...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>"Mark A. Mandel" wrote:
>> Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
>
>FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
>such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
>word.
>
> '''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
>
>(I've occasionally considered trying to learn a basic vocabularly
>therein, mostly to make the occasional umop-ap!sdn phrase a bit faster
>and easier to type.)
I have a friend, a programmer at Microsoft, who tells me that, when he
had a job with little to do years ago, he taught himselft to read
ROT13. He says he's never met anyone else who can do it.
Filksinger
AKA David Nasset, Sr.
Geek Prophet to the Technologically Declined
Garrett Fitzgerald
news:GE4nH...@world.std.com:
> Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
>
> "Ash nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul,
> ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
Does it tick anyone else off that the original scans almost exactly to
the translation? Tolkein was usually more creative than that...
Joe Ellis
(Garrett Fitzgerald) wrote:
If you want a challange, hammer it to fit "Hava Nagila" <sp?>
Ash nazg durbatulu^k,
Ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh
burzum-ish' krimp'tul.
<<WEG>>
Aaron Davies
> "Mark A. Mandel" wrote:
> > Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
>
> FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
> such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
> word.
>
> '''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
Um, what? I can't figure that out.
Martin Julian DeMello
> Joe Kesselman <kes...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
>> such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
>> word.
>>
>> '''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
> Um, what? I can't figure that out.
"In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie"
(Each word is rotated 180 degrees, so that in -> ui (or u! if you prefer).
And, of course, some letters like t don't rotate too well, though in some
fonts a broad-based '1' or a crossed '7' do a reasonably good job.)
--
Martin DeMello
Terence Chua
aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com (Aaron Davies) wrote:
> Joe Kesselman <kes...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > "Mark A. Mandel" wrote:
> > > Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
> >
> > FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
> > such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
> > word.
> >
> > '''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
>
> Um, what? I can't figure that out.
Read it upside down and back to front. "In the land of Mordor, where the
shadows lie."
Aaron Davies
> In article <1eu8ij2.7iviiz1vt1k5iN%aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com>,
> aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com (Aaron Davies) wrote:
>
> > Joe Kesselman <kes...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> > > "Mark A. Mandel" wrote:
> > > > Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
> > >
> > > FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
> > > such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
> > > word.
> > >
> > > '''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
> >
> > Um, what? I can't figure that out.
>
> Read it upside down and back to front. "In the land of Mordor, where the
> shadows lie."
Ah, I see. I was looking for the whole sentence to have been rotated.
You just did each word individually.
Joe Kesselman
> Does it tick anyone else off that the original scans almost exactly to
> the translation? Tolkein was usually more creative than that...
Ah, but was he creative in translating _to_ the Black Speech -- or in
doing a poetic translation _from_ it?
("A translation is like a mistress: Beautiful and unfaithful, or
faithful and plain." -- Russian proverb.)
Joe Kesselman
> (Each word is rotated 180 degrees, so that in -> ui (or u! if you prefer).
Oops. Typo; that should indeed have been u!.
> And, of course, some letters like t don't rotate too well
I usually use + for t, like the ! for i. But what works best can vary
from font to font.
(Hm. I have access to a letterpress. Tempting to set a whole business
card in asJaAu! and see how long it takes people to figure it out...)
Mark A. Mandel
: Mark A. Mandel <m...@world.std.take.this.out.com> wrote:
:>Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
:> "Ash nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul,
:> ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
:>"The change in the wizard's voice was astounding..."
: *frowns disapprovingly* It's been a LONG time since anyone dared to
: speak that tongue on this newsgroup....
<eg> Ahhhh. That's very much like the reaction I got in college.
-- Mark
Mark A. Mandel
: FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
: such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
: word.
: '''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
OW! My brain Hertz! ... Or rather, as you have it,
!Hertz brain My !OW Order reverse in are words the.
I prefer
ail smopays ayt aJaym 'JopJow Jo puel ayt u!
This doesn't look as good for me as it should because my "a"s are
"script", with no "roof".
-- Mark A. Mandel
FIJAGH! Now, *filking*, on the other hand...
http://world.std.com/~mam/filk.html
Mark A. Mandel
: On Wed, 30 May 2001 00:04:31 -0400, Joe Kesselman
:>
:>FWIW, the "inverted video" font I've sometimes used for spoilers and
:>such also has a nice forbidding sound to it when spoken aloud word by
:>word.
:>
:> '''ui ayt puel Jo JopJow, aJaym ayt ssmopays ail'
:>
:>(I've occasionally considered trying to learn a basic vocabularly
:>therein, mostly to make the occasional umop-ap!sdn phrase a bit faster
:>and easier to type.)
: I have a friend, a programmer at Microsoft, who tells me that, when he
: had a job with little to do years ago, he taught himselft to read
: ROT13. He says he's never met anyone else who can do it.
When I was working at Honeywell, in the computer division they bought from
GE, I heard the following tale told as true. I was there in the 80s and
this would have been well before that.
One of their products was line printers. They sometimes did custom jobs
of printers, print chains, drivers, and so on. For you young sprouts who
have never seen a line printer,* it's this machine about four feet high by
three or four wide by a foot or so thick (at least the ones I worked with
were) that prints on 132-column paper, jerking the paper along one line at
a time, and printing all the characters on each line almost simultaneously
by running a chain of the types along the line very fast, with a hammer
for each column to hit the chain just at the moment the right type ('a',
'b', ...) for that position is AT the position. Noisy as hell.
* ObFilk: When I Was a Boy
One of their customers was No Such Agency* or some other secret gov't
organization, which needed one or two very special jobs for something
related to encryption. Knowledge of the specific details was restricted to
a few people in the company, and the machines were definitely NOT to be
used before secure delivery. But they had to test it before shipping.
* The National Security Agency, which pretended it didn't exist.
The answer was to send an agency man to the company to run the test. Well,
he set it up, but there was a problem: the print chain they had on it
wasn't the right one. I don't remember why -- it may have been designed to
run with a special-order print chain that they didn't have on hand, or the
only one was at the agency, or whatever.
But he started up his test program anyway and stared through the window,
upside-down to the type, at the rows of gibberish coming off the printer
at about 60 lines a second. And his face lit up with a big grin, and he
crowed, "It's working! It's working perfectly!"
He had solved the substitution cipher from the available print chain to
the right one in his head, on the spot, and was reading the output as it
came off the printer.
-- Mark A. Mandel
FIJAGH! Now, *filking*, on the other hand...
http://world.std.com/~mam/filk.html
Mark A. Mandel
: On Wed, 30 May 2001 02:41:35 GMT, "Mark A. Mandel"
:>Yes, that's what I meant. The Black Speech.
:> "Ash nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul,
:> ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
: But what was it in the original Klingon? :-)
Since you ask...
Hoch ra'meH wa' Qeb
Hoch SammeH wa'
Hoch qemmeH wa' Qeb
'ach HurghghachDaq baghmeH
Klingons disdain rhyme as effete.
tlhIngan veQbeq marqem la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcommander Marke'm, Klingon Sanitation Corps --
Death to Litterbugs!
Mark A. Mandel
:>
:> "Ash nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul,
:> ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
: Does it tick anyone else off that the original scans almost exactly to
: the translation? Tolkein was usually more creative than that...
Doesn't bother me. It's a challenge to the translator. I've translated Tom
Lehrer's "The Old Dope Peddler" into Esperanto with the same rhyme and
meter as the original, quite singable imho. Ditto the Hebrew "Erev Shel
Shoshanim".
-- Mark A. Mandel
FIJAGH! Now, *filking*, on the other hand...
http://world.std.com/~mam/filk.html
--
Mark A. Mandel
: Mark A. Mandel <m...@world.std.take.this.out.com> wrote:
: : Ahhh. I'm gonna save that to memorize... the same way I freaked out some
: : college friends with my accurate (well, believable, and accurate if you
: : know how to follow JRRT's descriptions) rendition of the Ring-rhyme.
: College friends, your *children's* college friends....
<long echoing evil laughter>
-- Mark
tomboy ISO tea party
> I have a friend, a programmer at Microsoft, who tells me that, when he
> had a job with little to do years ago, he taught himselft to read
> ROT13. He says he's never met anyone else who can do it.
I can't read it as fast as regular text, but I can recognize it without
being told it's ROT13 and do the translation reasonably quickly. I can
also read upside-down, sideways, and backwards with very little trouble.
--Rose, easily bored as a child
--
I want to do my own mending.
Why? { http://i.am/rwp * r...@i.am }
Because, she said, I want to. { MKIOK }
--Judith Tarr, _The Golden Horn_
Chris Croughton
<VRULWI...@spammotel.com> wrote:
>I have a friend, a programmer at Microsoft, who tells me that, when he
>had a job with little to do years ago, he taught himselft to read
>ROT13. He says he's never met anyone else who can do it.
He doesn't know anyone on uk.rec.sheds, then, where a lot of the
residents type straight in ROT13 as well as read it. Reading ROT13 is
almost a prerequisite for reading the group (basically, any words which
/might/ offend - which includes jbex and guvax as well as 'real' "words
not in polite usage" like penc - are ROTted). The traffic is too high
there for me to read the group regularly, but they are a crazy (in the
fannish sense) bunch...
Chris C
Chris Croughton
<r...@i.am> wrote:
>I can't read it as fast as regular text, but I can recognize it without
>being told it's ROT13 and do the translation reasonably quickly. I can
>also read upside-down, sideways, and backwards with very little trouble.
Ah, but do you also try to de-ROT Cymraeg (Welsh)? I know several
people who have tried <g>...
Chris C
Chris Croughton
<mdem...@kennel.ruf.rice.edu> wrote:
>(Each word is rotated 180 degrees, so that in -> ui (or u! if you prefer).
>And, of course, some letters like t don't rotate too well, though in some
>fonts a broad-based '1' or a crossed '7' do a reasonably good job.)
Oh, only every /word/. I tried to read it as the whole phrase upside
down...
Chris C
tomboy ISO tea party
David G. Bell
<slrn9hcdk4...@dayspring.firedrake.org>
ch...@keristor.org "Chris Croughton" wrote:
It often feels more fannish than any of the SF-specific newsgroups in
the UK. And read the FAQ.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
If I were to go back to my schooldays, knowing what I know now, I would
pack cheese sandwiches for lunch.
Joe Ellis
party) wrote:
>Chris Croughton <ch...@keristor.org> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 31 May 2001 00:40:30 -0400, tomboy ISO tea party
>> <r...@i.am> wrote:
>>
>> >I can't read it as fast as regular text, but I can recognize it without
>> >being told it's ROT13 and do the translation reasonably quickly. I can
>> >also read upside-down, sideways, and backwards with very little trouble.
>>
>> Ah, but do you also try to de-ROT Cymraeg (Welsh)? I know several
>> people who have tried <g>...
>
>Nope, I've seen enough Welsh to know better. *)
>
>--Rose
>
Hmmm... I tried ROTing Welsh... it made MORE sense. <<grin>>
(... and the Ellyce side of the family _may_ be Welsh...)
Michael Liebmann
news:3b151dcc...@127.0.0.1...
>
> I have a friend, a programmer at Microsoft, who tells me that, when he
> had a job with little to do years ago, he taught himselft to read
> ROT13. He says he's never met anyone else who can do it.
>
Michael
Filksinger
ROT13 is a common way of hiding spoilers in newsgroups, and also for
hiding "questionable" words from filters. It is done by taking any
letter, and moving it 13 places down the alphabet, with words going
past Z wrapping around to A. Repeat the process to decode.
Most newsreaders have the ability to automatically ROT13. For example,
in Agent, select the text you want to ROT13, then click Edit, then
Apply ROT13. For Outlook Express, you can decode by opening the
message fully, then selecting Message, then Unscramble, but there is
no function for _creating_ ROT13 of which I know.
MegaMole
<m...@aps-law.com> writes
>>
>ROT13??????
>
>Michael
>
(just in case Michael really doesn't know)
Come *on* Michael - you give the air of someone who's been around a
while. ROT-13 is where one takes a word, let's say "Michael", and moves
each character 13 steps on in the alphabet, to get "Zvpunry".
(snigger).
ROT-13 is often used to hide outrageous fcbvyref for the latest series
of Ohssl (for example).
There are ROT-13's which are anagrams of the word they're hiding.
"Obhtug" is one.
Visit uk.rec.sheds for a true rknzcyr of ROT-13 in npgvba. If you can
pbcr, that is.
And my newsreader (Turnpike) has a nice little ROT-13 feature.
--
* MegaMole, The Official Enrico Basilica : Chocolate rix in thy tum *
* http://www.countertenor.demon.co.uk/index.html Filks, Liff, Stuff *
mo...@lspace.org mo...@music.slut.org.uk fi...@countertenor.demon.co.uk
"Listen! Lyf is gude, And thou art welbiloved and frended..." DQ 627
keith lim
> There are ROT-13's which are anagrams of the word they're hiding.
> "Obhtug" is one.
Some anagrams are words sliced in half and the halves swapped:
vain
Some ROT13s are palindromes:
gnat, ravine
Some turn into other words:
crag, ebbs, ones, rail, onyx, Jung, terra, clerk, Cheryl, abjurer
One interesting thing to try is to write a (minimally coherent) sentence
that turns into another (minimally coherent) sentence when ROT13ed. (In
other words, neither sentence has to make any more sense than the
average palindrome, but they have to be more than just a bunch of words
strung together at random.)
--
keith lim keit...@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~keithlim/
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
--Steven Wright
Aaron Davies
> Garrett Fitzgerald wrote:
> > Does it tick anyone else off that the original scans almost exactly to
> > the translation? Tolkein was usually more creative than that...
>
> Ah, but was he creative in translating _to_ the Black Speech -- or in
> doing a poetic translation _from_ it?
>
> ("A translation is like a mistress: Beautiful and unfaithful, or
> faithful and plain." -- Russian proverb.)
Which reminds me of Heinlein's opinion (thru a character in _Number of
the Beast_, IIRC), that Tolstoy *gains* in translation.
Mark A. Mandel
: Hmmm... I tried ROTing Welsh... it made MORE sense. <<grin>>
: (... and the Ellyce side of the family _may_ be Welsh...)
Joe, I thought it was only the English who spoke of "those rotting Welsh"!
Mark A. Mandel
: He doesn't know anyone on uk.rec.sheds, then, where a lot of the
sheds? As in outbuildings???
Mark A. Mandel
: And my newsreader (Turnpike) has a nice little ROT-13 feature.
As does tin. I've used it more in the past five minutes than in the five
years previous.
Intentionally, that is. Tin uses "d" to toggle ROT13. When I lose track of
whether I'm in a newsgroup or an email list and hit "d" to delete the
current message (in pine, my mailer) and read the next, I suffer brain
ROT.
-- Znex... hey, I can pronounce that!
Mark A. Mandel
: Some ROT13s are palindromes:
: gnat, ravine
Not really palindromes, which would still be palindromes under rot13 or
any substitution cipher, but I see what you mean.
-- Mark
Mark A. Mandel
: : But what was it in the original Klingon? :-)
: Since you ask...
: Hoch ra'meH wa' Qeb
: Hoch SammeH wa'
: Hoch qemmeH wa' Qeb
: 'ach HurghghachDaq baghmeH
****
<HIvqa' veglargh!> That should be <'ej>, not <'ach>. <'ach> means 'but'.
My memory of the original was confused by Black Speech "agh", which means
'and'.
Mark A. Mandel
: Which reminds me of Heinlein's opinion (thru a character in _Number of
: the Beast_, IIRC), that Tolstoy *gains* in translation.
Yes, Sharpie, who was based on Mrs. H. Well, all his heroines were, but I
refer specifically to learning Russian to read Tolstoy in the original.
-- Mark
tomboy ISO tea party
> Most newsreaders have the ability to automatically ROT13. For example,
> in Agent, select the text you want to ROT13, then click Edit, then
> Apply ROT13. For Outlook Express, you can decode by opening the
> message fully, then selecting Message, then Unscramble, but there is
> no function for _creating_ ROT13 of which I know.
Creating ROT13 == decoding ROT13, yes?
Rob Wynne
I always rot13 all my posts twice, for extra protection...
Rob
--
Rob Wynne / The Autographed Cat / d...@america.net
The best original science-fiction and fantasy on the web:
Aphelion Webzine: http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/
Gafilk 2002: Jan 11-13, 2002, Atlanta, GA -- http://www.gafilk.org/
"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV
series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and
cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith
keith lim
> keith lim <keit...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> : Some ROT13s are palindromes:
> : gnat, ravine
>
> Not really palindromes, which would still be palindromes under rot13 or
> any substitution cipher, but I see what you mean.
Ugh. Did I write that? I actually *know* what palindromes are. What I
meant to say, of course, was that some ROT13 words are their
counterparts spelled backwards.
While I was typing that bit, I was thinking about a ravine being named
Enivar. The "Enivar Ravine", the palindromic tourist attraction. The
thought must have leaked out into what I ended up typing.
There once was this bookshop in Singapore called Skoob Books. A good
source of secondhand SF books at reasonable prices, but sadly long gone.
Love the name, though.
--
keith lim keit...@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~keithlim/
The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.
Dave Weingart
>ROT13??????
N irel fvzcyr fhofgvghgvba plcure, jvgu rnpu yrggre zbirq (be "ebgngrq")
unys na nycunorg (13 yrggref) njnl.
Genqvgvbanyyl, vg'f orra hfrq ba Hfrarg gb bofpher jbeqf gung qryvpngr
frafvovyvgvrf zvtug svaq bssrafvir.
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK "They reached for tomorrow, but tomorrow's
mailto:phyd...@liii.com more of the same. They reached for
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux tomorrow, but tomorrow never came."
ICQ 57055207 -- Berlin, "Masquerade"
Dave Weingart
>Creating ROT13 == decoding ROT13, yes?
Yeppers.
Michael Liebmann
>
> ROT13 is a common way of hiding spoilers in newsgroups, and also for
> hiding "questionable" words from filters. It is done by taking any
> letter, and moving it 13 places down the alphabet, with words going
> past Z wrapping around to A. Repeat the process to decode.
>
> Most newsreaders have the ability to automatically ROT13. For example,
> in Agent, select the text you want to ROT13, then click Edit, then
> Apply ROT13. For Outlook Express, you can decode by opening the
> message fully, then selecting Message, then Unscramble, but there is
> no function for _creating_ ROT13 of which I know.
>
Michael Liebmann
news:NeR0jIA9...@countertenor.demon.co.uk...
> >
> (just in case Michael really doesn't know)
>
> Come *on* Michael - you give the air of someone who's been around a
> while. ROT-13 is where one takes a word, let's say "Michael", and moves
> each character 13 steps on in the alphabet, to get "Zvpunry".
> (snigger).
>
Michael
Chris Croughton
<m...@world.std.Take.This.Out.com> wrote:
>Chris Croughton <ch...@keristor.org> wrote:
>
>: He doesn't know anyone on uk.rec.sheds, then, where a lot of the
>
>sheds? As in outbuildings???
Well, sort-of. That's what I thought when te group was proposed, but
when they started talking about "virtual sheds" and "a garage which has
a Creed 75 teleprinter in it counts as a shed", and the things one does
in sheds (involving pork pies and beer, mostly), it became clear that
these people weren't just talking about your common or garden shed,
this is for "sheddi knights" who know the True Inner Meaning of Sheds.
Or "fannish type people who happen to not be actual SF fans in some
cases but are mad enough to be trufans"...
Chris C
Filksinger
wrote:
>Filksinger <VRULWI...@spammotel.com> wrote:
>
>> Most newsreaders have the ability to automatically ROT13. For example,
>> in Agent, select the text you want to ROT13, then click Edit, then
>> Apply ROT13. For Outlook Express, you can decode by opening the
>> message fully, then selecting Message, then Unscramble, but there is
>> no function for _creating_ ROT13 of which I know.
>
>Creating ROT13 == decoding ROT13, yes?
Yes, but in this case, the built in function only works on _received
newsgroup messages_. So to create ROT13 with that function, I'd first
have to send the message to the list _without_ ROT13, then create
ROT13 and paste it into a new message.
Filksinger
wrote:
>Still don't understand what you mean.
Observe.
To turn the word Alice into ROT13.
A is #1 in the alphabet. Add 13, making 14. Letter fourteen is N.
L is the 12th letter, 12+13 is 25, the 25th letter is Y.
I is 9, 9+13=22, 22=V
C is 3, 3+13=16, 16=P
E is 5, 5+13=18, 18=R
So, in ROT13, Alice is Nyvpr
To decode, just use ROT13 again
N=A
y=l
v=i
p=c
r=e
Nyvpr=Alice.
If this is difficult for you to do, and you don't know how to use the
ROT13 feature in your newsreader, here's a key:
A=N
B=O
C=P
D=Q
E=R
F=S
G=T
H=U
I=V
J=W
K=X
L=Y
M=Z
It works both ways. So, F=S and S=F. Just take the letters you start
with, find what they are equal to, and write them down. Voila!
Filksinger
wrote:
>There once was this bookshop in Singapore called Skoob Books. A good
>source of secondhand SF books at reasonable prices, but sadly long gone.
>Love the name, though.
>
>--
>keith lim keit...@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~keithlim/
> The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts.
Are you in Singapore? Terence Chua once said he thought he was the
only filker in Singapore. You may want to contact him, if you are
there, too.
Joe Ellis
(Filksinger) wrote:
Not that I doubt you, but the ROT13 feature in MTNewsreader on Mac works
both ways... try highlighting the text you want to change and then select
"Apply ROT13"
If it _won't_ work, why did they call it "apply" instead of "decode"? <<grin>>
David G. Bell
<slrn9hfcef...@dayspring.firedrake.org>
ch...@keristor.org "Chris Croughton" wrote:
Since it _does_ include a filk or two, the following is the uk.rec.sheds
FAQ...
----8<----
FAQ for newsgroup uk.rec.sheds, version 2&1/7th 1999-02-01 (roughly)
==============================
(You'll want a good old-fashioned fixed-width font for the change bars)
[ For general information on Usenet newsgroups ]
[ and etiquette, consult http://www.usenet.org.uk/ ]
"When?"
uk.rec.sheds was created shortly after May 8th 96 (when the vote passed).
It all started some time before that when some threads on the subject of
shedding in soc.culture.british led The Master JD to post a "faquette"
and, later, myself to post a joke RFD for the newsgroup. This was
picked up by The Guardian's Jackdaw column, and that recognition spurred
me (I'm Dave Budd) on to do a real RFD and a subsequent CFV. Eventually
the vote came in at 60 for, 25 against, and 1 abstention.
"What?"
This newsgroup is about sheds: those usually small and usually wooden
structures usually found in the garden which usually house a cornucopia
of usually useless items, and various related structures and spaces.
It's not about houses for railway engines, pop groups with silly names,
or slang uses of 'shed' which include a derogatory term for vehicles,
excessive boozing, and something sexual which we prefer not to enquire
into.
Conversation about sheds themselves is actually quite rare: the newsgroup
is a meeting place for shedders wherein they may share information which
will further the art of shedding. As shedding quite often appears - to
the outsider - to be 'doing nothing much', so too the exchanges in the
newsgroup may appear to make little, if any, sense. To the initiate, of
course, every character typed simply oozes with esoteric significance.
The true secret of happiness was to be busy with unimportant things.
This is a quote from J B Priestley (probably)
Here's the rationale that was posted with the proposed charter in the CFV:
The shed, with its contents and use, is a major archetype within
the male psyche; the exigencies of modern life are, however,
gradually eroding the typical male's knowledge of the joys of
shedding. This may well be contributing to the breakdown of
modern society that we see around us every day.
Heretofore there has been no suitable forum on Usenet where
shedders can gather to pursue the furtherance of shedding.
This newsgroup provides such a place, and will hopefully attract
many of the unshedded into the hobby. A prototype FAQ already
exists (many thanks to Jeff Drabble) and this has been posted on
soc.culture.british. Though sheds appear throughout the English
speaking world it is felt that Britain is their cultural home and
that the uk hierarchy is therefore correct for this newsgroup.
The popularity of the recent shed-threads on s.c.b. have amply
demonstrated that sufficient volume exists for a newsgroup.
"How?"
One keyword here is "whimsy" - not Wimsey, who's a character in a book,
or mimsy, which is a state borogroves get into. A dash of surrealism
adds a little je ne sais quoi, and you may also detect a hint of gentle
nostalgia for the days when brown ale was still widely popular and a
piece of 2x4 wasn't actually 50x100mm.
"Who?"
Hang around the newsgroup for a while and you'll notice several frequent
posters, each with their own brand of vaguely roguish charm, but especially:
'The Master JD', aka Jeff Drabble, who (despite being stuck in New Zealand)
has an inimitable prose style which set the tone for the newsgroup.
This is his original faquette:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
As a result of the alarming amount of confusion regarding sheds, I feel
duty-bound to set down here a distillation of my understandings in the
matter of shedding, as we know it today. Some of the items raised will
be contentious, but there is room for discussion, so let us remain calm
and have no more of the capricious exhibitions displayed by our more
angst-ridden posters. The questions below represent a fair
cross-section of those asked of me by both posters and emailers in this
matter. These questions and their answers, should, with your assistance
and input, provide an understanding of sheds which will be seen as a
triumph of glistering clarity. As this is not actually a newsgroup in
its own right, this presentation will be referred to not as a FAQ,
but as a faqette.
1. Q: What is a shed?
A: A slight or temporary erection built to shelter something;
an out-building.
(Ref: The "King's English" Dictionary. Pg 795. Published 1942 by
Books of Dignity and Service Ltd.) This esteemed tome shall be
deemed to be the official reference for all matters shedish.
2. Q: How do I know if I am a sheddy person ?
A: If you are, you will know. If much of your life has been spent
with the uneasy feeling that you are not quite like other people
and if you are inclined to hoarding useless and broken items,
coupled with an inexplicable urge to find shelter for these items,
you could be sheddy. Budd has divulged secret childhood yearnings
for a shed. This is a powerful indicator.
3. Q: 'Is Doug's "outbuilding" a shed ?' asks Muir.
A: Possibly, Max, possibly.
4. Q: "Is a gazebo a shed ?" asks Fowler.
A: No.
5. Q: Several people have asked if a Nissen hut is a shed.
A: Special conditions apply in this case.
Slick, professionally built jobs: no.
Tack-ups from materials at hand: yes.
6. Q: "Who said I was a bedsit type?" asked Lynch.
A: He was off topic and drifted further to describe his fish supper
and his consumption of a lesser froggy wine. Not a shedster. He
also said, "I am outraged".
7. Q: "What is a Mk V-c?" asked Spence.
A: Well, only the most coveted of all sheds, that's all. Muir has one
with provenance that implicates Kitchener in its construction.
The Mk V-c is the archetypal shed with such features as: a knurled
door handle for ease of operation when you have slime on your
hands; a very small window with pre-installed grime to reduce light
ingress to a minimum; extra 4" nails on the studs to improve hanging
capacity; downwardly adjustable headroom to ensure that no owner
shall be able to stand fully upright.
8. Q: Will I require a building permit ?
A: No. Your local building inspectors are marplots and will require
such things as plans and safety features. Eschew regulations.
9. Q: Does a tree-house count ?
A: Only inasmuch as they can be seen as a precursor to true shedness
and are generally the outward manifestation of a young lad's desire
to eventually become fully ensheded.
10. Q: What materials should I use ?
A: It is generally considered good form to select only those
materials known to be esculent to a wide range of insects and fungi.
Used has preference over new.
11. Q: What exterior decoration might I undertake ?
A: None. Dilapidation is the hallmark of fine sheds. Decorative
sedulousness is undesirable. Paint, finials, fretwork and the
like, are to be included in the nomenclature of contents and one
should never consider using them as embellishments. The
judicious application of runes is acceptable.
12. Q: What can I put in my shed ?
A: The key to this is uselessness. If there is a possibility that
the item could have a future use, it should not be consigned to
the shed, the shelter of which must only be offered to the shoddy,
worthless, rejected and unusable items in your possession.
This faqette is a work in progress and will only achieve its full
usefulness with your input and opinion. May you be blessed with an
exundation of shedding pleasures.
Hope this helps
Jeff Drabble.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[INTERMISSION]
In order that readers of this FAQ do not get bored and give up, we break
the overwhelming rush of data at this point for some light entertainment,
to whit, a poem from RonC:
I must go down to the shed again
for a bottled ale and a pie
And all I ask is a Stanley knife
and some Branston standing by,
And the nutmeg breath and a pint of meth
and the cobwebs shaking
And a rusty tinge on the door hinge
and the paintwork flaking.
I must go down to the shed again,
for the smell of the rising damp
is a wild smell like a rusty nail
or a wartime landgirls' camp.
All I ask is is some sloe gin
and a log to rest my butt
And the hay-bale and the pipe's smell
and the warm well-filled gut.
[RETURN TO FAQ]
"Words?"
Since the original threads and newsgroup got going, we have a few new
terms:
tqt (pronounced 'tat', obviously): top quality tat, ie the sort worthy
of storage in your shed. Also some derived acronyms such as lgt(low
grade tat), lqt(low quality tat), mqt(medium quality tat), and so on.
pshed (pronounced 'shed'): a pseudo-shed, or proto-shed, or even
para-shed. Something that isn't a True Shed but has many shed-like
attributes.
shedoid: While a pshed doesn't look like a shed (from the outside) but
has shedlike attributes, the shedoid looks like one but isn't.
Right Wayne?
sheditation: The preferred in-shed activity. Often involves entomology,
non-linear ratiocination, brunellobibendation, and other
things too worrying to mention in this family newsgroup.
sheddily available: more accurate then 'readily available' for most sheds.
Thanks to ja...@spuddy.mew.co.uk (Ian James Abbott)
Molish, mantle (as in "I'm going outside Dear to mantle my shed") and
teriorate have started being used to mean the construction and erection
of sheds and sheddy artifacts.
mangents: not in your dictionary? Well, if knowing that Ed's are lrage
and mine are small and toroidal doesn't help, you'll have to go to
DejaNews and try to find the original posts on the subject - should be
easy, as DejaNews is not at all sheddy, and has indexes and everything.
Pete Shaw found on the web some great word definitions that may not be in
your dictionary, but I've viciously trimmed the list:
HAXBY (n.)
Any garden implement found in a potting shed whose exact purpose is unclear.
COTTERSTOCK (n.)
A piece of wood used to stir paint and thereafter stored uselessly in a shed
in perpetuity. (Hmmmmmm I've got several of these)
LOW EGGBOROUGH (n.)
A quiet little unregarded man in glasses who is building a new kind of
atomic bomb in his garden shed.
NOTTAGE (n.)
Nottage is the collective name for things which you find a use for immediately
after you've thrown them away. For instance, your greenhouse has been cluttered
up for years with a huge piece of cardboard and great fronds of gardening string.
You at last decide to clear all this stuff out, and you burn it.
Within twenty-four hours you will urgently need to wrap a large parcel,
and suddenly remember that luckily in your greenhouse there is some cardb...
KELLING (participial vb.)
A person searching for something, who has reached the futile stage of re-looking
in all the places they have looked once already, is said to be kelling.
HASSOP (n.)
The pocket down the back of an armchair used for storing two-shilling bits and
pieces of Lego.
WOKING (participial vb.)
Standing in the kitchen wondering what you came in here for.
EXETER (n.)
All light household and electrical goods contain a number of vital components
plus at least one exeter. If you've just mended a fuse, changed a bulb or fixed
a blender, the exeter is the small, flat or round plastic or bakelite piece left
over which means you have to undo everything and start all over again.
The collective noun for a number of sheds is currently undecided: the
Master JD has supported the suggestion 'a dave of sheds' submitted by
David John, due to the surprisingly high percentage of Daves involved in
this newsgroup.
Another suggestion was 'an allotment of sheds' but it's thought it may
be unwise to overload the word allotment. Other ideas include
'decrepitude' and similar words.
ROT13: Certain words are anathema to shedders. Where it's necessary to
use them we tend to use the ROT13 encoding system, which gives rise to:
arj jbex (and its phonetic version jaybecks, as this one is really
nasty) obhtug rnea (note that these two are anagrams of their encoded
form!!!). Some words are just nicer when ROT13'd - eg. snegvat.
If you don't have ROT13 on your browser, a program for that is at:
http://www.brookings.net/~darinaf/rot13.html
For small stuff, a post-it note can be used by writing on it:
ABCDEFGHIJKLM
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ which can be quite hfrshy
In general, any word which might imply parting with money, or "achieving
closure" of some project, or undisarranging things, may cause a shedder
distress and should be avoided, either by creative circumlocution, or by
using ROT13 or our other encryption system, Bcrypt: this consists of simply
swapping each pair of letters, and although it hardly needs software to do,
having been developed from everyday typing errors, Brian Skinner has a
program that will do it for you, at http://www.brisk.demon.co.uk/tp2.zip
Also, of late, the any-old-anagram and creeaytif spellink systems have been
becoming more and more popular.
The use of acronyms is endemic: most of them are resonably obvious if
you've read the group for a while, and often they're explained in the
footnotes anyway: we like footnotes. Apart from the common Usenet
ones such as iirc, hth, hand, afaik, and so on, which are explained at
http://www.usenet.org.uk/usenet-information.html#BTW
We use several versions of WOCAx [Who Of Course Are x] which was originally
used with x=B on soc.culture.british to describe the Serapu {R13}. We also
use a lot of SWx and HWx for She Who and He Who - you can usually fill in
the x from context or past usage. BA is Brown Ale. PP is Pork Pie.
wwp is 'wireless with pictures', also known as the 'farseeing machine' in
the creative circumlocution system, or the etelivisno in Bcrpyt.
You may also notice "oomeX", where X may be any of several body parts. |
Read it as a noun derived from the statement "ooooo, me X!" |
Koans: koans are very popular on some newsgroups. So far we have one:
Is a chain that has rusted to the point of
homogeneous rigidity still a "chain" ?
[Submitted by din...@codesmth.demon.co.uk (Andy Dingley) ]
There're some rather good haiku at, um, ah, seem to have forgotten who it was
that said they'd put them on the web. Ho hum.
But in nay case, Bob suggested an alternative peotic form, the sheddu: |
|
Sheddu need to be based on sheddy unit like |
number of firkins in wet fortnight |
last line should be long as piece of string |
at least one line should be |
quarter-inch Whitworth |
svany word should of course |
be omitted |
for sheddu become unsheddu if |
ever actually svavfurq |
ROT13 should be nccyvrq yvorenyyl. |
This may even be a |
We also have a proverb:
"Oh what a tangled web we weave when a nail snags the wool on
your cardigan sleave." (attributed to Jack "Yeltsin" Twelvetrees)
[Submitted by Michael....@jet.uk (Michael Loughlin)]
Carl .LHS. Williams reckons that "If you sit in uk.rec.sheds long enough,
the world will put a mousetrap under your door, that's what I say".
And a song (to the tune of My Favourite Things) by Adrian Waterworth,
from an idea by Gareth Evans, approved by Jeff Drabble, can be found
at http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds/favsong
Ron C also penned a sheddy version of My Favourite Things which is at
http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds/favor.txt
Wayne's version of Perfect Day can be found in the same directory in
the file perfect.day
"Theorems?"
The Special Theory Of Shed Space : Details how all True Sheds are linked
via a singularity in spacetime. Amongst other things, this theory
explains why you can never find that No8 masonry bit (or only when
you don't need it). I probably have the original post on the subject
around here somewhere....
Anyway, one of its important corollaries deals with that tennis
ball that's in the corner of every garage you've ever been in.
Also there's some discussion about how shedness spreads beyond the
actual shed itself - this may become a General Theory of Shed
Space, if Ed Fowler ever gets round to it.
As physicists deal with the weak and strong nuclear forces, so the
master sheddists handle the weak and strong unclear forces. A job
which is not for the faint of heart! Thanks to John Cooke for
borrowing these terms from his friend Paul Fay and for the
concepts of the knothole, the knorhole, and the knandhole.
And to RonC for warning us of the dangers of the shack hole from which
no tqt can ever escape and which may bring about the end of Shedspace.
Some researchers are now working on a theory of the particles that
mediate the weak unclear force, the tuits. The round tuit has been
known even to the layman for some time, but there appear to be other
'flavours': the up, down, in, on, right, round, go, and charm. The
first 6 of these form the 'get' family, and there's a pattern tuit.
Quantum shedding has arrived, and Schroedinger has no idea what state
Wayne's cat is in (though Wayne says "It'll be reet").
Bob Franklin was working on a theory that we are just a transmission
medium for a shed-to-shed language in which the words are made up of
items of tqt. Could happen.
"Heroes?"
Our patron saint is Jack Hargreaves, who used to introduce the tv show
'Out Of Town' from an amazing shed full of obscure tools which might
well come in useful one day. Somebody claimed to have posted a midi
file of the OOT theme to alt.binaries.sounds.midi but it wasn't there
when I looked, maybe it is now, or of course it may well have expired on
your news server by the time you read this.....
A close second to sainthood is Adam Hart-Davies who is the narrator,
pink helmeted cyclist and demonstrator of that other fine TV series
"Local heroes". He once said: "There's no doubt that a barrel of gunpowder
does serious damage to a garden shed".
Rex Garrodd was known for his work on the Secret Life Of Machines with |
Tim Hunkin. His recent appearance on Robot Wars, where he managed to win |
without crunching his opponents too much and also inflicted satisfactory |
amounts of damage on the house robots, has led to his being given the |
entirely deserved title of Sheddi Knight. |
Bob Flowerdew has a very sheddy approach to gardening and has been given
the title of Lord. One of his mentors, Trevor Bayliss (who invented the
clockwork radio) is up for a title but it's not yet finally decided.
If you want one of the saints the rest of the world knows about, then Jill
Russell reminds me that we more-or-less settled some time ago on St.Jude:
Judas Thaddaeus was one of Christ's Apostles and later became known as
St Jude. For the next eighteen centuries, however, he was completely
ignored. While other saints were invoked daily, hardly a prayer was
offered in St Jude's direction.
"Other?"
Ronald Hawke was to be a benefactor from the group after his shed had
been stolen from his allotment in Hertford. The group had managed to
raise the replacement cost in pledges only to find out that a
replacement had already been donated some weeks earlier. In true shed
style we never did get a round tuit.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is our favourite bit of physics: it tells
us that disorder always increases, and is often employed to explain the
state of our shed shelves to the wife (speaking of which we hear Ed's
wife looks rather winsome in oily overalls and is a bit sheddy herself)
There are some very sheddy books about. One in particular is Stephen
Pile's "Book of Heroic Failures", and then there's anything by Tim Hunkin.
"Blokes and sheds", by Mark Thomson ISBN 0 207 18916 1 is a look at the
Australian approach to the craft.
Some have claimed that there's a link between sheds and masculinity.
Others point out the similarities between sheds and wombs (low light,
separation from the world, a supply of comforts, etc) and, with Freud,
believe sheds to be essentially feminine: a retreat to a shed is an
exteriorisation of the unconscious desire to return to the womb.
"Official Items?"
There have been several nominations for Official Shed Day. None are
entirely satisfactory, but there's always the anniversary of the day
the newsgroup was created (see above).
Official drink is brown ale - once widely popular, nowadays my local
Tesco has only Newcastle Brown, which is something of a special case.
There are some good ones about though: Manns Original for starters.
Lager? How's a rat going to cross the yeast crust if the yeast's at the
bottom?, eh?, answer me that you young whippersnapper.
SOBAR, the Society Of Brown Ale Rivivalists, have the IcePie Book of
Brown Ale at http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sobar/
Jon Guite's infamous nettle beer recipe is at
http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds/nettle.txt
coz I wanted it nearer than a Netscape bookmark away, just in case.
And in case you need an excuse to go down the pub (I HAVE to go,
dear, it's his birthday, he'll be upset if I don't), there's a list of
birthdays of the denizens of uk.rec.sheds (and half their families and
pets...) at http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds/birthdays
Official euphemism for death is: "his shed door was finally closed"
Thanks to: Stu...@StuartD.demon.co.uk (Stuart Davies)
Official insecticide is nitrogen tri-iodide, though you can't really
spray your plants with it as it deals with insects by blowing them to
pieces.
Official shed clothing: A cardy with holes is nice. One of those brown
warehouse coats cuts a dash. Overalls can be very flattering: see Ed's
wife. You can't go far wrong with something that has lots of pockets,
especially if some of them are unusually shaped and/or have holes in them.
Official shed food: pork pie (optional pickled cabbage side dish), with
(of course) brown ale.
Now this seems like a good time for another [INTERMISSION]
From: Richard Yates
Subject: Cor! Paste! Contains XXX strong language!
But all in a good cause. None of the below has been ROT-ed.
Raised paste, or more properly paste for raised pies, is of a
special consistency so that it can be moulded or 'raised' and it
will hold its shape without the support of such things as flan
tins or pie dishes.
Start in the same way as for short paste - rub the fat into the
flour, but using 1/2 the water. So, for 1lb. of plain flour, take
1/2lb. of lard and about 1/2 a teacupful (1/8 pt.) of water. Rub
the fat, in pieces, into the flour, then add the water, and
manipulate it to make it all cohere.
Now comes the most important part of all. Knead the paste. It
must be kneaded (on a floured surface) for several minutes, to
develop the gluten in the flour. It will begin to feel quite
rubbery[1], or springy[2].
If you use too much water, the paste will be too slack, and won't
stand up. If you add too little, it will remain friable.
Cut 1 1/2 lb. of lean pork into very small pieces, reserving any
fat, gristle, or skin (for stock). Put the meat into a bowl and
just cover with water. Add spices (esp. pepper), mix well and
leave.
Take 1/3 of the dough and roll it out 1/4" thick. Cut four
circles from this with a fluted 2-in. pastry cutter. These will
be the lids.
Knead the leftover dough back into the rest, and divide into four
equal parts. Roll these into balls.
For each of the dough balls, put the ball on a floured surface,
and proceed to hammer it around the edge, using the edge of
your hand, turning it round and round as you do so (keep it the
same way up) until a 'brim' forms all around and the thing
resembles a solid 'hat'.
Now, take a half-pint Brown Ale bottle (empty this first for
safety), flour the outside, set one of the dough 'hats' crown-
downwards on a floured board, and press the bottom into the
middle of it. As you keep pressing, the 'brim' will curl upwards
and inwards.
Continue to turn it round and round on the floured board, and
mould it gently around the bottle as a potter moulds his clay
upon the wheel, and gradually the dough will rise up the sides of
your bottle. Every so often, remove the bottle and flour the
inside of the dough to prevent sticking. When the sides are about
3" deep, you have your finished 'jar' of raised paste.
When you have completed the other 'hats', fill them with the
spiced meat, which will be quite wet. Do not add any more water.
Moisten the edges of the lids, and put them on. Pinch around the
edges to join them properly. Paint the tops of the pies with
beaten egg for a golden finish.
Tie a cummerbund of greased grease-proof paper around each pie,
and let an air-hole into the top.
Bake at Gas Mark 6 (400F) for 1/2 an hour. Reduce the heat to GM
1/2 (250F) for another 1 1/2 hours.
Make the stock into jelly with gelatine, and pour some (hot) into
the top of each (cold) pie. When the jelly has set, remove the
grease-proof paper.
[RETURN TO FAQ]
Official shed drug: nutmeg. Really, it's not worth asking why.
Official shed syndrome: Ergophobia .
From the OED: 1905 W. D. Spanton in Brit. Med. Jrnl. 11 Feb. 300/2 "He has
discovered that it often pays better to idle and loaf about than to [jbex],
and the consequence is that a new disease has been engendered, which I have
termed ‘ergophobia’" [thanks Brian]
Official shed attitude is slightly grumpy, like Uncle Mort in Peter
Tinniswood's books, or your late grandfather (the one in the corner
with the pipe and waistcoat).
Official shed units are undecided - and probably undecidable - but
"Niall" <nia...@ndirect.co.uk> suggests:
There is the "opened out fag packet" representing a thickness of about
0.025" or 4 stroke petrol engine plug gap (CB ignition); fold in two for
2 stroke or CD ignition, and that favorite of TV science programs; the
"one bar electric fire" or 1kW.
The furlong/firkin/fortnight system isn't bad: it has the microfortnight
(about 1.2sec) and the millifortnight (about 20min). The mass unit is a
firkin of water, which I think works out to 90 lbs. Thanks Chris Hedley.
[In this system the speed of light is 1.79*10^12furlongs/fortnight]
{and the national speed limit (A roads) is 161280f/f}
For angles, Mr Passingham Indeed suggests that the shed unit of rotation |
should be the ajar, defined as: the angle between a door and its frame when |
there's a slight draught coming through: subsequent discussion indicates |
that the chord of this angle will be the width of a British Standard Cat. |
Atomic physics has a unit called the "barn", equal to 10^-28m^2, and a
Hubble is 10^9 light years, so a Hubble-barn is about 1 and 2/3 pints,
or just less than one of those new-fangled litre thingies, which means
that drinking a couple of brown ales is like emptying a bottle the
length of the universe with the cross-sectional area of a medium-sized
nucleus. And you thought it was a long way to the Gents.
Boonie calculates the Hubble-radius barn is about 13 liters. This is the |
volume of a straw that has the cross-sectional area of a barn and a length |
equal to the radius of the universe (given by H^{-1}c). |
If you use the old value of H, 55 km/s/Mpc, you get 17 liters. The
extreme value of H near 100 reduces this by half. The current value is
40 < H < 100 so a median value would give about 13 liters.
The fact that a gallon milk jug has the same volume as a straw with the
area of a medium sized nucleus such as Silicon that reaches to the end
of the universe is one way to visualize just how small and how big those
two numbers really are.
Oh, and thanks to Brian Skinner for clearing up the correct values of
those constants: Frank & Malcolm must have been testing the BA bit when
they sent in their values.
An appropriate unit of jbex is the barn-yard-atmosphere (9.3*10^-24Joules)
And lest we forget, which I did, Brian Skinner mentioned and then James |
Garry reminded us, a bit smaller than the barn is the shed: 10^-52 m^2. |
There's also a furlong/farad,Faraday/fortnight system, but its unit of
mass, the (Faraday^2*fortnight)/(farad*furlong^2) is impracticably small
at about 2.3 atto kg. Thanks to Boonie for finding and posting the file
with these last two paragraphs in it, and for finding:
A microcentury is about 52.5 minutes;
one nanocentury is about pi seconds;
The micro-Fortnight is approximately a second;
The speed of light (c) is 1.80 tera furlongs per fortnight (or 1.80
furlongs per pico-fortnight);
One teaspoon is 1.6 barn mega-parsecs;
An appropriate unit of jbex is the "barn-yard-atmosphere"
(9.3 * 10^-24 Joules)
Official fractions -
Mathematics are best done in 7ths which lends nicely to 3 & 1/7
equalling pork pi.
Official thread -
Of course, for anything threaded, Whitworth is preferred.
Official cartoonist is Steven Appleby, since he did a nice 4.5 panel
cartoon capturing the spirit of shedding quite well in The Guardian on,
um, Saturday 15th June 1996 I think. Then again there's Paul Sample who
does the Ogri strip in some motorbike mag, as Ogri has a brill shed-cum-
garage.
Official shed poet is up for (endless) debate: McGonagal, perhaps? Or
that nice John Hegley, who actually wrote a poem called Sheds.
Official shed diva is comedienne Jenny Eclair, since her C4 programme
"If I Were Prime Minister" in which she said she would make it
mandatory:
"One man, one shed" [minimum]. What an election winning slogan!
Thanks to: zvd...@amoco.com (Dave Healy)
NB Nancy Banks Smith's review of that show in The Guardian was pretty
sheddy in its own right!
[INTERMISSION]
Just in case any of you were dropping off, here's a little more light
relief, courtesy of Bob Goddard:
You are old, Father William, the young man said,
And hair sprouts in tufts from your ears.
Is there something you do to encourage it,
Or is it down to the passage of years?
When I was younger, the old man replied,
Hair grew on the top of me head.
Now I'm old and grey it's lost its way
And comes out of me orifices instead.
You are wrong, Father William, the young man said,
You spend too much time in the shed;
And the hair in your ears has grown to keep out
The spiders that drop on your head.
Nonsense, my son, the old sage retorted,
You know naught of my auditory hairs.
Lay off me brown ale, don't touch that pork pie,
Sod off or I'll kick you downstairs!
[RETURN TO FAQ]
"Inventory?"
The cobbler's last is an item beloved of all sheddists. It's believed
that the 3 armed type actually has a 4th arm orthogonal to the other 3
which extends into hyperspace and is not visible in our 3 dimensional world.
A copy of Exchange&Mart, preferably at least a year old, takes pride of
place in many a shed. Those outside the UK must, of course, make do
with their nearest local equivalent. In emergencies it's possible to
substitute items such as the 1985 What Camera? Buyer's Guide. Actually
any out-of-date catalogue will do, though the more obscure items it has
in it, the better. It seems that every shedder on the group has a copy of
the Hawkin Bazaar catalogue - a current one! A partial copy of this is at
http://www.hawkin.co.uk/ Check out the pop-pop boat!
Various containers partly full of various liquids greatly enhance any
shed. The most obvious choices are part used paint cans, but so poorly
labelled that in fact you'll never find the right one for that bit of
touching up on the dining room wainscoting, or if you do it'll be full
of rust. Most of the real shed experts will have some Hammerite around
somewhere. And it's obvious, I hope, that one cannot survive past the
age of 30 without owning a can of WD40 or one of the close equivalents,
although it's normal to lose the plastic straw.
A collection of tobacco tins full of partially sorted screws, nails,
bolts, etc is a must: though some prefer to have the tins and the stuff
that ought to fill them, but never quite get around to getting the two
together.....
For special storage needs, it's been suggested that a Klein bottle could
be made by sewing together two Moebius bands, along their single edge.
Can't say I've tried this one.
"Affiliated Organisations?"
SOBAR (not quite sober), the Society Of Brown Ale Revivalists
Membership open to all who enjoy a pint of something dark.
http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sobar/ for a very poor web page.
The International Goatkeepers Society
You may join at the personal invitation of bill (sk...@worldnet.att.net)
The Junior Bloody Club
Membership is open to any who had interesting or amusing extreme physical
trauma as a child. Copious amounts of blood would normally be required
to qualify, but anything that makes your mother faint would do.
The League Against Cruel Cats
You'll know if you're a member of this one - you'll have the scars.
The OETKB club - well, were you Old Enough To Know Better when you did that |
really stupid thing that led to injury (or at least, major embarrassment) ? |
"What Else?"
C++ is something of a sheddy language: full of bits you don't really
need but which might come in useful one day, not easy to get into, and
anything you do want will be impossible to find as it will be buried
under several layers of inherited classes in an include file called from
another include file.....
Frank Sidebottom apparently records his records and radio shows in a
shed in his mum's garden.
Linda Casey reminds us of a radio programme called "Our Shed" -
"Aahh - but things are different there!" Max Wall would cry dramatically.
"Where?" he would be asked.
"Our Shed" he would reply in a soppy kid's voice.
"'Ere, it's everso nice in there..."
The May/June 95 issue of The Idler had a good article about sheds.
You can find a copy at http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds/idler.txt
Thanks to Pete Shaw for bringing it to the newsgroup's attention.
uk.rec.sheds archaeologists and historians frequently dispute the
origins of the shed, which seem to stretch back into pre-history.
However:
Dragons used to sit on hoards of stuff;
there's a dragon on the Welsh flag;
there are some fine sheds in Wales with excellent tqt collections.
If the dinosaurs managed to evolve into birds, maybe dragons evolved
into sheds?
According to Jenny Woolf, Lynn Tate of The Old Foundry, Leigh On Sea,
SS9 2EP tel01702 471737 is doing greetings cards featuring sheds AND
they're on the lookout for more sheds to immortalise. What kind of
greeting you'd put on such a card is somewhat hard to imagine.
There were several other things I meant to put in this file, but I can't
offhand remember which pile of stuff I left them in. Maybe next time.
Some of the posts from the pre-newsgroup threads can be found at:
http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida/sheds Naturally those files are half sorted.
I've put the charter and faq there too, and there's a few JPEGs of
various people's sheds in there as well. Send me some more.
Here's one: http://gepasi.dbs.aber.ac.uk/ROY/shed.htm
And there's several here: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~cn237
andy the pugh mentions that images of himself, Gaye, Mike Fleming, Gaz
and Mark Neil and glimpses of Gaz's collection of fine welsh sheds may be
found at http://www1.psi.ch/~reid/aber.html
Ian Roderic Izett has pictures of one of his sheds and its contents on
his web page at http://www.aber.ac.uk/~iri
Joe Tozer finally and circuitously JPEG'd a fine shed which can now be
seen at: http://www.tozer.demon.co.uk/shed.jpg
I am: D.B...@mcc.ac.uk http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiida
but just because this line is here doesn't mean I wrote all the above
(obviously I didn't write Jeff's original faquette, for example)
as I pass this to a different regular poster each month or so, so that they
all get a chance to stick their oar in. So far it's been checked over
by:
Jeff Drabble, Ed Fowler, David John, Gaye Oliver, Frank Erskine, Steve Boon,
Jill Russell, Brian Skinner
--8<------
I do hope that clarifies what a shed is....
Mark A. Mandel
: While I was typing that bit, I was thinking about a ravine being named
: Enivar. The "Enivar Ravine", the palindromic tourist attraction. The
: thought must have leaked out into what I ended up typing.
: There once was this bookshop in Singapore called Skoob Books. A good
: source of secondhand SF books at reasonable prices, but sadly long gone.
: Love the name, though.
In NYC there is or was a firm whose trucks read
SLATNER RENTALS
My sister lives in Connecticut (USA) near a town named Ledyard. Every time
I see the sign to it, I imagine a Judaica company located there called
Ledyard Draydel
(That's not my preferred spelling of "dreidel", but it is in use.)
-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
Philological Busybody
a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel
Mark A. Mandel
: tlhIngan veQbeq marqem la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
gyuVatna irDord znedrz yn'Ubz -- Urtuorw tuVUzbUjV'ch'!
OUCH!! rot13ed Klingon is even worse than Klingon in the clear!
Harold Groot
wrote:
>>>> Most newsreaders have the ability to automatically ROT13. For example,
>>>> in Agent, select the text you want to ROT13, then click Edit, then
>>>> Apply ROT13. For Outlook Express, you can decode by opening the
>>>> message fully, then selecting Message, then Unscramble, but there is
>>>> no function for _creating_ ROT13 of which I know.
>>>Creating ROT13 == decoding ROT13, yes?
>>Yes, but in this case, the built in function only works on _received
>>newsgroup messages_. So to create ROT13 with that function, I'd first
>>have to send the message to the list _without_ ROT13, then create
>>ROT13 and paste it into a new message.
>Not that I doubt you, but the ROT13 feature in MTNewsreader on Mac works
>both ways... try highlighting the text you want to change and then select
>"Apply ROT13"
>If it _won't_ work, why did they call it "apply" instead of "decode"? <<grin>>
<jumping in>
In my copy of Free Agent (version 1.1/16, copyright 95-96) the apply
ROT13 works just fine on new messages. Select the text with mouse,
Edit, apply ROT13, it's done.
keith lim
> Are you in Singapore? Terence Chua once said he thought he was the
> only filker in Singapore. You may want to contact him, if you are
> there, too.
*Was* in Singapore; I don't live there now. Terence may well be right;
he could be the only *active*, *self-identifying* filker in Singapore.
(There are probably many others; they just don't know they're filkers
yet.)
Terence and I have actually known each other for some years now, and
we'll meet up again at MilPhil. (Thanks for the suggestion to contact
Terence, though; you didn't know it was redundant, and the effort to put
filkers in contact with one another is noted and appreciated.)
I did pass along to Terence the third-party idea that he turned into
"The Song Which Cannot Be Named"; as far as I recall, that's the
entirety of our filk-related collaboration. As for whether there is a
common pattern of warped thinking in our individual compositions--the
effect of Singapore on people's minds? or just coincidence?--I'll leave
that to the group to decide.
--
keith lim keit...@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~keithlim/
To state the obvious is to state the obvious.
Leslie Fish
>
> I have a friend, a programmer at Microsoft, who tells me that, when he
> had a job with little to do years ago, he taught himselft to read
> ROT13. He says he's never met anyone else who can do it.
>
Ye gods! Only a dedicated Geek-speaker would WANT to learn a language
called "Rot Thirteen"!
--
--Leslie <;)))><