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millenium hand and shrimp

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Shadow

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Feb 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM2/27/96
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does anyone out there know if 'millenium hand and shrimp' is a Pterry version of
some other saying, or is it just completely made up???
if so, why???
--
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*'Luck is my middle name... | Shadow *
* mind you, my first name is bad' | 10075...@compuserve.com *
* -Rincewind the Wizzard | *
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Pod

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Feb 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM2/27/96
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Shadow <ee4...@surrey.ac.uk> writes:
> does anyone out there know if 'millenium hand and shrimp' is a Pterry version of
> some other saying, or is it just completely made up???
> if so, why???
>>
>>Possibly it's a re-write of "Ye gods & little fishes"?

Dick Eney

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Feb 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM2/27/96
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In article <4h06u2$p...@news.cs.tcd.ie>,
Colm Buckley <cbuc...@cs.tcd.ie> wrote:
>> == Shadow <ee4...@surrey.ac.uk>

>
>> does anyone out there know if 'millenium hand and shrimp' is a Pterry
>> version of some other saying, or is it just completely made up???
>> if so, why???
>
>I seem to recall Terry saying that "millennium hand and shrimp" popped out of
>one of this programs which garble two texts together; most of the time they
>produce nonsense, but sometimes they produce *good* nonsense.
>
>I'm still wondering what the two texts *were*, though.
>
> Colm
>
Aw shucks. I was hoping the "Ye gods and little fishes" annotation was
true, it was so neat.

But *how* can you not know who George Carlin is? oh yeah, most of the
posters who admit their ages admit to being born in the 1970s...but he
had a tv show just within the last few years. Okay, Carlin is a
comedian. He began as a standup comedian, did some very popular record
albums which got a lot of airplay in the 1960s, and is still going strong
last I heard. One of his regular bits was the Hippy Dippy Weatherman,
who predicted, among other things, "It's dark. Continuing mostly dark,
changing to widely-scattered light in the morning." Another one was the
Seven Words You Can't Say On Radio/Television. Most of which were said
on tv at some time during the next ten years, mostly as a result of his
doing that routine.

And here I thought that the bit about foretelling Silly Weather Fronts by
watching the Magic Fluxes on the Disc was an allusion to George Carlin's
Weather Reports... <sniff>

-- Tamar Lindsay (sharing account dick...@access.digex.net)

Terry Pratchett

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Mar 2, 1996, 3:00:00 AM3/2/96
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In article <3134f439...@news.demon.co.uk>
geo...@hanslope.demon.co.uk "George Mahoney" writes:

> Shadow <ee4...@surrey.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> >does anyone out there know if 'millenium hand and shrimp' is a Pterry version
> of
> >some other saying, or is it just completely made up???
> >if so, why???

> >--
> I think I remember reading somewhere that the phrase came from some computer
> generated "poetry" that TP saw. Anyone else able to confirm?

Yep. It was a program called Babble, or something similar. I put in all
kinds of stuff, including the menu of the Dragon House Chinese take-away
because it was lying on my desk. The program attempted to make
'coherent' phrases (!) out of it all.


Terry Pratchett

Christian A Wedge

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Mar 3, 1996, 3:00:00 AM3/3/96
to
Excerpts from netnews.alt.fan.pratchett: 2-Mar-96 Re: millenium hand and
shrimp by Terry Pratchett@unseen.d

Well, that would explain the shrimp. I wonder if "millenium hand" is
from the They Might Be Giants song Particle Man.

"He's got a watch with a minute hand,
Millenium hand and an eon hand,
And when they meet it's a happy land.
Powerful man, Universe Man."

--
:) Christian Wedge (Zat...@cmu.edu)
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~zathyr
<):{=- "I'm stranger than that."

Ian Hogg

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Mar 4, 1996, 3:00:00 AM3/4/96
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Terry Pratchett (Ter...@unseen.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <3134f439...@news.demon.co.uk>
: geo...@hanslope.demon.co.uk "George Mahoney" writes:

[SNIP!!!]

: Yep. It was a program called Babble, or something similar. I put in all

: kinds of stuff, including the menu of the Dragon House Chinese take-away

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: because it was lying on my desk. The program attempted to make

: 'coherent' phrases (!) out of it all.

:
:
: Terry Pratchett


You saw it here first folks....

The official TP product endorsement! :-)))

Ian
===

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