Glad I've found you
Heidi Dyer
At last I can discuss DISCWORLD stuff with people who have a clue and give a
damn about what I am going on about and who won't ask questions like....
"Why are the elephants so important?"....my partner after asking me to
explain the pictures in the book I am reading (TLH).
Well, thanks anyway and I look forward to "chatting" with you all some more
Heidi
Alex the Eternally Harassed
> Very pleased to have found this newsgroup.
> At last I can discuss DISCWORLD stuff with people who have a clue and give
> a damn about what I am going on about
Hmmm. You must be in the wrong place. People discuss _Discworld_ here?
It's not happened in my lifetime :)
> and who won't ask questions like....
>
> "Why are the elephants so important?"....my partner after asking me to
> explain the pictures in the book I am reading (TLH).
Tell them that they are for people who can't read.
> Well, thanks anyway and I look forward to "chatting" with you all some
> more
Welcome aboard :)
Oh, and have a quick look through the FAQs :)
--
Alex the Eternally Harassed
.sig when I can be bothered...
Speaker-to-Customers
"Heidi Dyer" wrote ...
Feel free to chat; pull up a chair, have some chocolate, call the cat the
insulting name of your choice, and don't you step on my blue suede shoes.
But unfortunately the Discworld is very rarely discussed here (despite my
best efforts). We usually discuss other things entirely.
Alt.books.pratchett is where we talk about the Discworld.
Paul Speaker-to-Customers
Barry R
Harassed did wossname thusly...
>It's not happened in my lifetime :)
and boy is that *some* amount of lifetime...
<g,d,rvvvvvf>
Barry R
--
chown -R us /home/you/*bases*
Suzi
news:kNQ$kPNtB...@newssvr.manx.net...
[Snip]
> But unfortunately the Discworld is very rarely discussed here (despite
> my best efforts). We usually discuss other things entirely.
> Alt.books.pratchett is where we talk about the Discworld.
Even so, what people sometimes seem to fail to appreciate is that we are
discussing nonDW stuff in a place where everyone has read some DW - so
odd items thrown into conversation that would flummox the poor deprived
nonDW people don't throw the inhabitants in here :-)
Suzi
Richard Bos
Besides, discussing DW isn't forbidden in AFP. In fact, you'll find
people will discuss DW as readily here as on ABP. The big difference is
that in here, they'll be doing so sandwiched between a film geek thread
and a beer thread, and any [I] sub-threads that will spawn from your [R]
thread (and believe me, they will) tend to grow larger than the original
thread.
Richard
Flesh-eating dragon
> Even so, what people sometimes seem to fail to appreciate is that we are
> discussing nonDW stuff in a place where everyone has read some DW - so
> odd items thrown into conversation that would flummox the poor deprived
> nonDW people don't throw the inhabitants in here :-)
Yup. For example I can suggest an imaginary OO language in which the
syntax for initialising a new object is based on the notion of the
pork futures warehouse from MAA. Thus, to initialise a new afper
called Suzi2 I would write:
futures.afper.suzi2.exist;
(where 'futures' is conceptually a place where objects that don't
exist yet are stored until they do)
Or even (don't try this at home):
while bursar {
n = n + 1;
futures.afper.suzi[n].exist;
}
And there you have it - a programming thread tagged [R].
Adrian.
Soldier of misfortune
says...
>
> Yup. For example I can suggest an imaginary OO language in which the
> syntax for initialising a new object is based on the notion of the
> pork futures warehouse from MAA. Thus, to initialise a new afper
> called Suzi2 I would write:
>
> futures.afper.suzi2.exist;
>
> (where 'futures' is conceptually a place where objects that don't
> exist yet are stored until they do)
>
> Or even (don't try this at home):
>
> while bursar {
> n = n + 1;
> futures.afper.suzi[n].exist;
> }
>
> And there you have it - a programming thread tagged [R].
>
> Adrian.
>
OOOHHH, You make my head hurt, oh large brained one. Perhaps we could
just speak in double talk and retoric instead. That way I can get all
saucy and stand a good chance of not being understood, ipso facto no one
takes offense!
--
may contain traces of nut
Flesh-eating dragon
> > And there you have it - a programming thread tagged [R].
>
> OOOHHH, You make my head hurt, oh large brained one. Perhaps we could
> just speak in double talk and retoric instead. That way I can get all
> saucy and stand a good chance of not being understood, ipso facto no one
> takes offense!
If it's not being understood that you want, ask me for lessons.
Adrian.
Sylvain Chambon
wrote:
> Yup. For example I can suggest an imaginary OO language in which the
> syntax for initialising a new object is based on the notion of the
> pork futures warehouse from MAA. Thus, to initialise a new afper
> called Suzi2 I would write:
>
> futures.afper.suzi2.exist;
Nonono! To make them exist you have to take them out of the futures
warehouse, not just send them the "exist" message and leave it
there...
So, that would be something like:
suzi2 = futures.get(Afper); // take an Afper out of the futures
// warehouse
And destroying the object would be like:
futures.put(suzi2); // put suzi2 back into the futures warehouse.
Right?
(But then, is "futures" an instance of a class, like a container, or a
class with static methods to instantiate object?)
> while bursar {
> n = n + 1;
> futures.afper.suzi[n].exist;
> }
I like the "while bursar": totally random loop :-)
Sylvain.
--
"I keep trying to drown my sorrows, but they appear to be marginally
more buoyant than expanded polystyrene" - Iain Banks, _The Crow Road_
|Sylvain Chambon | gou...@lepcf.org | Try out http://gourou.lepcf.org
Amy Vartdal
> In article <a4g7se$jad$1...@library.lspace.org>, Flesh-eating dragon
> wrote:
>
>> Yup. For example I can suggest an imaginary OO language in which the
>> syntax for initialising a new object is based on the notion of the
>> pork futures warehouse from MAA. Thus, to initialise a new afper
>> called Suzi2 I would write:
>>
>> futures.afper.suzi2.exist;
>
> Nonono! To make them exist you have to take them out of the futures
> warehouse, not just send them the "exist" message and leave it
> there...
>
> So, that would be something like:
>
> suzi2 = futures.get(Afper); // take an Afper out of the futures
> // warehouse
>
> And destroying the object would be like:
>
> futures.put(suzi2); // put suzi2 back into the futures warehouse.
>
> Right?
Or maybe past.put(suzi2); ?
--
amy
Soldier of misfortune
says...
techno-literate so I can boggle people with a diatribe of jargon!
--
You go to these places expecting fine cuisine, and all you get
34 diffrent words for "outrageously overpriced canned goods on a
ridculously
large plate"!
Suzi
news:slrna6nfv7.2...@localhost.localdomain...
[Snip]
> > Thus, to initialise a new afper
> > called Suzi2 I would write:
> >
> > futures.afper.suzi2.exist;
[Snip]
>
> suzi2 = futures.get(Afper); // take an Afper out of the futures
> // warehouse
[Snip]
Can I just point out at this point that I'm not entirely certain I'd
like a cloned Suzi inhabiting AFP?
Suzi
Ingvar Mattsson
If we can have multiple cloned dutch Gidjabolgo trolls, we can have at
least one Suzi-clone. Possibly with good ID tagging so we can tell the
difference (it would be embarrasing if, say, Sandriana would, say,
call me Martin), but that's just an implementation issue.
//Ingvar
--
(defun m (f)
(let ((db (make-hash-table :key #'equal)))
#'(lambda (&rest a)
(or (gethash a db) (setf (gethash a db) (apply f a))))))
Phil Davison
>
>If we can have multiple cloned dutch Gidjabolgo trolls, we can have at
>least one Suzi-clone.
For every Suzi-clone there would need to be a Gid-clone to keep her
happy. Hey, this could save the British brewing industry!
--
Cyclops
robert craine
> the pork futures warehouse from MAA.
I discovered in a lecture this week that the futures market started in
chicargo in the 1860s, when people decided for some reason to start
trading in pork belly futures.
Just thought I'd share this useless piece of information with the
world.
Rob
--
I shall add no more, but that a mathematician will easily percieve it
is not put in such a Dress as to be taken notice of by him, there
being an abundance of Words spent to make the more ordinary sort of
People understand it.
John Arbruthnot, Of The Laws of Chance (1692)
Flesh-eating dragon
> > If it's not being understood that you want, ask me for lessons.
>
> Oo! Oo! Oo! Lesson! Lesson please! Make me sound all computer savvy and
> techno-literate so I can boggle people with a diatribe of jargon!
That's not what I said. I said I could offer lessons in /not being
understood/. I didn't say anything about computers or jargon.
Adrian.
Flesh-eating dragon
> > Yup. For example I can suggest an imaginary OO language in which
> > the syntax for initialising a new object is based on the notion of
> > the pork futures warehouse from MAA. Thus, to initialise a new
> > afper called Suzi2 I would write:
> >
> > futures.afper.suzi2.exist;
>
> Nonono! To make them exist you have to take them out of the futures
> warehouse, not just send them the "exist" message and leave it
> there...
Objects are stored in the futures warehouse until they /exist/.
So to get something /out/ of the futures warehouse, you send it an
instruction to exist, and then it does.
> So, that would be something like:
>
> suzi2 = futures.get(Afper); // take an Afper out of the futures
It's another way to do it, I suppose, but I still prefer my syntax.
> And destroying the object would be like:
>
> futures.put(suzi2); // put suzi2 back into the futures warehouse.
It's a bad idea to put anything /back/ into the futures warehouse.
It's for storing things that don't exist /yet/, not things that have
/finished/ existing.
> (But then, is "futures" an instance of a class, like a container, or
> a class with static methods to instantiate object?)
I'd say a warehouse is probably a kind of container, wouldn't you?
> > while bursar {
> > n = n + 1;
> > futures.afper.suzi[n].exist;
> > }
>
> I like the "while bursar": totally random loop :-)
I was trying to think of something that would be always true (at least
until the "dried_frog_pills" message is passed, though to which object
I'm not sure) and it was also a play on the word "loopy".
I'd like to see what other contributions people can make to this
language. What shall we call it? (the name BURSAR doesn't sound bad).
Adrian.
Phil Davison
But if you boggle people with a diatribe of jargon you won't be
understood. It's just that nobody else will admit to it in case you
know what you are talking about.
--
Cyclops
Evil Heretic Infiltrator
Heidi Dyer
Thank-you for the welcome[s] and for pointing me towards the FAQs.I have
duly read and digested!!.
I will do my best to keep up with all the traffic and hopefully not make a
complete idiot of myself in the process.
Heidi
Jens Ayton
>
> It's a bad idea to put anything /back/ into the futures warehouse.
> It's for storing things that don't exist /yet/, not things that have
> /finished/ existing.
Destruction would, of course, involve throwing an object over the edge
of the world. (Would the Circumfence then be garbage collection?)
Personally I'd like a Smalltalk-like message-passing syntax (because
it's nicely weird).
[[futuresWarehouse objectWithName:suzi2 type:AFPer] exist]
// an AFPer called suzi2 now exists
[rimOcean deposit: suzi2]
// suzi2 is now gone
--
\\\\ Jens "not Jen" Ayton Fratello di Vetinari
\\\\\__, Bringing sarcastic one-liners to the common hedgehog since 1999
\\\\\`/ PGP key: http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-49116/stuff/jens_ayton.pgp
Flesh-eating dragon
> Destruction would, of course, involve throwing an object over the edge
> of the world. (Would the Circumfence then be garbage collection?)
The idea of the Circumfence handling garbage collection appeals.
But might an object not be destroyed as follows?
death.take(Suzi2);
Adrian.
class Rincewind extends DistanceBetweenHimselfAndPeopleChasingHim {...};
Alexander Strange
<morgan...@netyp.com.au> wrote:
> "Jens Ayton" wrote:
>
> > Destruction would, of course, involve throwing an object over the edge
> > of the world. (Would the Circumfence then be garbage collection?)
>
> The idea of the Circumfence handling garbage collection appeals.
>
> But might an object not be destroyed as follows?
>
> death.take(Suzi2);
If we're going to be Smalltalk/Objective-C-like, how about:
if (Suzi2.species == kRat)
Death killer = [[DeathOfRats alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
else
Death killer = [[RegularDeath alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
Wow, that's pretty ugly code...
Would BURSAR be Hex-compatible?
--
Alexander Strange
MrVa...@mac.com
Flesh-eating dragon
> > But might an object not be destroyed as follows?
> >
> > death.take(Suzi2);
>
> If we're going to be Smalltalk/Objective-C-like, how about:
Well, I don't know any Smalltalk or Objective-C. So I don't 100%
follow the following, nor Jens's post.
> if (Suzi2.species == kRat)
> Death killer = [[DeathOfRats alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
> else
> Death killer = [[RegularDeath alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
Killer is the wrong word; doesn't apply to Death in the Discworld
sense. As for the allocations and initialisations, I have no idea
what they mean.
In Ada you could write:
package Death_Of_Rats is new Death(Rats); -- Ada
which is similar, but much much much much more typesafe than the C++:
typedef Death<Rats> Death_Of_Rats; // C++
So perhaps:
futures.death.death_of_rats;
futures.death.death_of_afpers.exist(<afper>);
death_of_afpers.take(suzi2);
> Wow, that's pretty ugly code...
>
> Would BURSAR be Hex-compatible?
It wouldn't just be hecks-compatible - it would be hells-compatible,
damns-compatible, bl8dys-compatible, sh!ts-compatible, poots-compatible,
and a whole lot more besides.
Adrian.
Flesh-eating dragon
> > But might an object not be destroyed as follows?
> >
> > death.take(Suzi2);
>
> If we're going to be Smalltalk/Objective-C-like, how about:
Well, I don't know any Smalltalk or Objective-C. So I don't 100%
follow the following, nor Jens's post.
> if (Suzi2.species == kRat)
> Death killer = [[DeathOfRats alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
> else
> Death killer = [[RegularDeath alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
Killer is the wrong word; doesn't apply to Death in the Discworld
sense. As for the allocations and initialisations, I have no idea
what they mean.
In Ada you could write:
package Death_Of_Rats is new Death(Rats); -- Ada
which is similar, but much much much much more typesafe than the C++:
typedef Death<Rats> Death_Of_Rats; // C++
So perhaps:
futures.death.death_of_afpers.exist(<afper>);
death_of_afpers.take(suzi2);
> Wow, that's pretty ugly code...
>
> Would BURSAR be Hex-compatible?
It wouldn't just be hecks-compatible - it would be hells-compatible,
Nigel Waite
> "Sylvain Chambon" wrote, quoting myself:
>
> > > Yup. For example I can suggest an imaginary OO language in which
> > > the syntax for initialising a new object is based on the notion of
> > > the pork futures warehouse from MAA.
<snip>
>
> I'd like to see what other contributions people can make to this
> language. What shall we call it? (the name BURSAR doesn't sound bad).
>
> Adrian.
How about Object Oriented Kabal or OOK !
Nigel
Alexander Strange
<morgan...@netyp.com.au> wrote:
> > if (Suzi2.species == kRat)
> > Death killer = [[DeathOfRats alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
> > else
> > Death killer = [[RegularDeath alloc] init] ; [killer free:Suzi2]
>
> Killer is the wrong word; doesn't apply to Death in the Discworld
> sense. As for the allocations and initialisations, I have no idea
> what they mean.
alloc allocates memory for an object. init runs the constructor.
Objective-C is the evil language created when NeXT engineers mixed
Smalltalk with C. Since they look nothing like each other, having to
use them all mixed up is annoying for us wannabe Cocoa programmers in
Mac OS X.
If you use the "monkey" keyword after doing futures.exist(Librarian) ,
does the program crash?
--
Alexander Strange
MrVa...@mac.com
Stevie D
> Thank-you for the welcome[s] and for pointing me towards the FAQs.
> I have duly read and digested!!.
Now might not be the best time to tell you, but all of our FAQs now
come pre-digested, after an incident with a small purple goat that ate
everything in sight. We tried to get them back to their original
state, I hope they weren't too unpleasant for you.
> I will do my best to ... not make a
> complete idiot of myself in the process.
Oh, so you don't want to fit in. Be like that then!
One of the things we do best here is all make complete idiots of
ourselves at regular intervals. At least weekly - in some cases hourly
or more.
You think I'm joking, don't you...
--
Stevie D
///// \\\\\ Bringing divorce settlements to
.__/////// \\\\\\\__. the common hedgehog since 2002
____\'///////___\\\\\\\'/_____________________________________
Alex the Eternally Harassed
> In article <u6llhnd...@corp.supernews.com>, Alex the Eternally
> Harassed did wossname thusly...
>
>>It's not happened in my lifetime :)
>
> and boy is that *some* amount of lifetime...
>
> <g,d,rvvvvvf>
*smuck*
--
Alex the Eternally Harassed
.sig when I can be bothered...
Jens Ayton
>
> Well, I don't know any Smalltalk or Objective-C. So I don't 100%
> follow the following, nor Jens's post.
It works like this:
[foo bar]
where foo is an object and bar is a message. The message consists of an
identifier and parameters, which can be interleaved. In my earlier
example:
[[futuresWarehouse objectWithName:suzi2 type:AFPer] exist]
there are two embedded message-passes; the inside one is handled first.
The object futuresWarehouse is sent the message "-objectWithName:type:"
with the parameter list (suzi2, AFPer). AFPer here would be a class
object, i.e. an object of type Class that represents the class AFPer.
Then, the result is sent an "-exist" message. (In Objective C, the class
object is mainly used with the syntax [[foo alloc] init], where an
object of type foo is created by passing the message "+alloc" to the foo
class object, and then inited by passing the message "-init" to the
result. The + and - are used to differentiate class and object message
handlers. This is safe because passing a message to NULL is a supported
no-op.) It's very simple once you've grokked it, really. ;-) The primary
utility of the syntax in Objective C is that it differentiates between
class message handlers and structures with function pointers.
Martyn Clapham
<ph...@cyclops.force9.co.uk> writes
keyboard is because I've learnt not to eat or drink while reading! :-))
Mart.
ps I thought Suzis comment about a possible clone was very restrained!
--
Almost everything you want to know about afp is at http://www.lspace.org/
My own site is at http://www.mclapham.demon.co.uk/index.htm
Afpengaged to Mary Messall, being afpadulterous with Spooky and
afpchauffeur to Hippo. Having fun on afp from 1996
Martyn Clapham
<Heidi...@cableinet.co.uk> writes
Well that's one way to stand out from the crowd! :-))
Mart - who usually manages to make a complete idiot of himself at least
once each year!! :-(
Soldier of misfortune
says...
pickeled fruit herrings say you cried crackbaby tears for the worlds
mortuary! (Is this a good start oh guru?) Please teach me the ways of the
farce!
--
Protecting Children from unsolicited A.F.P humble opinion posts world
wide!
Maaike
That was Lesson One, wasn't it? ;-)
-Maaike
Flesh-eating dragon
> Good enough -Please oh guru, make me completly unintelligable!
> pickeled fruit herrings say you cried crackbaby tears for the worlds
> mortuary! (Is this a good start oh guru?) Please teach me the ways of the
> farce!
That's pretty good.
Now, pretending that you were speaking Welsh, say after me:
Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht.
Adrian.
Soldier of misfortune
says...
&
Ich habe einer oomph!
&
hakoto no ken!
Flesh-eating dragon
> > > Good enough -Please oh guru, make me completly unintelligable!
> > > pickeled fruit herrings say you cried crackbaby tears for the worlds
> > > mortuary! (Is this a good start oh guru?) Please teach me the ways of the
> > > farce!
[...]
> > Now, pretending that you were speaking Welsh, say after me:
> > Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht.
[...]
> Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht!
> &
> Ich habe einer oomph!
> &
> hakoto no ken!
Practising is good; you must strive to clear yourself of all traces of
intelligability. Watch yourself viligently to see that you do not lapse
into the occasional fragment of sense.
Very well. Now let us recite poetry.
Note that I'm using Welsh spelling conventions because they're more or
less convenient, but I don't intend that you should use Welsh stress
patterns. The natural rhythm of the words will occur to you as you
recite them:
Arist ancal, athwn dyras ontir
Arwm onderth 'Tachwl yn salyndir'.
Ombrach llynirch, na chast, asalymdor -
Embrwthanach salwnd. Dyrallyn tor!
When you are completely comfortable with this text, compose your own
version of the next four lines. You should try to make them fit the
sense and feel of what I have already written.
Adrian.
Alexander Strange
misfortune <l_m...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article <a4moul$h65$1...@library.lspace.org>, morgan...@netyp.com.au
> says...
> > "Soldier of misfortune" wrote:
> >
> > > Good enough -Please oh guru, make me completly unintelligable!
> > > pickeled fruit herrings say you cried crackbaby tears for the worlds
> > > mortuary! (Is this a good start oh guru?) Please teach me the ways of the
> > > farce!
> >
> > That's pretty good.
> >
> > Now, pretending that you were speaking Welsh, say after me:
> >
> > Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht.
> >
> > Adrian.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht!
> &
> Ich habe einer oomph!
> &
> hakoto no ken!
Otaku-san! Hentai baka!
&
Dein Katze isst ein Hut und ist einen Hund!
--
Alexander Strange
MrVa...@mac.c0m | De-hackerise to mail
Unofficial Member, Churches of Atheism and Kibology
Alexander Strange
> In article <a4moul$h65$1...@library.lspace.org>, morgan...@netyp.com.au
> says...
> > "Soldier of misfortune" wrote:
> >
> > > Good enough -Please oh guru, make me completly unintelligable!
> > > pickeled fruit herrings say you cried crackbaby tears for the worlds
> > > mortuary! (Is this a good start oh guru?) Please teach me the ways of the
> > > farce!
> >
> > That's pretty good.
> >
> > Now, pretending that you were speaking Welsh, say after me:
> >
> > Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht.
> >
> > Adrian.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht!
> &
> Ich habe einer oomph!
> &
> hakoto no ken!
Flesh-eating dragon
> Dein Katze isst ein Hut und ist einen Hund!
A warning to SoM:
Do not listen to this person. He will make you stray onto a path that
is not the true gibberish, for both his words and his grammar are
bloated with too much sense. Be on your guard against such things!
Adrian.
Paul Wilkins
> &
> Ich habe einer oomph!
> &
> hakoto no ken!
And now, utter gibberish in english . . .
She will promise stupid trees outside the rude distant doorway, whilst Sheri
truly irrigates them too. Better learn cans now or Debbie will weekly
wander them throughout you. Both moulding now, Patrice and Pam conversed
the sticky signals around dry jacket. She wants to call tired figs under
Bruce's fire. How did Sherry like around all the carrots? We can't change
books unless Robbie will crudely tease afterwards. Get your lazily covering
yogi between my ladder. Dianna's case behaves with our jar after we lift
throughout it. Try not to open a card! Yesterday, Julie never rejects
until Robert joins the fresh pear halfheartedly. Who improves incredibly,
when Neil kills the long tailor without the island? Roxanne helps the onion
outside hers and totally excuses. Lots of durable candles kick Byron, and
they wickedly attack Murray too. One more lost short smog cleans caps
against Susanne's hot pen. Selma! You'll look exits. Tomorrow, I'll
answer the carpenter.
--
Paul Wilkins
| /\ Inform yourself | Paul Wilkins | When you ask a computer person to
| /__\ Project Mayhem | Christchurch | fix your machine, they will first
| http://tetrica.com/ | (03) 3433097 | spend hours downloading upgrades.
Flesh-eating dragon
> And now, utter gibberish in english . . .
>
> She will promise stupid trees outside the rude distant doorway, whilst Sheri
> truly irrigates them too. Better learn cans now or Debbie will weekly
> wander them throughout you.
When will you people ever learn? This is *not* utter gibberish. One
can extract meaning from it - not very consistent or realistic
meaning, but meaning nonetheless. The True Gibberish - of which I have
given examples - is not polluted with any kind of meaning whatsoever.
Adrian.
Eric Jarvis
says...
ITYM no element true Gibberish can directly be translated into
English...Gibberish itself is truly, madly, deeply redolent of profound
and subtle meaning...as long as you make no attempt to understand it with
your conscious mind
cf my entire Usenet posting history
--
eric
"Gibberish is my native tongue"
Richard Bos
All the same, you promised lessons in not being understood. It seems to
me that it wouldn't matter whether someone _thinks_ he understands you
or not; as long as you succeed in failing to communicate the meaning of
your words at all, you've succeeded in not being understood.
In fact, I'd say that making someone think he does know what you mean,
when he in fact doesn't, seems to me to be closer to being not
understood than cuasing someone to know that you don't mean anything
sensible at all.
Richard
Soldier of misfortune
uitgeverij.nl says...
--
A German documentary has revealed Hitler’s SS bodyguards dressed up as
showgirls to take part in a song and dance extravaganza featuring one of
the fuehrer’s favourite film stars.
The show was called "Mein Camp - Peter Berner
Flesh-eating dragon
Eric Jarvis wrote, quoting myself and respectively Paul Wilkins:
> > > She will promise stupid trees outside the rude distant doorway,
> > > whilst Sheri truly irrigates them too. Better learn cans now
> > > or Debbie will weekly wander them throughout you.
> >
> > When will you people ever learn? This is *not* utter gibberish.
> > One can extract meaning from it - not very consistent or
> > realistic meaning, but meaning nonetheless. The True Gibberish -
> > of which I have given examples - is not polluted with any kind of
> > meaning whatsoever.
>
> ITYM no element true Gibberish can directly be translated into
> English...Gibberish itself is truly, madly, deeply redolent of
> profound and subtle meaning...as long as you make no attempt to
> understand it with your conscious mind
>
> cf my entire Usenet posting history
Gibberish in its general definition is the art of creating the
/illusion/ of sense within the /absence/ of sense. The first analogy
that springs to mind, although it's a little backward, is that chaos
theory shows us how the /illusion/ of randomness can exist within the
/absence/ of randomness.
Paul's deviant art - and it is a deviant art in the same way that all
but one branch of the Blank Paper religion or whatever it's called is
a heresy - uses /real/ words and /real/ patterns of grammar and chains
its nonsense to the shackles of this predetermined structure. This
greatly compromises the degree to which it can really said to be
nonsense.
In Paul's text, meaning exists undisputably at two levels - the level
of individual words, and also at the level of grammatical structure
since subjects, verbs, objects, tense, phrases, subclauses, etc can be
identified without controversy. The notion on which his art is based
is that there is a third level - that of overall semantic coherence -
at which meaning /does not/ exist - or to phrase this more honestly,
was not /intended by the author/.
But ponder this: At what level can the sentence, "Try not to open a
card!", among others, be said *not* to have meaning?
Actually, the presence of meaning at the first two levels creates
meaning at the third level /even if the author did not intend this to
be the case/. For each subclause in Paul's text, the reader can invent
a scenario, however implausable, in which that subclause would have a
specific meaning. When the reader does this, the meaningfulness in the
words and grammatical structure are using the reader's consciousness
as a place to breed and then to spread into new territory - the third
territory, the level of semantic coherence. To say that meaningfulness
does not exist in the whole text because the meaningfulness of the
parts (the subclauses) do not form a coherent message is absurd as to
say that animal life does not exist within Africa because lions,
hyenas and giraffes do not constitute a single coherent elephant.
Paul's text is absolutely /riddled/ with meaningfulness, and there is
no point denying it on the basis of intentions. We'd be much better
off in this country if we could say that since we did not /intend/ for
this or that introduced species to take its toll upon the wild, it
therefore has not done so -- but we cannot. A writer who wishes to
deny the unintended spread of meaningfulness within a text such as
Paul's faces a similar dilemma - they cannot. That is the truth of it.
Now to reiterate the definition of gibberish: it is the art of
creating the illusion of sense within the absence of sense. I have
shown that sense (aka "meaningfulness") is /not/ absent from Paul's
text, but instead /permeates/ Paul's text. Now let me explore the
complimentary question - what /illusions/ are created, if any, by the
interaction of sense and nonsense within Paul's text?
An illusion is successful if an uninformed observer cannot distinguish
that the phenomenon is not genuine. But reading Paul's text, is the
reader ever under much doubt about what is genuine and what is not?
- Individual words: Does the reader ever suppose it is pure
coincidence that every word in Paul's text happens to have a
meaning in English? -- NO!
- Grammatical structure: Does the reader ever suppose it is pure
coincidence that Paul's sentences follow the structure of English
grammar? -- NO!
- Small-scale semantic coherence: Does the reader ever suppose that
the specific semantic meanings they invent for each of Paul's
subclauses and sentences were, on the whole, intended by Paul? --
NO!
- Large-scale semantic coherence: Does the reader ever suppose that
Paul has in mind a single, coherent scenario which makes the whole
text suddenly all make sense as a unit? -- NO!
Paul's text offers us, it seems, very little illusion whatsoever!
There are elements of gibberish within Paul's text. But the gibberish
is so compromised by meaningfulness that it has very little to do with
the True Gibberish, which should be allowed to roam free.
Let's look at the examples of True Gibberish that I have already
supplied:
- Lembrwth am acrasta lwtas echastym lletiswmracht.
- Arist ancal, athwn dyras ontir
Arwm onderth 'Tachwl yn salyndir'.
Ombrach llynirch, na chast, asalymdor -
Embrwthanach salwnd. Dyrallyn tor!
This is Gibberish in the true sense. It is utterly meaningless, yet it
has a certain consistency and cadence whereby an uninformed reader
might well suppose that it *might* mean something, in some language
somewhere. An uninformed reader being one who (a) has not been told
that the text is meaningless, and (b) does not have sufficient
knowledge of specific languages to rule out the possibility that it
means something in one of them.
It's true that I used Welsh spelling conventions, and you might know
enough about Welsh to know that apart from "am", "yn", "na", "c(h)ast"
and "tor" there ain't a scrap of actual Welsh meaning within the whole
piece. The fact that Welsh stresses the penultimate syllable which
totally messes up the rhythm of my 'poetry' is a dead giveaway. But
firstly, if you were uninformed, would you feel /confident about
declaring the test meaningless or not without reference to external
resources? Secondly, even with a little knowledge, can you _prove_
that I did not acquire the text by starting with a text in another
obscure language and then re-spelling the words based on Welsh
conventions, adding the occasional 'll' to reinforce the illusion? Can
you argue a strong case that if one read the text aloud, then someone
somewhere would not recognise it as a meaningful text in their own
language, albeit possibly delivered with a Welsh accent? And thirdly,
suppose the text was simply spoken, not written at all, so that you
couldn't identify the spelling conventions as those of a specific
language - what then could you say? The prosecution's case hangs on
the allegation that the words are meaningless - do you have reasonable
doubt?
The truth is, it *doesn't* mean anything. It is also *not* some kind
of magical incantation (although I might just be saying that - can
you prove it one way or the other?). I did not, in any way whatsoever,
use a coherent, meaningful text to generate the gibberish. I just
uttered semi-random syllables in the same way that a musician
improvises a semi-random tune, and I wrote down (more or less) what I
said. It's as simple as that.
But could an uninformed reader or listener deduce from the cadence and
consistency of the words that they might (perhaps even probably) have
a specific meaning? Surely they could! And that's "the illusion of
sense within the absence of sense" - the essence of gibberish.
The True Gibberish is a fine art. Most people (at least untrained)
cannot recite random syllables that nevertheless have the cadence of
speech, just as most untrained people cannot improvise or ornament
their music convincingly. I /can/ do it, in fact I find it very easy,
and it is a fact that uninformed speakers /cannot/ tell whether I'm
reciting text in an actual language or not.
I urge everyone who wishes to speak Gibberish to learn the True Art
only, and to condemn the deviant halfbreeds that clamour for their
attention in this land.
Adrian.
Flesh-eating dragon
> > When will you people ever learn? This is *not* utter gibberish. One
> > can extract meaning from it - not very consistent or realistic
> > meaning, but meaning nonetheless. The True Gibberish - of which I have
> > given examples - is not polluted with any kind of meaning whatsoever.
>
> All the same, you promised lessons in not being understood. It seems to
> me that it wouldn't matter whether someone _thinks_ he understands you
> or not; as long as you succeed in failing to communicate the meaning of
> your words at all, you've succeeded in not being understood.
Yes. And by not writing anything on a piece of paper, one has
succeeded in creating a blank paper. Same logic, same fault.
> In fact, I'd say that making someone think he does know what you mean,
> when he in fact doesn't, seems to me to be closer to being not
> understood than cuasing someone to know that you don't mean anything
> sensible at all.
See my reply to Eric. A sufficiently uninformed reader would *not*
know that my text is, in fact, meaningless (and such a reader is not
difficult to postulate) whereas any English speaker can make a pretty
reliable educated guess about where meaning lies and does not lie in
Paul's text.
Adrian.
Soldier of misfortune
says...
think that they've been unable to mate and propogate thier hellish
species, they crop back up. Like herpes!
Richard Bos
> ARRRGHH, ARRGGHH, ARRGGHH! Damnable linguistic pedants! Just when you
> think that they've been unable to mate and propogate thier hellish
^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^
YM propagate, and their, respectively.
Richard
Flesh-eating dragon
> ARRRGHH, ARRGGHH, ARRGGHH! Damnable linguistic pedants! Just when you
> think that they've been unable to mate and propogate thier hellish
> species, they crop back up. Like herpes!
Does this mean you wish to leave your training in the Guild, so soon?
Perhaps it is best so - it is not always well for a member of a Guild
that is in battle. To defend my Art and Trade from heretics, drastic
measures have been forced upon me: 'tis not that I should cause
unnecessary bloodshed, but I shall defend The One True Gibberish at
any cost. Perchance my enemies shall rise to my challenge and defend
their foul perversions as best they may, and then I shall see the
flies upon their dead bodies when their words and swords fail them.
Yet I do not see their army assembling, and must allow the sad but
unsurprising possibility that they have discovered themselves weak
and fearful in the face of my might. Ah, would that they wish be a
... er ... I wish that they wish be a ... um ... I'd prefer a worthy
opponent.
Yet perchance there are some who have formally dabbled in heresy
and perversion that would now, confronted with The One True Gibberish,
choose initiation into my Guild. Should this be so, then I may - with
sufficient followers - submit the Guild of the One True Gibberish,
with myself as Guildmaster, as a new clique in Afphrid. Yet should the
perverted lure of heresy attract all but myself, then I shall know
that I am still beyond my time and await patiently as befits the
masters of all fine Art.
In the meantime, study my words and learn from the master. For there
is truly nothing of which I am more qualified to claim mastership.
Adrian.
Harsh Sukthankar
"Flesh-eating dragon"
<snip>
> In the meantime, study my words and learn from the master. For there
> is truly nothing of which I am more qualified to claim mastership.
Heard of Yoda, you have?
--
Harsh Sukthankar
"...there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot
be duplicated by a normal, kindly man who just comes into work every day and
has a job to do." - Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
gra...@affordable-leather.co.ukdeletethis
On Tue, 19 Feb 2002 18:00:13 -0500, "Harsh Sukthankar"
<hjsukt...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> In the meantime, study my words and learn from the master. For there
>> is truly nothing of which I am more qualified to claim mastership.
>
>Heard of Yoda, you have?
When 900 years old you are, talk such fluent gibberish you will not!
Cheers,
Graham.
Flesh-eating dragon
> > In the meantime, study my words and learn from the master. For there
> > is truly nothing of which I am more qualified to claim mastership.
>
> Heard of Yoda, you have?
He talks too much sense.
In case anyone didn't get the line quoted above, "there is truly
nothing of which I am more qualified to claim mastership" belongs to
the same school of humour as "you'll make me wish you hadn't".
And the whole post was complaining about the unpredictability of the
newsgroup that I know and love. One day, a throw-away line generates
a massive thread, and the next, something that you type whilst
thinking, "Yes, this is sure to strike at the very core of the afp
sense of humour", dedicate considerable effort to, and look
expectantly for replies that you just /know/ are going to be a lot of
fun to read - this generates no response at all. I'm sure every afper
knows this fustration - a watched thread never grows. For example in
my followup to Eric I was casting myself as something akin to a
participant in a mock debate (the whole tone of my post, particularly
the polemics, was governed by this character-role), and was fully
expecting an equally satirical response from another side, arguing in
favour of other forms of Gibberish. That would have made for a lot of
fun, IMO.
Oh, well ...
Adrian.
Harsh Sukthankar
"Flesh-eating dragon" said:
<snip>
> And the whole post was complaining about the unpredictability of the
> newsgroup that I know and love. One day, a throw-away line generates
> a massive thread, and the next, something that you type whilst
> thinking, "Yes, this is sure to strike at the very core of the afp
> sense of humour", dedicate considerable effort to, and look
> expectantly for replies that you just /know/ are going to be a lot of
> fun to read - this generates no response at all. I'm sure every afper
> knows this fustration - a watched thread never grows. For example in
> my followup to Eric I was casting myself as something akin to a
> participant in a mock debate (the whole tone of my post, particularly
> the polemics, was governed by this character-role), and was fully
> expecting an equally satirical response from another side, arguing in
> favour of other forms of Gibberish. That would have made for a lot of
> fun, IMO.
>
> Oh, well ...
<clears throat>
Velleye reddyerpost, anneye founnitilarious, cepteye codentfine
anyteentasay, butteye woodof iffeye couldof, stiltissapity morposers
dinnereply. Wotteyem garbling ryennow mennotbee "dewon-troogibbrish", buttby
cod, twazza god enoffor mefadder, annis fadder aforeim, antis god
enofformee. Iffanywon kinactually dekuiper wotteyem sayin, feelfree terjoin
mysssect, annolternative toode orthortrian mornoply offdis sockalled
won-troogibbrish. Gibbrishers offde wrold yoonite! Yoo gort nuttin terloose
buttyer chines.
<fx: wipes tear from eye>
That was beautiful.
Flesh-eating dragon
> Velleye reddyerpost, anneye founnitilarious, cepteye codentfine
> anyteentasay, butteye woodof iffeye couldof, stiltissapity morposers
> dinnereply. Wotteyem garbling ryennow mennotbee "dewon-troogibbrish", buttby
> cod, twazza god enoffor mefadder, annis fadder aforeim, antis god
> enofformee. Iffanywon kinactually dekuiper wotteyem sayin, feelfree terjoin
> mysssect, annolternative toode orthortrian mornoply offdis sockalled
> won-troogibbrish. Gibbrishers offde wrold yoonite! Yoo gort nuttin terloose
> buttyer chines.
You know what I think?
If gibberish is creating the illusion of sense within the absence of
sense, then what you've just done must be "shireggib" (or something)
the illusion that something has no sense when in fact it does (though
I think people usually call this "code"). They're opposites, see? And
as such, the two could be said [1] to exist in some kind of universal
harmony, as long as one doesn't claim to be an alternative for the
other.
A bit like how declaring that there is One True Tree still allows for
the existence of rocks, as long as rocks don't start claiming to be
trees. If the rocks started claiming to be trees then the One True
Tree would declare war right there.
(P.S. I read the whole thing without too much difficulty)
Adrian.
[1] because you could say anything whether it's true or not