5-word Monkey Nonsense Challenge

[dr_mabeuse]

I had occasion lately to write a string of gibberish for a story. It was supposed to be a series of totally unrelated random words, meaning nothing, like a computer might spew out if it was melting down. I had a hell of a time putting 3 or 4 words together that sounded like total nonsense.

So I went to a dictionary and started flpping pages and choosing words at random. But even then it was hard to find words that sounded random, even though they were (pretty much) chosen randomly.

So give me five words strung together in such a way that they're never appeared together before in the history of the universe, and probably won't ever appear together.

(And you can save your "Doctor. Mabeuse. Good. Writer" jokes.)

Show me something the monkeys have written.

---dr.M.

 

[Master_Vassago]

Aboard grayling moth-eaten smidgen turrets.

Monkeys have found their Master. HEHE.

 

[TheEarl]

Went Spackle Moment Wasp Kerplunk.

Why do you need five random words?

The Earl

 

[English Lady]

dank heft jitters bisect notedly

 

[oggbashan]

It has been done - John Buchan "Island of Sheep" used the same idea.

stupa rowlock bulb chronicle tree

Works better with nouns.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Why nonsense?

Why do I want a bunch of random words? Mainkly becuase I don't want to do what I should be doing.

No, really I was working on a sci-fi idea that involves a talking central computer in a spaceship kind of thing, and the computer loses it, kind of like HAL in 2001, but instead of reverting to a kind of machine-human babytalk as HAL did, I thought it would more likely start spouting strings of random words. But every time I tried to come up with these strings, they didn't sound random, they always seemed to make some sort of poetic sense. It's like no matter how random the words are, our minds will find some pattern or meaning in them. We're prisoners of our sense of making sense.

I think it's impossible to put two words together so that they seem randomly chosen: our minds can make sense out of any two word combinations, and most 3-word combinations. You have to get up to 4 pr 5 before you can have a "sense of nonsense".

That started me thinking about all sorts of stuff, including our inability to generate or imagine randomness; writing as the job of putting word-units together; and the possibility of a writer's putting words together in a way that's really new.

I figured it would be nice to be able to point to a five-word string and say that it's absolutely original: that it's never appeared anywhere before.

BTW: I noticed both you guys did something that I was doing when I was trying to do in coming up with a random string: you both used rare or unusual words, or words of high "strangeness". I was doing things with glockenspiels, orang-utangs and bocci balls. I don't think a navigational computer would be programmed with these words though.

Okay. I'll go now.

---dr.M.

 

[oggbashan]

Re: Why nonsense?

Why do I want a bunch of random words? Mainkly becuase I don't want to do what I should be doing.

I think it's impossible to put two words together so that they seem randomly chosen: our minds can make sense out of any two word combinations, and most 3-word combinations. You have to get up to 4 pr 5 before you can have a "sense of nonsense".

That started me thinking about all sorts of stuff, including our inability to generate or imagine randomness; writing as the job of putting word-units together; and the possibility of a writer's putting words together in a way that's really new.

I figured it would be nice to be able to point to a five-word string and say that it's absolutely original: that it's never appeared anywhere before.

You could get sets of five random words by using a random number generator and a simple children's dictionary.

But they might not necessarily SEEM to be random. You have set other criteria such as "nonsense" and "original". Those added criteria mean that the string is not random.

Five new words:

panel eclair swing gall short

generated by opening a large dictionary with my eyes shut and placing my finger on the page before opening eyes to read the word.

Do they meet your added criteria?

 

[TheEarl]

The five coolest words in the English language are Pickle, Monkey, Cobalt, Spackle and Wasps.

As written on the back of 'Hooray for Boobies' by 'The Bloodhound Gang.'

The Earl

 

[Whispersecret]

bookcase her should throughout does

 

[jfinn]

Linoleum, icicle, hierarchy, jingle, march

Jayne

 

[MathGirl]

Digitally speaking.......

generated by opening a large dictionary with my eyes shut and placing my finger on the page before opening eyes to read the word.

You've invented a truly digital random word generator. Congratulations.
MG

 

[oggbashan]

Re: Digitally speaking.......

You've invented a truly digital random word generator. Congratulations.
MG

I tried it again with a random digit but all my results produce a bathtub curve.

Og

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Testify
Purple
Angst
Slowly
However

 

[The_Fool]

Re: Why nonsense?

BTW: I noticed both you guys did something that I was doing when I was trying to do in coming up with a random string: you both used rare or unusual words, or words of high "strangeness". I was doing things with glockenspiels, orang-utangs and bocci balls. I don't think a navigational computer would be programmed with these words though.

Keyboard, originate, airduct, yellow, November

diagram, quantum, red, yesterday, region

sequence, blue, capitulate, yes, firewall

trajectory, Monday, no, green, sequence

shut, speak, error, seven, flow


Trying to keep it within the concept of navigation and computers. Does that help?

 

[The_Fool]

Re: Re: Why nonsense?

Keyboard, originate, airduct, yellow, November

diagram, quantum, red, yesterday, region

sequence, blue, capitulate, yes, firewall

trajectory, Monday, no, green, sequence

shut, speak, error, seven, flow


Trying to keep it within the concept of navigation and computers. Does that help?

Sorry, used sequence twice.....

trajectory, Monday, no, green, off

 

[NoJo]

Re: Why nonsense?

Why do I want a bunch of random words? Mainkly becuase I don't want to do what I should be doing.

No, really I was working on a sci-fi idea that involves a talking central computer in a spaceship kind of thing, and the computer loses it, kind of like HAL in 2001, but instead of reverting to a kind of machine-human babytalk as HAL did, I thought it would more likely start spouting strings of random words. But every time I tried to come up with these strings, they didn't sound random, they always seemed to make some sort of poetic sense. It's like no matter how random the words are, our minds will find some pattern or meaning in them. We're prisoners of our sense of making sense.


---dr.M.

Nearly 40 years ago John Sladek wrote the "The Muller-Fokker Effect", which is an mind-bogglingly brilliant exploration of pattern and randomness. The book is like a big puzzle, and also very funny. Like the stories of Robert Scheckley, his writing is at least as funny and orginal as Douglas Adams' stuff, which is sort of in the same vein. It's also amazingly prophetic, anticpating in great depth the discussions abnout chaos, randomness and human thought that went on in the 1990s. It's a lot funnier, and a lot less self-important and pompous than all the later "Cyber" crap -- and a lot cleverer, in my opinion.

The Muller Fokker effect was written in 1966. In it, Sladek , to illustrate the insanity the US could be heading towards, predicts Ronald Regan would soon be the president- like most of the other ideas in the book, WAY ahead of his time.

He has a character hooking up the "Muller Fokker" tape to a paint machine, trying to produce truly random art, but all it churns out is second-rate Surrealist paintings.

 

[gauchecritic]

Got to agree with the doc here. out of all the examples so far there isn't one where I couldn't make a sensible connection between at least two consecutive words. Didn't try but some of the attempts could have made whole sentences with a bit of jiggering. For humorous purposes here follows two examples of the infinite monkeys theme.

Mel Brooks:

To be or not to be that is the gazonenplat.

The Simpsons:

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.

Gauche

 

[Dirt Man]

I fudge puckered syphilis night.

DM

 

[Chicklet]

you guys totally just stole all the good words <wink>

garage math mud loop turtle

 

[Svenskaflicka]

spring
pancakes
porch
fattening
plant

 

[MathGirl]

spring
pancakes
porch
fattening
plant

Hiya, Svenska.
In the spring he liked to plant his butt on the porch and eat fattening pancakes.
MG

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Hiya, Svenska.
In the spring he liked to plant his butt on the porch and eat fattening pancakes.
MG

Damned! Too easy! OK, how about this...


Frame
Thirsty
Dictionary
Ourselves
Inexplicable

 

[jfinn]

Able, Lint, Gallop, Candle, War

Jayne

 

[MathGirl]

Damned! Too easy! OK, how about this...


Frame
Thirsty
Dictionary
Ourselves
Inexplicable

We were thirsty in that time frame, but we used the dictionary to look up "inexplicable" for ourselves.

MG

 

[unergative]

Thoughts for dr_mabeuse

I'm not sure how much this matters, but you seem to be pursuing two independent goals. One of them is to have random words of the sort that a broken computer would spew. The other is to have a sequence of words that seem random.

One thing about people is that they are capable of imposing patterns on randomness (and not random things too). So if you want random, establish a dictionary for your computer (include tenses and agreement (things like plural, the 3rd person singular present 's' on verbs, possesive 's')) and then use a random number generator (say a good pair of dice) to select words. Then [DON'T reject the list if some of the words seem connected to some of the others.

But you might also want to think about what kind of ungrammatical nonsense you want. Which of the following sentences is more like the stuff you want:

1] colourless green ideas sleep furiously

2] me all potato eat then

3] skip any leave the up

The (1) example is a classical example of ``good syntax, bad semantics'', since the basic structure of the sentence is perfect English, it's just that things can't be both green and colourless, and ideas can't be either, and they certainly don't sleep, and furious is a way to sleep. By contrast (2) is a good case of reasonably coherent semantics, but bad (English) syntax. Finally, (3) is just nonsense on anyones account, since there doesn't seem to be any coherent reading (NOTE: yes, given enough time, we might imagine situations that a hopelessly bad speaker of English (or a Tamil speaker with an English phrase book) might try to describe with (3), but that's not the point).

So there you go, three degrees of random. Which one is right for you? (Enquiring Minds and all that.)

good luck with the story!