• bizarroland@fedia.io
    17·
    1 month ago

    Thank you for digging yourself out of the mountain of genitals that have been flung at you due to your vocabulary to participate in this AMA.

    I do not mean to floccinaucinihipilificate your accomplishments, but can you tell us what led to this moment this event for you?

    • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.worldOP
      16·
      1 month ago

      I was getting in an MRI machine and had a sudden panic that the aglets on my shoes were metal. I garbled out my concern quickly to the nurse and was surprised to hear myself say “aglet” in a sophisticated manner rather than “the little end things on my laces” like a pleb. Of course, she didn’t actually know what I meant and we all died. Joking. Some people died. This story is half true.

    • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.worldOP
      6·
      14 days ago

      The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - page 19

      It’s probably just your house being knocked down,” said Ford, drowning his last pint.

      ”What?” shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford’s spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window.

      ”My God they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?”

      ”It hardly makes any difference at this stage,” said Ford, ”let them have their fun.”

      ”Fun?” yelped Arthur. ”Fun!” He quickly checked out of the window again that they were talking about the same thing.

      ”Damn their fun!” he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously waving a nearly empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that lunchtime.

      ”Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!” bawled Arthur. ”You half crazed Visigoths, stop will you!”

      Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he asked for four packets of peanuts.

      ”There you are sir,” said the barman, slapping the packets on the bar, ”twenty-eight pence if you’d be so kind.”

      Ford was very kind – he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to get a nice new set of aglets while he was at it.

      The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn’t understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before.

      In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny sublimal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth.

      On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn’t very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse.

  • fakeman_pretendname
    2·
    1 month ago

    Was it a one off, or do you get to use it quite frequently? I see from your description that it was due to a surprise hospital machinery incident.

    When do you expect to next be able to say it?

    I used it most recently in the phrase “like some kind of improvised security aglet” (we were discussing wrapping tape or crimping a metal ferrule round the end of some metal wire to stop the frayed end from unravelling). That’s probably the last time I’ll get to use it this year.

    • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      1 month ago

      I’m optimistic about another use some time next year. I’d thought about planning it, but it all began to feel a bit too contrived and was really draining the joy out of it. So I’m just going to see what happens. If it rolls around to next autumn without another appearance I might get a bit restless, but I’ve learned you can’t rush these things.

      • fakeman_pretendname
        2·
        1 month ago

        Yeah, there’s plenty of other joyful weird little words to deploy. Focusing on one is just going to become stressful :)