Daily puzzles/problems.

[Scheherazade]

Qu’est-ce que c’est? Fa-fa-fa-fa….

American Psycho

...and where it’s going, no one knows.

Slaughter House-5

Squeak, piggy, squeak

Lord of the Flies

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

1984

‘Clueless’ is about right

Emma

Like The Omen with sprinkles

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Not sure how many of the above guesses are correct but, once again, I realise how unfamiliar I am with children's literature (English)...

[prendrelemick]

Scooby do its not : Call of the Wild, or could be White fang. (I can't remember which is which.)

The compulsive carnivorous activity: could be There was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a fly. (A song that may have been made into a children's book.)


Gin a body meet a body: I once read a review very similar to this of Catcher in the Rye.


Not all moloko and cookies A Clockwork Orange.


The Classic American Breakfast: The diabolical Green Eggs and Ham.

The Shipping News is an unreadable book set in (Oh America my) New found land.

[MarkBastable]

Yep - that's the lot. Scheh got six and Mick got six, so here's a tie-breaker just for you two... To give you both a chance (given that Mick seems to be up at some godforsaken hour to do something to animals), answers can be posted only after you've had your lunch.

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If anyone other than <author> had written this then it would probably have ended up on one of the many vanity publishing websites that plague the Web. ...this has the feel of a commissioned piece, or the fulfilment of a book deal commitment rather than great literature. As a book this is a massive piece of self-indulgence. It is also inherently anti-Semitic in a way that only a book written by a Jew about Jewish culture and society could get away with.

Overall a passingly useful insight into a very caricatured view of Jewish life, with quite a few Yiddish words that I didn't know, most of them scatological. As a book it doesn't seem to try hard to do anything other than dump the authors problems on the reader...

...it just reads like a little boy trying to see how many dirty words he can get away with using.

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During the very short time it's going to take them to work that out, perhaps the rest of us can take another look at this review of Green Eggs and Ham, and consider the kind of superbly screwed-up mindset that produced it.

Green Eggs and Ham

The "hero" of this tale spends the entirety of the book trying to force green eggs and ham upon a nameless skeptic. The "villain" turns down the offer several times, but the hero refuses to respect the man's right to say no, and badgers him incessantly until he caves under the pressure.

What disgusts me most about the end of the story is that once the man gives in, he is simply another addition to a pool of addicts. The author's tragic allegory for the rising drug use among young people that plagued his time period is brilliant, but certainly not appropriate for young children. Sam is too easily twisted to become a hero, opening the antagonist's mind to new things, rather than a metaphor for Satan as I believe was originally intended.

[prendrelemick]

It's The Challenge Cup Final today, so Lunch will be starting about now, be mainly liquid and finish around 4 o'clock - later if Leeds win.

I'll wait till then so as not to incur your roth.

[prendrelemick]

Portnoy's Complaint.

[MarkBastable]

Yep. Off you go.

[prendrelemick]

[65 108 97 115 44] [112 111 111 114] [89 111 114 105 99 107 33] [73] [107 110 101 119] [104 105 109 44] [72 111 114 97 116 105 111 46]



ps. Those square brackets are not part of the message, I can't seem to get spacing without them.

[prendrelemick]

[MarkBastable]

I was about to apply some concentration to this but the sight of Arthur Askey - the least funny and most irritating little man ever to stand on stage* - put me right off.



*With the exception of Norman Wisdom.

[Silas Thorne]

During the very short time it's going to take them to work that out, perhaps the rest of us can take another look at this review of Green Eggs and Ham, and consider the kind of superbly screwed-up mindset that produced it.

Green Eggs and Ham

The "hero" of this tale spends the entirety of the book trying to force green eggs and ham upon a nameless skeptic. The "villain" turns down the offer several times, but the hero refuses to respect the man's right to say no, and badgers him incessantly until he caves under the pressure.

What disgusts me most about the end of the story is that once the man gives in, he is simply another addition to a pool of addicts. The author's tragic allegory for the rising drug use among young people that plagued his time period is brilliant, but certainly not appropriate for young children. Sam is too easily twisted to become a hero, opening the antagonist's mind to new things, rather than a metaphor for Satan as I believe was originally intended.

Oh dear! There's too much reading of personal prejudices into this. I thought the whole point was to encourage people not to be closeminded about things. The writer clearly hasn't tried any Green Eggs and Ham. Maybe he/she should.

[billl]

I've been working on this one, but just fiddling with the substitution cipher angle. I checked this guy's tunes on the web, and it was a nice break. Sounds like he had fun doing those songs. Was he maybe also beating the commies with cryptology, between the puns and zingers on those albums? A national hero? Or is he (much less dramatically) perhaps the source for the text of this encoded message or something?

[prendrelemick]

I'm sorry I put you through that billl.



All I shall say at this point is that it sounds like he should know the answer.

[billl]

Hah, it came to me suddenly as I arrived home and sat down. I saw "Key" in the guy's name, and firgured, "Ask key", so this guy knows, I would ask him, hmm....

Nope, ASCII, is the clue, thanks. (I actually had solved for "poor" already via substitution...)

"Alas, poor Yorick! I know him, Horatio."

[prendrelemick]

That's right billl. I'm always relieved when someone gets my clues, it shows I'm not totally odd.

[billl]

Yeah, I know, it can sort of feel like one is being rude when no one gets it right away.

NEXT ONE:

I was 8 when Amy was born.
Now, I am twice as old as Amy, and half as old as my Brother Bob.

How old was Bob when Amy was born?