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What'! Moriarty Actually Chose A Winner For The HITCHHIKER
Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Hey, you would have dragged your feet, too. When I first announced this contest, Harry sent me an IM. “You are fucking crazy,” he said. I told him that I was going to enjoy the judging process.
I was wrong. Dear sweet God, I was wrong.
For one thing, I didn’t anticipate that I would get over 4,000 entries. You try reading 4,000 Vogon-style poems sometime. Most of the past three months has involved people trying to wrestle guns out of my hand as I tried to end the horror and put myself out of my suffering.
Now, though, finally, there is a winner. I have to say, there comes a point at which terrible poetry becomes pretty much the same. All of you sent in godawful, miserable, stinking, foul, ungodly poems, so you can feel good about that. You all suck. I mean that most sincerely. But someone has to suck the most, and that person is...
Josh Ebeling.
Now, according to Josh, he didn’t technically write his own poem, but I’ll let him explain it to you:
I should begin by saying that the nature of this contest has compelled me to forward the following, even though I am not technically supposed to have it. The fact that it is even in the possession of a human being, let alone on Earth itself, is a violation of a staggering number of interplanetary treaties, codes of ethics, country club membership rules and general common sense guidelines. Perhaps some explanation is in order.
This poem was written by a succession of the Yuilg family of Associate Assistant Vice-Prostetnics of the Galactic Civil Service Core. Such bureaucratically wasteful positions are, for the Vogons, the equivalent of hereditary royalty titles, and when the original Associate Assistant Vice-Prostetnic Yuilg died in what appeared to be an accident during a routine ear canal wax excavation, the position was passed, in receivership, to his eldest son. At the time of his 23rd birthday, the eldest Yuilg began filing the necessary paperwork to inherit his father's title and, soon after his 57th birthday, assumed the position and claimed his full inheritance. In what at the time was considered too much irony for rational thought, he died the next day, leaving the estate and title to his younger brother. When the same thing happened to him 34 years later, the day after the middle son claimed his inheritance, an exploratory committee was formed to determine the need for a preliminary investigation into the matter.
Before they could reach a conclusion, the youngest Yuilg son filed his paperwork in a record 32 years, and discovered what had perpetrated the deaths of his family: a short poem his father had been working on. Naturally, the youngest Yuilg began to make some improvements to it. So began a cycle that would continue for the next millennia, whereupon the death of the father Yuilg from the ever-improving poem, it would be passed in succession through his children until it reached one hardy enough to survive it and improve upon it. As the poem continued to grow more vile, so did the children, with only children able to survive the poem continuing on to reproduce, and thus making the Yuilgs ever-more immune to its "lyrical elegance." Eventually, however, the poem was improved to the point that an entire generation of Yuilg children died, and through an oversight in someone's will, became available to a Vogon publisher. It was summarily banned from public consumption soon afterward (not due to any hazard the poem itself presented, but because the various creationist cults objected to it as proof of evolution, and thus, deemed it offensive).
Despite the outright banning supported by the full weight of the Vogon bureaucracy, the poem managed to leak out to several sources, and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of sentients throughout the galaxy. Recognizing the problem (in a dramatically quicker fashion than was the norm), the members various galactic governing bodies set out to prevent the dissemination of the potential weapon-poem throughout the universe while, naturally, attempting to secure a copy for the use of their own representative governments. So it was that the poem eventually settled into an equilibrium phase of being locked in the deepest vaults of every governmental organization, having killed anyone so bureaucratically inept as to actually have read the poem. Periodic testing through intergalactically transparent control operations ensured (through the countless deaths of Renkarnian Log Sloopers, agreed to be the lowest evolved, but still technically sentient, being in the galaxy, just below the Terran Human) that the poem possessed by these governments was the real McCoy.
How the poem came into my possession is the simple confluence of the heart-stopping nightmare of every government official charged with keeping the Yuilg Poem secret. Since time immemorial, spies have sought a way to ensure complete secrecy during their communications with others. (Despite the relative socio-political-economic equilibrium status of the various governing units throughout the galaxy, espionage is still employed by all of them through the same sort of instinct that causes middle aged beings to begin expressing their diminishing sexual prowess through the purchase of ever-larger internal combustion machines.) It is well known the best defense against the unwanted overhearing of classified information is to simply bring a recording of the Yuilg Poem on a playback device to the desired meeting, completely isolate ones auditory nervous receptors, play the poem, then proceed with the meeting. Any being not directly killed by this procedure has most likely had the Babel fish residing in their ear turn into a yellow paste-like substance, rendering the being unable to understand the ensuing conversation. (This Babel fish-byproduct is most commonly shipped to a secret distribution house located on Earth, which places it in a can and markets it as a room temperature artificial cheese product.)
During one such espionage mission to Earth, whereupon the spy in question was attempting to determine the extent of the nuclear capabilities of a particular government through, in what surely makes sense in that particular beings culture, the interviewing of a series of traffic lights. Upon his death, his possessions were passed to me and a small group of associates, under the ancient and universally accepted dogma of "finders-keepers." Without further ado, then, here is the poem we discovered:
Oh rightly satcheled suture sieves,
oh grundled grebes of yore,
upon my petti-coated-clippings
of finger and toenails.
I see the future in my past,
The past upon my bathroom floor,
when after severe stomach pains,
I vomit my entrails.
Zlacked limbs adorn my kitchen,
vaunted Rons await at my door,
but in my tub I stay and watch,
and decipher excrement trails.
AAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
YOKO!!
AIEEEEE-YAAAAAIIEEEE-YAAIIE!!
Let no one move me from my task,
I must read these illecution'd more
lest I miss the meanings of
these waste product Holy Grails.
You may now be asking yourself, if the poem was indeed not written by me, why I deserve any sort of prize for its submission to this contest? Rest assured, then, that the poem did not come easy – in fact, all the aforementioned associates who discovered it with me have met with rather gruesome ends. The poem, as described, is quite lethal, and the translation of the poem into English, while mildly reducing this effect, is still a very dangerous undertaking. Therefore, what you read here is not truly the Yuilg Poem (as I have very little chance of collecting such righteous swag as the grand prize of this contest if you are dead), but instead the closest abstraction of the concepts of the poem into our language as may be attempted without causing more than a mild headache and, very occasionally, a sharp jabbing pain behind the eyes and sinuses. For such a heroic undertaking (and to ease the loss of my friends, though I will admit that I didn't particularly enjoy their company to begin with, but none the less), I deserve at least some credit, especially since, if it's not as bad as some other entries, it's because I've done my job too well.
- Josh OOOWAH
Congratulations, Josh. And many thanks to the rest of you for all the sorrow and pain you’ve caused me. I may never recover.
"Moriarty" out.
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+ Expand All
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Apr 04, 2005 2:27:00 PM CDT
Between that poem and Mori actually giving the results of a cont
by big bad clone
Whew, false al[ka-boom]
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Does this mean the GAH giveaway results might not be far behind?
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Oh and apparently, I'm First!!!! Is this the point in which I am to be raped, tarred, feather, have my genitals chopped off, die and burn in hell?
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Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput! -
Or is that the most eloquent and well thought out prose to appear on AintItCool in quite some time.
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That was only one submission and I could barely take it. Mori, you are more man than Lee Marvin, Bruce Willis, and John Wayne put together.
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Dude really knows where his towel is.
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I found out a couple of days ago that I forgot to post my poem. Being a humanitarian I won't post it here either. I'm sure I would've made the top 3000, though.
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I think editing out the Babelfish-becoming-processed-cheese thingey would actually be of benefit.
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I feel like the gruesomely long intro deserves this prize.
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He definately deserved to win, his explanation was a riot.
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First person who can tell me how this reference makes sense in relation to the above article wins a free virtual cookie
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Wow, maybe if I write longer then this guy maybe I'll win this contest too
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Hear me Hollywood? That's talent. Tap it.
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It's from a Monty Python skit. The world's funniest (and deadliest) joke). I think Hitler told the "My dog has no nose" joke. Someone else can figure out how it relates to the Vogon poem.
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Vogon plant!
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Has to be the worst - by definition...
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Douglas Adams, who wrote "Hitchhiker's Guide," early in his career wrote for Monty Python, although the World's Funniest Joke skit was fairly early, and I didn't think he wrote for the show until after Cleese left.
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I love somebody complaining about "spelling and grammer" while spelling "grammar" wrong.
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bravo.
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A normal intelligent open minded human being who isn't dwelled with angst would've understood what this person meant in the first place. I don't get people that point out meaningless errors when they still understood it to begin with. Are they perhaps lonely or desperately trying to climb the ladder out of that "social degenerate" status your in? I can understand pointing out something that caused confusion but a quote from Clerks describes this well... "I hope it feels so good to be right. There's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?" As for this poem, hands down this person thought outside the box and did more than just a poem. Talented indeed. ;)
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Must add my two cents to this. First of all, i JUST finished reading the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, all 816 pages of it, all five books, plus a short entitled (Young Zaphod Plays It Safe) and I have to say something. I didn't think they were that great. I know I know, shoot me if you must, but I honestly don't see what the fuss is about. I will admit, parts of them are entertaining and Adams has a unique voices that wirtes some very clever and funny satirical observational humor. But, seriously...816 pages, and it goes nowhere. ANd it doesn't go nowhere fast, it meanders there. Plot lines dropped, things thrown in that become completely reversed. Adams admitted he wasn't a writer, and hated doing novels. And it shows. I think the books could all be chopped into halves (And the last book, the most off kilter of the five, could be cut into a third of its length) and maybe be readable. But, seriously, it became a chore to finish the books, hoping at the end there would be some sort of closure. Well, a bit of closure...almost like Adams found out the books were being cancelled and had to change the ending of the last one just in time for printing so that there was an "end". The writer above did a good job of Adams. Which is to say, I found myself racing to get to the bottom of the paragraph before utter boredome threatened to destroy a witty passage that's too verbose for its own good.
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Apr 05, 2005 7:25:00 AM CDT
I still don't understand the need for the fifth Hitchhiker's boo
by monkey butler
The end of the fourth book was absolute perfection. Hopefully we'll get to see it in a Hitchhiker's sequel, assuming this one does any good.
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Writing silly pop songs isn't that hard really. Art is harder, as Lennon's piss-poor cartoons illustrate.
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Apr 05, 2005 8:46:06 AM CDT
Nice!! Well deserved. And pity poor old Mori, go have a couple
by big_bubbaloola
...you'll feel much better....then very very bad......then possibly a little better.....then your liver will more than likely exit outta your arse and go to Alcoholics Anonomous.
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This is the dorkiest stuff I have ever read. I better get out of here man.
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that was fun to read. kinda like hammering a 6-inch spike through a board with my penis would be fun.
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Lines Composed a Few Parsecs Above Rigil Kentaurus, on
Revisiting the Election of a Prefect During a Tour
- unknown constructor ship guard
The perfervid moment of acclamation
Became proximal for the junta.
A putsch would serve as rejoinder for malversation.
Servitors would winnow with no distrait.
As the quagmire of gubernatorial democracy
Slogged toward a marriage of outrage and reverie,
The constituents battened down their matrixes
To quarantine the plagiarism inherit to selection.
Like an insurgent hoard of cicadas,
The incumbent electoral hurricane recorded
Its sovereignty on the partisan blog
Carried like the defenestration of a peloton.
In the causatum of the perturbation
The peons of the argosy felicitated.
An uncontaminated prelate had been appropriated.
No longer would the chattel moil disconsolate.
-------- There you have it, a poem fit for only the
most bureaucratic Vogon. And yeah, those are all real
words.
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Lines Composed a Few Parsecs Above Rigil Kentaurus, on
Revisiting the Election of a Prefect During a Tour [space]
- unknown constructor ship guard[space]
[space]
The perfervid moment of acclamation [space]
Became proximal for the junta.[space]
A putsch would serve as rejoinder for malversation.[space]
Servitors would winnow with no distrait.[space]
[space]
As the quagmire of gubernatorial democracy[space]
Slogged toward a marriage of outrage and reverie,[space]
The constituents battened down their matrixes[space]
To quarantine the plagiarism inherit to selection.[space]
[space]
Like an insurgent hoard of cicadas,[space]
The incumbent electoral hurricane recorded[space]
Its sovereignty on the partisan blog [space]
Carried like the defenestration of a peloton.[space]
[space]
In the causatum of the perturbation[space]
The peons of the argosy felicitated.[space]
An uncontaminated prelate had been appropriated.[space]
No longer would the chattel moil disconsolate.[space]
[space]
-------- There you have it, a poem fit for only the
most bureaucratic Vogon. And yeah, those are all real
words.
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How could anyone read Vogon poetry, let alone write or recite it!
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Technically, I'm not being bitter since I didn't enter.
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I read the Hitchhiker's Guide books in high school (which is when I think everyone did). The above entry was fantastic! Brilliant rendition of the Adams' style. The poem is only slightly funny but the length and extent of the write-up surrounding it shows a true devotee to the Douglas Adams' school of thought. Loved it! -- SPYder, out.
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I recited that poem to him almost verbatim, however using the correct translation, and I am not dead, nor on the verge of its sweet black darkness! That motherfucker took my poem and is trying to claim the..........ack! erk! (gurgle)...(choke).....bleeeeeeahhhuuuuughhh. Good work on the poem, dude.
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Even if he didn't actually write it, he deserves it anyway just for making it through the ordeal. Far better than mine:
As my tongue rolls around my slibbering lips
Tastebuds lovingly unfurling against perioral folds
My thoughts turn to you, my ever-neeblinged one.
You that I lost in the deepest nether regions of Saxaquine,
whose saliferous flavor I now recall.
I await your return with exawindy fargalinds.
Ah, such diobean giblings we enjoyed together!
Such donderings shall be ours again,
after I remand you to our viderous chamber.
Let me bawdle gibberously in your bilious lorifens,
and rest, my torfling snauffler in your malidam,
to await the coming of the Saunder.
No more, no more will I be boniferous.
I am here, waiting, for you.
Congratulations, Josh, you lucky bastard. -
Ouch. That hurt.
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