So, it's becoming rapidly clear:

Someone wearing culottes in a phone box on Charing Cross Road sees one of those dodgy cards pinned to the side, advertising cylinders of longing. S/he involuntarily sneezes in reaction, thus attracting the attention of a passer-by. It all ends in rampant lust cusp.

Er, nearly there...

You are all wrong.  I really think we need to go back to the source material and make a fresh translation here, ignoring the obvious punctuation errors and typos.


Dances involving normal golf scores, and the seed of every elephant in rectangles are seen by Johhny Depp and Lacan as a longing for a wooden droid equal to 84 standard years - a manly idea.  A current mother's sister and a spherical trouser leg, going on a trip with the godly nasal passage, Australian Natalie Dessay, represents a separation anxiety about cylinders (a log?), and has no point.  The contact vacuum cleaner for small bees is a manly idea.  Get off the queue for points.  Contact a place for replacement arms.

Clearly, after a psychological trauma involving elephants, the patient's robot has become viewed as deficient in the arm department.  The patient needs to stop touring holidays of a religious-soprano nature and go to a shop selling replacement arms.

Agreed?

Tommo

En ce moment, cher Mort, je suis en train.

Tommeau

For the benefit of the uninitiated: Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style consists in its published version of 99 retellings of a single, rather silly, story: there is a rather full bus on the S route in Paris (as it was called when Queneau started on the exercises; when it was restarted after the war it became the number 84). A 26-year-old chap with a long neck gets on. He's wearing a soft hat whose ribbon has been replaced by a piece of string. He argues with another passenger, accusing him of deliberately bumping into him. He then sees an empty seat and nabs it. Two hours later the narrator observes the chap again in the Cour de Rome being told by a friend that he should move one of the buttons on his coat.

The curious might like to click on the following link:

I quoted the first of two paragraphs of the one entitled Géometrique. It continues:

Si l'homoïde A rencontre un homoïde homologue C, alors le point de contact est un disque de rayon r>l. Détermier le hauteur h de ce point de contact par rapport à l'axe vertical de l'homoïde A.

All clear now?

Bit like Chinese Whispers? Thanks for the explanation Ollie! I was wondering... but even though I hadn't a clue what you were all talking about!

Not very grumpy in here, is it?!

Since you ask...

Queneau was inspired by a 1933 concert of The Art of Fugue to attempt something analogous. He didn't start until 1942 though when he published 12 texts. Various others were published between then and 1945, and he destroyed 52 of them in the summer of 1946, publishing a collection of 99 in 1947. In 1963 he published a new version, replacing six of the texts with new ones and changing eight titles.

This all from my trusty folio plus edition with texte intégral and dossier.

'I'm sorry you want to do what?'

'I want to blow these A4 pages up to B4 and then have them copied double-sided.'

'We don't have B4 paper I'm afraid.'

'Can you copy them onto A3 and then trim them down then?'

'Yes we could do that but it wouldn't work if you were copying it double-sided.'

'Well yes, but couldn't you use the bypass tray?'

'Weeeeeeeeeeeel... [looks doubtfully at photocopier] I wouldn't know how to do that. Why don't you come back on Monday and ask the manager?'

'Because I need to post this today... Well thanks anyway'

x 10

So how did you spend your morning?

[edit: see Happy Room for an update]

Tis the curse of Murdoch Anty, the game is televised on Sky Sports who presumably bought the rights.