LJ Daily Answers: 30 May 2005

[chaosvizier.livejournal.com]

Greetings from the Emerald City of San Francisco! For the first time ever, we're together and working on the quiz live and in person. Of course, that really just means we got loaded on gin and then put this off to the last minute, much as we predicted. But that's ok, the fun is just beginning. Read on!



1. In the musical Cats, which cat sings the song "Memory"?

"David Bowie is the coolest cat there is!" - akiyasan

"Tom. [Was the cat Tom or Jerry? I've no idea.]" - psychoticspy

(You wound me with your grave lack of cartoon knowledge. Tom is the cat. Jerry is the mouse. Oy gevault! -AL&CV)

"I can't remember. Is that considered irony, or is it only ironic in the half-assed, Alanis Morissette kind of way?" - soimpossible414

(Yes. To the latter. -AL&CV)

"I'd rather slit my own throat with a rusty blade and gouge out my eyeballs with a toothpick than to listen to someone singing it on karaoke ever again." - gaaak

(I guess we will leave karaoke bars out of the LJDQ Pub Crawl then. -AL&CV)

"They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother. Can you dig it?" - chlaal

(Oooohhhh yeah. SHAFT! -AL&CV)

"Garfield, with backup howling from Odie." - nakedblueninja

"All I can do is picture a cat singing, which makes me want to throw shoes, as is traditional." - sesmo

"How can you even tell them all apart? I've never seen Cats, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't go, 'oh, look! That's the cat who sang that random song about marmalade earlier! Why the hell is it singing about memories now?'" - tinydamonkey

"I know that I have no clue, but the word Cats brings back memories:
Me: Mommy! Mommy! I want to see Cats! Can we go?
Mom: Honey, you're allergic to cats. You can go and see this. *points at Peter and the Wolf.*
Me: Err... Mom?
Mom: Yes, dear?
Me: It's a bunch of people dressed up as cats, not a Ms. Cat Beauty Pagent.
Mom: No means no." - nosesonapole

"Its that fugly one that gets all purtied up. What the hell was her name? Grizelbee? Grizelbelle?" - galilei1283

"Grizabella - whose name always suggested a fiendish cat/bear hybrid." - lazy_alex
"Grizabella, never to be confused with Grizzly Adams" - shes_precious
"Grizzabella, who looks like a bag lady and whose name sounds like a beard conditioner." - ladylyonesse

"Grizabella the glamour cat. I always break down and cry like a big old softy when she sings it but I never admit to any one except I guess that I just did." - midnight_emily

"Grizzabella! I would have named one of my cats that, but neither of them are grey. One's black and one's white; they're lesbian yin-yang ninja kitties." - delordra

(I hope that some day I will have the opportunity to use the phrase "lesbian yin-yang ninja kitties" in casual conversation. -AL&CV)

"It's something like Grizabella, or Grizahontas or something with "Griz" in it. Probably because she was old and grizzled and probably would not be a tasty cat to eat (that is, if we ate cats. Which we don't. Not at all. Moving on.)" - fantom07

"I remember once in college one of my snarky friends convinced one of my ditzy hallmates that Cats was all about furries, and that it was a stage performed furry exhibition. She got really pissed when her boyfriend went with his family to see it, too, and he never could figure out why." - kiwislut

"I can't see the musical live, though, because I'm really allergic to cat dander. The last time I went to see it I sneezed for three days. True story." - deza

"Did you know that's the one song in Cats that isn't based on the T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats? It was actually from Rhapsody on a Windy Night, which was from Prufrock and Other Observations." - dorei

Correct Answer: Grizabella

"Friends don't let friends dress up as cats." - bacskocky

"Do you not think T.S. Eliot is rolling in his GRAVE? 'I studied at Harvard and the Sorbonne, I practically created Modernism, I WON THE NOBEL PRIZE, yet I am best known for a bunch of anorexics prancing around in FAKE CAT OUTFITS to the tunes of ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER!!!'" - pisica



2. What are the names of Odin's two ravens, and what do their names mean?

"My brother was driving out to the lake and he nearly hit a raven, so he rolled down his window and pelted it with a french fry, which it promptly ate, I think that was its plan, stay by the road untill a fat man pelts me with greasy food. best plan ever." - invalidcaracter

"Alan Cumming played Loki in that movie I didn't see, and did you know that Alan Cumming's signature fragrance is not just a joke? I admire a man who designs a scented candle and then calls it Cumming in the Air." - 3jane

(Full credit, because... wow. -AL&CV)

"I'd throw in a reference to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, but I can't think of a way to make it witty." - emilyray

(There is NO WAY ON EARTH to make that series witty. -AL&CV)

"Heckyl and Jeckyl" - 5 of you

(Magpies ain't ravens. -AL&CV)

"Flotsam and Jetsam, and their names mean that your voice is going to get stolen and worn around an evil witch's neck in a shell." - prettypinkkitty

(Eels ain't ravens either. -AL&CV)

"If Odin lived in modern society he would have called them 'desktop calendar' and 'PDA'." - silmaril

"All I know about ravenology is that the Latin for "tomorrow" is "cras" named after the cawing of ravens, who are due to eat your eyes some time in the future. It doesn't say much about the Romans' attitude to the future." - grapefruitzzz

"I swear I thought that said Oded, and I was wondering how anyone would know that Oded Fehr had two ravens. I mean that's not the sort of thing one usually volunteers in an interview, unless they have really awesome names. Like.. Cheech and Chong" - kiwislut

"Quoth, and... More. Because then he could write Raven-care instructions like: 'Always feed Quoth the raven, never More.'" - psychoticspy

(And the winner of this week's Worst Edgar Allen Poe Pun Award goes to... psychoticspy! -AL&CV)

"One of them means Memory. Why can't I remember the other one? Did I forget to leave him enough roadkill again? Damn it, Memory, this is just too ironic!" - rushthatspeaks

"Thor: Dude! I can see that raven's ASS! What is he doin'?
Tyr: Oh, he's just Munin." - feste

"Minerva and Athena. Minerva meaning memory, and Athena meaning more memory. I think this is one of those times that guessing based on the theme doesn't help." - cjohlm7

(No it didn't, but nice going on the Norse-Roman-Greek mythology Triple Combo Supreme. -AL&CV)

"Odin had a bit of a drinking problem and was always forgetting stuff because of it, so he had his two ravens carry his thoughts and memories just in case. And they kept his car keys, as well, because ravens don't let Norse gods drive drunk." - alliterator

"Odin also had a goat that pissed mead" - shadowkeeper

(I think the mead came from its udder, not its urethra. Even the Norse had some taste. -AL&CV)

"One was named Munin, and his name meant 'memory'; the other was named Hagar, and his name meant 'A woman's place is in the kitchen, now go get me another beer, Helga!'" - silent_r_infork

"Their names mean 'time' and 'memory'. I know this, because Sailor Mars has two pet ravens named after the moons of Mars, which are named after the ravens of Odin. You see? It all works out! Thank you, badly dubbed animation!" - vanbrosia

(There are so many things wrong here, I don't even know where to start. -AL&CV)

(I do. -1 for everyone who used Sailor Moon anime as an educational source. Old LJDQs are much more reliable sources of information. -AL&CV)

"Twins seperated before hatching, Hugin was raised in a loving middle-class household with two kind parents and a pet worm named Olga. Mugin, on the other hand, grew up in the hood and started his own gang when he was a teenager. Fortunately they were reunited by Odin... and then enslaved and forced to do his godly will." - marasca

"Hugin and Munin; Thought and Memory. Once again, AD&D (i.e. Deities and Demigods, available at a local bookstore near you) saves me from failing the ljdq completely." - fragbert

"Hunin and Munin, aka Thought and Memory. Which, sadly, I know from having once been a Laurell K. Hamilton fan. Pity that nowadays all she writes is vampire porn that even Anne Rice would be ashamed of." - sethrak

"These names roughly translate to 'Bill' and 'Ted.' As a side note, Odin's name translates into 'Rufus.'" - dark_goddess_

Correct Answer: Hugin and Munin, "Thought" and "Memory"

"They gained their wisdom by eating the bodies of the dead after battles. It's amazing they never developed some avian version of Mad Cow Disease." - deza
"All of a sudden, I don't care about ravens anyway, I care about candy." - kokopellinelli



3. Wernike-Korsakoff's Psychosis, a condition that may someday afflict the ljdq co-moderators, is memory loss caused by what?

"When I tried to say it, it sounded more like Winery-Corkisoff Psychosis. It's obviously drinking." - active_apathy

"dis sindr0mz affX pipl hu reed 2 much txt spk onlyn 4 no gud rzon." - grapefruitzzz

(-1 for inflicting that sentence upon us all. -AL&CV)

"Too much pudding." - about half of you.

(As if such a thing could be. -CV&AL)

"Eating too much baby animal flesh? Well, at least for chaosvizier. I don't think angledge is quite so fond of courting trichinosis by eating Wilbur the Splendid Pig. Nah, if this diagnosis is to apply to both our merry mods, it's probably excessive consumption of alcohol, brought on by reading too many disturbing quiz answers. By the time they get done with the weekly submissions, they're probably so slobbering drunk they can't even buy brandy." - sethrak

(+1, The Princess Bride. -AL&CV)

"I should totally know this as I read about it for my Forensics For Beginners exam. And you only do -1 for webcheating, right?" - dracothelizard

(Sure, we only do a -1. But we do it 50 times. -CV&AL)

"I'm really hoping it's too much trivia. My college roommate used to claim my goal in life was to fill her brain with so much trivia, she forgot her name. I haven't gotten there yet, but I'm still working at it." - hija_paloma

"Having stuff being taught to you when your brain's already full. The sufferer experiences the feeling of some old stuff being pushed out of their brain." - lord_of_evil

"That would be memory loss as a side effect of metaphysical motion-sickness--which in turn is caused by swinging too hard in the handbasket you're in on your way to hell." - lisaofdoom

"Here's to alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." - smittenrosebud

(+1, The Simpsons. -AL&CV)

"Thiamine deficiency, often related to alcohol consumption is the root cause of Wernike-Korsakoff's Psychosis. So clearly what this means is that if you're going to do your binge drinking, you need to be taking your B1 vitamins!" - samuraimeg

(Is it a good sign or a bad sign that your moderators already know about B vitamins, & take them as hangover preventatives after nights of hard drinking? -AL&CV)

"No! LJDQ has merged with my study for the US Medical Licensing Exam, Step 1! This is simply not right. I think I'm obliged by duty and honor to kill myself now, right after that I tell you that the answer is thiamine deficiency, usually seen in the US in alcoholics." - delorda

(Do NOT kill yourself. The LJDQ needs you ... to help us get to 1,000 watchers so we can have a pub crawl. -CV&AL)

"Wernike-Korsakoff was the boozier and less musical brother of Rimsky-Korsakoff." - drdoug

"Seeing as you use ljdq as a drinking game, I'm gonna go with alcohol addiction." - crinkledpaper

(Using the LJDQ as a drinking games .... that's genius! +1. -AL&CV)

"Deep mental scarring. They warned you not to google 'goatse', but you did, and now you'll pay ... (Seriously. Don't.)" - vanbrosia

(We second that warning. Whatever you do, do NOT google "goatse". -CV&AL)

"I think you meant 'Heinekin-Korsakoff's Psychosis'. It is caused by getting drunk on beer and then placing Russian classical piano music at such volume that the brain, already weakened by the beer, leaks out one's ears." - feste

"Wood alcohol? Oh, that makes you blind. Didn't they used to say that masturbation made you blind, too? Wood alcohol=masturbation? Man, no wonder I keep failing math classes. My formulae make no sense." - duia

(Try this one: 2Viagra + 7595Masturbation = blindness. -AL&CV)

Correct Answer: Extensive alcohol abuse

"the psychosis is the FUN part!" - aliaspiral



4. In what book do we find Sayuri and Pumpkin working and living together in the district of Gion?

"Is this one of 'em vegetable-tentacle hentai titles?" - atomichatred82

(God no! -CV&AL)

"Memoirs of a Geisha. Have you ever noticed how, in that particular title, 'memoir' sounds like the sound of a French-style double air-kiss? 'Mwah-mwah of a Geisha' - as she kisses the air either side of your cheek. Maybe it's just my overactive imagination." - drdoug

"Sayuri? Pumpkin? Gion? Dude, I have never heard of any of that. I'm going to say Pride & Prejudice and sit back and wallow in my stunning incorrectness." - ewacat

"With names like Sayuri and Pumpkin, I bet they're living in sin." - sskipstress

"Are they both guys? Because the state of Texas forbids my reading of books which may imply homosexuality. It probably also forbids my answering of this question." - maskofsmiles

(Actually, I imagine the state of Texas would forbid LiveJournal in its entirety if they could. -AL&CV)

"Something about a whore? Memories of a Whore? We read it for hum class last years. And by 'We read' I mean 'My classmates read it and I absorbed random tidbits from the class discussions, and then wrote a 10 page A+ paper about those tidbits. Oh yes, Queen of Bullshit am I.'" - the_wanlorn

"Who the hell names their kid Pumpkin? I mean, really? I once had a dog named Pumpkin, but an actual human being? He must have hated going to school, with all those taunts. 'Hey, Pumpkin! Why don't you...open up your head and put a candle inside!'" - alliterator

"Memoirs of a 'I'm going to be made into a really crappy movie I just know it' Geisha" - samuraimeg

"I was gonna make a horrible rhyme, but nothing really rhymes with geisha except Croatia." - crinkledpaper

"Its Sayuri and Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" - umbralcorax

"That'd be Memoirs of a Geisha, which was given to my daughter at the age of 14 as a christmas present from my uncle. I'm not exactly sure what he was thinking at the time, but I'm uncomfortably aware that he spent a great deal of time in the far east, and I sincerely hope he wasn't sending her a training manual." - dorei

(Eh heh heh. That's disturbing. -AL&CV)

Correct Answer: Memoirs of a Geisha



5. Name the movie:
"Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts."

"That's some damn powerful memory right there. It's like some sort of Jedi force thing. It would sure make construction projects easier if you could just make buildings do whatever you want like that. And think of the special effects potential!" - dreamoflight

"I prefer Dr Demento, but that's just me." - deza

"Total Recall" - king_duncan

"Johnny Mnemonic Device" - umbralcorax

"I'm going to take a wild guess and go with... The Matrix? No, wait. Cosmo tells me that I should sound confident even when I don't feel that way. Let me try again. The answer is certainly The Matrix. How dare you waste my time with such simple questions?" - marasca

(-1 for reading Cosmo. -CV&AL)

"Although memory isn't the only thing that can change the shape of a room or the colour of a car - that's what Photoshop is for." - lazy_alex

"Mementos: The FreshMaker" - meepbitch

"Pimento. (It was the pits.)" - nihilicious

"The movie's called Why Is Everything Going Backwards? Or possibly I Can't Understand Any of This Shit. Or maybe Dude, Trinity Just Spit in My Drink!" - alliterator

"Memento, a fact I only know because one of my roommates has that quote on her door. She's training to be a lawyer. I'm not thinking about putting any trust in the justice system anytime soon, what with its dependence upon witness testimony and all." - liseuse

"I must confess that the only part of that movie I remember really well was the guy tattooing himself with ballpoint pens. At first I was kind of grossed out, but then I had a strong desire to go buy a bunch of Bics and try it out on myself...or perhaps my little sister." - soimpossible414

Correct Answer: Memento



6. Give us the opening paragraph from your memoirs.

"Ninety-nine bottles of gin on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of gin, take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of gin of the wall. Ninety-eight bottles of gin on the wall..." - atomichatred82

"As I sit here looking back over the past hundred and fifty years, I can't help but ask myself certain questions. Questions such as: why did I wait until I was 60 to invent the immortality pill? and Why didn't I give that really hot chick I met in Acapulco one of my immortality pills? and What ever happened to Kevin Federline after his wife Britney was ripped to shreds by angry mobs as she attempted to purchase one of my immortality pills? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to the beginning, and visit my mother as she waits anxiously for the birth of her firstborn child, in that wretched hive of scum and villainy we called Boston back in the 1970s...." - chlaal

"There are places where dreams and reality are separated by a gossmar thread of possibility. Sadly, Ves lived nowhere near these places. Instead, she lived in a concrete, here and now sort of world where people left their garbage sitting on the front porch for weeks and yards could barely be seen beneath the ragged hulls of junked out Impalas." - empressvesica

"Throughout my life, I have been called many things. Mum always said I was a 'wonderful surprise,' which is a much nicer way of saying that I was a product of the .5% failure rate of Ortho Tri-Cyclen." - soimpossible414

"404 Not Found." - blu_matt

"Just tell me my last words weren't 'Hey Y'all, watch this', and I will know that my death wasn't in vain." - sweetpea86

"I may as well begin as I mean to go on, so this is mostly true; I do mean to reveal everything, except maybe some of the mix tapes. I had a Bee Gees phase." - technoinfidel

"Omnia Gallia est ... shit, it's been done. Call me... shit, it's been done. It was the best of times, it was... done already! Shit! It was a dark and stormy night. Happy familes are all alike. In the beginning... Oh screw it, I'm going back to bed." - aki

(+1 for that impressive display of plagiarism. -AL&CV)

"Among the throngs of incompetents who couldn't tell the difference between the Godiva booth and the customer service booth, even though the two were only ten feet away, one man stood up for the rights of logic, common sense, and actually thinking in general. One man would not cater to the whims of these fools! One man...smarted off to them on a regular basis! I am that man." - silent_r_infork

"First he was like, 'no way.' And then I was all, 'omfg!' And then he was like, 'whatever!'" - galilei1283

"Seventeen years ago, a terrible thing happened in a hospital in Mississauga. A baby girl was born who would spread fear and darkness over the world, and eventually cause its destruction. However, this book is not about her. It is about the baby born in the next room over." - deesarrachi

"One of my earliest childhood memories is of going to an ice cream parlor with my babysitter. I ordered the mint chip ice cream. Several times I ate about half of what I had and then go back to the counter to ask if I could have just a little more, please. The store clerks thought I was so darn cute that they gladly added more to my cup. I ate so much mint ice cream that day that I puked. I'm sure that this is somehow symbolic of my whole life." - marasca

"... I forgot to answer number 3. Not on purpose. *facepalm*" - rushthatspeaks

"Tension Sheet, inventor of; cmzero, aged 17. And he died tragically in a plane crash, aged 98. It was his own fault, apparently; he was making love to his fourteenth wife and lost control of the plane." - cmzero

"It took her until Question 6. Yes, that's when I realized that the theme for the week was memory and decided to write down my life's story." - ladyisabella

(Now, from the LJDQ mother-daughter duo, csflick & sskipstress. Mom says:)

"Freezing weather, doctor's day off, three weeks early, how could they have known that all that gray hair could come from one small child?" - csflick

(Daughter says:)

"Some people are conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, but for my parents it was just plain old horniness." - sskipstress

"I was born just down the road from Columbia University. I'm sure it was my parents' dream that someday, the red, squalling bundle of blankets in their arms would one day attend that prestigous university on a full scholarship, then graduate from medical school and find a cure for cancer. Well, folks, sorry to disappoint, but I do make a good omlette." - thevioletangel

"I'll probably die from a tragic pasta accident or something." - dreamoflight

"Some may say my husband has it rough, living in an estrogen-saturated household, what with a wife and three daughters. Just wait until they're all teenagers they might say. But he has it easy; he doesn't know what adversity is. I do. I'm a Star Trekker living with a Star Wars fanatic, and he's slowly turning my daughters to the dark side of the SciFi fandom. This is my story." - lovellama

"I think the story of my life can be summed up in one word and two punctuation marks, those being: 'What?!' See, these were the first words my mother uttered when finding out about me. She was in labor at the time, having just delivered my sister." - grayarcadian

"Best. Lesbian. Ever." - twilight_angel

(Prove it. - CV&AL)

"Yes, I have always been this stupid." - alexmegami

"The doctors told me it was terminal. I remember it well. The young man, too young to be a doctor, I thought, looked me straight in the eyes and said I was too sexy to live." - lots42

"The End. (I'm going to tell it backward.)" - v827

(Have some backwards scoring. -1. -AL&CV)

"Chapter 1: I am Born. The Summer breezes from the California coast were balmy, as was the sweat on my mother's brow, the morning I was dropped into the world. I am told I was crying as found egress from my mother's vagina, and the Doctor said, 'How Like a Woman, screaming already', and then realized that I was, in fact, a boy. I slapped him." - king_duncan

"It was the best of times, it was ... the blurst of times?!?" - nihilicious, slickrickt

(+1, The Simpsons. -CV&AL)

Correct Answer: Eh, no C.A. this week.



Right. No time for closing quotes, as we're already hours late with this. And drunk. And sobering up. Back to the gin bottle for us!

Rock on,

AL&CV.

Comments

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Well, she's up to Book Four (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345443578/qid=1117569610/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-6762456-5435264), right? Doesn't this series have sort of a built-in deadline & a plot-ending point (i.e., when Merry succeeds her aunt as Queen)?

[jelymo.livejournal.com]

Something like that, yeah. Although knowing LKH, she'll never reach that point. Fae *are* difficult to reproduce, afterall, hence the need for a harem. Perfect set up for nonstop porn, if you ask me.

I'd laugh if Cel beat her to it and everything went to hell as a result. That would be the best ending ever.

And yes, they just did book four. I started reading before the first one came out, and that's when I heard about it being a trilogy. Guess she's changed her mind, because now I've since heard it's a 10-book deal. (Did I already say that? I can't remember. And I'm too lazy to check. So my apologies if I'm reiterating.)