oxfordhacker | Entries tagged with quiz

OK, time for the answers to my recent ear-worm quiz. I note that no-one managed to simulate my mental processes very accurately, for which we should, perhaps, all be relieved.

There was a week during which a glance at my calendar would leave me mumbling "This is fucked up, fucked up". Which film was I scheduled to see?
A: The film was the Oscar-winning bonkers ballerina body-horror Black Swan, and the song was the excellent 'Black Swan' by Thom Yorke. Congratulations to brixtonbrood and offensive_mango.

I can't say the name of one of Oxford's cinemas without following it with "Yeah, you know me." What's the acronym by which that cinema is known?
A: It's the Ultimate Picture Palace, aka the UPP. The track in question is in fact 'OPP' by Naughty By Nature. Points to Oxfordians concourse, jinty and tortipede. Half points to the out-of-date brixtonbrood (it's not the Penultimate Picture Palace any more) and to offensive_mango for getting the song.

After taking my coat for repairs, I spent the rest of the day singing about "a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it". What needed fixing?
A: It was a button, though it was not, in fact, 'The Hardest Button To Button' as the White Stripes quote might have led you to expect. Well done concourse, brixtonbrood and offensive_mango.

Currently the financial news often leaves me singing "It was a clear black night, a clear white moon, Warren G was on the streets trying to consume..." What is being proposed for the banking industry?
A: Regulation, though probably not of the glock-mediated variety that Warren G and Nate Dogg advocate. brixtonbrood was the only person gangsta enough to guess that one.

I was talking about fruit with archie in the kitchen at work, when I unnerved him by singing "I want to kiss you but I want it too much (too much)..." What sort of berries were under discussion?
A: Boison! (Boison running through my veins...) The line's from 'Poison' by Alice Cooper, as guessed by concourse and brixtonbrood.

I spent an evening alternating between "Don't want to be on my own again tonight" and "If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it". What disease had poor tinyjo been diagnosed with?
A: She was a shingle girl/lady, depending on whether I was singing her 'Single Girl' by Lush or 'Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)' by Beyoncé. brixtonbrood got that one.

When I search the shelves at Oxfam for books for tinyjo I occasionally find myself singing "Shake it like a Polaroid picture." Which author I am seeking?
A: Georgette Heyer or, as Outkast pronounce her, 'Hey Ya'. brixtonbrood guessed correctly, jinty and offensive_mango were halfway there...

News reports about former President of Serbia Milan Milutinovic would leave me singing about "watching the tide roll in", and occasionally essaying ill-advised whistling solos. Where was he sitting at the time?
A: He was sittin' in the dock of The Hague, on trial for war-crimes. jinty gets half a point, brixtonbrood gets one, but offensive_mango gets two for correcting my lyrics (the tide should be rolling away), and tortipede also gets a bonus for extending my punnery rather wonderfully.

Whose fault is it that:
a)... I develop a stutter when suggesting that we eat something "more sub-sub-sub-substantial"?
A: R.E.M.'s, for using that line in 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite'. A point to concourse, there.

b)... when talking about badastronaut I always call her "Deb-or-ah (Deb-or-ah)"?
A: Pulp, for 'Disco 2000'. One for brixtonbrood.

c)... when I hear Martin Luther King mentioned I unfortunately think: "'Love is the only weapon'? Shit! Bullshit! Martin Luther King died with love!"
A: Alabama 3, for sampling that line from a Jim Jones rant in 'Mao Tse Tung Said'. Gotten by jinty and tortipede, though surely the most obscure of the three songs in this section.

When playing the excellent card game Dominion, it appears to be a house rule that you can't play one of the cards without introducing it thus: "This is not the greatest song in the world." What is that card called?
A: It is a Tribute (you've got to believe me...), as sung by Tenacious D and recognised by brixtonbrood.

When playing the excellent board game Pandemic, one draws cards from a deck containing major cities from throughout the world.
a) Which one always prompts me to say "If you didn't you wouldn't be in here"?
A: That's when "I know you've got Seoul". It's from a track by Bobby Byrd, apparently, though I know it from sampling by James Brown and Eric B & Rakim. Another point for brixtonbrood.

b) Which one always makes me mutter "Vanishing point, vanishing point, vanishing point"?
A: No-one guessed Karachi, and I'm not surprised. Only in my head does it sound sufficiently like 'Kowalski' by Primal Scream.

Sometimes, on my cycle to work, I find myself singing Ice T's 'Gotta Lotta Love'. The noise of what automatically-scheduled event has inspired this song?
A: OK, we're into the impossible ones here. It took me ages to work this one out myself, but eventually I figured that it's because of the opening lines: 'Woke up the other morning, heard a Roomba'. Well, OK, it's rumour in the original.

What did we find on our bikes one morning which left me singing "Hurry down the chimney tonight"?
A: Another impossible one. Sadly we had found neither the deed to a platinum mine, nor all the fellas that I haven't kissed (though they were good guesses offensive_mango), but spider babies. Fortunately, unlike 'Santa Baby', they did not hurry down our chimney...

When I have teleconferences in Mandarin, I tend to be distracted by one of two ear-worms: "Wu buck wild with the trigger!" or "I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want." Can you explain?
A: No, you can't, and no wonder. You'd need to know that Chinese people (or at least, the ones I work with) tend to repeat the words for 'that' or 'this' where we might use 'ummm' to fill sentences, that they're pronounced 'nà ge' and 'zhè ge' respectively, and hence put me in mind of 'Shame On A Nà ge' by Wu Tang Clan, or the Spice Girls really, really, really wanting to zhè ge zhè ge in 'Wannabe'.

Bonus vid - hilarious, extremely well done, and terribly unsafe for work unless you've got your headphones in:

I'm very impressed that someone managed to get all but the final, completely ridiculous ones, so well done all, especially

brixtonbrood for getting the most. I've enjoyed myself, so I guess I'll revisit this in another three years once the backlog's built up again...

Current Location: Work (tsk)
Current Music: 'Hey Ya' - Outkast

It's a rare moment when I don't have a song playing quietly somewhere at the back of my mind, and it's often hard to work out exactly why. However, occasionally I'm able to reverse-engineer the free-associative chain that my (apparently pun-riddled) brain took to get there and when I do I like to note it down. One of the advantages of carrying a smart-phone everywhere (and assiduously transferring my notes from device to device) is that I can write:I'd do this again, but these were gathered over several years so it might be a while before I build up enough...
in 2008, and then three years later make good on my promise.

So, just as before, I will present lyrical questions in approximate order of difficulty (from 'hard' to 'impossible'), screen the comments so you can answer individually, and will post the answers in a few days' time. Google may help identify the song, but it's not cheating much because that may be only the first step towards the answer...

There was a week during which a glance at my calendar would leave me mumbling "This is fucked up, fucked up". Which film was I scheduled to see?

I can't say the name of one of Oxford's cinemas without following it with "Yeah, you know me." What's the acronym by which that cinema is known?

After taking my coat for repairs, I spent the rest of the day singing about "a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it". What needed fixing?

Currently the financial news often leaves me singing "It was a clear black night, a clear white moon, Warren G was on the streets trying to consume..." What is being proposed for the banking industry?

I was talking about fruit with archie in the kitchen at work, when I unnerved him by singing "I want to kiss you but I want it too much (too much)..." What sort of berries were under discussion?

I spent an evening alternating between "Don't want to be on my own again tonight" and "If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it". What disease had poor tinyjo been diagnosed with?

When I search the shelves at Oxfam for books for tinyjo I occasionally find myself singing "Shake it like a Polaroid picture." Which author I am seeking?

News reports about former President of Serbia Milan Milutinovic would leave me singing about "watching the tide roll in", and occasionally essaying ill-advised whistling solos. Where was he sitting at the time?

Whose fault is it that:
a)... I develop a stutter when suggesting that we eat something "more sub-sub-sub-substantial"?
b)... when talking about badastronaut I always call her "Deb-or-ah (Deb-or-ah)"?
c)... when I hear Martin Luther King mentioned I unfortunately think: "'Love is the only weapon'? Shit! Bullshit! Martin Luther King died with love!"

When playing the excellent card game Dominion, it appears to be a house rule that you can't play one of the cards without introducing it thus: "This is not the greatest song in the world." What is that card called?

When playing the excellent board game Pandemic, one draws cards from a deck containing major cities from throughout the world.
a) Which one always prompts me to say "If you didn't you wouldn't be in here"?
b) Which one always makes me mutter "Vanishing point, vanishing point, vanishing point"?

Sometimes, on my cycle to work, I find myself singing Ice T's 'Gotta Lotta Love'. The noise of what automatically-scheduled event has inspired this song?

What did we find on our bikes one morning which left me singing "Hurry down the chimney tonight"?

When I have teleconferences in Mandarin, I tend to be distracted by one of two ear-worms: "Wu buck wild with the trigger!" or "I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want." Can you explain?

ETA: Answers have now been posted here.

Current Mood: Amused
Current Location: The garden room
Current Music: [Spoilers]

As promised, the answers to my earworm quiz of a couple of days ago, underneath the cut:

( The answers )

Current Mood: Revealing
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: 'Wanted, Dead Or Alive', Bon Jovi (in my head. I only have myself to blame.)

I have voices in my head. Mostly voices from indie-alternative music of the nineties. I refer, of course, to my mental iPod, a capricious device with wildly varying playlist and volume. It's normally playing something, normally just a track I've heard recently or an old favourite, but occasionally it's one that was brought to mind in some other way. Working out how it was brought to mind can end up pretty non-linear, but it's a game that I enjoy, and which I thought I'd share with you. See how you do with the following, all genuine examples of earworms I have suffered, ranked from (relatively) easy to fucking ridiculous. Google is only cheating a bit, because though it'll make the the first few pretty trivial, I suspect that 5-7 are nigh impossible if you're not actually me. Hell, I found it damn hard to work out some of the associations. I've screened comments, so you can post your guesses (or just request the answers) without seeing anyone else's. I'll let you know how you do...

While shopping for a new curtain rail (i.e. watching tinyjo shop for a new curtain rail) I found myself muttering "Got a letter from the government the other day, opened it and read it, it said they were suckers". What is our new curtain rail made of?

On the way home from the vet's, I realised I was singing "'Hey!' said the devil, when I met her at the roundabout." What sort of patient had arrived as we were leaving?

I went to the kitchen in work to grab a snack, and returned singing "A few times I've been around that track, so it's not just gonna happen like that". What snack was I holding?

Whenever my lovely ex-boss talked about spending time with her family, I'd end up singing "Oooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?" In which county do her parents live?

I was reading 'Time and Again', about a man who time-travels back to New York of the 1880s. The narrator was marveling at how inhabitants of the modern world don't realise how quickly and profoundly some aspects of city life have changed. I soundtracked this (rather trite) revelation with "These days everybody wanna talk like they got something to say, but nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish". What particular aspect of life in the city was being considered at the time?

The other day I fixed an Access query by explicitly casting a variable using a Visual Basic conversion function. For the rest of the afternoon I was singing "I asked Bobby Dylan, I asked The Beatles, I asked Timothy Leary, But he couldn't help me either". What variable type was I converting to?

I occasionally find myself singing 'The Sharif, he don't like it' when using Windows XP. What have I right-clicked to prompt this?

Bonus roleplaying round

Having fought some wild boars, our party met their owner, who explained that she was on her way back from having them 'serviced' when they went crazy and ran off. The conversation ran as follows:
"So they were actually wild sows, then?"
"Unless she's a really incompetent pig farmer."
Naturally, I started singing "I've got something to put in you, I've got something to put in you." What was the (cleverly modified) chorus of this song?

When a party member falls in combat and you're not sure whether or not they're beyond help, it's good form to give them a shot of a healing wand anyway. Naturally this leads to a rousing chorus of "I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride". What's the next line?

If you're now singing any of the above, my work here is done. If you have any similar examples please post them, if only to assure me that you suffer as I do. Surely it's not unusual?

ETA: Answers are now here.

Current Mood: Surprising even myself
Current Location: Downstairs on the sofa
Current Music: If I told you, it would be a spoiler...

It's not unimaginative to just post quiz results if you wrote the quiz in the first place, is it?

What kind of fish are you?

I am a Sarcastic Fringehead.
"The majority of the time, Sarcastic Fringeheads are at rest in their homes — only their heads protrude."
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