Went over to Dove's last night (well, she's staying in a very swanky apartment in Melrose Arch at the moment, only for two weeks), so I took over my Box Noodle and a bottle of wine.And really, it's amazing what we do to entertain ourselves.
Firstly she found a piece of fluff in her lettuce bag. And she reckons, 'Do you think if I successfully sue Woolworths, I'll get a lifetime's worth of rocket?'
It's not a bug Dove. It's actually a piece of stray seed.
'It's a fucking bug mate. It has legs.'
No it really doesn't.
'Free rocket for a lifetime. Imagine that.'
She showed me THEE most amazing thing on her MacBook. And again, this is why I love my MacBook, and this is why you want to own one.
For the Text Edit programme.
You type words in a box, any words – and trust me, we pulled the ring out of the profanities - you then hit 'Speech' and Bob's Your Auntie, it fucking says your words. But in all sorts of different ways.
It's Speak & Spell, only more sophisticated.
There's 'Fred,' the default voice over guy, but there's also 'Deranged' and 'Hysterical' too, which was nothing short of unprecedented entertainment.
We spent the night playing Mission: Beat The Machine, This Is Extreme.
We started off with the basics. As one does.
honk honk honk honk honk honk. get off the hooter mate. you are shagging on the fucking hooter.
And: fuck. fuck. fuck. va jay jay poenani.
Well blow me down, it got everyone of those words perfectly articulately. So now it became a a mission to beat the machine at it's own game.
The perfect evening of drunken geekery. God. What a rush.
We tried verbosely ridiculous celebrity names:
peaches geldof, mary kate olsen, jake gyllenhaal, viggo mortensen, amy winehouse, victoria von engershausen [That name doesn't exist – but it could fuck the machine - Ed] maria sharipova, martina navratalova, enrique iglesias, jennifer lopez, moon unit zappa, ashton kutcher, hugh hefner scarlett johannson, naomi campbell, giselle bundchen, matthew mcconnaughay joaquin phoenix.
It even got Joaquin Phoenix perfectly. Tough crowd. So we tried bigger words:
hyperbole, hypothalamus, diarroeah, onomatopoeia, algorithm, oesophagus,homophobic, deep vein thrombosis, enema, somnambulist, kiddie fiddler, paedophile, telefunken.
No dice.
Right. How about: supercallafragelisticexpialladocious
Holy tits. Not a phonic out of place.
Game On Muthafucker.
Rare and [frankly unfortunate] diseases:
gonorrhoea, syphilis, herpes, hepatitis b, pneumonia, cirrhosis, bronchitis,thrush, piles, kwashiokor, rickets, bunion, candida, haemophilia, anaemia, psychological dysfunction, pap smear, scabies, foot fungus.
Fred was on fire.
Fine chassis.
It said 'shassey' not 'cha-sis.'
When was the point going to be when we say, 'We fucked you man. Ka ching?'
Place names. English-sounding ones only, because we don't need to cheat when we have a challenge. We will beat the machine:
berwick upon tweed, pimlico, kloof, suffolk, minneapolis, saskatchewan, raleigh north carolina, greenwich
Dude. It even got Grennidge.
But. It's not over till the fat lady sings.
Science.
hydrogen sulphide, potassium dichromate, bromine water, intergalactic stratosphere, hydrochloric acid, molecules, carbon fibroids, caustic soda, sulphuric acid, plutonium, curium, einsteinium, freudian, marxism, lithuania, uzbekistan, tajikistan, kazakhstan.... borat
It was either going to fall short with Borat or Freudian. But it didn't. Fiddlesticks.
Dove executed a final blow, as did I. Hers was (and it's a real word:)
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Yahtzee.
Everything was going fine until Fred stumbled upon the second-to-last syllable. 'Ism.' He didn't get the 'ism' at the end.
The rush. The immediate high. My. God.
Then I typed in: (and bear in mind, I wrote it out so that it was an easy read for the machine. I gave the machine ample room to get this right, but alas alack. I beat the machine:)
am i bovv id. am i bovv id though. arcs me if i'm bovv id. look at my face. am i bovv id, arcs me if i am bovv id. i aint even bovv id. i aint even bovvid though.
The machine read 'bovvid' as 'back fed.' We had to write 'buvvered' for it to pronounce it properly.
So there you go. Bovvid and Antidisestablishmentarianism. That'll show it whose boss.
9 comments:
First to comment...
I'm just impressed at your combined vocabulary. At which point did you two dust off the dictionary?
We didn't mate. We're just super talented like that. ;)
Nah we really do find words the most fascinating things ever. So we make it our business to know :)
Garry Kasparov feels your pain.
hahahah. That's one for Fred. I'm gonna beat him with Garry Kasparov.
That's why I read your blog - to live vicariously your rich and fulfillling social life. All I have planned for the weekend is dinner, dancing & a booze-up (I mean cultural exchange) at the Italian club and mebbe a visit to the ballet and some shopping and a lunch or two.
Hahahaha - I know Charm, it's hard to keep up with my crazy social calendar. It's really hard to squeeze in a night with Fred The Machine when my diary is chockers packed.
Shitters - your weekend sounds fantastic! Wanna swap?
WTF, you have a life. If you ever get as bored as I am, you can buy one of the really poshe voices from Cepstral, they're even more mind-blowing than the standard Mac ones.
I hope that works with Windows. Because I find that fascinating.
Dude! Fred is my favourite voice, ha ha ha, classic!! Ive played the exact same little "game", dude, I can go on for hours! Have you ever played with the speech recognition function yet? If you turn it on, you get a little box microphone, and if you hold in esc button and talk, you can ask the computer questions, or give it commands and it listens and talks back to you!! I shit you not. You can even ask it to tell you a joke and it will proceed with knock knock jokes! Another night, another bottle of wine and you're A for away! :)
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