(Preambulatory into a brick wall)

In the Jahr of 1992 and the following Jahr (which, by most reputable accounts, was the Jahr of 1993), I was ensconced in a universe of university and simultaneously sharing a dwelling with two other members of the human species, who shall herein be coloured purple and green. We were all a bit mad then.

Then?

Pleasantly struck over the mindbrain by the notion of holding a preposterously lengthy and circuitously rambling written discussion, largely revolving around topics of stark gibbering nonsense (stark! bark!), we proceeded to spend a disturbing and peculiarly intermittent fraction of those Jahrs pouring forth our innermost haha into a couple of big papery things through the medium of cheap biro dribble.

Each person would respond to the ramblings of the previous, or from time to time shoot off on a twisting tangent of their own. Occasionally there were Other Contributors™, some of whom have since taken up recreational implosion, or simply gone mad.

The dwelling was on William Street, and the big papery things survived. Here they are, bit by eky bit. Eek! Run away!

Not 'arf.

(This is Gibberbook One)

              Front matters not
                The man who never blinks
                  Until thoroughly decomposed
                    Let us go then, I and me
                      Banished forever
                    Dim semiotic desires
                  Millimillillimilimeter and Earwicker
                Wipeout
              Very close to harmony
            It was all he had left
          Whisperingly
        Back at the base
      Boredom in limbo
    Where's my moo-cow?
  A sinister gentleman's raincoat
Soupy twist
  Dear dear
    Sage sinography
      I want some plot
        Breaking free
          Wooffle ooffle!
            The Antiplautus and the pluperfect conditional
              Election Mania
                Page 14
                  To the starship Milwaukee
                    Not very good stars
                      Curses
                    Upside, downside
                  Pieces of marmalade
                Hic haec hoc
              Seive sense
            The Sisterhood of Omelette
          Foresty forest
        Evolved from the rain
      What did it all mean?
    No absolutes! No idea!
  An environmentalist's nightmare
Flibbertigibber
  Chapter None
    The moment of truth
      Pitch invasion
        Naranja? Arancia?
          Plubnic burp
            Young Nat Penderby
              Apparatus umbrellicus
                Sic transit arcana mundi
                  In my end is my beginning
                    Everybody weird
                      A really good space filler
                    Orighkinal siggn
                  Language, Timotei!
                Grammatological pap
              Relative madmen
            Vedic doodles
          Rewind
        Into the sunset
      All in the mind
    The absence of his subjectivity
  Dialogue of cowpats
Makes you go kerfazzle
  Policies for the future of the text
    The island of seven pages
      Chinston Wormhill
        Ray Vin Ma'd
          8 out of 10 Wombles
            Still completely
              Interim
                Herring and Crisp
                  Dire critics and nested brackets
                    Quince (Peter)
                      Drang nach Osten
                    Metamorphosis
                  Elk, eek
                Up we shall journey
              Four pages later
            A flyte of limericks
          Mauve with boredom
        No goat on the moon
      The Limerick Squad
    Grandmatology
  Covered in cow
Quite enough determinacy
  Detective commissioner Walrus
    Book virus
      The ice-cap reigns
        Made glorious somewhere TEXT
          The sentence-pede
            Fore legs good
              I love existential quantifiers
                Well-past-its-sell-by-date logic
                  Il n'y a pas d'hors-texte
                    Archaeopteryx
                      Generous irony
                    Limericks — never again
                  Tekstulineto
                Chopped up
              Almost Bowie
            Desiderata
          It's a sign
        Limerick desserts
      Is it a question?
    Staggeringly mad and obtuse
  Beezo whether
Derrideana
  Arcana, Freudiana, and Zxy
    Ten-month-old sick
      Star Trext
        Triptych
          Trip tick
            Trip sick
              Dipstick
                Twentych
                  Krud gibber twaddle tosh
                    The absence of sane
                      Gibbons, pigs and lions
                    He thought he saw
                  Rubbishyat
                Morning activities
              Afternoon activities
            Phallogocentrism
          Evening activities
        Goodnight
      Word association football
    Bless thy five wits
  Synchronicity
Diachronicity, and variants
  The process of history
    The progress of himmel-rot
      Boldly
        Biblical flow
          Monthly moo
            Fish diagram
              Carlsberg Black Label
                Omelette-faced fractals
                  Madasa
                    The pluggandisp of pluggandisp
                      Form, self-referring, is content
                    Dustbin sonnet
                  Arthur in his bin
                Sum pipple
              No God was reified
            Obscurantism is normality
          Outdated metaphysic
        No innuendo
      Full circle
    Yes, you
  Heap big breakfast
Sink stink
  Repressions
    Rudeish bit
      Rubbish bit
        Kayak intestine
          Discarded dogmas
            Twixt one logic and the next
              Edna's approach
                Return of the Pope
                  Raving other
                    Limericks at dawn
                      The fishmonger joke
                    Swiss roll
                  Boustrophedon
                Gravity play
              Alpha es et O
            O Meaningless
          Greek garlic
        O meta-stuff
      Go, Volvo, go!
    Xylophones
  A godalmighty belch
Gyres run on
  Jack and Jill
    Gibberwocky
      His flashing hair!
        Tom Lehrer scansion
          Pericles' Funeral Oration
            Oh frabjous play!
              More pickaxes
                Popular Philosophy
                  Brainium
                    Haddock official
                      What did you think?
                    Inconsequential indigestion
                  The final frontier
                Wellington, to boot
              Stereophonic nothing
            New Cluedo
          All writing is suicidal
        Epitaphs and gribbles
      Death of the Authors
    The final clock
  Are you mad?
Are you madder?
  Are you maddest?
    Are you Liz?
      Art thou Liz?
        Liz who?
          Are you Geoffrey?
            Is you Geoffrey?
              Bonus question
                Are you Simon?
                  Are you barking?
                    Are you ergo?
                      Double-page spread
                    Have you read the book?
                  Thnky fr rdng
                Diaphragms of realitude
              By hook or by crook
            Acknowledgemoulds
          Xedni

(This is Gibberbook Two)

  Reboot
    Crosswords
      Where's the plotsky?
        Bleen and grue
          Mrs Potato Head
            A Geoffrey who Simond a Liz
              Greetings from Phallogocentrism
                Depictions
                  Tennis deconstruction and mould
                    Oscar Moskva
                      The graph of guilt
                    Invasions
                  The pyramid of Liff
                Luigiustic pofferation
              Tarragon, tarragon, tarragon
            Coffee trays
          Esperanglo joko
        Esperanta ŝerco
      Further note on the "Ŝerco"
    The major corpus
  La plej granda verkaĵo
Gospel according to St Bernard
  This man is an lunatic!
    Owl Farther
      Free pizzas and an cucumber
        Praise be!
          Saussure
            Chomsky
              Philosophy belch
                Your nose becomes a moth
                  My goaty, my boggly
                    Gnugle
                      The anorak alphabet
                    The addlepated alphabet
                  Loony O'Porridge
                The acne alphabet
              Chi San and the hermit
            Chi Zar and the Great Master Yog
          All bananas
        Just kinda ludic
      A warehouse full of toilet seats
    The alphabet of it
  The plot plotter
Now
  Talk of text
    Tribute
      Are you a deconstructionist?
        Ahem
          The what
            This hopeless now
              Eludicating bang
                Devastating boing
                  Textville timetable
                    Raving author
                      Are you an Author?
                    Cogito ergo sumo
                  Touché
                And yet
              Waxwork and walrus
            Hideous welcome
          Before the textual revolution
        You are Liz
      You are Simon
    You are Geoffrey
  Remember the rules
Criticisms
  This is me saying
    Greetings from a guest
      Saluton from another guest
        The North Pole of the Sun
          Why not?
            What is art?
              Is it?
                Quoth the raving
                  A Leonard Cohen song
                    Anatiferous haiku
                      Gone again
                    Heavy elk crossing
                  A plank in the decks
                To the broad sunlit uplands
              Normality will resume
            Arthur bursts
          Megabeggar
        Credulous student
      Limerick extension
    Veritable biographer
  A good morning
Disclaimers
  Slip-ups in the ethereal
    Hipporhinostricow
      Arnie the Armadillo
        Bernie the Bat
          Sebastian the Steamroller
            A catalogue of Pavarotti
              Untitled
                My life was a geranium
                  The sanity report
                    Know the feeling
                      Gramophone sonnetry
                    Gobblebarble spaghettry
                  Song for Maastricht
                Dead moob
              Treaties made of pond
            The telos of the arche
          The lumbergrad song
        A local map
      A global map
    A radiation map
  Ignorance
Secret diary
  Implausible books
    Supplementary bibliography
      Phrase book 1
        Phrase book 2
          Phrase book 3
            Phrase book 4
              Filling
                Guide to Paul de Man
                  A load of old books
                    Another load of old books
                      A third load of old books
                    A fourth load of old books
                  Green pie
                Estos vidanta vin!
              Brain cheese
            Brain scones
          Flattening by imitation
        Ananasogram
      Both guns blazing
    Imploding bastard
  Yesterday's tomorrow
Closed for deconstruction
  Oaf who
    A wandering moose
      Breaking the mould
        Fish warning
          Obey gnu, I see
            What's the problem?
              Probably weather
                And they call it
                  O, ye use being!
                    Curlicue
                      The Scottie Play
                    Sonnet 130.2
                  Trekemata
                If the universe is about to end
              Doily flan
            Perhaps it is ending
          Irrelevanto
        Spuggly
      Hairy scribble
    Smelly dribble
  Toady's menu
Tomorrow's rotty
  Yesterday's regurge
    Sunday crunch
      Honest Frint's
        5 Oak Crescent, Littlehampton
          42 Vico Road, Dublin
            Custard fungus
              Meaningless myth
                Wooble
                  Mattock blubber
                    Toothpost
                      And so the cosmos began
                    This is Radio 6
                  Doing the doo
                Q-ogonek
              Loose sprocket
            Gnu gnows?
          Smelly on wheels
        No one is sane
      Sleeve notes
    Not sleeves
  Random people
Snar snarrr biddle de koow
  Aardvarkiana fulminata
    Joyeux party
      Never again
        Goatry pitch
          The glue is cast
            Utter metaphysic
              All aboard the milkfloat
                Blunderbuss or grape?
                  GCSE in surrealism
                    Circumlocution
                      Attila's kind of day
                    Pickled onion
                  Serenity peg
                Carpet boom
              The calm before the storm
            Poor old uncle Jacques
          Seasonal stodge
        Real fairy cake
      Slush
    Ideal hell
  Alternative hell
Nightmare meltdown
  Daft glyptodon thrips
    Phaistos disq
      Enorbous
        Ping the Jabberwock
          Albert the monster
            Putrid offal sandwiches
              Shrimp Trek
                Warp 459
                  Front to back
                    Carparking
                      Allusions
                    Dead zombies
                  Stylistically negligible
                Vervicis
              Logic
            Emendation, Lewis
          Moonmoose
        Anglepolo
      Buy sickle
    Adam and Eve it
  Gone bong
Ends well

Ends well

Take a hard boiled egg. Buy it from Sainsbury's. Strike it repeatedly against your forehead. You now have egg on your face. Stew lightly until bruised. Baste it until lambasted. Throw out the lamb – and down the Château Villandretmouillé 1973 until (w)asted. Throw up.

You need – an IQ of > 73 (available from most large retail inlets inlaws). Coriander will do instead – except in February. Add a pint of whisky. Throw the baby out, being careful to conserve the bath water. Butcher cows on their way home. Then simmer lightly until thoroughly simmered.

Arthur made a sudden mid-recipe reappearance. Now was his chance. It was another case for

WOMBAT MAN.

But it was too late – his arch-surrealist foe

AARDVARK FISH

had go(a)t there first. Using his recipe book, however, Wombat Man succeeded in out-weirding his adversary, who turned out to be none other than

PROFESSOR KARSWELL

that ends well.


{And here ends the Second – and last – Gibberbook.}

Gone bong

My brain is gone
    My brain is gone
        I wonder WHERE
            My brain is gone?

My sane is bong
    My sane is bong
        An odd ECLAIR
            My sane is bong!


Hoodliser this Christmas on BBC8.

"I can't wholly remember what I thought about before I thought about literary theory."

Ahem. Discuss. Answers on the third side of a postcard please.

Adam and Eve it

"Zebra," said Adam. "If it had been on time, I should have called it 'Migraine'. Trust God to disconnect the aerial."

    At this moment, Eve arrived. "Z already!" she said, "And what about 'BICYCLE'? You've forgotten, haven't you? It's all very well you sitting there thinking up names for things just so that you can order them about! It'll all go horribly wrong, you'll see! And here I am, trudging about Paradise. How can I possibly get you those nice banana things for your tea without a bicycle! You remembered a name for 'banana' well enough, didn't you? And you spelled 'kitchen' with a 'C', just to get it named in the first half hour. Well, you can get your own bananas from now on – I expect that ridiculous aardvark thing will help you. Your sense of humour is so puerile! You just had to name the things with funny noses first, didn't you? Aardvark! Anteater! ..."

    But by this time Adam had slipped away. As he wandered about, his head throbbing with a terrible zebra, he met the Serpent. "Greetings" said the Serpent. "Saluton!" said Adam. Adam explained his problem. "Simple!" said the Serpent, "it's like fishing." Adam looked puzzled.

    "You stand there, I'll throw you the fish," the Serpent explained patiently. This made Adam uneasy, but he couldn't identify any especial reason for this.

    "So?" he persisted, "what about bicycles?"

    "Simple," said the Serpent. "Call that banana 'One pound fifty', then give it to me!"

    "Okay," said Adam, mystified. His doubts about the Serpent were both allayed and confirmed when it offered him a large, banana-shaped object in return for the banana.

    An hour later, Adam knocked on the door of Eve's bower. "I've come about the reaping!" he grinned.

Buy sickle

plums (n.) (pl.) (s.) (adj.)
    3m.   plums, dried plums, grapes, prunes or other sickle. [Fr. guille, Ln. popocotopotloid, *bhgw(d)tÓ™2].

BUY SICKLE

{A bicycle flies past, with no one on it}

Still completely other