Stringlish - would you buy this game?

The above illustration is for a game concept I came up with last year right before the economy blew apart. I'd like your help in seeing if it's worth a damn. The concept is one that involves stringing different phrases, titles, words and cultural references together--sort of like Dennis Miller would do when he was still funny, except hopefully more fun for more people. I have used the concept when trying to warm-up or loosen-up teams for brainstorming sessions or just for breaking ice with new working groups--I welcome you to freely do the same if it seems of use. I could try and make it sound fashionably neuro-scientific but I have nothing but anecdotal proof that it works at what it's intended to do, and that people like it in it's limited use so far.

Oh, one more thing: The point? I'd love to be able to put this into some physical or cheaply downloadable format (examples, instructions, etc) via paypal and give the idea and the proceeds to my kids as a gift that, hopefully, might keep on giving as one enters middle school and the other rises to high school and they look forward to paying for college, or a start-up.

I've bored you enough already. Will you give me some feedback on what you think of the concept? Here's my original notes from an early morning, July 2008:

Okay, it was 12:30 AM Monday and I'm watching Spike's MXC waiting for Daily Show and Colbert. Did I mention MXC is a repurposed Japanese game show with dubbed English? Imagine Samurai standup mated with the old British show It's a Knockout. Yeah, some shows are funnier than others and it's likely an acquired insomniac taste for us Y-chromosome sufferers.

Anyway, one of the hosts, "Vic Romano," introduces a contestant as a "Shotgun Wedding Planner." Heh. A few minutes later, he drops another boolean job description: Trailer Park Ranger. They do that lots, in between the puns about poo, STDs and serial killer jokes.

Finally, it's 1:00 AM and time for The Daily Show.

But I can't stop the boolean job title thing running in my head and, yet, the job title thing seems so limiting. The best I can do still has the lurid themes of MXC:

Native tongue bather.
Nocturnal Emissions Checker
Maid of Honorable Discharge

Okay, I did kind of like that last one. But shouldn't it have more zing, more roll, more pointless associations? Sure..

The earlier lamo becomes the longer, lamer Nocturnal emissions check's in the mail bag o' donuts. (5 links - did u see them?)

Hmm. Skate Board of Directors Guild of America. Dining halls of Montezuma's revenge of the nerds?

Okay, by now, you're thinking two things. This fouro guy needs 1) a life and/or 2) psychiatric help. Bah, get lost in translation.

Somebody tell me there's a parlor game or meme already out there about this phonetic linking thing. And if there isn't, why the hell not? And if not, in the spirit of being aware of all internet traditions, I christen it Ringlish in honor of the fine culture that inspires MXC and the better-known mangled wordsong called Engrish.

There it is: Ringlish™, a string of known or recognizable phrases, terms or titles joined for as long as you can keep adding with the requirement that one links the next and that sustainable nonsense is the point of the thing. Extra points for efficient linking i.e.: least use of filler words between linked chains of words. For example:

Big bang a gong show me the money back guarantee (5 links, no filler!)

Employees must wash hands to work, hearts to God is in the Details Magazine stand and delivery room with a view. (8 links, one filler: Stand and Deliver is modified to Delivery to keep things moving s0 it counts as filler word!)

Am I obsessing on this? Sure. But so did Rob Angel and look how famous he is today. Ahh, mind your own businessweekend of the world as we know it.

Imagine the thematic options, extra points for staying on topic. Pencils ready? You have one minute:

MOVIES: Missile Command Decision at Dawn of the Dead Zone Troop (filler!) Beverly Hills Have Eyes of Laura Mars Needs Women in Love Story of O-klahoma. (14 unique links, but since it's topical, 2 points per, instead of 1 each.)

For those not playing at home:

Missile Command
Command Decision
Decision at Dawn
Dawn of the Dead
Dead Zone
Zone Troop[ers]
Troop Beverly Hills
[The] Hills Have Eyes
[The] Eyes of Laura Mars
Mars Needs Women
Women in Love
Love Story
[The] Story of O
Oklahoma

Here we have one filler: Zone Troop[ers] so .5 of a point deducted; one Fluffer™: Story of O is a porno (2 extra points). The is acceptably dropped from Titles, as in The Hills Have Eyes and The Eyes of Laura Mars, etc. Otherwise half the movies, songs and books written will kludge things up. Total Score: 30.5

Home of the Brave New World Order form follows function button fly fishing hole in my bucket list Maker's Mark.

13 links - did you count them all? 13 points.

Phew. Are your eyes glazed? If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Yes, I liked the name Stringlish better after sitting with it a few days. Good choice? Well, what do you think of the game?

The lost art of rhetoric: how to persuade, not assault

A great find: How to teach a child to argue. Why do something so crazy? Because conflict is basic to humans disagreeing over what matters and how to channel scarce resources and energies. And because simply relying on increasingly raised voices--cable TV "debates" between actual grown-ups for example--gets us further apart not closer to useful co-existence. Jay Heinrichs tells us about it here.

...And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree. Most Americans seem to avoid argument. But this has produced passive aggression and groupthink in the office, red and blue states, and families unable to discuss things as simple as what to watch on television. Rhetoric doesn’t turn kids into back-sassers; it makes them think about other points of view.

I had long equated arguing with fighting, but in rhetoric they are very different things. An argument is good; a fight is not. Whereas the goal of a fight is to dominate your opponent, in an argument you succeed when you bring your audience over to your side. A dispute over territory in the backseat of a car qualifies as an argument, for example, in the unlikely event that one child attempts to persuade his audience rather than slug it...

I must admit, this hits home. I'm the product of an Oregon-born stoic, a retired US Air Force dad. But my mother was British though and through, a Merseyside/Lanacashire shop-girl who saw The Beatles when they were just a club band. I bring it up because Heinrich's makes me remember a related example of what he mentions about argument. The scene was Christmas dinner back in the mid-90s when my brother and his wife were in the states on a visit from Birmingham. Attending were Mom, Dad, my brother Malcolm, and our two wives. During the course of the meal, we lapsed into our old pattern: A vigourous discussion about some topic or other after an hour or so of dinner table conversation-lite. For us, debate was alwyas good sport and about the only non-contact way we'd found, as brothers, to have a go at each other. But it wasn't shouting, not a fight. We would argue like we were jousting, and facts and supporting details mattered.

The point of the story? It drove my dad crazy. For him, the pure-born American, watching the to-and-fro was uncomfortable--he saw the animation, heard the argument (rhetorical definition) and thought "fight!" Maybe it was his military background and a need for cohesion and measured communication. Maybe it was because we talking about something he wasn't familair with. Either way, the stoic started to get amped up.

"Dammit, will you guys quit it! This is a dinner table--I just want to enjoy a good family meal!" And here's where Mom, who's been quite happily watching her two boys of 35 and 45 bob and weave over some forgotten issue, says her piece, one that struck me as familiar to Heinrichs' point:

Jerry, I don't see my boys together very often and I like this. This is what families are supposed to do--they talk about things, argue even. Dinner comes with interesting converation. If you don't like it, go in the other room.

He did. And mum picked up her glass of wine and said, "as you were."

Read Heinrichs' piece. For me it says alot about what and why we don't say enough, or much at all very well, about what matters here in the land of "Free speech."