There once was a fellow that my friends and myself knew who had a habit of making irrelevant comments during normal conversations. We never managed to work out whether it was deliberate or just some kind of accidental superpower, but that's not really relevant right now.
Anyway, I propose a scoring system for irrelevant comments made in all good faith in normal conversations. The score goes from zero (completely relevant) up to 12, for a reason that isn't important right now.
A cunning point is that as soon as someone makes a fairly irrelevant comment that attracts a high irrelevancy score, any immediate attempts to try and better the score are then in fact pertinent to the discussion, and attract abnormally low scores. Calculating exactly when the background relevancy of this situation dies down is left to the experts, but I expect it has a half-life kind of like radioactive material.
The grading of Rods Tiger on this score is left as an exercise for the reader.-- pmillerchip, Oct 02 2002 Exactly what pmillerchip is talking about http://www.aae.wisc.../future/dairy24.htm [Jinbish, Oct 02 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] Aubergines http://www.halfbake...con_20Fax_20MachineI reckon that's worth about 5 points, not entirely irrelavent, but def. off topic of bacon [Zircon, Oct 02 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] Irrelevant link http://www.arwenian.net/fc/ [FarmerJohn, Oct 02 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] Halley's Comet http://seds.lpl.ari...planets/halley.htmlDue to return in 2061 [DrBob, Oct 02 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] Know your Dynasties http://emuseum.mnsu...ial_china/tang.htmlT'ang Dynasty [Wes, Oct 02 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] I win! http://www.halfbake...20comment_20scoringRedundant, yet completely irrelevant. [RayfordSteele, Oct 02 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] Price of tea in china http://www.beprepar...cles/Butterfly.htmlOr, maybe not [Mr Burns, Oct 02 2002] Irrelevant http://www.digitalw...me=BorgComply%2Ewav [Amos Kito, Oct 04 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] College Roomies From Hell http://www.crfh.netlook through archives for the nonsence contests. they're everywhere. [xtraspecialzero, Oct 17 2004] Yes. [+]. Any supposedly irrelevant coments posted here should also attract a very low score by dint of their relevance to the idea.-- calum, Oct 02 2002 calum - you score 0.-- PeterSilly, Oct 02 2002 Is there any distinction drawn between an irrelevent comment and plain gibberish? What if a response to an irrelevant comment is itself irrelevant... AND is unintended? It isn't pertinent to any discussion and stands alone as an irrelevancy.
Also, one would require to forget this idea to make any subsequent irrelevant comments available to score well.
wibble wibble.-- Jinbish, Oct 02 2002 Or you could just press the delete button. (;-)-- DrCurry, Oct 02 2002 the boil on my dogs backside is clearing up nicely.-- po, Oct 02 2002 How about some real-life examples of high scoring conversations? Or is that too boringly relevant?-- pmillerchip, Oct 02 2002 Class link, Jin, but what's that to do with the price of fish?-- PeterSilly, Oct 02 2002 Hmmm, wonder what the weather in Tasmania is like today?-- blissmiss, Oct 02 2002 in pastry with a creamy white sauce.-- po, Oct 02 2002 Where HAVE all the flowers gone?-- FarmerJohn, Oct 02 2002 Let one not go to inverness, make egg pastry and some suculent Irish new geese.-- Zircon, Oct 02 2002 <relevant comment> [UB] That's mental, your anno wasn't up when I stated writing yet we both managed to mention pastry, this site is insiddiuos </relevant comment>-- Zircon, Oct 02 2002 I think you'll find the aphorisms one somewhere else.-- PeterSilly, Oct 02 2002 I think it best to address the energy crisis now, before another one of us experiences the hunger of the third world!-- reensure, Oct 02 2002 see you later.-- po, Oct 02 2002 My shadow and my inner child are missing.-- blissmiss, Oct 02 2002 "I believe that every human being on this planet, at least once in their life, experiences a moment of divine synchronicity." ... blissmiss, Mar 21 2002-- thumbwax, Oct 02 2002 T'ang Dynasty.-- Wes, Oct 02 2002 I never really cared for the taste of Tang that much. Much too artificial.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 02 2002 you don't hear the name Much much-- po, Oct 02 2002 My mother told me to choose this very 1.-- FarmerJohn, Oct 02 2002 1% is only 99.8 percent pure.-- blissmiss, Oct 02 2002 How do I change my mouse pointers in Windows?-- Wes, Oct 02 2002 cheese, I forgot the feckin' cheese-- po, Oct 02 2002 You're all insane (or is that highly relevant? I never can tell here).-- kaz, Oct 02 2002 kaz, milk? no sugar. then back to bed - my love. yes your mother is coming at the weekend, please take this doctored sugar lump.-- po, Oct 02 2002 I was wondering why the scoring went up to twelve? You said in your post that the number was not important at this time. I was wondering if there was a future date on which it would become important and how important it would become? My aunt Sophie had twelve fingers and it was often important to us all especially when she used them to count the months of the year or check off the number of eggs that where left in the carton. Sadly Sophie had the gout and her monkey refused to clean the house when she had a particularly bad attack. It would just lie around, eat and steal the ring from Sophie’s extra finger while she was sleeping. How that monkey loved to swallow the ring! I remember as a child the way Sophie would bribe and cajole us to retrieve her ring from the monkey’s littler box. I hated that bastardly monkey!!!!
Please score the above I was thinking of applying for a scholarship majoring in irrelevance theory and want to see how I stack up. The scales a great idea I vote yes!-- Ardd, Oct 02 2002 Too right, like orange plated cups of keys, or sectarian non sequiturs.-- ty6, Oct 02 2002 Enter Mrs Malaprop.-- skinflaps, Oct 03 2002 Sp: calisthenics-- thumbwax, Oct 03 2002 My 3 year old nephew said to his mommy one day, "Mommy, do you know where I was when you were getting married?" Mommy asked him, "no, where?" Nephew replied "I was hiding in the bathroom the whole time!"
And besides that, keep the flavored dental floss away from your cats. (Ask [barnzanen].)-- XSarenkaX, Oct 03 2002 And so began the great mushroom hunt of '72'.-- kaz, Oct 03 2002 you have to switch the central heating on a couple of times in the summer or it completely seizes up come the autumn, ask any plumber. gawd, I need a plumber. perhaps not. the last one flooded the bathroom.-- po, Oct 03 2002 When the fairies come theres no reason to be alarmed, except if they're carrying apples, then you really need to be firing on all four sponges.-- kaz, Oct 03 2002 granny smith's?
they are sharp. love is the drug.-- po, Oct 03 2002 Tomato's are the fruit of love. Just ask my granny.-- blissmiss, Oct 03 2002 You see? No more fun. You've reached the Irrelevent Horizon.-- General Washington, Oct 03 2002 Washing in General can weigh a Tonne.-- skinflaps, Oct 04 2002 Are extra points scored if the speaker remains totally unaware of having caused others mental whiplash? </expecting high score for returning to subject>-- lurch, Oct 04 2002 Hmmm. This doesn't seem to be working. It is too easy to make a comment that is, on the face of it, totally irrelevant to the subject at hand. A bit more structure would help. Taking a word from the previous statement and spinning an irrelevant comment out of that word, as several have done above, helps some. But that is still too easy. What if A makes a comment, and B makes a comment irrelevant to A's comment, and C makes a comment demonstrating the profound relevance of B's comment to A's comment, and D makes a comment that is, umm, irrelevant to C's comment but is relevant to A and/or B's comment, and ... wait. Don't halfbakers do this anyway?-- rabbit, Oct 04 2002 Almost all of this page has followed what calum's first annotation predicted. Boring. Consider this, a genuinely unexpected irrelevant comment from my housemate:lewis: "Do you want tea or coffee?"malpass: "Let me look at your arms."Viola, there is an example of two entirely different trains of thought converging at the moment when the two people converged in physical space - both having a question or command to give the other, neither waiting for the other to speak first. What occurred after that exchange was a full half minute of really puzzled silence. We walked away, walked back and started again. She wanted tea, and observed that I have really prominent veins on my arms. Apparently I would be a great intravenous drug user. Just been listening to Avril Lavigne on the radio. Nice voice. y'see. there's a difference between a change of subject and a complete irrelevancy.-- lewisgirl, Oct 04 2002 ditto re: the first two sentences.-- DrBob, Oct 04 2002 see [DrBob]'s anno. above.-- XSarenkaX, Oct 04 2002 tritto.-- yamahito, Oct 04 2002 I echo the above sentiment.-- blissmiss, Oct 04 2002 quattro-- barnzenen, Oct 04 2002 So at this point, pretty much anything that didn't reference a fifth level concurrence should score quite nicely, I should think. Guess this rates rather poorly.-- ton80, Oct 04 2002 Yes, ton80. I wholeheartedly agree.-- Amos Kito, Oct 04 2002 DrBob's analysis is back from the lab - q2fw5zz2 - xxxx4 + erss H2So4 - HDDS
all clear Ok ..BugBear from po +-- po, Oct 04 2002 Look at this mess. Who's going to clean this up?-- waugsqueke, Oct 04 2002 Genetic Engineering-- thumbwax, Oct 05 2002 That's *MISTER* Genetic Engineering to you, thumb!-- PeterSilly, Oct 05 2002 Wouldn't scoring a comment, therefore stopping the previous topic, become a source of irrelevancy? Or would it make the topic of the irrelevancy all of a sudden relevant. That is relevant to the new discussion. I like the idea, but I think it looks better on paper. Would this be the right time to ask for a raise? And where are the tongs that we used for the salad last night?-- ByteMarquis, Mar 14 2003 On the contrary, [ByteMarquis], chocolate spread IS in fact a suspiciously slender alternative to Dial M for Murder, but hey, I'm not the one to dissect (sp?)-- modular, Sep 10 2003 My elbows are being fried in grease.-- maabbott88, Feb 21 2004 Who is Rods Tiger, or is it Rod's tiger, and if so, who is Rod and why does his tiger have a capital T?-- pashute, Nov 03 2012 //Who is Rods Tiger//
They are.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 03 2012 A thirty watt LED bulb is surprisingly bright.-- Voice, Nov 05 2012 I am not attempting to score points via irrelevant comment, only to seize the opportunity to mention that I just finished explaining the word irrelevant to a person who had english (american english) as a second language. He had challenges with both pronunciation and the meaning.
I believe I have now established the normal baseline for this series of exchanges.-- normzone, Nov 09 2012 Given the topic, any irrelevant comment made here is, in fact, relevant. That does not imply that any relevant comment is irrelevant, however. In other words, any possible comment one could conceivably post here would be relevant to the discussion.
I think I just blew my own mind.-- ytk, Nov 09 2012 Did they? I thought that was all just a part of the herring manifesto.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 09 2012 Coin operated, Sir; this is a tray, and two of the starfish won't dance.-- lurch, Nov 10 2012 Never ask a starfish for directions.
Extra points for comments that are irreverent as well as irrelevant.-- AusCan531, Nov 10 2012 random, halfbakery