A magazine, to be dressed up as self important news and opinion sheet, beer and tits lad's mag, floral prints-and-wainscotting country interiors periodical, whatever will appeal to the target, the textual content consisting of nothing but partial and perhaps total non sequiturs, for wholesale to whoever it is that's responsible for depositing magazines in barbershops, waiting rooms, ditches u. s. w.-- calum, Aug 01 2004 I think the RSPCA should be informed about this idea. Abuse of animals is never funny (-).-- iivix, Aug 01 2004 The point being that nobody would notice the textual part because they look at the pictures? Or the average person is such an airhead that he wouldn't recognize the non sequiturs? I think your idea is wet cat fur on a sunny morning.-- bobad, Aug 01 2004 I object to the tag, phundug. The idea is for a magazine, the merits and demerits of which are the topic for discussion. Though the tone of the annotations is tending listwards and it looks like they could slide, at a moments provocation, into as tiresome a cavalcade of repetitous mock oddness as can be seen over at Use Bizarre Metaphors, the idea is not a game to be played in the annotations. As such, I politely request that if people wish to add their own non sequiturs, they do so after making some sort of point.
Unless, of course, the bakery gestalt is making, through these non sequiturs, some such point about the overall readability of Total Non Sequitur. If this is the case, I should take this moment to point out to the gestalt that it has, until now, been drawing its non sequiturs from the more non sequiturial end of the continuum and perhaps has overlooked the use of the word partial in the idea text.-- calum, Aug 01 2004 list? what list?-- po, Aug 01 2004 no, he didn't!-- po, Aug 01 2004 I think that either [calum] is a lot more smart than I am, or a lot more stupid. I will abstain on this one until I can figure it out.-- wagster, Aug 01 2004 This is, as far as I can tell, a magazine containing nothing but a list (of non sequiturs). Magazines are baked.-- phundug, Aug 01 2004 <shudders>Imagine sitting in a dentist's waiting room, perhaps with bland muzak playing from invisible speakers. The room seems quite full. Every five minutes or so, the smiling, manicured receptionist calls a name, and leads someone through to the dentist's surgery. This continues for an hour or so, until the waiting room is almost empty, and you are well and truly bored. It strikes you as a little odd that you've never seen anyone come back out of the dentist's room, but you reckon there's probably another exit somewhere that you never noticed. Besides, as the person who's been sat next to you for ages gets called through, you figure you're probably next. Idly you pick up a copy of "Glossy Extraneous Architechture Monthly" and begin to leaf through it. The pictures catch your attention for a while - so much so that it takes you some time before you actually begin to pay attention to the text. Then, with a feeling of icy shock which makes even your teeth go numb, you realise that something is very, very wrong. All the articles, headlines, even the taglines, consist only of the words "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." You don't even have time to admire the perfect faux-magazine formatting before the still-smiling receptionist calls your name...-- lostdog, Aug 01 2004 that will be £42.72 - thank you...-- po, Aug 01 2004 what's the difference between a partial and a total non sequitur? i didn't know there were degrees of non sequiturs.
i didn't get the part about //wholesale to whoever it is that's responsible for depositing magazines in barbershops// does that mean they'd pay to have a non sequitur in there?
anyway i'd think there'd be a certain poetry to it, non sequiturs juxtaposed with random/unintended visual content. (+)-- xclamp, Aug 01 2004 Do you need change with that ? [po]-- skinflaps, Aug 01 2004 We understand how all this is connected. You just don't.-- Ander, Aug 02 2004 How about the mags you get on a plane? Those are pretty varied in topics.
[edit] I see now, topics are not the topic here. lack of topics...-- dentworth, Aug 02 2004 Well done calum, very entertaining.
i suspect this magazine would be even more entertaining than the ones usually found in waiting rooms etc.
For [phundug]. The magazine doesn't sound like "nothing but a list" therefore non sequiturs are great.-- dobtabulous, Aug 02 2004 Don't non sequiturs automatically form a list? There have to be at least two sentences (in this case, there may be many more), and the two sentences don't merge into one concept (by definition); therefore it can't possibly fit into your refrigerator.
I removed my [m-f-d] tag, but I still don't understand why lobsters are so precarious.-- phundug, Aug 02 2004 There are already magazines that seem to follow this concept. "It's August, so you have to throw away every item of clothing that you own and buy these new ones."[phundug]: It can, but the lemons arrive on Tuesday.-- angel, Aug 02 2004 [calum]'s not insulting anybody. And in no way is this idea an invitation to create a list, so [phundug], be kind enough to take down you mark for deletion.
Truth is, people don't really pay attention to what they are reading in the dentist's office. That's why there are glad mags in the waiting room rather than novels. It takes a real eye to see non-sequiturs and I for one would really enjoy the joke. Not to mention that my brain seems to flit from thing to thing and would probably find the Esquire Non-Sequitur a very appealing read. <raises eyebrow imperceptibly in celebration> +-- k_sra, Aug 02 2004 I see, but Calum seems on the cranky side today.and I don't see why a list is against the rules. People get on a roll and it's fun.-- dentworth, Aug 02 2004 [dentworth]: Lists appear to be currently against the rules because the help file says "Likely reasons to call for deletion are: ... list - the invention itself is a conversation game that is played in the annotations", but as [calum] says, this is not such, it's merely collecting list-like annos.-- angel, Aug 02 2004 pouting :- (-- dentworth, Aug 02 2004 I don't think the author intended this as a list, and ideas for magazines seem to be the purpose of this category.
As a suggestion for the design of the magazine, I think it should steal an idea from the paper version of "The Onion" and have slug lines on the cover that tout stories within (with page numbers of course) that actually do not exist.-- krelnik, Aug 02 2004 Me? Cranky? I am Archduke Calum The Fluffy of Happyland.
//i didn't get the part about //wholesale to whoever it is that's responsible for depositing magazines in barbershops// does that mean they'd pay to have a non sequitur in there?// I didn't think like that [xclamp], I just assumed that the proliferation of old magazines in public places was the work of some commerically driven enterprise.
lostdog's got it, but the effect would not be quite such a shock, more of a creeping realisation, a slow dawning that everything is not quite right. The brow knits, trying to make sense of the sentences, the eyes begin to dart about the page, looking for a clue, a connection, then the hands begin to flick through the pages with increasing speed, then up, up out their seat, picking up, fluttering though in increasing panic, a succession of glossies, the pit of their stomach dropping ever deeper, filling higher and higher with leaden terror until snap! the reader bolts for the door, leaving the 10 am slot free for Mrs McTumshie's root canal.-- calum, Aug 03 2004 //I didn't know there were degrees of non sequiturs.// Shirley there are sequiturs, and there are non sequiturs. And I'm not too sure about the sequiturs. [+] This will alleviate the frustration of being half way through an interesting article when your turn is called. You know you'll never read the other half. You can never interrupt a non sequitur.-- English Bob, Aug 05 2004 Smithsonian Magazine, edited by Hugh Hefner, then?-- krelnik, Aug 05 2004 With the amount of shoddy journalism out there already I'm not so sure this is a new idea, [calum]. Last time I was in a dentists' waiting room, there were a number of magazines, none of which interested me in the slightest (apart from the beer and tits lads mag, but I wasn't about to pick it up - what, with a wee old lady sitting next to me). So they may as well have been entirely composed of non-sequiturs because my general level of disinterest was so high that I couldn't remember the point of one sentence from the next... In summary what [English Bob] said too.-- Jinbish, Aug 05 2004 //I didn't know there were degrees of non sequiturs.// Oh but there are. Well, perhaps types would be a more accurate label for categorizing them. First is your standard and popular "Total Nonsense" wherein any statement earns a balderdash follow up. Then you've got your "Partial" type whereby the follow up statement follows (though perhaps not closely) in topic but not in logic. And then, of course, you've got your "non" non sequitur, such as this sentence.
Alternative idea: markov chain magazines for psychiatric unit waiting rooms.-- calum, Aug 05 2004 I once knew a guy who got a Degree in Non-Sequiturs. Tough course. Every lecture was in a different subject. Don't see him much now. He moves around a lot.-- lostdog, Aug 05 2004 Idea: A 4-weekly gardening magazine that features alternative devices for vegetation pruning. Title: Non Secateurs, Monthly.-- zen_tom, Aug 16 2006 //You can never interrupt a non seq...
MOOOOOO!
...uitur.//-- k_sra, Oct 23 2007 random, halfbakery