Examples of her tweets:
- The couple behind me has been discussing whether a wooden picnic table is animal, vegetable, or mineral. Unsurprisingly, it's getting ugly.
- She thinks it's a mineral but he's pretty sure it's vegetable, since you could eat it.
- She's never heard of the animal/vegetable/mineral classification system. He concedes it might be something only his family uses.
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It's not that weird of a question:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Questions#Popular_variants
Perhaps 'Twenty Questions' radio show, which ran for ever and a day in the UK, didn't travel elsewhere ? The idea was by using less than twenty questions of the 'host' the participant would ID the object exactly. 'Animal, with some vegetable - or is that vegetative - tendencies, and definite links to the (manufactured) mineral world' might lead to questions like "Is it Danish", "can it be found in Bolton", and so on...........
ReplyDeleteI think the joke is that these things and the 20 Questions games is supposedly known very well, also in the US.
ReplyDeleteI've never played it though. Is a wooden table properly mineral or vegetable?
Wood: it's a DEAD vegetable, d'uh!
ReplyDeleteBut if it's plastic, made from petrol, which once was a vegetable... I think anything fossilized officially becomes mineral.
A popular question in Lebanese shows is the ever-classic: "Is its length bigger than its witdh?" ROTFWL!
Our ancestors invented the modern alphabet, but clearly not the axioms of geometry. :o)
France once spoofed such games with the classic "Le Schmilblick".
"The answer is yes. What were you thinking about?
- Same thing YOU were thinking, you dirty old man!
- Please, people, some manners, we're live on television! I remind you that the Schmilblick is just an egg. Next candidate, what's your question? Take your guess."