Friday 19 April 2013

Q is for ... QQSD


So today is the 19th of April, which must mean that it's the seventeenth day of the A to Z challenge.  I've decided to share my love of writing through this challenge, and hopefully introduce people to the world of Oulipo.  I first heard about Oulipo when I was at university, and I was fascinated by their approach to writing that I decided to delve deeper into the world of experimental writing.

In a nutshell, this group of writers likes to assign constraints to their work in order to push creative boundaries.  Not only is this fun to do (the process of writing something with a constraint really does open the mind), the results are brilliant.



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Q is for ... QQSD (Qui se souvient de ... ?)
Exemple de liste à démarreur: Qui se souvient de.... ?Qui se souvient de ?
(Translation)
Example starter list: Who remembers .... ?Who remembers? 
http://www.oulipo.net/contraintes/docs/liste-a-demarreur
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So this is similar to 'I remember ...' but instead of focussing on what you remember, you are asking others if they remember the same things as you.  This can be used to spark conversation or debate, or developed into stories or poems.



Who remembers when MTV was the only music channel?

Who remembers when there were jokes on ice-lolly sticks?

Who remembers “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club”?

Photo credit: Nicobobinus / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Who remembers snap bracelets?

Who remembers “The Red Car and the Blue Car had a race, and all Red wants to do is stuff his face”?

Who remembers when you didn’t have to wear seatbelts in cars?

Who remembers Techno music?

Who remembers Scatch, Jump Skip Balls, Lolo Balls and Hula Hoops?

Who remembers when Scott & Charlene got married?

Who remembers Russ Abbot, Little & Large and Canon & Ball?

Who remembers Gordon the Gopher, Ed the Duck and Bobby the Banana?

Who remembers Ricki Lake, Sally Jessy Raphael and Geraldo Rivera?

Who remembers bum-bags?

Who remembers when everyone was scared by crop circles?

Who remembers when a Looney Tunes cartoon was shown before all children’s films at the cinema?

Who remembers t-shirts that changed colour when you applied heat to them?

Who remembers Um Bongo; they drink it in the Congo?
Photo credit: sally_monster / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Who remembers Timmy Mallet and his Mallet’s Mallet game, where he would stick a plaster on the loser’s chin and they would have to waggle it up and down?

Who remembers “Don’t push me, push a Push-Pop!”?

Who remembers Spitting Image releasing ‘The Chicken Song’ and I loved the lyrics “Hold a chicken in the air, stick a deck-chair up your nose,
Buy a Jumbo-Jet, and then bury all your clothes.”?

Who remembers Tomy Water Wizard games?

Who remembers when computers had black screens and green writing?

Who remembers when ‘Golliwog’ wasn’t offensive?

Who remembers Tinkerbell Make-Up for little girls?

Who remembers when you could feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, and you were encouraged to do so by the man in the little hut who sold tubs of pigeon food?

Photo credit: swh / Foter.com / CC BY-NC
Who remembers “Keeeviiiiin”?

Who remembers “Sharkey & George, crime busters of the sea”?

Who remembers Pogs?

Photo credit: niallkennedy / Foter.com / CC BY-NC
Who remembers stick-on accessories for cars which gave the impression of bird poo splatters on the bonnet, or fake fingers that could be stuck at the opening of the boot or a door to make it look like a person had got their hand trapped?

Who remembers Mr. Matey bubblebath?

Who remembers magic painting books?

Who remembers that the Coca-Cola “Holiday’s are coming” advert meant that it was Christmas?

Who remembers banana flavour antibiotics medicine?

Who remembers Milk Teeth toothpaste that had no flavour.  I also remember Punch & Judy toothpaste that had a strawberry flavour?

Who remembers when there were only four television channels?

Who remembers when Eric Cantona jumped and kicked a spectator in the face?

Who remembers when yoghurt pots had feet?

Who remembers TaB and TaB Clear?

Who remembers doing “the Shake ‘n’ Vac to put the freshness back”?

Who remembers when telephone area codes only had four numbers?

Who remembers when it was not possible to put a whole Wagon Wheel in your mouth in one go?

Who remembers fuzzy felt?

Who remembers when Pluto was still a planet?

Who remembers Michael Fish’s faux-pas and the hurricane of 1987?

Who remembers audio cassette tapes?

Who remembers when the smaller versions of the 5p, 10p and 50p pieces came into existence?

Photo credit: Greg McMullin / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

14 comments:

  1. I love chocolate on pretty much anything!

    and I still have all my MixTape Cassettes.

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    1. Yep, chocolate makes everything better!

      I no longer have a tape player at home :( I have a tape player in my car though, so long journeys are always accompanied by mix tapes :)

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  2. I had no idea there was an actual name for that, let alone that it was a subset of something else even more complicated. Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Thank you :) Yes, most things have 'official' names, although homemade names are often better!

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  3. Never knew "remember when" had a name. Cool beans. I enjoyed your post. It truly did trigger some lost memories in my brain. Thanks for clearing some of the cobwebs that were collecting.

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    1. Ha! Thank you for stopping by. You need to clear out those cobwebs, it's the weekend!! :D

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  4. How fun! A lot of these brought back memories but even more made me feel the need to go to wikipedia to look stuff up. Crime busters of the sea? Sounds like fun!

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    1. Sharky and George was brilliant :D Glad that my list brought back memories for you :)

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  5. That's a lot of things to remember! That list must have taken a little while to write :)

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    1. It did take a while. It was part of my university dissertation. Once you get started thinking about what you can remember, the list doesn't stop!

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  6. Awww, I should have made Sharky and George my S post for today! Nevermind, I think I've still got a winner with Spitting Image :)

    Jamie @ Mithril Wisdom

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    1. Yes, you should have used Sharky and George :P I never watched Spitting Image; it always scared me :/

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  7. Who remembers when awesome blogs such as this one didn't even exist?

    Who remembers when we didn't have blogs at all?

    Who remembers when we had to share our thoughts on paper?

    :)

    #atozchallenge, Kristen's blog: kristenhead.blogspot.com

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    1. I love your comments! Thank you for always giving the constraint a go in your responses :D

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