Terry Pratchett uses this phrase pretty often. The Bursar has said it when he was in need of his Dried Frog pills. One of the beggars in Ank-Morpork says it. (Foul Ol’ Ron?) And away from Discworld, Mrs. Tachyon with throw it into her mad mutterings.
Millennium hand and shrimp. Does it mean anything?
From the Annotated Terry Pratchett:http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/apf/lords-and-ladies.html#p324233
[p. 324/233] “‘Millennium hand and shrimp.’”
One of the truly frequently asked questions on alt.fan.pratchett is “Where does this phrase come from?” (Foul Ole Ron also uses it, in Soul Music.)
The answer concerns Terry’s experiments with computer-generated texts:
“It was a program called Babble, or something similar. I put in all kinds of stuff, including the menu of the Dragon House Chinese take-away because it was lying on my desk. The program attempted to make ‘coherent’ phrases (!) out of it all.”
Nope.
yabob
May 26, 2001, 5:29pm
3
Excerpted from a Pratchett FAQ:
Terry is a fan of a fairly obscure band (in Europe at least – in America they are a bit better known) called They Might Be Giants (he has mentioned on a.f.p. that their ‘Where your Eyes don’t Go’ is the scariest song he’s ever heard – not that scary is a word I’d normally associate with TMBG, mind you, but then I don’t know that particular song).
…
One of the truly frequently asked questions on alt.fan.pratchett is “Where does this phrase come from?” (Foul Ole Ron also uses it, in Soul Music.)
The answer concerns Terry’s experiments with computer-generated texts:
“It was a program called Babble, or something similar. I put in all kinds of stuff, including the menu of the Dragon House Chinese take-away because it was lying on my desk. The program attempted to make ‘coherent’ phrases (!) out of it all.”
One of the other things Terry must have fed it were the lyrics to the song ‘Particle Man’ by They Might Be Giants.
“Particle Man” contains the lyric:
Sounds plausible, but take with a grain of salt. The stuff I elided out at the “…” was some other musing on TMBG influences on Pratchett’s stuff.
Huh…
You have a question about Terry Pratchett, and there’s a whole website about this relatively popular author. With a section for questions that are asked frequently. Well, well, well…
Thanks andygirl and yabob.
