Emotion. Somatic. Affective. Adrenaline. Noradrenaline. Fight or flight. Old Norse. Facial expressions. Aggression. Well-being. Displays. Manipulation. Social influence.
Over the years, Wikipedia has done so much for scholars, vandals, and the United States House of Representatives. Wikipedia also provides the ideal playing board for restless surfers of the interwebs. You may already know the game in which competitors individually open a mutually agreed-upon random Wikipedia article on their own computers and race to find a page relating to sex.
But whether or not you have ever played the WikiGame (WikiGame>Teletubbies>sexologist), you are guaranteed to love Wikipedia: the Page-Guessin' Game, or WPGG.
Last night I was engaging in mature conversation with a number of bosom friends when, spontaneously, we discovered an urgent need to apprise ourselves of the distinction between "second" and "third base." Luckily, one in our group knew precisely the Wikipedia page to turn to in such a circumstance, and, having satisfied our longing for wisdom on the matter, we took it upon ourselves to peruse the rest of the page.
This was one of those pages that could only benefit from the humorlessness of Wikipedia editing. So, apart from finding out that "second base" comprises "aggressive stimulation between the neck and waist" (so where does aural* fit in?), we also learned that these running-the-bases euphemisms arose during the aftermath of World War II. While trying, with little success, to correlate the Cold War with open-mouth kissing (well, it's French?), we were tickled by the eclectic set of Wikipedia pages that were linked to from our particularly instructive article: adolescents, baseball, euphemistic, metaphor, sexual intimacy, and aftermath of World War II.
Thus was Wikipedia: the Page-Guessin' Game brought into this world. One Reader is beset with the task of navigating to a salient Wikipedia page, the identity of which he or she keeps secret. To the gathered Guessers, the Reader recites the page's internal links in order, skipping any that might be particularly identifying. The first Guesser to correctly name the article then takes the position of the Reader.
What is the name of the page whose links are at the top of this blog post?
Good luck!
A Concerned Friend
*So, according to Google, I was apparently not the first to discover this dialectally-engendered homophone...
Anger! This game only works if the Guessers don't have Google ready.
ReplyDelete^what Mara said^
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I lol'd over "bosom friends."
ReplyDeleteThat was kind of a very immature comment to make, but I cannot delete it. Sorry for de-classifying your blog.
ReplyDeleteIt's not meant to be played with Google, you cheaters!
ReplyDeleteAnd damn you, Meredith, stop apologizing. My blog has never been classy. I would never say "bosom friend" unless I wanted lolling going on.