NokkyQuotes/AlexChurchill

Just in case any of you managed to miss it, Alex got married on 29th July. In a time-honoured tradition which Alex himself started when he did it to me (see /MikeJeggo), the BestMan? collects together the cream of utterances by or concerning the groom into a quotes file and embarasses him hugely. In Alex's case, I only had space for the real creme de la creme, but here they are, just in case anybody didn't make it to the wedding or has forgotten. MoonShadow supplied some excellent photographs as a supplement to this page - perhaps we could include them? --MJ

Alex in his own words

Alex: From some points of view I guess I'm masculine

Mike: Do you often get house and hair confused, Alex?
- Alex: Frequently...

Alex: I always cause trouble wherever I go

Alex: I've already lost it twice

Alex: Every now and then I catch myself saying things that just don't make sense
Only every now and then, Alex?

Alex: Language is not really adequate for the kind of questions I want to ask

Alex: I'd like to be News at Ten's Emergency Pants Correspondent

Alex: Do you think it's bad when my first reaction to seeing two people trying to kill each other is to reach for my camera?

Alex: Group hug theory - I shall do my PhD in that!

Alex: Oh, I have no shame. Oink oink oink! Neeiiggghhhh! MooooOOOOO?! Maaaaa! Cluck cluck cluck!

Alex: I haven't managed to sleep in more than one place at once. I keep teleporting back and forth at hourly intervals. I haven't quite mastered the coexisting thing yet...

Alex: What do you mean, "my laugh"? I've got 10 different laughs!

Alex: I took the [High School Stereotype test] - I came out as "geek". I took it again, trying to avoid the geeky answers... and I still came out as "geek"...

Alex: I don't expect raspberry jam to have mangoes in it.
- Dave: Or fish?
- Alex: I do expect it to have fish in. But that's because I expect everything to have fish in it.

Mike: An official letter from Silly Notes Through Your Door International Ltd, accompanied by a number of compensatory babies of the jelly variety perhaps
- Alex: Ahhhhhh... Now you're speaking a language I understand!

Mike: I don't think either Alex or Nokky is a nuclear reactor. Unless there's something they haven't been telling us...
- Alex: I'm not a nuclear reactor. Well, not last time time I checked, anyway.

Alex: There's a large neon sign above my head which I can turn on, saying "silent contempt and scorn it deserves".

Alex to Mike: Whether any word I say to you has actually come from my *brain* is another matter...

Alex: Every now and then when I'm faced with a difficult puzzle like this one, I have to take my brain out and put it on a rack. Then I get a new one from the rack.

Mike: I thought I'd started to understand what you meant when you said weird things, Alex
- Alex: Ho, ho, ho! How you underestimate me...

Alex to Mike: Not everyone's as practiced at bleating as you and me

Alex: Sometimes when I read the world 'broccoli' I just can't help myself...

Alex: I think I had an oven glove velcroed to reality... That's the closest I got to a grip on reality...

Alex: I wouldn't like to lay claim to *all* weirdness...

Alex: I don't understand, in general

Alex: Whenever I'm talking sense I don't mean it

Alex: In my brain there are person dispensing machines

How Alex Passes the Time

Alex: I've licked my mobile phone before.

Alex: I'm going to do an impression of a weatherman... "And so here we have an outbreak of curly hair... here we have a cute face missing its normal glasses... here we have some more curly hair, in fact there's a large band of curly hair visible across the whole area... I have 14 mana, I'm not going to use it... and I'm going to hand you over to Mike... in the studio."

Alex: I've never set fire to a whole room with a marshmallow before

Morag: Right, guys, we seem to be bank-wobbling
- Alex: That's a sport, is it, like cow-tipping? You go round different banks and wobble them? "Right, it's NatWest? this week... wibble-wobble!"

Alex: I didn't know what to think or look like

Alex: Every now and then I just look up and think, "Yikes! There's a giant wooden dolphin about to hit us!"

Alex: Do you have some paper I can make an origami conversation out of?

Alex: I built a Lego hamster to run round the Lego hamster-run

Mike: Why are you clutching a tube of glue?
- Alex: Because I'm practising to be an alien

Alex: Well, I can take on "Mornington Crescent" duty, anyway

Alex: ...Unless the day I finally won my independence from Holland was since last Monday.

Alex: Remind me why I am a communist regime?

Alex: I'm going to light a fire on my chest hair, and then send smoke signals

Alex: I think being a Transformer is a fabulous vocation

Alex to Stephen: We will rule the world with our improbable sheep!

Alex: Right, now we've got a cardboard box, how do we put a cow in it?

Tom: Anyone feeling the urge to dissolve?
- Alex: Frequently...

Mike: Alex is thinking. You can tell by the expression.
- Alex: And, rather wackily, the "whirr whirr whirr" noise I happened to be making
[For entirely unconnected reasons]

Alex: I would have loved that job - to record twenty squeaks of a Comic Relief nose, and listen to them to choose which was the absolute best

Alex: [My mind] is on its way out of the solar system. I have to go catch it, on my bike.

Mike: If you could refrain from igniting my T-shirt, this would be... preferred.
- Alex: [thinks for a few seconds] ...How boringly conventional...

Alex: I haven't made any plans for Monday, and I plan to keep it that way

Alex: "Yes, Mike, we tidied two-thirds of your bills into the coal-scuttle and one-third into the washing machine... I hope that's OK..."

Alex: I was only wearing the shoe on my hand *because* I was asleep on the train
(See photograph)

Alex: Ooh, I've never got to be a rabbit before

Alex: There might be circumstances in which waltzing with a bike could be what you want to do

Alex: Oh, there are all *sorts* of games you can play with pasta. Some of them even without impacting the decor.

Alex: Eating your opponents is generally viewed as cheating.

Alex: I spend Wednesday evening dismantling my bed. Then reassembling it.
- Mike to Alex: Is this a common hobby of yours?
- Alex: Yeah, I like to take it apart every week or so, see how it's put together...

Alex: I'll remember this, if I'm ever training a cybernetically enhanced assassin schoolgirl.

Alex: The sensible thing for me to do at this point is "Maaaa". ...The thing is, compared to so many other things I could do, it is!

Alex: I didn't say [I was] romantically involved with the strawberry. It's strictly a casual relationship.

Alex: That whole exchange is so quotable I'm going... [looks down]... to bend a sofa

Alex: It's amazing how many uses for a StanleyKnife?? you can find in a bedroom

Alex: I'm sure my employers would rather I keep the time I spend compulsively drawing castles on work time to a minimum...

Alex: Unfortunately I've not been in the habit of keeping regular backups of my bodily organs

Alex: I'm wondering whether to jump to an alien, or finish this one first

Alex: Am I the Cadbury's Caramel bunny?

Alex: At least I can still offer people jellybabies. [looks round, making puzzled "putting-on-backpack" motions] ...At least, I could, except I can't, because I didn't bring my bag...

Just Plain Strange (and some puns that are better thought just strange)

Alex: You get a bash on the head with a stuffed elephant, which can't be that bad

Alex: "What? I've fallen off the ceiling?" *shockedlook*

Alex: And if that makes any sense, then I'm... a dancing baboon.
- Susan: I think it makes a tiny amount of sense.
- Alex: Oh... dear. I must be... a dancing baboon then.

Alex: It's quite hard to use earrings to cook sauce in

Alex: What was the date on the 22nd of January this year?
- Mike & Morag [unplanned, in unison]: 22nd of January

Alex: And here was me hoping I had genetic mascara

Alex: Me and my brother both stuffed myself

Alex: You haven't looked under my armpits - you might find another cheek there

Mike to Alex: We need to polymerise your hair

Alex: [singing] Everybody needs a Nagi buffalo /
Yours is fat but mine won't grow /
Where'd we get them I don't know but /
Everybody's got a Nagi buffalo-ooooo...

Serge: Buses don't normally breathe
- Alex: Nor do they normally flick their ears, but they're very cute when they do?

Alex: All of a sudden there are four sheep in my hand - and they're getting rather smelly!

Alex to a chocolate: You sympathise, don't you, chocolate?

Alex: Well, I don't think we'd be able to carry a giant mobile phone, the green triangle, all our Magic decks,
both boxes of Settlers, Angela's scooter, and Hilbert into the cinema

Alex: We're going to end up with one piece of furniture and 902 dancing ducks

Alex: If your sense of bAlance is more finely bAlanced than your sense of self-preservation, buy a unicorn!

Alex: My jeans are currently sitting in the freezer
- Mike: Is this where you normally keep your jeans??
- Alex: Well... yes.

Alex: Strawberries are masters of disguise...

Alex: Excuse me, there's a bear roaring by my ear.
- James: Is that really a bear?
- Alex: Well... no. It's a Cambridge bus. But it looks a bit like a bear.

Alex: After a hard afternoon spinning round an iron atom, you just want to "hang out" like an electron...

Alex: Who'd have thought that tomato ketchup could be such a destructive weapon?

Alex: I shall set myself a reminder: "Harass Susan lunchtime"

Alex: That's a good concept - emailing my brain to myself

Rob: Alex, what colour is your hair?
- Alex: It crashes every 3 hours

Alex: It's a cow that makes toasted sandwiches! You've got to approve of that.

Alex: I've still got bits of castle in my hair

Alex: I believe it's true, ElvisPresley?? has been seen in every single chip shop on Jupiter!

Alex to Jenny: Having seen you wield the fork, I now understand Finnish
(Alex protests that this should have read 'I now understand. Finish.' But no-one else believes him)

Mike: I always thought things were good in CityChurch??, until you now tell me that they're irreverent up at the front.
- Alex: That's not irreverent... that's an 'ippopotamus!! [A FlandersAndSwann reference]
- Mike: So you have elephants in lectures and hippopotami in church -- Alex, what kind of world do you live in?!

Alex: Rob is putting a kettle on. ...Hopefully he will then take it off, fill it with water and plug it in...

Alex: It's not often that the phrase "Get in the bath by 9:15" means "Think about what you've just heard and find a bit to remember for the next week"... but now [it is] not unknown!

Alex: What I really need is a way to detach my head and send it floating round the room

Alex: Ph34r the mechanical properties of my peanut butter!

Alex: I shall have to turn my bike helmet into nose hair so I can attack... you... with... it......

Alex: Imagine if the only things you saw all day were RubberDucks... imagine what it would do to your head if all of your workmates or classmates vanished, to be replaced by RubberDucks... After a few weeks, months, interacting with no other people but just RubberDucks, mightn't you start thinking you were a rubber duck too? Can you be sure you wouldn't?

Mike: In most people's houses if you leave bread around too long, it goes mouldy. In Alex's house it turns into beautifully foil wrapped chocolate sheep!
- Alex: I think it started off foil wrapped...

Mike: [A cow] didn't look interested in chocolate
- Alex: How can you tell? Do they have two lamps, a green one and a red one? A green one that lights up "Chocolate" and a red one that lights up "Not interested in chocolate"?

Mike: Hopefully [a DVD was] not bootlegged?
- Alex: No, it's a genuine one from a con

Alex: I hate it when your food's nose grows just when you're trying to eat it

Alex: The book suggested you could use cooked spaghetti as brains

Alex: Yes, I need milking. - No, leave my tummy alone!!

Alex: It's perfectly possible for a skateboard to be designed in such a way that it's also a spaceship! I don't think that's silly...?

Alex on Mathematics

Alex: Restrain bouncing. Focus on Galois theory.
[5 seconds later] ...Yuk...

Alex: [claps] It's cylindrical polar co-ordinates! They can get anywhere in space!
- Angela: [steady withering look] It's a crane.

Alex. I shall be expecting a high Haddock quotient from you
- Mike: We shall have to deceive you and send you herrings instead

Mike to Alex: Is this what you're writing your essay on - "The Mathematics of Potato Creation Through Stargazing"?

Alex: The great thing about infinity is that it's so big!

Alex: So given that this is me, and that time is infinite, and the universe is also infinite -
- Mike: You want some toast?

Alex: I am the incarnation of five!

Alex: Whereas I derive my identity... by strict mathematical principles!

Random stranger in coffeeshop to Alex: Excuse me. Do you believe in the square root of twelve?
- Alex: Ummm... ah... well, I believe it exists...
- Stranger: Do you know what it is?

Alex: The people who live in three [spatial] dimensions, from which group I'm temporarily discounting myself...

Alex: 1, 2, 3, 4, fish. 1, 2, 3, 4, fish. That's fabulous - why did I never think of counting like that before?

Alex [re the question "Are you hungry"]: Hungry has a different meaning when pudding is involved... it has the meaning "yes" when pudding is involved

Alex: It's reality's fault, for not corresponding to the mathematical model

Alex: I wil not boast in anything, except Christ and powers of 2

Alex: You nasty man! You caused my brain to do a division by zero!
- [...] - Alex: Well, if you're going to make me calculate the percentage of things a soft toy says that make sense, then what do you expect...? *pause* ...Ah, er, more quotes I guess...

Alex [musing]: e to the pasta, I think is best. ...It's quite likely to be transcendental, apart from anything else...

Alex: No you can't do that! I won't pass through the enlightened state of having 31 integer thwaps. [With a towel]

Alex: The function f takes 4 arguments... a function f can be defined to be strange if its arguments are in the category of oblong sheaves, and they are fish which --

Alex: My quotes are clearly mathmos.

Alex: If my fingers are purely imaginary then so is my arm

Mike: I'm wearing my scarf! That's why I couldn't find it in my bag. Unless of course I'm in my bag and not aware of it. (Alex looks curiously at Mike) Well I have to remember these logical yet unlikely cases when I'm talking to a MathMo...

Alex and his family

Alex: Hello, I'm a big green bogeyman from outer space!
- Mum: Hello, Alex...

Ant: ...So you get two fat sausages joined together.
- Alex: Sounds like a pretty good definition of Category Theory

Alex: Don't eat your friends, brother - how many times have I told you that!

Alex: Yes, Ant's going to have to chop his hair off, bake it, and give it to a teacher as a bribe, to get good exam results [as in: He's going to have to put his hair in a bun for school]

Alex: They're my pyjama trousers. And they're on my head. And they're the wrong way round.
- Dad: What's the right way round to have a pair of pyjama trousers on your head?

Alex: I shouldn't scream in terror at the thought of my brother, should I?

Dad to Alex: I was about to say "Don't do that, I'll get your parents", but then I realised I *am* your parents

Dad to Alex: You need rear-view mirrors on your elbows

Ant: I'll be downloading like a... frenzied.. walrus.
- Alex: Do frenzied walruses download?
- Ant: Ooh yeah. You've never seen a frenzied walrus on a downloading spree. -- Well? Just try to deny it!

Vic: We used to have a coffee grinder, but... It melted.
- <people laugh>
- Vic: "Cap'n, the engines canna' take it!"
- Alex: A coffee-powered spaceship. Somehow that seems so... right.
- Ant: It doesn't really go anywhere, it just bounces around!
- Vic: Hyper-drive!

Lucy: I can see why Alex turned out the way he did if he has a father like himself.

Mike: You're not a Microsoft product, are you?
- Alex: [pauses for thought] ... ...If I am, then there's something my parents haven't told me!

Alex on Nokky, Quotes and Computers

Alex: When will people learn; if they're leaving random comments in the quotes file, they should use the Roman font!

Alex: [Nokky] rules over a small Middle Eastern country

Alex: Are you aware of my phone's hatred for conifer trees?

Alex: All computers develop personality
- Angela: Not if you format their hard drive often enough...

Mike: So let me get this straight, Alex. You don't just talk to yourself - you set up a video link and converse with yourself *face-to-face*!
- Alex: I'd say yes, except you'd quote me...

Mike: Where's Alex?
- Rob: Somebody make a quote, he'll soon turn up

Alex: My noise was deliberately chosen to avoid syllables that can... be... quo...ted...

Alex: Nyahahahaa - my website is all-powerful!

Alan: I think it is VERY interesting to speculate about the relationship between the Great Nokky of Quotedom and the fuzzy haired Alexcreature...

Mike: Alan, you're getting Alex and Nokky muddled up again. It's quite simple. Alex is the tall one with the hair, Nokky is the short one with the screen.

Alan: Alex is just a human-interactable version of Nokky

Mike: Alex is the only person I know who's possessed by a mobile phone, rather than the other way round

Alex to Mike: I have an SMS. [sudden look of surprise] ...What?! It's not from you?! It's not you sending me an quote by SMS! [looks at SMS] [stops looking surprised] ...It's Alan sending me a quote by SMS.

Alex: The quote now refers to an entire teaspoon collage, and not a teaspon [sic] collage which wouldn't make much sense.

Alex: No, it's the other way round! Nokky is the cute young defender of the internet, and I'm the plastic-formed kit who carries him around...

Alex re his LoanPhone: I might appreciate the cuteness of this phone, but my heart is given to Nokky. I won't be unfaithful.

Peter: I tend to trust printed material over things overheard in conversation
- Alex: Quote! ...[he starts typing, then pauses]... Why am I quoting this?

Alex: Cool! It's a mouse with a left and a right button!
- Mike: I think you'll find they're called ears, Alex...
- Alex: Don't be silly, since when did mice have ears?
- David: Since before they were plasticky!

Mike to Alex: You get worryingly excited about checkboxes sometimes

Alex: Just because I'm a computer doesn't mean people feed me to Nokkette!!

Alan: Well I can't possibly imagine Nokky as a mobile phone... he/she gets around too much and is so intelligent... Alex on the other hand.. well...!
[!!]
- Nokkette: Alex beeped when he saw this one. I just rolled my eyes...

Alex: Now, what would be the most disturbing kind of NokkyQuote to find in your bed, I wonder?

Mike: I should have known that Alex's JellyBabies were Net connected

Alex: Did I just hear you say "we have a shortage of ethernet"?
- douglas: No, I said "we have a shortage of ethanol". Alex, you have a one-track mind!

Alex on God and religion

Alex: It's really distracting praying with a big one-ton lump of lead around

Alex: God speaks in so many ways: you've got dreams, you've got voices, you've got visions, you've got random Macedonian blokes

Alex: Let's pray for a massive domino chain across the UK.

Mike: Where's your theology Alex?
- Alex: I think I left it in my other trousers...

Lucy: Did you evangelise anyone on your punt trip, Alex?
- Alex: Er, um, a couple of cows...

Alex: I wil not boast in anything, except Christ and powers of 2
(Yes I know this one was in the Maths section too, but it's good enough to come twice when it's impossible to place cleanly in one category only!)

Alex: I don't have my giant inflatable Bible with me

Alex: I'm afraid I can't live up to the standard of God of knowing every hair on every JellyBaby's head

Alex on his friends

Alex: How does one reboot a television?!
- Mike: If anyone can, Serge can!

Mike: Does this frequently happen to people you know?
- Alex: What, drifting into an alternate universe and turning into planets? Yeah, every now and then...

Alex re James: I understood him perfectly... it was only later I realised he was talking gibberish

Alex: I should hold a badger-poking party.
- Mike: Would anybody except Stephen come?
- Alex: Oh, I think I know a few who would. You forget what my friends are like...

Alex in his friends' words

Serge: Alex has a big red jellybaby
- Emma: Alex has serious pRoblems
- Serge: He also has a big red jellybaby

Angela to Alex: You look like Bananaman without the banana

Jeremy: Alex is 85% jellybabies, 4% maths and 11% other things

Mike: The chances of getting Alex to be anywhere, within 20 minutes of when he's meant to, are fairly remote

Angela re Alex's hair: "Long and curly" is a polite way of saying "mad and everywhere"

Alan to Mike: So are you saying that Alex should be a manager, perhaps of the Um Bongo factory...? though that would make him a rhino... a scary thought...

Milan: Alex, pardon me if I might be mistaken, but I think you're being eaten alive!

Angela: Just because it's true does not make it sensible. There are many true but nonsensible things, like Alex...

Dave re Alex: It isn't just his toe that's trying to escape from that sock... it appears to be his entire foot. Although having seen that sock, I can understand why...

Mike: What a scary thought... multiple Alexes...
- Kazuhiko: All sitting there typing quotes into their own Nokkettes.

Alan: For some reason every time you use the words disembodied and crazy, I expect the next word to be Alex

ChrisHowlett: Alex, why are you lime green again. Stop it

Morag: [Alex] is not a sample taken at random! You cannot possibly call him... well, you can call him random, but...

Alan: I'm suprised Alex hasn't appointed jelly babies as ushers. A whole array of them...

Miscellaneous

Alex: Oh, buzzard doesn't begin with A does it?

Mike: Why are you going through an advent calendar now?
- Alex: Because I forgot to last month.
- Mike: But last month was January!

Alex: Sleep and caffeine: opposite sides of the same coin.
- Serge: Can I have one?!

Alex: "Difficult" doesn't usually have a "J" in it, does it?

And finally...

Alex (and Rachael) on romance and marriage

Alex [describing video scene]: They were gazing romantically at each other, until she suddenly did an evil look and whipped out a huge hammer and started bashing him with it.
- Serge: I know that feeling...

Alex: It's OK, you don't need to feel guilty about being married

Katie [explaining why she's not sent much email recently]: I got a job. And a house. And a husband.
- Alex: I've got a job... I'm getting a house... but I should be safe from getting a husband, so I think I'll be OK

Alex: I don't think you should marry anyone who isn't terrifying

Alex: Going out with a girl is very much like a game of Lemmings...
- James: It's best with two mice? [As used by 2-player Amiga Lemmings? ]
- [...] James: Going out with a girl is very much like a game of Lemmings...
- Alex: You can very easily dig yourself into a hole?
- James: Yes. You spend half your time building bridges, and the other half digging yourself into a hole!

[In what other ways? ...At times you find yourself floating on air, sometimes you want to bash a wall, at times you get immensely puzzled and frustrated, but it's definitely worth it and when talking to friends on the subject you can't help but speak well of it...]

[Also, every so often, the only solution is to explode]

Rachael: These two are the most appealing. [Said while selecting "A terrorist attack" and "Gravity" over a number of Apples cards, including most notably "Marriage"]