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A similarly unintentional comedy in translation was a book I found several years ago that I believe was an autotranslation: "How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?". The amazon reviews are similarly hilarious.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Eve...




I have a copy of this! I found it in a used bookstore years ago and had to grab it.

I'm pretty sure it's not auto-translated: like the sibling said, the first half-ish of the book is a verbatim collection of Usenet posts of the author, from 1999, writing in his characteristic broken English, earnestly laying out his anus-constricting theories while getting mildly trolled.

The rest of it is a screed in the same style. Opening to a random page (really, didn't have to look for samples), we see

> Besides shooting out a big blank from your buttock, you can feel as if your root chakra leaked sweet hot mucus. You can feel your root chakra as if it were an exciting womb. Cabala says "human being could have lived on the earth of high temperature long ago years as a human being of immaterial hermaphrodite". I think there has been the imprint of immaterial hermaphrodite in our physical body.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's closer to Time Cube via English as a second language than bad/autotranslation per se - as far as I can tell it was originally written in English as there doesn't appear to be anything with a similar title in Japanese by anyone with that name, and there's a fair amount of common English-written-by-Japanese-speakers grammatical errors and other smells.


That's crazy, according to the reviews the first 90 pages are also just usenet conversations where people are making fun of the author who apparently just copy-pasted the conversations into the book.


This sounds like a work of genius. Unfortunately I have not resurrected my Abby's so I great I may next movie the thrush.


There's a bunch of background on the book at Everything2: https://everything2.com/title/How+to+Good-Bye+Depression%253...

(and the title is thoroughly mashed up and reused across the site for comedic effect)


well? ...did the anus constricting work??


Well, I tried it and now my hovercraft is full of eels.


I tried doing that ten times in a succession and it’s hard. Can someone please explain shortly the essence of this method? Or what’s the joke is, at least.


Seems to work along the same principles as yoga. Strengthening of the root chakra if you're familiar with the lingo. If you're not familiar with a system like that, there's probably no short version.


You managed 10 reps in one sitting? Do that 9 more times today and you'll have achieved your (if dubious) goal.


thank you for asking the real questions!


Oh my, thank you for introducing this into my life lol


Best coffee table book ever.




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