World’s Largest Choka Adds Concordance

— Concordance Added to Record Breaking Poem —

The World’s Largest Choka(tm) (www.chokaonit.com) has added a concordance, making the record-breaking Web site even more impressive, interesting and fun.

A concordance is a listing of the frequency of words found in any one body of written work. Throughout history concordances have typically been used almost exclusively for lengthy, socially significant, books and documents such as the Bible, the Koran and the works of Shakespeare. Scholars use concordances to study the language, and underlying zeitgeist, of a body of work.

A rare conference call with the two creators of the World’s Largest Choka provided more insight. The programming genius known as birdhead put it this way, “The concordance on the choka appears in the right margin of the Web page. We first exclude the 100 most common words in the English language — such as ‘the’ — from consideration. We then display the 100 words most common to the choka in a size that is roughly relative their frequency of appearance in the poem.”

— Is the Choka Something Bigger Than a Poem? —

The result of the concordance is strikingly beautiful and, once again, brings into question if the choka is merely a piece of writing by various contributors, or more a form of collaborative pop art for the 21st century.

The birdhead adds, “By supplying a concordance, I do not want to imply in any way that the choka is a holy document similar to the Bible. It is not. I just think it’s very cool.”

A voice at this point came onto the call that is suspected to be, but cannot be fully confirmed as, the poet/creator known as b1-66er, “I think the birdhead is wrong. I think the concordance proves the choka is holy.” This was followed by several clattering sounds and, unfortunately, the call was dropped.

— The Most Popular Words —

At this time the most common word is “choka,” followed by “internet” and surprisingly, “frank.” At the bottom of the top 100 are “call,” “maybe” and “want.”

The birdhead assures people that the choka is still under development. “There’s always more to do.” Stay tuned.

— Choka On It - History at a Glance —

6-February-2006: Choka On It created on a “Blogger” Web page.

6-March-2006: Overwhelming popularity forces single couplet choices in the judging of Wall of Fame and Shame Alley recipients.

9-March-2006: 1,000 couplets reached. Mad rush at choka contributions forces move to www.chokaonit.com and a switch to Six Degrees’s authoring tool “Movable Type.”

19-March-2006: Concordance added. Choka contributions immediately double.

— About Choka On It —

Choka are a form of Japanese poetry related to, but pre-dating, haiku. “Choka On It” is a collaborative choka residing at the Web address www.chokaonit.com and created by two shadowy figures known only as the birdhead and b1-66er. The public are encouraged to add a couplet of their choosing (consisting of 7 and 5 syllables). Reading and adding to the choka is completely free of charge. No username, password, email address nor Web site are necessary for contribution. Every week the best couplets are granted a place on the Wall of Fame, lameness is given a kick-in-the-teeth with a mention on Shame Alley. Choka On It is now the largest choka ever written with over 1,500 couplets produced in a mere six weeks. The birdhead and b1-66er have a stated goal of buying pizza with the money they make from clicking-through on adsense ads. It will come to pass. Oh yes.