DaniWeb IT Discussion Community - Trying to shuffle an array containing text

i have a web page with an array of text messages which i want to 1) shuffle, and 2) scroll. first the shuffle part. right now i can scroll one random message per refresh of page. i want to shuffle the list and then change the scroll function to display all messages in random order. here is page now:

<html>
<head>
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
var msg = new Array(5);
msg[0] = "First Message"
msg[1] = "Second Message"
msg[2] = "Third Message"
msg[3] = "Fourth Message"
msg[4] = "Fifth Message."
var count = 0;
var i = 0;
any = Math.floor(msg.length * Math.random());
while (i < 60) { i++; msg[any] = " " + msg[any]; }
function msgScroll() {
document.scroll.msg.value = msg[any].substring(count, msg[any].length);
count++;
if (msg[any].length == count) { count = 0; }
window.setTimeout("msgScroll()", 150);
}
window.onload=msgScroll;
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form name="scroll">
<p align="center">
<font color="#0000FF">
<input name="msg" size="125" style="border:0px solid; font-family:georgia; font-weight:700"></font></p>
</form>
</body>
</html>

i found following code to effect the shuffle but before i could customize to my page i get an error on 9th line: (trg = random(placearray.length); saying "object expected". can anyone point out my problem here?

arraythang = ["narf", "nood", "philbin", "twink", "snoogans"];
placearray = new Array();
newthang = new Array();
for (a=0; a<arraythang.length; a++) {
placearray.push(a);
}
for (a=0; a<arraythang.length; a++) {
do {
trg = random(placearray.length);
newplace = placearray[trg];
} while (arraythang[a] == arraythang[newplace] && a != arraythang.length-1);
placearray.splice(trg, 1);
if (arraythang[a] != arraythang[newplace]) {
newthang.push(arraythang[newplace]);
} else {
newthang.unshift(arraythang[newplace]);
}
}
trace (arraythang.toString());
trace (newthang.toString());