lonita

Heading towards Valentine's Day...

Last night was a first for me at work - I talked to a man that, literally, had a heart in his hands. He was a doctor we picked up at the airport from the air ambulance, and took to the hospital.

So, someone's going to wake up to a brand new day today, and that's a very good thing indeed. It also means that someone died last night, and that's sad.

I do not envy that doctor his job. I don't think I'd ever want to be the one who babysits the organs.

I've always had a big thing (oh how eloquent for a word nerd) for constrained writing of various kinds, though I haven't indulged in it for a long time ... until now. I'm reading Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels, so I'm feeling a tad eliptical today. Speaking of, I used an exerpt from the book in conjunction with the Oulipo N+ method, using N+9 rather than the (seemingly) usual N+7 (1), and got the following:

California, Labor Day weft ... early, with ochlocracy foie gras still in the Strega, outpatient motor racing wearing chain reaction, shaft and greasy Levis roll out from damp garbology, all-night dinghy and cast-off one-night paddock in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey pennon, north of Big Sur ... The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the hundred-carat headphones, running fast and loud on the early morocco French, low in the saddle soap, nobody smoke ball, jamming crazy through tragacanth and ninety militarism an house church down the center strobe, missing by incision ... like Genghis Khan on an iron man horseleech, a monster steeple with a fiery aoudad, flat out through the eyeglass of a beer parlour canape and up your dawn chorus' legal person with no quartering asked and none given; show the square pianos some class, give em a whiff of those kick offs they'll neer know.

The exerpt in its original state

California, Labor Day weekend ... early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll ot from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur ... The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the undred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the sadde, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches ... like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg with no quarter asked and none given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they'll neer know.

I tried to do Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, but there weren't enough nouns in it to make it terribly interesting or amusing.

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1: The N+9 method requires that you replace each noun (2) with the noun nine entries after it in a dictionary (3).

2: I chose not to convert proper nouns except for the title of the post.

3: I used the Concise Oxford Dictionary Tenth Edition.