(no subject)

[spatch]

On February 13, 2003, nebulous menace on Ed's World started a thread called Chain Mind Meld. The rules of the game are quite simple: Take a work from Author A and write it in the style of Author B. The next person then takes a work from Author B and writes it in the style of Author C, so forth and so on, until, uh, I guess, you stop. Or something.

At any rate, I've taken all the entries so far (it's technically still going, but for some inexplicable reason everybody's been stuck on Terry Pratchett for over six months) and archived them up in one big web page so that everybody could see exactly how brilliant everybody else is being behind their backs. My favorites in the collection are J.R.R. Tolkien's The Song of the Old Fisherman (after Ernest Hemingway), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Anne Rice, and Paradise Lost in nadsat by Anthony Burgess.

Take a look when you've got the time, but be prepared to sit down and read the entire thing through because that's how good it is. I think it's one of the funniest, most intelligent works that have ever come out of a web-based BBS (and that includes "hay guys diagnose my medical problem over the intar web but don't tell me to go see a doctor, k")

Good stuff all around.

Comments

The Rites of Equality by Marcel Proust

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

Notwithstanding the position in which the esteem of Mlle. Weatherwax was held within the near-myopic introspection of the Bad Ass bourgeoisie (for it is a much-loved characteristic of the Lancre provincial that, proud to the point of mania over his village shrine or such leadwork as remains unstolen in the roof tiled a decade ago, he disregards happenings of the most momentous import to be of another world, though they occur but two valleys away), none was more resolute in its certainity than Mlle. Weatherwax herself; and, when such an attribute is borne as not only a shield against critique but a well-placed avalanche to brush it away entire, it is not unusual to find (as, near Hogswatch, one's eye may light upon a single verdant bud press its lustre too early on a snowy world that can never sustain it) that persons exist whose rustic instinct for intransigence, so facilitous in the field entire of their other peregrinations, causes them to voice a contrasting opinion; doubtless their fragile hopes never transgress so far as to anticipate a victory at the expense of one as at ease in the intimate company of the greatest men alive as elbow-deep in pregnant kine, yet by their recalcitrance they perhaps hope (a hope no less hopeless) to assert, however fleetingly, some acknowledgement of their existence's felicity; and among such unhappy fellows we must number the father of Eskarina.

Hooray pour Proust, champion du point-virgule!

[isquiesque.livejournal.com]

Although I think you're exaggerating, perhaps, ever so slightly.

I must confess that the thought had previously occurred to me that one of the reasons that I like Proust is that he eases my conscience about the fact that I like to write in really long sentences most of the time; he makes it seem okay for those of us that are wordy.

(I've been meaning to get back to him, in French - a somewhat frightening thought.)

Re: The Rites of Equality by Marcel Proust

[spatch]

Holy cow. That's damn impressive.

Re: The Rites of Equality by Marcel Proust

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

Cudja post it to the forum? I doubt it'd make much sense to join just for this one post, but it'd be cool to get the thing moving again.

Re: The Rites of Equality by Marcel Proust

[spatch]

I've posted it in the thread. Thank you very much for help keeping the game alive! Your laurel and hearty handshake are in the mail.