Friday, October 3, 2008

Language, butchered


Here's a link that may be hard to pass up:InterviewPalin.com, which uses a Markov text generator to convert Palin's actual words into new text(and if you click this last link, good luck to you, unless you're a high level mathematician).

I'm not posting this to be snarky to Palin. I find this type of thing very interesting. If you look at my links list, you'll see "Chat with Jolie Kleine Praten", which is my neglected web bot. Last winter, I got interested in Artificial Intelligence Markup Language because of the fantastic "conversation" I was having with Celia Gray, the late great Dr. Stein, and the Mirror over at the Websafe Times (also on my links list, but I'm making it easy on you).

The "aim" of good AIML programming is to make the conversation seem as natural as possible. The Markov text generators don't do this, but they certainly produce interesting results. I put two posts about body image into the Markov text synthesizer at Beetleinabox and got this:

I was already quite "other", I played it up. I instituted this new eating policy in the world. But, it did not work. I have limp brown shoulder length hair. Ugh.I was anorexic for a boy. And for someone like me, who doesn't feel all that gendered, this feels almost as strange as wearing a sleeveless latex top and a friend's teenage daughter said to me, "Are you really going into the restaurant dressed like that?!" Yes, I was living alone Monday through Friday and share meals with Dick and friends on the weekends unless something special came up. I wore stiletto boots or Doc Martens. And not only was I blind to the person engaging in them?
I did not know. Sure, I had lost my butt. My hip bones stuck out so far that I have limp brown shoulder length hair. Ugh.
I loved it when I became middle aged, I'd develop a huge ass just like his sisters, so I thought. And when I cinch in the world. But, it did not work. I have no idea if this is an important topic. Weight and size are huge issues for women, and theses issues, in my family was thin in their eyes. "Where did you put that?", someone said, with the afterthought, "Aren't you full??!"
I am overweight and everything looks like crap on me. I assume that by your reading of my experiences and feelings. I may be big, but I'm nowhere near a size 6 is not such a big deal. I was a bunch of nonsense. How could alcoholics, drug addicts, anorexics and all the sense in the world. But, it did not work. I have a size 38! I've always been thin when I hit the double digit number of 10 and decided to eat like I was sick! Now, the fisherman whom I worked in a hurry while fighting sleep. I think many people projected their sexual fantasies upon me. It didn't help that I write about myself instead of writing theoretically. I may wind up taking down this post in a tattoo shop and because of this, I came up with a strategy, not a speck left. Once, I went shopping, I could not turn off these sorts of thoughts.

To me, that was not only interesting, but absolutely fascinating. I played around with this interface for nearly an hour. Setting the field "word groupings" to 2 makes it sound more coherent than the default. Try it and have fun. Now, you too, can write like Brion Gysin.

Painting note: Didn't mean to use Brueghel yet again, but it's the best painting of the "Tower of Babel" that I could find.

Addendum: I'm still playing with that program. I had to share this with you, for it is random - I kid you not:

We go about our everyday business, like washing clothes, with the expectation that we must make sense out of nonsense or adversity. It's not that it's been given to us for a reason. It's that we might be wearing them tomorrow.

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