Encaptionating

Thanks again to Maud Newton* comes this fun idea that blends language and not-always-so-helpful modern technology. She reports that

A reader who calls himself Angry Young Man has figured out a way to automate New Yorker cartoon captions — using New Yorker short stories.

It seems that Angry Young Man discovered that applying Microsoft Word's "autosummarize" function ("tools" menu) repeatedly to New Yorker stories left a residue after several iterations that sounded like the characteristically droll captions to New Yorker cartoons. It's easy to imagine how that might be true.

Naturally, this sounded like a word game, which I am tentatively thinking of as "encaptionating', too simple and too fun not to indulge in a bit.# Therefore, I've done a couple of short experiments using my own (written under my alternym Jay Neal — see link above) published (or soon-to-be published) fiction as input.

The first example comes from a longish story, "Goodland, Kansas", which will be published in a few months by Cleis Press in the book Country Boys, edited by Richard Labonté. The original story had about 6,000 words.

First, after 4 iterations with autosummarize (I've done some reformatting):

"I’m Alan Morrison.” Now Alan seemed more distracted. Alan seemed surprised by Donny’s offer.
Ross intoned. Alan asked. Kenny sounded confused.
Kenny scowled and Alan poked Ross in the ribs with his elbow.
' “Good,” Ross said,' Alan said with evident delight.
Ross didn’t stop him. Alan’s hand easily slipped under Ross, where he lightly fingered Ross’ balls.
Alan counted next. Kenny counted last. Ross made no response.
“I think Kenny’s asleep,” Alan whispered.
"Kenny? Why?”
Kenny giggled. Ross turned and left.
Alan asked. Alan affected an innocent air. Alan shook his head slowly. “Poor Ross.“
Kenny?

And then after another iteration — not quite to caption state:

"I’m Alan Morrison.”
Ross intoned. Alan asked.
Alan counted next. “I think Kenny’s asleep,” Alan whispered.
Kenny giggled. Alan asked. “Poor Ross.“
Kenny?

Now on to a story called "The Lighthouse Keep", which was recently published in Best Gay Erotica 2007, edited by Timothy J. Lambert & Richard Labonté (Cleis Press, October 2006). This story has quite a different voice, and was 3,500 words long. After four iterations:

The Lighthouse Keep:
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight…?”
“Do you keep the lighthouse?”
“Heed my warning and do not approach the lighthouse” indeed.
The Keep slowly, deliberately coiled the whip in his hand then stepped towards me. Several times he plunged in the whip, and each time I pumped out another load.
The candles flickered ominously.

One more iteration gave a sort of Haiku version:

The Lighthouse Keep:
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight…?”
The candles flickered ominously.

which, to me, captures the mood with chilling accuracy.
———-
*Maud Newton, "Repurposing New Yorker Fiction", Maud Newton, 11 January 2007.

# This reminds me of a computer-necessary game known as "Travesty", that generates text based on word-pair associations (or correlations) in some input text. Fellow motsseurs might recognize the "travesty" idea since I remember its being a fad topic for awhile in the newsgroup c. 1993, introduced by Jojo to mock the Melmon, if I remember correctly. I had hoped to dispense with all I had to say about it in this footnote with a quick reference or two, but it's already grown out of hand and will require a separate post.

Posted on January 23, 2007 at 14.06 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Curious Stuff, Such Language!

One Response

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  1. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Wednesday, 24 January 2007 at 00.28
    Permalink

    Yes, there's something intriguing about it, in a mechanistic sort of a way.

    Ever play Mad Libs?

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