Thursday, August 18, 2005

Gibberish: Running away with the words

One discipline for writing every day is to just sit down and do it. One discipline for getting started is to just type gibberish for five minutes. Five minutes. After you get the juices flowing, it gets easier to keep writing.

Gibberish is a category that will reproduce snippets of running-off-at-the-mouth on the keyboard. They'll never mean anything, just show the quicksilver vagaries of the creative (if demented) mind.

The first Gibberish post, which follows, was probably written as a warm-up on a PDP/11 in 1983. On second thought: Due to the hole punches and squiggle-O all-caps characters, this one has to go back to first-quarter 1979, typed in draft mode on a Honeywell non-impact page printer (which fed, printed and cut paper from a 50-pound drum roll) in the Pillsbury computer department.
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And so, in summary, we have the moral of our story: That, in the end, justice shall prevail, that manifest destiny will be manifest, that the good shall not die young, and little Tommy Tucker will indeed get his 15-cent allowance. For truth is strong, and love may become meager, but in the end, Pillsbury is best. Strive to be happy. Avoid the dull and ignorant, for they are turkeys. And seek the pleasures of thy heart, but remember that you are going to Sheol, where there is no breath nor sight nor sound but only shadows, lest you turn from Yahweh your God in the land of the living. Be at peace; have a nice day; and remember: The words of the prophets are written on the tenement walls.

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