Dissociated Press

[Play on "Associated Press"; perhaps inspired by a reference

in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] An

algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous

garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a

marketroid. The algorithm starts by printing any N

consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at every

step it searches for any random occurrence in the original

text of the last N words (or letters) already printed and then

prints the next word or letter. Emacs has a handy command

for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated

Press applied to an earlier version of the Jargon File:

wart: A small, crocky feature that sticks out of

an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively

benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be

not worth paying attention to the medium in question.

Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press

applied to the same source:

window sysIWYG: A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer

to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a

chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech

makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual

abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem!

A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated

Press to a random body of text and vgrep the output in hopes

of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding

example, "window sysIWYG" and "informash" show some promise.)

Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield

better results. Similar techniques called "travesty

generators" have been employed with considerable satirical

effect to the utterances of Usenet flamers; see pseudo.

[Jargon File]