OK, Folks, I know I have been mad lazy what with producing no new kontent and barely commenting and all, and I should probably apologize for that…
but it would be bullshit, because I’m not good at apologies and I honestly felt I didn’t have much to contribute lately, so I figured it best to hold off on writing something until I had something worth writing. That said, I was struck by inspiration recently (read: I drank WAY too fucking much Saturday afternoon and before I took what turned out to be an epic 6 hours “afternoon nap”) which led me to the following Genius Idea ™ (patent pending, all rights reserved, etc):
entropy Reads The Classics, or, An Off Season Odyssey Of The Mind.
Naturally, this being DFO, and me being, well, me, there’s a twist:
I won’t be reviewing the entire work, just selected pages stitched together, based off the output of a random number generator that grabs 10 pages from the book, in any order. So, for example, my upcoming sample “review” will be Thomas Love Peacock’s (GREAT choice for Book One, I felt) work of satire, “Nightmare Abbey.” Because this is a novella and only 141 pages, I selected 8 pages at random, giving me a short story which consists of pages 117, 7, 23, 84, 103, 48, 71, and 47… think of it like a Choose Your Own Adventure Novel, only completely without the author’s consent, planning, or knowledge. Considering I got this idea after being awake for about 40 hours and spending a bunch of them drinking, naturally it seemed ideal for this crowd.
So, you may be asking yourself, what the fuck do you want, entropy? I’m SOOOOOOOOO glad you asked! I’m looking for book ideas, people, and, if you’re feeling particularly froggy, you can go ahead and select the pages I’ll stitch together for my review as well! I have only a few simple rules:
- All books must be public domain (I want the review to be funny, not the damage to my bank account)
- All books must be considered a “classic” (no “50 Shades of Fan Fiction” bullshit)
- The random page number generator must be random… I don’t want the finished product to end up conventionally coherent
- Don’t suggest your favorite book, because I’ll probably find a way to ruin it
- All those 100-page “sports biographies” we all used in Elementary School for book reports are highly encouraged, if you can find me a digital copy to stitch together
- While I am sure we’d all appreciate it, don’t suggest the Playboy Girls of [insert location] pictorial collections…. the resulting review could get, well…. messy. Also, litigious.
Since it’s the off-season and we are usually kinda starved for content, I’ll try to get one of these done a week, depending on my schedule and how god-awful whatever I turn a classic work of Art into after the random page generator does its thing, so the sooner you guys get into this, the faster I’ll poison my mind with this batshit idea. Of course, Internet Dad has ultimate veto power should this have the potential to get us sued or whatever, but I’m thinking we’ll be clear if the book is public domain and I chop it up into something new and weird.
So there you have it, entropy’s contribution to ending the off-season doldrums for at least 45 to 50 minutes a week. Drop by the comments and let me know what book you want to see turned into a lobotomized version of itself on crack, and I’ll do my damnedest to get it done for you. Then, once we have a few complete, I’ll make sure to shop the links around to those online college paper repositories and see how many kids will be dumb enough to buy one of these things for a term paper. Either way, we’ll have fun with it.
I hope to see you guys joining in the fun soon.
A potential twist: you could take some novels in their original language (say, 100 Years of Solitude) and run them through Google Translate, then use THAT as a basis.
Too lazy to read the other comments. Just want to say any Russian literature would be great. Crime and Punishment maybe? Or Eugene onegin?
http://fanaru.com/the-simpsons/image/105096-the-simpsons-milhouse-gif.gif
http://fanaru.com/family-guy/image/36393-family-guy-take-your-index-finger-and-your-thumb-and-lightly-grip.gif
The Romance of Lust: A Classic Victorian erotic novel
free here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30254
Hound of the Baskervilles: https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/8921.The_Hound_of_the_Baskervilles
I found an English PDF of The Last Ringbearer which is LOTR from an orc’s perspective. I haven’t read it because lazy, so maybe you could instead!
Also, any and all of the Divine Comedy. Your pick of just ten pages from Inferno or to treat it as one book!
I’ve read some of that; it’s actually pretty cool, and has given me some ideas for my own original story that I may end up writing one day. For now, though, its not classic enough to fit this need.
Reminds me of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
http://www.hpmor.com/
Oh wait, Ent(ropy) said NO ungodly long fanfic.
FOAR our new Rooskie overlords, “Crime and Punishment” da!!
“As I Lay Dying” by Faulkner.
Needs to be brightened up a bit.
Or try Flannery O’Connor “The Violent Bear it Away.”
Both joyous versions of Southern Gothic noir.
I was thinking “Sound and the Fury” because so much of it is barely coherent. It would be interesting to try and decipher that one of of ten random pages.
“I won’t be reviewing the entire work, just selected pages stitched together”
Do you mean stuck together?
#circlejerk
Mein Kampf
James Joyce’s Ulysses. I believe you random page generator idea would render the book significantly more coherent.
ha
Do the same with Finnegan’s Wake and you risk ripping a hole in time
How bout the book by Baroness Orczy where she talks about the hooker’s boss, The Scarlet Pimp Ernel?
The book so nice, you mentioned it twice?
Now I look like a fool.
Not that I needed any help.
/Thanks edit button.
Now this I can get behind.
Diary of Anne Frank?
tl;dr
-PK
Pascal’s Pensees. I mean, a French guy talking about dicks has to be interesting, right?
To go classic classic, i vote for Othello. The play, not the game. Although you can actually play the game…
For funsies, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
With our luck, all the random pages would be the boring parts. “Thanks, Trump!”
oh i loved that game
I’ll do one right now, if that’s okay.
Old Man and the Sea
Old guy goes out to the sea.
Ruminates alot.
Catches a fucking big fish.
Sharks attack fish.
Old man gets back from sea.
He got nothing.
Probably dies from cirrhosis of the liver.
Stay off the sea, Old Man.
The Fozz spawn must just fucking love bedtime stories at the Fortress of Fozzitude.
“Daddy can we hear the story of the mean, alcoholic, shit eating, fuckfaced, asshole troll named Irsay and how he fucking tore the soul out of an entire city and how we should shit on his grave?”
“Sure kids, one more time and then off to bed.”
If I could “You like that, huh?” this more than once, I would.
I think I just came a little.
Someone didn’t read the rules. I take the classic, see, and randomly select ten pages, and build a new story out of that, then review it. Made a lot more sense when I was insomniac this morning.
A little google-fu turned up Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/
I’m torn between Treasure Island or Gulliver’s Travels.
I’ll leave that fancy random numbah generatin’ to ya’ll.
Great Expectations.
Fuck those chicks.
Mrs. Haversham needed to be killed and eaten.
Have some self respect, Pip. Fuck.
Just saying
Is this where we nominate a book?
Well, I say fuck yes.
I choose Fanny Hill. Pages 69, 22, 97, 151, 46, 73, 135, 165, 109, and 50.
If you don’t like the book there are several movie versions, including
Is the book public domain?
From the 1700’s, so yes. Think of it as a print version of Rochelle, Rochelle. A young girl’s strange erotic journey, from Milan to Minsk.
Wow, this could get…..interesting.
What does she do on page 69?
Her taxes, unfortunately.
So….drunken cliff’s notes? I can get on board with this.
You’re in the ball park, but think of it more as someone finding ten loose pages of a given classic novel, randomly assembling a short story, and then reviewing the results as though it were written that way on purpose.