Search This Blog

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Random Word Generators

Have you ever come across a random word generator? Probably not, for while they are described as "random", they do know their place, and don't commonly pop up just anywhere in a Google search.  They do, however, pop up occasionally on creative writing websites, and if you have enough extra time and lack of social activities as me to be browsing these sites, you may at one time have found yourself unconsciously wasting the minutes of your life away, giddily pressing a "generate!" button in anticipation of a new absurd word. Unfortunately, these words are not absurd at all, they're quite ordinary actually, which is why I sometimes question my own sanity when, after receiving the words "lid", "juggle", "phone book", and "aluminum", I still find myself impatient to discover what my next word will be. I call this the bubble wrap phenomenon- the repetition of a particular act that continually results in the same dull outcome in the belief that the next time something more satisfactory will occur. I have also found this phenomenon to apply to bad relationships, dieting, and watching the movie "Napoleon Dynamite". I am quite certain that the first time I came across a random word generator, my reaction was simply, "What in Gods name would require anyone to have any business with a random word generator?" (If you can imagine my subconscious asking that in a British accent, it would add to the authenticity of this reenactment, for my subconscious often asks questions of itself in the British tongue). But honestly, have we grown so dependent upon machinery that we now have electronic devices to randomly offer words up to us? A hundred years ago we would of gotten up off of our lazy bums, walked over to the shelf, and picked up the bell and rang for the butler to read us random words ourselves! Regardless of how needlessly modern this new invention is, it still has room for improvement. Namely, the "random household items" aspect. These random generators think far too much about "knife", "cutting board", and "spatula", which only fuels my creeping suspicion that Martha Stewart and her band of "Better Homes and Gardens" subscribers have an eerily large amount of control over society. But alas, one site, watchout4snakes.com, has taken random word generating to soaring new heights and created the "Random Word Generator (Plus)", which allows you to choose the complexity of your randomly-generated words, ranging in randomosity from "very common" to "obscure". The name of this site alone leads to me trust their knowledge of random. And bring my cat inside for the night. I've decided to use this site to generate ideas for my blogs, so I don't end up writing the same things all the time. And so I do not for God's sake, start writing about my day. So, be ready for some- ohmylordmymomfoundbubblewrap

No comments:

Post a Comment