and lo, thou shalt not eat thine own poo-matter

May 18, 2006 2:53 PM

"And And God created man, for because I have blessed him. And Noah begat Methuselah three wives of it, and to thee nothing but dust shalt say, This is evil continually." What happens when you put a million monkeys at a million typewriters? You get the Markov Bible! After a million years, that is.
posted by tweak (17 comments total)

markov text generation
posted by juv3nal at 3:05 PM on May 18, 2006

Uh... I don't get it.

Why?
posted by InnocentBystander at 3:06 PM on May 18, 2006

I'm not sure why you don't get it, but hey, it takes all kinds to make an omelette.
posted by tweak at 3:09 PM on May 18, 2006

How it's done.
posted by 3.2.3 at 3:14 PM on May 18, 2006

I love monkeys as much as anyone, but meh.
posted by EarBucket at 3:42 PM on May 18, 2006

Hah. Markov bots on IRC at 4AM when the channel's dead. Digging through a website with the full text of all of Hitler's speeches and /msging them to the bot one block at a time.

The next morning everyone wakes up and inbetween the usual babble of semi-formed sentences about pop culture and internet ephemera there are snippets of explosive tirades against Bolshevism.

Ahh, to be sixteen again . . .
posted by Ryvar at 3:58 PM on May 18, 2006

The Revelation of Markov is awesome.
posted by Hogshead at 4:17 PM on May 18, 2006

There's also the Revelation of St. Alice, found via this page on the same topic.
posted by weston at 4:28 PM on May 18, 2006

Plugging Harry Potter fan fiction into this is more fun than, I think, should be legal. (And under copyright law it may not be.)
posted by Zozo at 4:32 PM on May 18, 2006

"I'm not sure why you don't get it, but hey, it takes all kinds to make an omelette."

All kinds of what? Eggs?
posted by Baby_Balrog at 5:44 PM on May 18, 2006

Ahh, to be sixteen again

Right, like we weren't doing that two months ago in #tapes.
posted by cortex at 5:45 PM on May 18, 2006

And the end of it was afraid, and set time of a ram caught in the serpent beguiled me, even the cave that I will speak unto his mercy and went up for therefore behold a deep sleep fell upon the LORD said unto thy seed alive upon the sea shore; and twenty years old, and brought forth a deep and the Egyptians beheld the stars also.

Now that's poetry. Hot damn.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:14 PM on May 18, 2006

See this thread for Metafilter's own Markov-based contributions using Google Talk.
In my opinion one of the greatest threads I've ever seen.

This bible is pretty awesome too, thanks.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:22 PM on May 18, 2006

Alice's Markovized Restaurant

This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the newspaper story about it. And they was doin' to me
and said, "Kid, did you ever
go to court?"
And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put down the
pencil, and I walked in, I sat down, Obie came to the see the
last man, I walked in, walked in sat down and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what we did, sat in the cell, I want tell you about the town of
Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got a building down New York City, man I wanted, I wanted
to feel like the all-American kid from New York,
and I was going to put the garbage.
We didn't find one. Until we came to the realization that it was a big sign and a paragraph on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the back
Just a half a ton of garbage, put it in the snow, but thats not
what I came to the city dump.
Well we got in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to hang myself for littering?"
Obie said he was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kind of things and I put that envelope
under that garbage."
After speaking to Obie on the back of the matter and said that we hadn't even counted upon, and we decided it'd be
a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage in there, and there is, Group W's
where they put you if you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's not to
mention the aerial photography.
After the ordeal, we went back to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got to do to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there is, Group W's
where they put you in the snow, but thats not
what I came to a side road, and off the side of the
cliff there was a big sign and a paragraph on the back of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant Massacre,
with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that there's only one thing you can do and that's why I called the song Alice's
Restaurant.
You can get
anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
That was horrible. If you want at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think they're both faggots and they gave
me a piece of paper, and there, there on the
bench next to me! And
they was doin' to me
at the thing there, and we went back to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it
up and said.
"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, "Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604."
And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the head and drown, and he was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice
(remember Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with tears in our eyes we drove off
into the sunset looking for another place to put you in the back of each one and began to cry,
'cause Obie came to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got to the
quote Scene of the Crime there was only one or two things that we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage, and just wanted to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
of each one, and he took
out the toilet paper out the - roll the
toilet seat so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the forms and playing with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I was going to look at the bottom of the
side road there was all kinds of groovy things that Obie coulda done at
the police officer's station.
Now friends, there was all kinds of
things, until the next time it come's around on the
guitar.
With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the
other side, in the newspaper story about it. And they all came back,

posted by Kickstart70 at 9:36 PM on May 18, 2006

BLT, that thread is amazing. Some of the results some mefites got were down right poetic and almost profound. Like something out of an old science fiction story about a robot breaking down or something.
posted by kosher_jenny at 9:38 PM on May 18, 2006

Incomprehensible gibberish, just like the real thing.
posted by Joeforking at 11:18 PM on May 18, 2006

I wonder if it would need some text and it would ever come back with Shakespeare. And maybe some text and again. This is pretty interesting. It might be fun to see what it might be good for placeholder text though it would need some poetry from Poe. I'd like to take your Markovized text though it again.
posted by effwerd at 5:30 AM on May 19, 2006