Saturday, July 07, 2007
How Ricky Bary Harbord can be a pregnant former First Lady
Bunny was cycling through various Quick and Dirty B-Movie Plots and was wondering how it worked, because she kept getting stuff like:
Ricky Bary Harbord is a beautiful pregnant former first lady with a song in his heart and a spring in his step. Valeri Barbara Bramlett is a cigar-chomping gun-slinging farmboy searching for her wife's true killer. And together, they must save Elvis from the Illinois Nazis.
“How does it work?” she asked. “How can Ricky be pregnant and the former First Lady? And how can Valeri be a cigar-chomping farmboy?”
“Well,” I said, “I know several women who like smoking cigars.”
“But Ricky as a former First Lady?”
“Sex change operation.”
“And pregnant?”
“Okay, you got me there.”
How it works. Basically, it's a template:
<male-name> <male-name> <family-name> is <article> <adjective> <adjective> <occupation> <mission>. <female-name> <female-name> <family-name> is <article> <adjective> <adjective> <occupation> <mission>. And together, they must <joint-mission>.
You know, like all good generative text programs. But I have a single list of adjectives, occupations and missions that I pick from. And while I do adjust the gender specific pronouns, I don't adjust any other gender specific terms, partly because I'm lazy, and partly because it makes for some real amusing plots. Even though it does sound ludicrous that Ricky can be pregnant, if Hollywood can make Arnold Schwarzenegger pregnant, I'm sure they can find a way to make Ricky a pregnant former First Lady.
To save these plots, Bunny had to cut-n-paste them into another document. I then realized that it wouldn't be hard at all to add a bookmark feature to the Quick and Dirty B-Movie Plot Generator—all I had to do was save the random number generator seed and make it part of the URL. And lo' you can now bookmark specific plots that are generated, which is a feature I don't see at They Fight Crime.