2003-01-10

I like a bit of surrealism in my life. Seeing a guy wearing a huge sombrero and a suit made entirely of zippers preaching the word of God outside a Burger King always makes me smile. (Really � I see him all the time around the Byward Market. He should have his own brochure as a tourist attraction. The whole suit! Is made of ZIPPERS!) An old friend of mine, whenever he saw something similarly bizarre, used to say �Wow, that is SO Czechoslovakian-art-film!� Since those days, I�ve been tirelessly looking for legitimate excuses to use that sentence.

Now I�ve found a way to inject a dose of the bizarre into each and every day, and create brow-furrowingly avant-garde poetry to boot. I go to the Babel Fish translation page and select �English to Portuguese� (I suppose any language would work just as well, but Portuguese? That�s wacky!). Then I type in some Clash lyrics, because I�m still not over Joe, and hit �Translate.� Then I cut and paste the result back into the �Translate this text� window, select �Portuguese to English�, and voila! What the FUCK!

�London that calls it
zombies to arrest motionless death
for is
and extracts one another breath�

It�s like T. S. Eliot in a leather jacket.

Sadly, when processed in the Babel Fish blender, the Carpenters just come out sounding like a Japanese greeting card:

�Why the birds
appear suddenly
each time that you are next?
But as me,
they for much time
to be close to you.�

The Clash wins the �best artificially-created surrealist poetry� contest hands down. Also, the �not being a bulging bag of dingo crap� contest.