Automatic Surrealism

Combining my interests in poetry and computing is something I've played with for many years, ever since I wrote my first simplistic prose generator in Basic back in the early 1980s. Even in the era of AI and ChatGPT, computers aren't yet capable of speaking for themselves, but when supplied with samples of human language (unimaginably huge samples for the latest LLMs) they can produce highly convincing original discourse. But even just using pre-AI tools, by cunning choice of vocabulary you can make them appear to have intentions. I've written poetry generators in both Python and Snap that do just that, with a faintly smutty vocabularies that produce unexpected associations that resemble Surrealist Automatic Writing.

Here's an example:

SHOULD A TRUFFLE

Should a truffle smoothly stink?

Can its pickled stomach think?

The pepper capers over your floor.

Your cuckoo digs and loudly paints her cage.

Won't her black bean deflate our tent?

Should a woman surprise our dull father?

She shouldn't hurl the yellow coconut.

She could slowly drop the smouldering sea

around their mountain.

Your son digs and smoothly extracts a gleaming head

like a squid.

He won't thump my eagle?

The boy stinks like a dumb shuttle.

By his keen pepper, the river dissolves.

Into his mouth, their elbow expands.

Their reddish whippet screws his tit toward a room.

Into a bath, a short tiger possibly crumbles.

He couldn't shift the bath?

Where could my pagoda shout?

The drunken, lazy beetle penetrates my tinker.

Inside the cheek, the breath crumbles.

They could dreamily suck a sod.

We won't employ a basket.

Heavy Metal

More recently a passing addiction to Japanese metalworking videos on YouTube provided another source. YouTube will often show a button that yields a kanji character transcript of a video's soundtrack (in Japanese of course), but if you cut-and-paste this into Google Translate it can create passages of wonderfully surreal or zen-like 'poetry':

BENT FLAT METAL

You will see a set of techniques

Then I will explain the tools used in the work

At first we use with care machine

It becomes with the needle needle scale

There is a hammer that strikes a curved surface and a flat hammer that strikes a flat surface

This is the scissors to use for cutting

I feel cautious because I will not become a product later

I will do the zelkova one time as much as possible

It will be a double line with reform in the same place

Well if it is the main part, its effect teamed up

Hold the center point firmly, and it seems like good weather will enter properly

When I wrote

Don't let the war go wrong

For example, straight lines

If it is from left to right vertical line

Next is disconnection

Cut with scissors

What needs special attention is cutting the horizontal plate

Since it is a flat part, it is hard to fix if it is deformed.

Yes yes

Oops

Hmm

I would like to hold the one who wants to leave as much as possible and open the waist of the steel plate.

I think if you listen in a way to put more and more into something more easy to wear

Always keep an eye on the marking line for a total of about 1000 tablets

Especially in the straight line

I will strike out the seat with a gold sister hammer

Firmly on the contract battlefield

It is that I hit the tip of the shadow

If it deviates from the mark line, it will bend at the same time.

Of the moment I hit this

What is this

The hand of the person who has the gold that feels it with the left hand and has a shadow because it is said that the high transmission of power is felt

So, generally speaking, do you get the feeling that a good line has come out now?

I think

Ah ah ah

Peep

voodoo

Well

People who hit here are somewhat high

When I hit it I hit it

Because it is the meaning and the rubber which I did after the point to be flat to a certain extent where I was rough

After seasoning, cut the meat with drawing dimensions

Then insert a bending line and bend the flange with a north hammer

Yes yes

Hmm

I will process using my sister hammer yesterday

If you experience the experience of tapping, such a rhythm will probably feel like you naturally

Is not it

I will get used to it with a flat hammer and a shaman

I will strike the whole uniformly and get used to it

At that time I try to touch the surface with my hand

I will check with the gauge even after the break-in

Take the position of the little lord

While checking

That kind of praise

The flange's squeezing starts from the point where you put in the drawing dimension bending line

I will squeeze it by the manufacturing method because the r part will grow if I strike it simply

I will check here with the gauge firmly

Yup

I am

voodoo

beep

Hmm

Oops

Tut T T T T T

First of all, weld the welded parts together

Because butt welding

I'll have to hold that each other firmly by temporary fixing later

Because I'll miss you

One by one welding is firmly fixed

This welding will proceed with ease

I will melt the welding rod

From this start already

Until the end

Make sure your body moves in a comfortable way first and then unravel it from home as much as possible

Well as expected

Hammering of welds uses a gold hammer

I will beat from both sides firmly

Touch the hand to check the unevenness and check with the gauge

Punkoid Band Names

And finally, music pub posters are an inexhaustible fund of Z-list surrealism, like Brunk and Dutch Mustard :