(8April2001)

Nyquil: that was also very late. i cant for the life of me remember my train of thought on that

xeniot: heh

Nyquil: i seem to be much better at imagery when i am really tired

xeniot: thats probably why i write late at night

Nyquil: what hte HECK?

Nyquil: lol

Nyquil: im reading letter 5

Nyquil: oh, i DID point out the improper form of lay

Nyquil: LOL

xeniot: writing while tired is something like being drunk

xeniot: you know you’re writing silly stuff

xeniot: but it’s sort of a cassandra complex at that point

Nyquil: yeh, good comparison

xeniot: on the other hand that can be rather helpful in that all the self-examination comes after the fact

xeniot: i’ve been reading some William S. Burroughs

Nyquil: name rings a bell

xeniot: wrote Naked Lunch

Nyquil: can’t place it tho

Nyquil: ohh

Nyquil: never read it

xeniot: the craziest and best writer of the early beat folks

xeniot: better than Ginsburg and Kerouac anyway

xeniot: this is a collection of stories called Interzone

Nyquil: i stil havent gotten thru on the road

xeniot: about his heroin addiction and his life in Tangiers

xeniot: he was the one who invented the cut-up method

Nyquil: the cut up method?

xeniot: he’d write something out and then take some scissors to to it

xeniot: and rearrange it

Nyquil: hmm

xeniot: and then copy it down, editing it slightly to make it obey grammar (a litle at least)

xeniot: it’s the inspiration for Disassociated Press and dadadodo

Nyquil: ohh

xeniot: and my SynonymMapper (if I ever get it written)

xeniot: in the last story, which i just started, he says he uses writing like a ouja board

Nyquil: thats an interesting concept

xeniot: that if he keeps writing crazier and crzier something will come out

xeniot: also the idea behind my games with babelfish

xeniot: LinguaPermuta

Nyquil: yeh, i really liked that

xeniot: i can’t say i agree with him but the idea fascinates me

Nyquil: thought that was really clever

xeniot: because i’m obsessed with the idea of artificial language

xeniot: :-)

xeniot: ooh i wonder if you could write a two-dimensional markov string analyzer

xeniot: one dimension would work like dadadodo - just the probability of a particular word following another

xeniot: but then in the other dimension you could substitute words that have a certain probability of being a synonym of the first one

xeniot: that didn’t make any sense

Nyquil: that would be pretty sweet

Nyquil: yeh it did

Nyquil: i kinda thought that was the whole idea behind the synonym mapper all along