"Because see"

Bill Poundstone's latest Humumentization of Ann Coulter yields something Brainard-worthy! (And here's more on Brainard.)

(And...reminder—Ed—reading—tonight...)

Emo rats Had Rain, Cans

On the Fourth of July, William Poundstone—a sort of Edgar Cayce for our time—had this dream:

Everyone was talking about the clever new website that takes Ann Coulter's words and subjects them to the Tom Phillips A Humument treatment — producing random phrases of great wit and poetry.

"In the morning," he writes, "I realized that this idea (though stupid) was easily realized."

Putting dream into action, he has started a new blog, "Ann Coulter: Human Document," where he submits the conservative pundit's column to a Phillipsian process to come up with brave new meanings. Here's a small sample:

Last week — Teaching notes

I. Via L.G. Thos.: George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody is now online as a blog. (I'll be teaching this book next semester.)

II. Speaking of teaching: Last Tuesday, for my final short story class, I had my students read various short-shorts, including the liner notes to The Best of Leonard Cohen, which is one of my favorite very short collections of very short prose—exquisitely world-weary, self-deprecating, droll, and surprising.

Lady Midnight
This was finished in the Henry Hudson Hotel on 58th Street in New York. Yafa was doing tricks with her silver bangles. I owe her the last verse. It was recorded in Nashville. The voice is uncertain. In those days it took me fifteen minutes to decide whether or not I should wear my cap when I went outside and a half hour whether or not I should take it off when I came back.

Then today I saw that someone at The Millions blog included them on Friday (as part of its year-in-reading series)!

III. Also last week: Jenny D's post on Oscar Wilde's reading habits mentioned W.H. Mallock's book The New Republic. Why did the name "Mallock" ring a bell?

A: Because he is the author of A Human Document, which Tom Phillips transformed into A Humument...topic of my final Friday class!

I was also happy to find that A Human Document is available in its entirety as a Google Book.