Looking through the headlines of today's paper, by removing them from any context I can glean several phrases that would make good band names, poem titles, or secret government operation names:
Baby no. 81
virtual campaign
meatpackers face
festival stampede
food inquiry
last digs
discrepancy remains
kumquat blondies
everyday exotic
king of frozen egg rolls
sizable expectations
versatile grizzlies
belligerent prisoner
drunken robbins
define "member"
couples drop
seal incites debate
return to arms
stricter dress
surprising analysts
This would be a fun exercise for a creative writing class if each student had draw one of these phrases out of a hat and write a poem, story, or causerie based on their random title.
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5 comments:
I used to work (briefly) at a, um, well-known government agency. They employed an entire office of people whose job was to come up with cover-names for stuff. There was a parallel vocabulary, in some sense.
Think of how much money the Gov't could save if they simply hired me to pick these names. I could just cull them from spam emails and newspaper headlines. If they want to keep my job a secret, I'll give them a freebie: call it Operation Surprising Analysts.
I've done something similar with school kids. I let them go through newspapers, cutting out any words they think are interesting, and then they use them to write a poem. They are allowed to give phrases away to other kids or trade for fun ones.
Do you write poetry? Given your love for language, I should think poetry would come pretty naturally to you.
Sadly, the government (being what it is) has many, many rules about covernames. This is why we had to let a separate office choose the names for our projects and programs; as mere mathematicians we were not qualified to give things names.
Jo(e), I haven't tried poetry. It seems to be too hard. If I did, I would probably end up trying to be snarky and ironic like James Tate. Maybe someday I'll take a stab at one on the blog.
Rudbeckia, what a silly world you were in for a while.
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