Into The Cut Up Machine

Just for kicks, I sent a paragraph from my story, "Beauty Queens" through the Cut Up Machine over at Language is a Virus. No doubt it's much better with poetry, but you all know I don't have any of that.

So here's the original:

One day when I was seven years old I woke up obsessed with the word 'biscuit' (the week before it was 'crisp'). I spent some time in front of the mirror saying it over and over again. I liked the sound of it as it came out of my mouth, my tongue wrapping around the hard edges, hitting against the back of my two front teeth when the final 't' sounded. I was so overwhelmed by my love of the word that I mixed together oatmeal, flour, and orange juice and made one hundred and five small biscuits. When no one would eat them I cried and brought them to my Lola. She laid them out in her garden like a thousand gifts and held me on her lap while we watched the birds feast.

And here's the "Cut Up" (I've bold-faced what I find interesting juxtapositions):

out my that woke her eat word birds my love again. was as hundred by mouth, and on of it eat front front the on it obsessed love feast. love I hitting of hundred One wrapping sounded. tongue against teeth 't' and in sound no final against before small we her we word love garden on tongue we the two over thousand I front in hard word obsessed I together them I we again. and wrapping made I and I time time it seven her When old we by and flour, of and years biscuits. 't' When When came spent over I eat up of word tongue around and mixed I by on it brought when when I would years years them some on oatmeal, I flour, sound her mixed of was lap front

The oral fixation in the original paragraph is quite plain, but putting it through the Cut Up Machine multiplied it by five. This will no doubt amuse The Chatelaine, to whom I recently sent a blurb for her new Blurb Project. She responded, rather...I don't know...violently that "everything is about sex" with me and that she is not fooled—no she is certainly not!—by my Kindergarten vignettes.

And I'm all, "Wha?!!"

Anyhoots...if you're in the mood, put something of yours through the Cut Up Machine and post it in the comments. If you're feeling shy, there's no need to include your original.

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Finally, here's a link round-up to what some of our "A Call to Pens" participants have to say about their letter-writing experience:

Bec says this, barbara jane says that, and our resident bride-to-be chimes in, too.

Happy weekend all!