The Greatest Bus Driver in the World takes a moment to note the 50th anniversary of ‘Howl’. He notes that he sports a tatoo dedicated to the pome, something that interests me.

Years ago I noticed that the first line of ‘Howl’ can be disassembled and reassembled, essentially at random, without appreciably diminishing the verbal power of the line. I mused about building a Howl first-line randomizer, but had no idea how to do it. As I sxtarted to write this entry, I realized that now I do know how to do it, easily. But I don’t have the time to do it just this second. Bug me about this and I will execute the project, internets!

I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

I have minded the generated scenes of my madness, best destroyed

I have maddened the best generation of my sight by destroying minds

I have destroyed my mind by besting generations of maddening sights

I have X the Y Z of my foo bar, baz (by) quux

(cf. metasyntactic variables, for the puzzled)