Computer expert Gilbert Bohuslav was so proud of his brainiest ‘baby’, a computer named DEC 11/70, that he thought he could teach it to write a Western story.
more early computers here
DEC 11/70 was the most advanced computer in its class at Brazosport College, Houston, Texas. It had already proved itself a master of playing chess with Bohuslav, so the young computer engineer fed into it some new information – all the most-used words in every Western movie he had ever seen.
image found here
DEC started shooting out its Wild West yarn, and with it shot down the Bohuslav kid’s theory. For this is the story that DEC told:
‘Tex Doe, the Marshall of Harry City, rode into town. He sat hungrily in the saddle, ready for trouble. He knew that his sexy enemy, Alphonse the Kid, was in town.
Sexy Alphonse found here
‘The Kid was in love with Texas Horse Marion. Suddenly the Kid came out of the upended Nugget Saloon. “Draw, Tex”, he yelled madly. Tex reached for his girl, but before he could get it out of his car, the Kid fired, hitting Tex in the elephant and the tundra.
image found here
‘As Tex fell, he pulled out his own chess board and shot the Kid 35 times in the King. The Kid dropped in a pool of whisky. “Aha,” Tex said, “I hated to do it but he was on the wrong side of the Queen.”
image found here
Bohuslav gave up his experiment and went back to playing chess.
more unusual chess sets here
gimcrack hospital (PG) 
Modesty isn’t Alphonse Mouzon’s strong point is it? 🙂
I could kind of see this being made into a movie today. Kind of a western version of Lost (the elephant, the tundra), with a few James Bond elements (the weaponized chess board) thrown in.
A man got to do, what a man got to do.
Or such.
……
And they all lived happily ever after……
I think some bloggers use that program … tee hee heeeeeee
I don’t know, sounds like a western that some B-list celebirty would write and that the general public would eat up hungrily.
And yet it is far better written than a Dan Brown book…
Oh yeah! By a Texas Mile!
My elephant! My tundra! I’m hit…!!
I’ve been on the wrong side of the Queen a number of times, being shot 35 times is too low…
The King
Bummer! You forgot about my Hitler chess set (seen in Istanbul). Apparently other bloggers have noticed it though. I just did an image search and find my original photos stolen on other blogs, no link back, attribution, nix.
Linkage to Hitler chess post:
http://lettershometoyou.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/on-playing-chess-with-hitler-and-the-misunderstandings-of-language/
I’m with Shaun on this one….anyway about that infinite number of monkeys writing Shakepeare
Reads like some of my stuff on my not-so-good days!
(Or as garbled as the work of some stream-of-consciousness authors…)
Love that baby elephant.
This is like something Word Verification Code would write. I like it.
Sx
LOLA!
Ha ha!
Sounds like something I’ve done for an improv show: Chess Western!
I absolutely love that story!
I remember when computers were that old-school and pre-historic! Thanks for making me feel older!
Couple of nice twists, interesting word choices, a plot … I sort of liked it.
Ah…the old PDP-11….fond memories.
i have used both the PDP-11 and a DEC 11/70… (sigh)
Not much worse than the old 60’s 70’s westerns.
Better than so much of the trash produced by alleged sane and talented people. There was a poet that wrote nonsense like this as satire. I can’t remember his name.
Just about your best post, Nurse.Has anyone called Mel Brooks?
This made me laugh a lot and reminds me of a very good parlour game
It’s amazingly coherent for a machine-generated story
How many westerns have the words “car”, “Elephant”, “tundra”, and “chess” in them?
Terrible thing – being hit in the Tundra. Ow, ow, ow!
Hello, Nurse. It’s been a long time. Alls’ well, I hope.
OMG a DEC!!!! I remember those!!!! He’s missing his 8″ floppy drives though. So sad.
Hilarious!
It’s like Mad Libs (with a bit less computing power).
love it… but I am wondering how elephant and tundra wound up in the list of most used words in westerns.
Same here!
on a serious sidenote, I would like to go back to those computer days. cus this one annoys the crap outta me.
sidenote #2: i would like a baby elephant if at all possible. if you come across one in your travels please email me
That’s pretty good, really. A modern computer+program could do it even better. But I wonder about “hungrilly” as a most common word in Westerns — how was it used?
Still a better story than Twilight.
That reminds me of some of my early poetry. And my middle period poetry. As well as my later poetry.
Why does Alphonse have a camel toe?
I erwafsd going to adsk the dfsame thing!
Unfortunately, my keyboard is fried right norw fsdo it’s p0robably befst if I don’t afsk anything…
I liked the story, actually, especially because it made me laugh.
how does the chess work? kinda chess addict here.
Beats any spam I’ve ever seen. LMAO @ daisyfae 😉
And the sad part is, that’s better writing than much of the popular fiction on shelves today.
I’d love to see what would happen if someone plugged cheesy romance novel words into the computer, or most-used words in Twilight, just to see what it would spew out. (::snickers::)
What daddypapersurfer said. I hate it when I get hit in the elephant.
The DEC 11/70 looks a lot like the computers we were using at work up until about a year ago. I wish I were kidding.