Automate Your Funny Random Nonsense!

Does anyone remember playing Mad Libs? It was a fun little game when I was younger. You asked your group of friends for random types of words, and filled in the blanks on a page. You would then read the page with the words filled in, which often results in hilarious nonsense that made you laugh till you cried. Ah, good times...

Anyways, if you have a few minutes, check out this little trick to get some nonsensical laughs without the effort of having to fill in blanks with random words. Instead, use the internet to do it for you!

If you've ever looked at a template for a document, blog, website, etc, you've probably seen the heading "Lorem Ipsum" followed by a paragraph or two of Latin text you didn't understand. What is Lorem Ipsum anyways?

Yeah, that's it. Thanks Google Translate. So it seems there is indeed a Latin word for everything, even the internet. Ok, so maybe that's a loose translation, but you get the idea. So how do we use this space filler to generate humor?

The creators of website and blog templates often use a Lorem Ipsum generator to effortlessly provide suitable amounts of sample text to give their users an idea of what their creation will look like. Lorem Ipsum generators use semi-random-ish patterns of Latin text which make up the internet's favourite space filler. So here's what you do:

1. Head over to the Lorem Ipsum Generator. Which should open in a new tab by clicking on the link here so you can keep this page open.

In case you're curious to learn more about what exactly Lorem Ipsum is, explore the site a bit, it's full of interesting information to satisfy the curious minds like mine. Then scroll down a little bit to the form on the lower right of the page under the heading "Where can I get some?"
Select a suitable amount of random text to fill but not exceed your own attention span and click Generate.

Now you have your very own page of nearly useless page filler of Latin text. Ok, that's great, still not funny. So now what?

2. Highlight / select, and copy all that Latin text, and carry your clipboard with you over to the clever and sophisticated online translation tool we saw at the beginning of this post, Google Translate : https://translate.google.com/
Why Google? Because Google Translate uses complex algorithms to make educated guesses as to the modern information age meaning of certain patterns of words.
Select Latin to English at the top, Paste your text from the generator in the box on the left, and click Translate. Oh, and enjoy :)

Oddly enough, This is the sample text I generated while writing this post:

HTML-based time of laughter, a period of time the United States. We're a large, basketball, or a lot of it has been said, the porch or need. Live on the fringe of the basic clinical, manufacturing facilities and a price. Let us live than zero, the laughter from the time of my life, the web server stress. But even here. Unfortunately, it's just, it is a targeted development and public transportation gateway television production companies and investment professionals. Unfortunately, protein, now at least sometimes, to lay, to the earth on the fringe of a lot of options, that of mourning, to a large Bureau relax. It's the mass of the cats, you need to bow preventive health care, certain vehicles are no results. As always feel a variety of investment opportunities.

How nice of the generator to provide an internet-related sample for an internet based method of wasting time for a quick laugh.

Anyways, If you try this trick for yourself, pick a funny line from your result and post it in the comments below, I'm sure to giggle at it :)

Idle Mine

As an avid Minecraft player, I've spent a great deal of time searching the web for tutorials, mods, maps, skins, and other goodies related to the super-addictive phenomenon we all never thought we'd enjoy so much. During one of these searches, I turned up an interesting game on Kongregate called Idle Mine. Much like Minecraft, this game looks like a useless waste of time. Indeed it may be a waste of time, but if you allow yourself to play, you just might find that you lose a few hours of your concentration to the game. The more you play, the more powerful your "Idle" mining ability gets, which means you can mine effortlessly while the game mines FOR you. Yes, that's right, a game which features the ability to progress without any involvement whatsoever. Anyways, I can't reasonably convince you of this game's addictive qualities in a blog post, so go check it out for yourself. If you're bored enough to be reading this then it's probably not like you have much else to do, so go see what I mean.

Idle Mine on Kongregate.