Sunday, 27 March 2011
Change a letter, change the story
These, reformatted and with typos (hopefully) corrected, are from a Twitter hashtag we started in the wee hours, #changealetterchangethestory, which in turn was ripped off from a couple of old posts on this blog (1, 2 and you'll see that my first few were from my own contributions there), which in turn were inspired by an email thread. Please add more!
And check out the thread, scrolling back to the beginning, before it became a sort of minor viral. We particularly recommend contributions by @tinytoots, @ravages, @leftarmspinster and @rajasen (who are cordially invited to repost their selections here or on Facebook, where this will eventually cross-post).
The basic rules: (a) add a letter, subtract a letter, or change a letter, (b) provide a blurb and (c) if (b) is funny enough, you may be permitted to bend (a) slightly.
Jurassic Pork
Stars Miss Piggy. Kermit guests as amphibian with a taste for the Other White Meat.
Bone With The Wind
Rhett decides he doesn’t give a damn and follows his libido.
The Princess Ride
Another set of Princess Di revelations. The butler did it, apparently.
A Suitable Toy
The search for the perfect self-gratification aid
Vernon Dog Little
Dyslexic boy framed for incident in the city pound.
A Stud in Scarlet
Holmes helps a metrosexual accused of a crime of fashion.
The Complete Woks of Shakespeare
The man who introduced Chinese cooking to Elizabethan England.
The Dairy of Samuel Pepys
How one man milked success for all it was worth
Of Human Bandage
Florence Nightingale's rip-roaring autobiography
Finnegan's Cake
Buttery, over-cooked
Beautiful Thong
@soniafaleiro's lyrical real-life story of Fashion Week
Sin Fish
@chakraview's coming of age story, set in an aquarium
Heaver Lake
Vikram Seth's beautiful collection of poetry on throwing up
Nine Hives
William Dalrymple's ode to bee-keeping
Known Smurf
@anniezaidi 's debut novel about her childhood's favourite toy (yeah, okay, that was 2 letters)
Homage to Catatonia
The pro-LSD manifesto
Popcore Essayists
@jaiarjun edits set of learned essays on incestuous pornography
The Grill
@soniafaleiro on the art of barbecuing
My Fiend Sancho
@amitvarma's experiments with devil worship
My Experiments With The Troth
MKG's story of his marriage
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Umpire
@prempanicker's argument for neutral match officials
Mound of the Baskervilles
A pictorial study of the gravestones of Yorkshire
Of Rice and Men
How to ensnare a Tamizh groom
To Fill a Mockingbird
A guide to the bird-feeders of Alabama
The World According to Carp
Scientific study of the migration habits of this popular fish
Fear and Loafing in Las Vegas
The flaneur's guide to sin city
Match 22
Elizabeth Taylor's marriages
Midflight's Children
The progeny of the Mile-High Club (one more cheat - 2 letters changed)
The Unbearable Lightness of Peeing
Blessed relief
Sods and Lovers
The Hemingway you never knew
The Girl With The Dragon Tatti
Creative defecation
The Girl Who Flayed With Fire
S&M, pyromania; it's all there
The Grate Indian Novel
Slightly irritating IWE work
The Sly Company Of People Who Caress
Love for sale, surreptitiously
India Balling
An NYT reporter takes a gap year in India
Trainspitting
Why the railway tracks turned red
Shtupping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Frost's raunchier side
Love and Ponging in Bombay
How a deodarant salesman found romance in the city's trains
Malgudi Pays
RKN's guide to budding IWE writers
Sacred Dames
The BJP's sadhvis - an insiders account
Groom on the Roof
Finding love in the hills
In An Antique Band
Life on the road with The Rolling Stones
Maxiumum Pity
When Mother Teresa opened a branch office in Bombay
2 Statues
Best-selling Indian novel with wooden characters
Lunatic in my mead
The mad bootlegger of Bangalore
The Hungry Diet
Amitav Ghosh's patented, guaranteed weight loss manual
The Mother Side of Midnight
Oedipus revisited
Supperman
The sad story of an overweight superhero
The Kite Punner
Who strangled him with the manja?
A Hose for Mr Biswas
Naipaul's epic work on suburban gardening
What Ho, Jeeves
Bertie can;t remember who he was with last night (well, okay, no letters changed)
The 3 Mistakes of My Wife
How his spouse said 'I do, I do, I do'
The Singh And I
@bhogleharsha on how to keep smiling in the commentary box
Spittle Women
The first compartment of the 8.20 Churchgate fast
Withering Heights
Collected criticism
Sex and the Pity
How the losers get laid
The Twin Showers
The Ashleigh and Mary-Kate voyeur tapes
Park Night
Bruce Wayne cruises the Oval, looking for a little Robin
Lady Chatterly's Lever
Give me a place to stand and I'll make the earth move for you, baby
It Takes A Pillage
The USA's war on Countries Which Won't Give Them Oil
Who Filled Roger Rabbit?
A taxidermist's tale of woe
The Audacity of Grope
Another president's memoir
The Audacity of Dope
How an idiot became President
The Wind in the Pillows
Why she had to change the bedclothes
The Call of the Mild
Indian engineers move to the USA
Caturday Night Fever
The LOLCATS collection
Pilates of the Caribbean
Weight Loss in the West Indies
Dork Knight
@sidin's secret fantasies