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
The life of Pie - Filling, rising and crumble; its all there.
ReplyDeleteThis was the most fun thing ever! Here are some of mine. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteLady Chatterjy's Lover. Amour, Bangla.
Rankenstein. Class toppers get a makeover.
A Thousand Splendid Sons. Gandhari's other 900.
The Goon and Sixpence. Moe tells us how it doesn't pay to be a bully.
Trainslotting. Mamata knows best.
Rainspotting. The making of Lagaan.
Piddler on the Roof. What he wouldn't have had to do if he were a rich man.
The Inheritance of Floss. One man's pearly gates, another man's pearly whites.
Bunny Days. What Sunil Gavaskar will never tell you about.
Herdog. The pets Saul Bellow could never call his own.
My Experiments With Ruth. Love in the chemistry lab.
The World According to Parp. Traffic rules and etiquette.
The Old Man and the Pea. It was never just about the princess.
Men Are From Bars Women Are From Venus. Misconceptions about women and alcohol consumption.
To Gill A Mocking Bird. A bird and a fish can fall in love, but where will they build their nest?
Flight Club. A short and painful saga about South African cricket.
It was perhaps the most fun sleepless night I've had in recent time.
ReplyDeleteMy stories.
The ModFather - Keeping up with Date.
Black Hawk Gown - New thinking in Bridal Couture.
Animal Harm - The Peta 2011 Annual Report
To Gir With Love - Travels in Lion Country
The Hay of the Jackal - Desperate measures for desperate times in the Animal kingdom
Doll Flanders - One Barbie fights stereotypes
The Prodigal Don - Mario Puzo comes back. In style.
Midsummer's Night Cream - How Americans are fighting obesity.
Beyond the Slack Stump - The tale of a gentleman's tailor gone bad.
CSI Maami - Madras' crime fighters.
Amazing, and can't help contribute too!
ReplyDeleteBase: English title of the Al-Jazeera Documentary on Al Qaeda
Life of Pai: Biopic on ACK creator Anant Pai
Catchmen: The behind-the-scenes story of the worst/best fielders Cricket has ever seen
A Time to Pill: The Case for Preventing Pregnancies
Behind Enemy Lies: Decoding Diplomatic Chatter
Dangled: All you never saw about mob lynching
The Kids are All Bright: A Schoolteacher's Rise to Fame
No County for Old Men: or, Why Saurav Ganguly cannot play anymore
Cemento: A thrilling inside-view of the Construction Industry
Bat on a Hot Tin Roof: The Fourth Batman Movie starring Christian Bale
The Incredible Tightness of Being
ReplyDelete- The story of Roopa Underwear
The Holy Buble
- What they read to you in hell
The Loud of the Rings
- The film version
The Da Vinci Cod
- About fish which is actually descendent of Jesus Christ
Kahabharata? : The epic quest for the sea-route from Europe to India.
ReplyDeleteUnaccustomed Dearth : How the market crash impacted upon the lives of affluent Americans.