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