The T'inator

Self-indulgent, over-long Web content. There's no way The "A-Team"'s Sgt. Bosco "Bad Attitude" Baracus would've put up with it. He would've asked, "Hey man, how long are we gonna listen to this jive?" And then he would've intimidated that content until it became something fresh and readable.

But what can you do? You're not a Vietnam vet who was framed for robbery and is now on the lam, acting as a good-guy vigilante and mechanics expert. If only there were some way for you to cut through the pretense and make it bearable.

There is. It's a filter called The T'inator. A filter? Like the one that randomly inserts that inane Smurf language into text? Oh, no. The T'inator is no ordinary filter. It's no less than a content rejuvenator, complete with a rallying cry you'll soon be echoing: "Enough jibber-jabber!"

Just go to the T'inator home page and type in the URL of your favorite example of web flotsam. What will come back through the machinery is nothing short of soul-affirming: pictures of Mr. T pop up throughout the text to spread some '80s Tough Love, as do his beloved catchphrases, both in sentences woven into the original text, and in links to .wav files. It's a percolating mixture of scowling, gold chains and smart ass that cuts through even the most stubborn bombast. For example:

An On-Line Interview with Noam Chomsky: On the crazy nature of pragmatics and related issues
Brigitte Stemmer

QUESTION 1: How do U see contemporary clinical neuropsychological Jibba Jabba influencing your views on language processing?

NC: some question gunna be hard to answer because Mr.T have never had any particular views of language processing beyond what seems fairly obvious: that darn if Jones has that darn language L, then Jones's language processing accesses L; thus in processing language, Murdock access a variety of English, not Japanese. Who let this crazy foo in here? Here Mr.T understand L (for that darn Faceman, Helluva variety of English) to be an attained state of a genetically-determined faculty of language FL (that darn T overlook here irrelevant real world complexities, e.g., that darn fact that darn no one gunna be "monolingual" in thems sense). Get us all killed.

The uses for the T'inator are infinite:

* Got a friend with a personal website on which he posts his angst-y stories containing dialogue in which every character sounds like him? Run your ex-boyfriend's thinly-veiled indictment of your drunken rudeness through the T'inator, and let Mr. T douse the flame-throwing with, "What you talkin' 'bout, fool!?! I don't remember none of that!"

* Looking for some entertaining and accessible music commentary, but all you can find is another pompous review of The Strokes Is This It that contains more words than the total number of lyrics sung on the CD itself? Run it through the T'inator and let the incomparable Lawrence Tureaud slice through the pomposity with, "You heard the man, VIP passes only! Now get out of here!"

* Are you a writer who's been feeling that familiar sting of rejection, or worse, indifference? Is the futility of it all crashing down on you like the packages of ramen noodles that fall out of your poorly-organized pantry? Run one of your own pieces through the T'inator, and let BA Baracus drag you out of your self-abnegating morass with, "Murdock, is this your chicken?"

The T'inator's home site also automatically links to "pre-pitied" sites like CNN.com, The Onion, Slashdot, and the Internet Movie Database. There's even a Spanish translation link (Bastante jabba del jibba).

As the T'inator home page says, "Pages with lots of text work best fool!" That works out well, because those are probably the pages that most deserve to be T'inated.

Now drink your milk!

— Karen Lurie (karen@flakmag.com)