Note: Because this is a long post (surprise surprise), I’ve divided it into sections so that you can mix and match according to your own interests and time constraints.
I. The Part About the History of Lorem Ipsum
II. The Part About the Trend Toward Funny and/or Diverse Lorem Ipsum
III. The Part with the Examples of Funny Lorem Ipsum (9 total)
I. The Part About the History of Lorem Ipsum
When I first went to work in publishing, I saw “Lorem Ipsum” dummy text (AKA Greek text) and wondered why we were publishing a book in Latin. For priests, perhaps? Shrinking demographic, right? That’s when I learned about dummy text. I always wondered where the designers got it—this was pre-internet. Was it passed around virally? Did individual designers type or scan it in from a printout? I loved learning the vernacular of publishing in my first real job. Like “blad,” for example.
Per Wikipedia (always reliable, right? but oh so easy), “Lorem Ipsum” means “pain itself” (dolorem = pain, grief, misery, suffering; ipsum = itself) and its usage as filler text during typesetting dates to the “1960s, and possibly since the sixteenth century” (that’s a pretty big span of uncertainty). Further,
The text is derived from sections 1.10.32–3 of Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Boundaries of Goods and Evils, or alternatively [About] The Purposes of Good and Evil). The original passage began: “Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit “(translation: “Neither is there anyone who loves grief itself since it is grief and thus wants to obtain it”) . . . The passage was discovered by Richard McClintock [when he was] searching for citings of the rarely used Latin word “consectetur” [I never use it myself] in classical literature.
Here is the longer translation of “Lorem Ipsum”:
Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
Since typesetting can involve pain, but good typesetting, after the fact, causes great pleasure, the passage is fitting.
BUT APPARENTLY . . . NOT FITTING ENOUGH!
II. The Part About the Trend Toward Funny and/or Diverse Lorem Ipsum
There is a trend, it seems, for mixing it up with the Lorem Ipsum, assisted by the availability of technologically astounding randomizers. On an irresponsibly brief search, the earliest mention I found was from April 2005, but basically I have no idea how behind the curve I am in noting this as a zeitgeist moment. Recently the head of our amazing IT company (I so recommend them if you’re a creative studio in the LA area, even though I’ve just discovered that they’ve incorporated dorky stock agency photos into their website) emailed me with a list that a colleague had put together. I romped through the various offerings, and I’ve provided an overview so that you don’t have to romp yourself.
III. The Part with the Examples of Funny Lorem Ipsum (9 total)
What follows are analyses of nine such sites. Ten just seemed too hard to me.
1.
The apparent granddaddy: http://www.duckisland.com/
Called: Greeking Machine
Features: Can do normal Latin.
Other options: Hillbilly, Marketing, the Matrix, Metropolitan, Pseudo German, and Technobabble.
Examples:
Marketing:
Free tropical advantage monster not waxy it’s genuine. Velvety valuable prevents treat jiffy mothers. Classic yummy healthy thick vast energy sweet inside, are herbal wherever also. Feel, disposable also high-tech neat, triple 100% choose improved your, buy introducing. Money convenient brighter first extra prevents special secret durable. Parents think, expensive enjoy exclusive, money time and thick thirsty comfort. Goodness, out now expensive humongous if whopping, discover advanced terrific. To leading flavored for unlimited flash makes feedback power to only made herbal but, outstanding.
Hillbilly:
Highway grandpa bootleg yeehaw bootleg shotgun barrel, landlord neighbor’s, grandma cousin come. Last tobaccee hospitality tarnation, diesel polecat, water, fuss fell fixin’ shed moonshine tools. Fish drive hold tonic liar beer yonder stole bankrupt his how stole afford. Aunt coonskin fiddle fer been hee-haw shootin’ hillbilly, a fightin’ cold wrestlin’. Fart liar quarrel, been kickin’ butt her rodeo, a hairy bootleg grandpa damn, water. Stumped cheatin’ plug-nickel over poker marshal hogjowls hold frontporch feathered, marshal yer, barn.
2.
I’d never heard of the .me domain name; great for egotists: http://hipsteripsum.me/
Called: Hipster Ipsum
Tagline: Artisanal filler text for your site or project.
Rhetorical question: Do you need some text for your website or whatever? *sigh* Okay . . .
Options: Two (see below); the button to generate them says “Beer Me” for no apparent reason.
Hipster with a shot of Latin:
Beard marfa lo-fi sustainable duis. Freegan exercitation quinoa iphone locavore, blog squid. Portland chambray butcher ethical et, nisi hoodie. Tempor enim fap, ad id pariatur labore. Banh mi whatever labore, irure minim tofu keffiyeh art party echo park shoreditch cardigan et nesciunt beard tumblr. Williamsburg +1 non, voluptate cliche blog wes anderson pitchfork dolor. Vice aesthetic VHS qui.
Hipster, neat:
Seitan scenester fanny pack dreamcatcher gluten-free chambray, vegan twee lo-fi wes anderson wayfarers salvia tumblr. Dreamcatcher +1 before they sold out cosby sweater helvetica farm-to-table. VHS marfa butcher four loko, homo +1 jean shorts photo booth vinyl vegan seitan pitchfork cred brunch brooklyn. Vice whatever food truck synth, keffiyeh dreamcatcher high life trust fund jean shorts master cleanse retro wes anderson brunch. Letterpress craft beer skateboard, 8-bit american apparel vegan helvetica lo-fi sustainable. DIY yr lo-fi trust fund, four loko hoodie retro banh mi readymade sartorial. Homo photo booth cosby sweater, fixie synth lo-fi brunch chambray wes anderson locavore craft beer biodiesel thundercats terry richardson.
3.
I’m pretty sick of the bacon meme: http://baconipsum.com/
Tagline: Does your Lorem Ipsum text long for something a little meatier? Give our generator a try . . . it’s tasty!
Options: Two (see below).
All Meat:
Kielbasa jerky hamburger, fatback beef corned beef meatball drumstick leberkäse ball tip ground round. Flank rump capicola boudin ham hamburger brisket chuck, shankle spare ribs tongue. T-bone swine brisket sirloin pork andouille. Kielbasa ribeye boudin strip steak, venison cow chuck hamburger ground round tenderloin rump pancetta pastrami. Pastrami short ribs short loin, pork drumstick sirloin andouille. Tail pork belly brisket fatback flank, sirloin biltong short ribs strip steak jowl pork. Boudin sausage pork chop pig.
Meat with Filler:
Jowl chuck shankle, anim occaecat deserunt pork chop nulla id magna turkey. Spare ribs rump occaecat frankfurter in. Aliqua bacon esse eu, fatback duis velit irure flank ham hock salami cupidatat short loin pork. Ex boudin enim short ribs tri-tip, flank shank irure. Leberkäse andouille venison voluptate frankfurter short ribs. Magna incididunt veniam, spare ribs dolor cupidatat dolore ball tip in chicken pork loin ut. Dolor pork chop aute ex fatback.
And a particularly excellent FAQ:
Is there a vegan/vegetarian version? Yes! I recommend and have frequently used the meat-free lorem ipsum generator at lipsum.com. If you need some veggies, check out veggieipsum.com, or veganipsum.com.
You’re missing a meat. Can you add more? Sure, shoot me an e-mail or find me on Twitter at @GunGeekATX and I’ll get it added to the database.
Can you add fish? No. I’m not a fan of fish. If you want to make your own tunaipsum.com, knock yourself out. @chrisjean knocked himself out! tunaipsum.com
4.
For people who are sick of bacon, but not yet sick of vegans: http://www.veganipsum.com/
Taglines: “All filler, no killer” and “A meat-free alternative to Bacon Ipsum.”
Options: Two (see below).
English veggies:
Carrot drumstick plectranthus pignut cress, ensete. Pignut avocado chicory garlic. Kai-lan scorzonera cress elephant garlic tomatillo guar—tigernut. Winter melon pea sprouts collard greens indian pea.
Linnaean names:*
Cichorium endivia barbarea verna—valerianella locusta sium sisarum lathyrus tuberosus. Praecitrullus fistulosus arctium lappa phaseolus vulgaris valerianella locusta camassia. Pisum sativum cucurbita spp. Arctium lappa ipomoea aquatica sium sisarum houttuynia cordata lepidium sativum petroselinum crispum var tuberosum.
*Yes, I had to look it up, too. Per Merriam-Webster, “of, relating to, or following the systematic methods of the Swedish botanist Linnaeus who established the system of binomial nomenclature.” Basically (per me), Latin names of plants, i.e., the whole order, family, genus, species thang, which would make “English veggies” more properly entitled “common names.”
5.
For people who aren’t yet over Snoop Dogg: http://www.lorizzle.nl/?feed=1/
Called: Gangsta Lorem Ipsum
Tagline: Generate gangsta loremizzle my ippzle dummy text
Lorizzle ipsum crunk sit amizzle, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nullizzle sapizzle boofron, aliquet volutpat, suscipizzle quis, gizzle vizzle, daahng dawg. Pellentesque eget tortizzle. Boofron erizzle. Daahng dawg izzle away dapibizzle get down get down tempizzle boom shackalack. Its fo rizzle pellentesque nibh et turpizzle. Get down get down izzle tortizzle. Pellentesque shizznit dang sure. In hac habitasse sheezy dictumst. Away hizzle. Curabitur tellizzle gizzle, pretizzle the bizzle, mattis ac, fizzle things, nunc. Boofron suscipizzle. Integizzle shiz sizzle purus.
6.
From the public domain: http://www.fillerati.com/
Options:
L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars and At the Earth’s Core (I’ve heard of him, I think, but when I saw the titles, I began to question myself)
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (of course, as most people do, they called it simply Alice in Wonderland)
Jack London, The Scarlet Plague (not Call of the Wild?)
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (they forgot the all-important hyphen, as in Waldorf-Astoria; how many architectural style sheets have I made with that hyphen?)
Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days
H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, Book 1 (this would be fun to put in a newspaper setting to freak everybody out)
7.
Crowdsourcing is so 2010: http://www.lipsum.ahyeah.nl/
Called: Lorem Ipsum 2.0
Tagline: Community-generated greeking, because Lorem Ipsum is so 1541
Special feature: This one actually gets “busy fetching data” and asks you to wait “one moment” while it checks the different feeds! Also, the results appear in multiple (mixed) languages, because apparently people beyond the U.S. (gasp!) use computers! (My attempts yielded mostly Spanish, though.)
Options: Classic (Latin Lorem Ipsum), Delicious, Digg, Friend Feed, Reddit, Last.fm, Twitter, Random
Twitter:
Rt kelly small and you thought gangsta lorem ipsum was cool. How does a new web site get launched with only “lorem ipsum” for text? someone forget to proofread? Rt maskin unbuendiseñador sabe como lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Rt maskin unbuendiseñador sabe como lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Tired of lorem ipsum? how about bacon ipsum?. meatier fpo content generator at thx adriennerehm djmarsh for the tip.
8.
From Belgium: http://www.maketext.be/index.php
Special feature: Multiple languages (each of with can be generated in language-specific themes).
Options:
Alice in Wonderland (again with the incorrect title)
All About Coffee (unattributed; clearly from some boring-seeming book on the history of coffee)
Fun with Mathematics (from Amusements in Mathematics, by Henry Ernest Dudeney)
Middle Ages (from The Project Gutenberg EBook of Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period, by Paul Lacroix)
The Bible
The Kama Sutra
Ulysses
Wuthering Heights
All About Coffee:
The list of coffee-consuming countries includes practically all those that do not raise coffee, and also a few that have some coffee plantations, but do not grow enough for their own use. These countries are listed on page 287. Consumption figures can be determined with fair accuracy by the import figures; although in some countries, where there is a considerable transit trade, it is necessary to deduct export from import figures to obtain actual consumption figures. The import figures given are the latest available for each country named.
Fun with Mathematics:
In every business of life we are occasionally perplexed by some chance question that for the moment staggers us. I quite pitied a young lady in a branch post-office when a gentleman entered and deposited a crown on the counter with this request: “Please give me some twopenny stamps, six times as many penny stamps, and make up the rest of the money in twopence-halfpenny stamps.” For a moment she seemed bewildered, then her brain cleared, and with a smile she handed over stamps in exact fulfilment of the order. How long would it have taken you to think it out?
Kama Sutra:
As regards kissing, a wager may be laid as to which will get hold of the lips of the other first. If the woman loses, she should pretend to cry, should keep her lover off by shaking her hands, and turn away from him and dispute with him, saying “let another wager be laid.” If she loses this a second time, she should appear doubly distressed, and when her lover is off his guard or asleep, she should get hold of his lower lip, and hold it in her teeth, so that it should not slip away, and then she should laugh, make a loud noise, deride him, dance about, and say whatever she likes in a joking way, moving her eyebrows, and rolling her eyes. Such are the wagers and quarrels as far as kissing is concerned, but the same may be applied with regard to the pressing or scratching with the nails and fingers, biting and striking. All these, however, are only peculiar to men and women of intense passion.
9.
Multi-culti: http://generator.lorem-ipsum.info/
Feature: Does other alphabets/writing systems and languages, including Russian, Hindi, and actual Greek (as in “Greeked” and “Greek text”; say, did you know that when type gets too small in a computer application, it goes into abstract rows and at that point is said to have been “Greeked”?).
Chinese:
? ?? ??? ???, ?? ? ??? ???, ?? ? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ?? ?, ?? ??? ??? ??? ?, ??? ??? ??? ?? ? ??? ??? ??? ?? ?, ?? ? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ? ??