A bottle of chocolate syrup and Fidel Castro rained to destroy Macintosh; unfortunately sixty pounds of hamburger begged town hall. (Movie Plot)
A small clone of Bill Gates and a misplaced mouse incinerated to release Pentium chip; unfortunately Trekkies impaled plain. (Movie Plot)
A small clone of Bill Gates and one bicycle incinerated to construct Macintosh; unfortunately action figures solicited Ernest Borgnine. (Movie Plot)
David Bowie wrote in to tell us that IBM trampled to release diamonds for the Free Software Foundation. (Slashdot)
Harrison Ford wrote in to tell us that Vlad's Auto Repair begged to construct shoes for Time-Warner. (Slashdot)
The rain in Microsoft corrupts evily on the Macintosh. (Proverb)
Fidel Castro and one bicycle tempted to baste Pentium chip; unfortunately action figures impaled Ernest Borgnine. (Movie Plot)
One bicycle and an elephant irriadiated to release Ernest Borgnine; unfortunately elephants irriadiated goths. (Movie Plot)
An elephant and a misplaced mouse solicited to baste plain; unfortunately Trekkies trampled Pentium chip. (Movie Plot)
The town hall in Microsoft sells lazily on the goths. (Proverb)

-- source code follows --
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Cmdr Taco seems to like the [insert thing here] Random Generators, 
# and they look all the same to me.
# This program is an explanation why.

# Inspired by a Solaris program called /usr/games/thought

use strict;
my @phrases =
  ('The %noun in %place %verb_n %adverb on the %noun. (Proverb)'
  ,'%name wrote in to tell us that %company %verb_p %verb_i %nouns for '
   .'%company. (Slashdot)'
  ,'%noun1 and %noun1 %verb_p %verb_i %noun; unfortunately %nouns %verb_p '
   .'%noun. (Movie Plot)'
  );
# The phrases need to be numerous, and many of them may vary only slightly
# from each other.  The %terms describe what word/phrase belongs there.  If
# you're thinking of the old game of "Baseball MadLibs," you've hit
# paradigmal paydirt.

my %dictionary;
$dictionary{'noun'} = 
  [ "rain","plain","Ernest Borgnine","your mother","goths","Macintosh"
   ,"Pentium chip","town hall","peanut butter"];
$dictionary{'noun1'} = 
  [ "an elephant","Fidel Castro","one bicycle","a misplaced mouse"
   ,"a small clone of Bill Gates","a bottle of chocolate syrup"];
  # singular nouns
$dictionary{'nouns'} = 
  [ "elephants","a horde of Fidel Castro clones","action figures","shoes"
   ,"Linux advocates","Trekkies","diamonds","sixty pounds of hamburger"];
  # plural nouns
$dictionary{'place'} = 
  [ "Spain","Microsoft","the North Pole","the Black Hole of India"
   ,"Area 51","Toronto","your left nostril","Leonardo DiCaprio's underwear" ];
$dictionary{'name'} = 
  [ "Fidel Castro","Ernest Borgnine","Elvis","Cmdr Taco","Moses Moore",
   ,"Ed the Wonder Squirrel","the Devil","Harrison Ford","David Bowie" ];
$dictionary{'company'} = 
  [ "Microsoft","Netscape","Time-Warner","SlashDot.Org","IBM","AT+T"
   ,"the Free Software Foundation","Vlad's Auto Repair","Wal-Mart" ];
$dictionary{'adverb'} =
  [ "mainly","quickly","darkly","evily","sexually","offensively","harshly",
   ,"gently","squooshily","lazily","desperately","easily"];
$dictionary{'verb_p'} = 
  [ "rained","trampled","incinerated","irrigated","tempted","begged","twisted",
   ,"irriadiated","whipped","solicited","raced","impaled","ignited" ];
  # verb in past tense.  
$dictionary{'verb_n'} = 
  [ "rains","sells","destroys","makes love","eats","corrupts","supports"
   ,"desires","flattens" ];
  # verb in present (or "now") tense
$dictionary{'verb_i'} = 
  [ "to destroy","to release","to baste","to construct"];
  # verb in infinitive form
$dictionary{'verb_ni'} = 
  [ "plan","hope","pray","exist"];
  # present infinitive form?
  #  Argh, going to need to hit an English grammar website
$dictionary{'verb_f'} = 
  [ "will announce","is going to present","will acquire"
   ,"intends to assimilate" ];
  # verb in future tense
# The real key to making good phrases is being very specific in the types of
# phrases that can be substituted.  The way I came up with the phrases was to
# think of some random sentences, or read them from a newspaper, and remove
# any words that have meaning and replace them with description of the word's
# substance.  Hit a grammar website to read up on the parts of the English
# language, and then make some special cases (like "plural nouns" and "singular
# nouns").

my $how_many_you_want = (shift or $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'} or 10);
 # remember "shift" works on @ARGV by default.
print "Content-Type: text/plain\n\n" if ($ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}); # run as CGI

srand();
while($how_many_you_want--) {
  my $phrase = $phrases[int(rand($#phrases+1))];
  $phrase =~ s/(^|\s)\%(\w+)
              /"$1".$dictionary{$2}->[int(rand($#{$dictionary{$2}}+1))]
              /egx;
  print ucfirst($phrase)."\n";
}

if ($ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'}) {
  # This is so web people can see the source code when viewing it on the web.
  print "\n-- source code follows --\n";
  open (FILE,$0) or die "Whoa, I can't find myself!\n$0:$!\n";
  while (<FILE>) { print; }
  close (FILE)
}