I love it when serendipitous collisions occur and the result is beautiful art.

The Longest Poem in the World is a series rhyming couplets drawn from randomly selected Twitter updates. Looking only for end rhyme, the site’s script pairs one tweet with another to make a couplet, then streams couplet and couplet down the never-ending, always-creating, nonstop-scrolling site.

An example:

hide and seek ain’t the game, cos you’ll never find what you are looking for.
and why does a potential employer need my credit score?

Line 1 was written by one user, Line 2 by another. Yet the nonsense blends into a kind of tongue-in-cheek, unaware-yet-self-aware poetry.

Real poets always try to reflect our contemporary moment in some kind of contained literary form. Yet this machine is aggregating the mundane minutiae of everyday life, and assembling the debris into a rhyming reflection of 2009’s most relatable experiences.

Going for a drive and this time i probably wont come back.
Making mac and cheese and bacon. who up for that late night snack?

How can you match such a sinister, threatening line with another that just snaps you back into the trivialty of every day? Did user 1 just threaten a break-up, or a suicide, and the second person balance it off with gourmet KD?

Rise and shine give God the glory!!!
AND WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT LORI?

Author Terry Pratchett always uses ALL CAPS whenever Death or God is speaking. I imagine God has just questioned Lori’s motives for rising and shining.

I find myself clicking “next” endlessly and continually reading for something profound, or something hilarious, but sometimes even just watching something mundane turn into a rhyme makes the silliness of our daily lives that much more passible.

Birds and the Bees. Why is it called that?
I put on my robe and wizard hat.

Our fictional combination poet is hoping to answer the question by donning the wizard getup, I guess.

Anyway, check this thing out. Try reading entire pages aloud with Shatner-like sincerity, or take turns with friends. I love it right now.

Chris Brogan, a pretty credible blogger focusing on marketing and business, recently published a few casual thoughts on what would define the next-generation media outlet (ie, a magazine or newspaper that would start from scratch, say, 5 years from now).

Here are a few highlights from what he had to say:

• Stories will be “points in time,” but won’t end at publication. (Edits, updates and clarifications would continue to happen after publication)
• Content creators won’t necessarily be on staff at the publication. Nonetheless, curators and editors continue to rule.
• Media won’t stick to just one form. Text, photos, video, music, audio, animation, etc, will all flow together.
• Advertising won’t be the primary method of revenue. Instead, we’ll see publishers marketing the content that’s being written about, contextually and within the article. Brogan writes, “Why not book hotels and flights from my travel magazine directly?”
• Collaboration is key. Why should the editor pick the next cover? Why shouldn’t a reader’s picture of the car crash be the best?
• Everything is modular and linkable. Everything is fluid. If a reader wants the publication to be a business periodical, then he/she won’t have to read a piece about sports.
• Paper isn’t dead, it’s on-demand. Users will be able generate a paper version of the publication when or if they want it. Do-it-yourself publishing.

You can read the full article, plus reader’s commentary, right over here. (Thanks to Kirk LaPointe for the tip — yep, I found out about the “future of news media” via the editor of the Vancouver Sun using Twitter. Perfect.)

From my perspective, I think the next-generation media outlet might just have to be medium-free. That is, it might not be just “a newspaper” or “a radio station” or “a website” — the outlet would use multiple delivery methods, adapted to its subscriber base. Having the fluidity to employ multiple mediums would speak well to the outlet’s core editorial strategy: as long as the content is compelling and well-produced, it should be deployable anywhere.