cow_reader.py

import random
import subprocess
import shlex

cows = ['apt', 'beavis.zen', 'bong', 'bud-frogs', 'bunny', 'calvin', 'cheese', 'cock', 'cower',
        'daemon', 'default', 'dragon', 'dragon-and-cow', 'duck', 'elephant', 'elephant-in-snake',
        'eyes', 'flaming-sheep', 'ghostbusters', 'gnu', 'head-in', 'hellokitty', 'kiss', 'kitty',
        'koala', 'kosh', 'luke-koala', 'mech-and-cow', 'meow', 'milk', 'moofasa', 'moose',
        'mutilated', 'pony', 'pony-smaller', 'ren', 'sheep', 'skeleton', 'snowman',
        'sodomized-sheep', 'stegosaurus', 'stimpy', 'suse', 'three-eyes', 'turkey', 'turtle', 'tux',
        'unipony', 'unipony-smaller', 'vader', 'vader-koala', 'www']

with open('illiad.txt') as f:
    for line in f:
        if len(line) > 10:
            quoted = shlex.quote(line)
            bash_command = "echo %s | cowsay -f %s" % (quoted, random.choice(cows))
            output = subprocess.check_output(['bash','-c', bash_command])
            print(output.decode())
            print()
            input()

TODO: make into a nice command line tool, with text file as an argument and automatically collect list of cows.