What an angry post. Yeah, You're a writer with impressive skill but there are millions of us who weren't born with that gift. Have you ever wondered why "texting " and "emoji's" are so popular, its because writing is a difficult task. This isn't the 1800's, where letter writing was necessary and endearing to the recipient, we're in the 2000's where no one is really that interested in long drawn out compositions.
Do you ever wonder how many readers analyze your posts and delve into the thought and art that it took for you to compose your posts. We read your post because you remind us of some previous era or of someone we once knew. Maybe they were better times than now but there is no great lesson here or epiphany.
Maybe there is a place for a Chat bot in this life, for the unworthy and unskilled. Art is art and word are words sometime words can be art but not always.
I haven’t crashed the system yet, but I have tested the boundaries of its creativity. Frankly, I was left unimpressed. Whether I ask it to crank out a lyric in the style of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette or Kris Kristofferson the resulting songs all pretty much resembled one another. Robot country is as boring as the (exploitive deleted) that country radio carries these days. It did no better with imitating Lennon, even when it copy the style of a particular song. If you really want to have fun with ChatGPT, ask it to express an opinion on would-be autocrats past and present.
Yes, we live in a AI world, but lucky for us, we combine it with Real Life, Pen to Paper, Wrench to Nuts, and all the beauty this world allows us to enjoy! Carpe-Diem!
I can do long division and show my work in a grade school composition notebook, I write first drafts of my books on paper and I send thank you cards that I write with my father’s Esterbrook fountain pen using proper penmanship that I learned in the first grade. I used to be able to change the oil in my car (dad taught me how when I was 15). So bots don’t really bother me. I’ve got authenticity in my corner no matter they come up with.
You waltz around the literary floor with your O. Henry endings of that make me smile. I loved to see that woman whose car was started by a Good Samaritan also moved out of the K-12 Baloney Section and started teaching first graders again. Start their engines too. As for bots and literary artists, you left out Hopkins and Eliot. The world won't spin properly without their word parsing and lightning. They won't flood our engines, they will jump-start them. Unclogging toilets is a fine calling as somebody has to do it, just like first grade teachers have to unclog their minds and learn to read. There's likely Vonnegut and more on their list if they do. So it goes. Praise the Lord.
Last night, I had an idea..... A while back you were lamenting about those workers across the hall making so much racket, then a few days ago there was a minor lament about not having much association with folks that do the work that holds the world together and wishing for a heart to heart with these imagined salts of the Earth.
My recommendation would be to walk across the hall and knock on the door. Introduce yourself and ask those workers questions and show an interest in what they're doing.
Pretty much. We’re heading towards Idiocracy. Sadly true. ‘Everyone’ in contemporary times is a ‘writer.’ Only positivity and affirmation is allowed. Identity politics rules the roost. To call it Orwellian is a gross understatement. I blame it on helicopter parenting in the nineties, American wealth and class privilege, social media, iPhones.
As a Minnesota boy in the 1970's, we were issued a set of jumper cables at the age of 9 at Christmas, along with a gift certificate to be redeemed for a case of Schlitz beer when we turned 19. They were the talismans of our northern upbringing. Today, as a man of a certain age living out on the high plains, I am seen as something of a miracle-worker (and probably foolish idiot) when I joyfully leap at the chance to jump co-workers' SUV's on the odd sub-zero day. A simple and pleasurable skill.
I didn’t know I was supposed to take this column so seriously! As a recovering academic I thought it was just supposed to make me laugh out loud. Which it did. Thanks, GK.
What an angry post. Yeah, You're a writer with impressive skill but there are millions of us who weren't born with that gift. Have you ever wondered why "texting " and "emoji's" are so popular, its because writing is a difficult task. This isn't the 1800's, where letter writing was necessary and endearing to the recipient, we're in the 2000's where no one is really that interested in long drawn out compositions.
Do you ever wonder how many readers analyze your posts and delve into the thought and art that it took for you to compose your posts. We read your post because you remind us of some previous era or of someone we once knew. Maybe they were better times than now but there is no great lesson here or epiphany.
Maybe there is a place for a Chat bot in this life, for the unworthy and unskilled. Art is art and word are words sometime words can be art but not always.
Any post where you can work the old Penguin and a Tuxedo joke in is money.
Did I write that, or was it AI?
Spot.On 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I haven’t crashed the system yet, but I have tested the boundaries of its creativity. Frankly, I was left unimpressed. Whether I ask it to crank out a lyric in the style of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette or Kris Kristofferson the resulting songs all pretty much resembled one another. Robot country is as boring as the (exploitive deleted) that country radio carries these days. It did no better with imitating Lennon, even when it copy the style of a particular song. If you really want to have fun with ChatGPT, ask it to express an opinion on would-be autocrats past and present.
What a FUN post!
Yes, we live in a AI world, but lucky for us, we combine it with Real Life, Pen to Paper, Wrench to Nuts, and all the beauty this world allows us to enjoy! Carpe-Diem!
I'd say you're grasping things pretty well at this point in your life, bro!
I can do long division and show my work in a grade school composition notebook, I write first drafts of my books on paper and I send thank you cards that I write with my father’s Esterbrook fountain pen using proper penmanship that I learned in the first grade. I used to be able to change the oil in my car (dad taught me how when I was 15). So bots don’t really bother me. I’ve got authenticity in my corner no matter they come up with.
You waltz around the literary floor with your O. Henry endings of that make me smile. I loved to see that woman whose car was started by a Good Samaritan also moved out of the K-12 Baloney Section and started teaching first graders again. Start their engines too. As for bots and literary artists, you left out Hopkins and Eliot. The world won't spin properly without their word parsing and lightning. They won't flood our engines, they will jump-start them. Unclogging toilets is a fine calling as somebody has to do it, just like first grade teachers have to unclog their minds and learn to read. There's likely Vonnegut and more on their list if they do. So it goes. Praise the Lord.
This post is a humorous way of reminding us that writing is hard work, and most people simply do not want to do it.
Last night, I had an idea..... A while back you were lamenting about those workers across the hall making so much racket, then a few days ago there was a minor lament about not having much association with folks that do the work that holds the world together and wishing for a heart to heart with these imagined salts of the Earth.
My recommendation would be to walk across the hall and knock on the door. Introduce yourself and ask those workers questions and show an interest in what they're doing.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I'm laughing rather hard, and it's beginning to hurt somewhere down below my chest, in one of those areas with great intersectionality.
Pretty much. We’re heading towards Idiocracy. Sadly true. ‘Everyone’ in contemporary times is a ‘writer.’ Only positivity and affirmation is allowed. Identity politics rules the roost. To call it Orwellian is a gross understatement. I blame it on helicopter parenting in the nineties, American wealth and class privilege, social media, iPhones.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
GK is clearly irritated and even somewhat comma-challenged this time. Something is going on.
As a Minnesota boy in the 1970's, we were issued a set of jumper cables at the age of 9 at Christmas, along with a gift certificate to be redeemed for a case of Schlitz beer when we turned 19. They were the talismans of our northern upbringing. Today, as a man of a certain age living out on the high plains, I am seen as something of a miracle-worker (and probably foolish idiot) when I joyfully leap at the chance to jump co-workers' SUV's on the odd sub-zero day. A simple and pleasurable skill.
I like this Garrison. It made me think and smile and laugh. Thanks.
I didn’t know I was supposed to take this column so seriously! As a recovering academic I thought it was just supposed to make me laugh out loud. Which it did. Thanks, GK.