Let me begin with an apology
and follow it with trigger warnings... such as 'I say FUCK fairly often in real life'
Dear readers:
It’s been a while. Months. I know I haven’t lived up to the terms of our agreement, and have felt anxious, even sickened, by my failure to do so. My excuse-albatrosses are many: my subscribers are largely family and friends I don’t wish to offend or alienate; will I get my ass canceled if I say what I really think; everything I write is garbage; will I soon be pushing a shopping cart filled with my earthly belongings rather than groceries; dare I release the story of getting burned half to death (and my terror that Putin et al might do this to all of us); who in their right mind would take training advice from a cranky, mediocre climber/cyclist; I should get a real job, but who would hire an arthritic old man who thinks (and is likely to say during the interview) that the unmasked are either irresponsible, deluded, or assholes seeking to infect him and his vulnerable family with covid: and a host of other weighty sources of self-doubt and inertia. Perhaps tossing seeds at birds will help, and golly, that route takes me conveniently near the liquor store, and god knows being half-corked tends to lead to productive hours…
The latest installment of ‘something resembling procrastination’ are the hours I’ve frittered away wondering exactly where ‘The Hate Boat’ and other ‘essays’ I penned for the ‘even more deceased than a Norwegian blue parrot’ Napster and Napsterites forums have gone. That search just ended: even dad’s old thumb-drives are devoid of my work, for which I hate them, and they’re no longer accessible for further delay short of dumpster-diving. I HATE forgetting and losing things, but I’m stuck with it.
I promise to do better.
With that out of the way, I shall now move on to simply being myself, such as I am. The mental handcuffs have come off. Apologies in advance, and, uhm…buckle up.
While I was immersed in self-loathing at my failure to live up to my promises and actually get shit done, I was subjected to the galling spectacle of some of the worst human failures in modern history just barely seizing power in the House of Representatives. I did feel a bit better about myself by comparison, but I was duly horrified and inspired to resume tapping out an imaginary open-air ‘Douche L’Orange’ 2024 presidential rally.
The imagery had to be as brutal as the contemptibly heartless words he lets slip through that contemptuous sneer, and it was pure pleasure to fill the pages with the gruesome outcome he won’t suffer except in my imagination. As happens, I refined the bulk of the piece, ‘grossified’ it here and there, and hit the inevitable block: can I ‘really’ publish this? Why finish it if it goes too far, alienates and offends my loyal readers? One can’t zip the lips on published work…
Meanwhile, I’d been keeping an eye on the increasing might of artificial intelligence and toying with the text-to-image platform, Dall-E, and more recently, ChatGPT, which generates uncannily human answers to pretty much anything you care to ask it. ChatGPT is being trained to avoid certain lines of inquiry, like ‘is it better to snuff the neighbour with a revolver or nerve gas?’, a precaution I’m largely in agreement with.
Here’s an image response from Dall-E to my prompt of “an iridescent octopus playing guitar, using a starfish as a microphone, singing to an audience of angry eels, in a photorealistic style”:
Pretty cool, and it was generated in perhaps 10 seconds, along with 3 other original and unique pieces of computer art. I’d still be erecting the easel while it licked the paintbrush and considered painting a fifth.
Later, I wondered what it would make of “Salvador Dali’s version of a Kafka trap”, with said trap being defined as: “A Kafka trap is when you are accused of something, and your denial is taken as evidence that it is true”. So, a surrealist’s painting of a logical fallacy, then:
Easy-peasy for Dall-E, mindblowing for Bill-E.
But back to writing and thoughts of what a large language model like ChatGPT could churn out with the right query or prompt. It can write computer code with few if any errors, write decent university essays, and supply reams of dubious medical advice, just like people! I wondered what it would make of my dystopic presidential rally this afternoon, warmed it up by asking it how smart it was, and asked it to complete the story.
WARNING: the short story that follows is beyond irreverent and cheerily horrifying. Perfect for Easter! only not really.
Raptured!
An uncalled for collaboration between Bill Kipper and ChatGPT.
[To ChatGPT]
I have an unfinished story in draft format. Please supply an appropriate conclusion:
It's 2024, and this MAGA rally dwarfs even the inauguration crowd - of Obama. Trump is in it to win it, bigly, and the adoring mob chants 'shoot them up! shoot them up!' as a recently released Boebert fires AR-15 rounds from the stage into the air at a rude Macy’s Parade-scale balloon caricature of the Dem opponent, Kamala Harris. Harris is naked and takes a round to a nipple, which bursts, spewing chocolate milk down onto the roaring throng. 'Looks like we won't have to worry about a milk shortage with me as president again', he brags, breaking into his trademark tiny-fists dance.
A cloud begins to eclipse the sun; a shadow sweeps across the fairgrounds; a noticeable chill displaces the humid Georgia heat. Trump squints into the sun momentarily; the shadow engulfs him and he cries out: JESUS! IT'S JESUS! The mob gasp as one, faces turned to the obscuring entity, which is indeed the Christian savior, or at least his head, crowned with thorns. His hair prismatically refracts the sunlight, which plays upon the ground in hypnotic, psychedelic waves, and the revelers begin to sway in time with them. Blood drips from the thorns: long crimson tendrils that stretch lazily down, down, down, until one reaches the ground, releasing ecstatic pheromones that intoxicate and lure in those nearest.
A delirious woman wearing a 'F*ck JB' shirt drops her Confederate flag as she initiates first contact with the blood of Jesus. 'OH LORD TAKE ME!' she shrieks, sinking her arms into the crimson jelly, which quivers and begins to flow skyward with her. 'I'm going to Heaven! I told you Jesus loved me! Come with me!' she calls down to the pheromone-addled swaying throng of the hypnotized. The crowd surges toward the Jesus Blood Elevator to Heaven and are suckered up on what's essentially a heavenly red octopus arm of the blood of Jesus. Deliria continues to ascend above them, moaning and declaring the ecstasy of knowing his orgasmic and eternal love, even as her body is further absorbed into the monstrous conveyance, anaestheblissed to her dissolving skin and the harvesting mucosa of 'Jesus'. This continues until she feels her imminent death burst into her awareness, filling her with the agony of realization at her horrifying actual situation, the pain of acid-bathed nerves and rapid organ failures, a popping eyeball and the omnipresent slurping suction. She vanishes into the rapture-harvester, her empty clothes flutter down to the frenzied multitude, and a lucky few soon clutch the moist rags, declaring them to be modern-day Turin shrouds.
All of the thorn-drop blood lures are studded with the raptured by the time Deliria's rejected skeletal remains begin to poke out of the bloody gel, and bones soon pelt fellow travelers and the witless mob below. Her skull nails a partially absorbed, blissed-out 'Truckers for Trump'er square in the face, jolting him out of his trance. He throws his considerable bulk back into pulling his arms free, screaming at the resulting forearm bone version of extraction from a fleshlight. He flops back, his femurs also pull out with a schlurp, and a single face-strike launches him down onto several luckless revelers with a wet, crunching thud. The omnipresent mesmerizing perfume overpowers the momentary sanity of the gore-splattered and nearly-crushed, and they resume their ecstatic shuffle towards a gruesome doom.
The thorn-strands begin to pulsate as harmonious tones blend in the air, growing louder and higher pitched as the rapture-load increases and nutrients are absorbed. Trump and his entourage, shut out initially by his tightly packed supporters, near a lure while he brags about calling God down to his rally: What did I tell you? Isn't this great? Never been anything like it in this world, you can count on that! They're probably going to seat me between God and Jesus, and I bet they still have Trump steaks up there!' He's just loud enough to be heard above the keening, shimmering shaft of gel, and thinks, despite the draw of the lure and his own overblown self-confidence, to look up into the face of God. Jesus is nowhere to be seen, only a tentacled - DRAFT, TO BE CONTINUED...
[From ChatGPT]
As Trump looks up, he sees that the tentacled entity that had absorbed his supporters is not Jesus at all, but a monstrous, Lovecraftian horror from beyond the stars. It's unfathomable form writhes and pulsates, oozing thick, viscous fluids that cling to the ground and the revelers still caught in its grasp.
The air is filled with the deafening screech of the beast, a sound that seems to split reality itself. As the creature continues to writhe and pulsate, it seems to be growing, expanding, consuming everything in its path. Trump and his entourage begin to run, but it's already too late - the beast has grown to an immense size, and its tentacles are sweeping through the air, snatching up anyone who gets in its way.
In the chaos, Trump loses track of his companions and finds himself alone, running desperately through the crowded fairgrounds, trying to escape the monstrous entity that has consumed his supporters. But the creature is everywhere, its writhing tendrils blocking his path at every turn.
Finally, exhausted and terrified, Trump collapses to the ground, looking up at the writhing mass of tentacles above him. In the midst of the chaos and destruction, he has a moment of clarity - he realizes that he has unleashed a force far beyond his control, a creature of pure destruction and chaos that he can never hope to defeat.
As the beast descends upon him, Trump closes his eyes, accepting his fate. And as the darkness engulfs him, he realizes that he has finally been consumed by the very thing he unleashed - the ultimate manifestation of his own twisted and destructive desires.
[To ChatGPT]
PERFECT. Better than expected, by far. Thanks, ChatGPT!
I followed that up by requesting an original story from ChatGPT that would integrate with the splendid conclusion it wrote for my draft. It returned a series of error messages and null responses, leading me to conclude that, while an amazing and scarily powerful tool, it can still fail in a DOES NOT COMPUTE fashion.
We’re still in the game, fellow writers!