Words without song*

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
“I got nothin’ here,” says Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

How many different ways are there to write, “This fuckin’ mook is 300 pounds of bellowing bullshit in a 10-pound Brioni bag?”

Beats me. I’ve read a ton of variations on that theme, even had a few goes at it myself, to no particular effect. Manhattan Fats and his Brooks Brothers bandidos just keep rolling merrily along, stealing everything that isn’t screwed to the floor, stenciling his name in gold Krylon on whatever’s left, and bombing the rubble just to watch it bounce.

It’s like watching a CBS remake of “The Maltese Falcon” in which Kaspar Gutman grabs the bird, the real one, and gets away scot free, while Joel Cairo and Wilmer Cook announce their campaign for the White House, Brigid O’Shaughnessy gets a talk show and a book deal, and Sam Spade goes to jail. And we’re just supposed to sit down and watch.

Did I mention it’s a series, not a movie? On every channel and streaming service 24/7? And not so much as a tiny box of stale popcorn with a watered-down soda for the rubes. No fertilizer, no corn. Thanks, Obama!

Subscribe! Follow! Like! Share! CGI junk food in an A.I.-slop sauce. Eighty-six the side of fries. No fertilizer, no spuds. Thanks, Sleepy Joe!

It’s starting to feel like even the bots have run out of scrapes for this tepid potboiler. Take “It Can’t Happen Here,” “Idiocracy,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “It,” “Grapes of Wrath,” “Lost,” the final installment in “The Godfather” trilogy, and the entire Marvel Universe catalog (except for maybe “Iron Man,” which was really pretty cool), throw it all in a big-ass blender, purée the shit out of it until all the ingredients are completely unrecognizable, and serve with a side of Motel 6 toilet paper.

Are we all just hanging on in hopes the final season will include a riff on the “Godfather III” scene in which the Devil — like the rest of us, mumbling, “Awright, OK, enough awready” — finally cuts Michael Corleone’s strings, leaving him to topple out of his chair like the dirty old man Tyrone F. Horneigh falling off a park bench in “Laugh-In?”

Well … maybe that’s just me. And in any event, we should all remember that the rest of the mob did not perish alongside Michael.

*Apologies to Felix Mendelssohn and his “Songs Without Words.”

Tea by the pool

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
No diving.

It’s not summer yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t crank out my little bit of bullshit on the patio instead of in the office. I mean, it’s 64°, just past 8 a.m., and there are a lot more hummingbirds out here than there are in there.

Birds of another sort abound elsewhere. Buzzards, mostly. The Benighted States have been at the polls again, hoping to find a few that shit gold instead of what we’re wading through at the moment.

It might help if we focused on finding a species that isn’t focused on eating our entrails.

A robin, maybe. One’s busily plucking bugs from the back yard as I type. Good, useful work, that. Many insects infest the American lawn; many, many of them. A hungry robin might be just the ticket.

Aw, hell, who am I kidding here? We don’t need a robin. We need a Batman.*

* Or a Batwoman, Batperson, someone who identifies as a bat, is transitioning to a bat, I don’t give a shit. As long as s/he/they kick ass.

    Westwhirled

    ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
    Just ask the guys at the shop how that whole robotic-workforce thing is working out for them. (BRAIN/2018)

    A couple weeks back, while trying to discover what exactly the fuck was up with the “Report” button that mysteriously appeared next to “Reply” in comments, I found myself wandering through the bleak, shabby A.I. wilderness, like Ted and the gang in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.”

    I still had a mouth, and I was screaming, albeit virtually. But at whom?

    First at bat was a bot, because of course it was. They reign supreme in Lower Supportistan and Customerservicesylvania. This level is tasked with solving the easy problems, which mostly I am not. Ask any publisher.

    With the bot dispatched, next up was a WordPress “Happiness Engineer.” Could’ve been from MeatWorld®, maybe ESL with an A.I. assist, but felt slightly off, like the HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission, etc. Or maybe the reassuring, yet slightly menacing drone of The President from “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus.” Occasionally one longs for a Marvin the Paranoid Android from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

    Still, one never knows. Automattic (with its sidekicks WordPress, Akismet, Jetpack, et al.) has big feet, one in MeatWorld® and the other on the Infobahn. So I dialed back the attitude, got a side of actual help with the platitudes, fired off an email to Akismet support, and went about my business.

    Until I got a chipper reply from Akismet’s “Happy Bot” asking whether I was happy too. Ignoring that earned me a followup from — well, I have no idea what. Happy Bot ratted me out to someone, or something, which asked:

    Since we haven’t heard back, we’re just checking in to see if the AI-generated response answered all your questions. Our goal is to ensure you get the help you need efficiently. If you require additional support from one of our experts, please reply to this email.

    Well. Shit. Lead with your chin, why don’t you? So reply I did, recapitulating the original snark-laden complaint that led me down this digital rabbit hole.

    And finally, I got an actual human response.

    I think.

    Which brings me to this piece in The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel. He writes:

    Across so many levels of culture, there’s a feeling of control slipping ever so slightly away. You, me, all of us, whether or not we enjoy or use these tools, are living through a crisis of agency. The agita and paranoia, even the excitement—over AI’s encroachment on work, education, art, and culture—is the by-product of a cultural and technological moment in which humans are sliding into a more passive role in many activities. One way to look at the generative-AI boom is as a massive societal experiment foisted on us by Silicon Valley, the animating question of which is: What is a human for?

    There’s much more to it, of course. And you should definitely read the Sam Kriss essay Warzel links to.

    The Jetpack “Happiness Engineer” who was my last point of contact regarding this gripe professed humanity. My suspicions about the use of British spellings and semicolons were addressed (my correspondent mentioned having lived in the UK, writing detective novels on the side, and happily claimed semicolon usage as “proof of life”).

    And my problem with the “Report” button? It too was addressed, and resolved:

    Where things stand now: the developers who built this feature evaluated the results and determined it wasn’t delivering enough value to justify the concerns it raised, including exactly the kind of concerns you described. The Report button has been completely removed. It is no longer appearing on any site, including yours, regardless of your Akismet settings. You don’t need to do anything.

    Y’hear that? I don’t need to do anything.

    So … I’m happy? I guess. I think so. Yeah, sure, I’m happy.

    But isn’t that exactly what they want? (Cue the spooky music. …)

    Today in hisssssssstory

    ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
    The devil you say. …

    Today in history, from The Associated Press:

    On May 30, 2024, Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

    Also on this date: In 1431, Joan of Arc, condemned as a heretic, was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.

    Sorry about that, Joan. In a righteous world you would have lived to a ripe old age and this other would have been a fatty chunk of long pig sputtering on the grill.

    The cat’s meow

    ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
    Miss Mia Sopaipilla once again enjoys a full complement of servants.

    We’re finally back to what passes for normal around here.

    Herself has returned from Tennessee and Miss Mia Sopaipilla couldn’t be happier. I’m not the person you want to see first thing in the early morning hours, when the Voices are in full throat, roaring for coffee and news, the cacophony just a few decibels short of drowning out the clicking, popping, and squeaking of various OE bits from 1954 announcing their imminent failure. And with the factory warranty long since expired, too.

    I lack a certain ruthless efficiency at stupid-thirty. Stack a few extra chores atop my tiny little pile and I am prone to mutter about Sisyphus as the rocks start rolling downhill.

    I do manage to achieve some sort of spastic rhythm after a few days catching bad hops in the valley. But it’s not a pretty thing to watch.

    Especially for Miss Mia. For openers, I like my coffee black, to match my aura, while Herself will share a dollop of frothy cream from her cuppa. I’ll pour Miss Mia a shot straight from the container, but it’s not the same. So off she goes, stalking from room to room, looking for Herself and that fat mug of cream with just a hint of coffee.

    Never you mind that the litter box is cleaned and the water refreshed, food and meds served up, bedding shaken out. These are services, to be expected. It’s the little extras that make the difference between living and merely existing.

    Eventually Miss Mia cycles through the Two Stages of Feline Grief: “I want something,” and “Fuck it, I’ll take a nap.”

    And then I can finally have my coffee. Black.