Magnum Opuses for everyone

Posted: July 30, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m confident that AI is having a profound impact already, let alone in terms of being something for people to blog about, but nevermind – let’s talk about magic.

Because we might as well, since that’s the stage we’re at.

I found something profoundly encouraging the other day whilst ChatGPTing.

I’d previously asked it to write a blog in the style of The Lateral Column (you might have heard of it) to see if it could compare. And it fairly much nailed it.

Bit worrying, since I like to think only I can be as inane as me, but this revealed that such irrelevant irreverence as my style of writing could be…commonplace.

And who’d want that?

I don’t want anything to write like I write, and you don’t want anyone to have to suffer reading as you currently are, due entirely to this style of writing.

Damn, damn, damn shame.

However, good news came shortly afterwards.

I asked the AI to repeat the same task, imitate my blog.

And, encouragingly, it turns out that Artificial Intelligence was having an off-day!

I read, and was delighted to be disappointed. It was a lame mimic of my blog, filled with bullet-point lists and jokes revolving around the sort of topics that unamusing people insist as a being humorous. Like cheese (wow, cheese, ‘ha‘ and then ‘ha‘ again).

I really started writing this blog today because I thought of the title and have tried to revolve it around the absurd suggestion of magnum opuses for everyone (like they’re free or mass produced). But I’ve struggled.

Instead, I could cobble together some nice bullet points (everyone likes a list), or an unamusing topic (like irony – what’s that about?).

But perhaps, I keep uploading my style of writing into the AI, en-mass and it gradually considers my blogs to be the example of what a blog should look like, and as hacks (bless ’em) look to imitate writing styles – they can all come to take examples proffered by AI, and thus, therefore and hence….magnum opuses for everyone!

That was lucky.

Sam

Sandwich ingredients – can’t we all just get along?

Posted: January 31, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Say you’re a slice of cheese, with all the crucial memories and opinions that a slice of cheese would have.

You want, specifics? Fine you’re brie.

Actually, no – you’re cheddar. Being cheddar is important for this.

It matters to me.

Anyway, you’re a slice of opinionated (cheddar) cheese – and someone places a slice of ham on top of you.

Opinionated ham.

Ham with a mother.

Ham with hopes (not dreams though – it’s just ham).

And that slice of ham is laying on top of you face to cheesy face – how would you feel?

Perhaps you’d nod politely at one another, like businessman bumping into each other on a crowded train, but then again, that doesn’t often happen when they’re both horizontal.

It’d be really neat if you’d both simply get along. No need to shove.

But that’s not all – next is the disappointment that comes from the comfortable slice of bread you yourself had already been placed on.

You’d been enjoying it being as soft and convenient as it was to relax upon, though weirdly, it was particularly buttery. As buttery as anything you can think of as being buttery.

Not many things are buttery. In fact, its likely that most things that are buttery, aside from bread, are not intended to be buttery.

Buttery.

Albeit buttery, it was a pleasant place to find yourself as a slice of cheese, even when a slice of ham is pressed against you.

Then, you see over the slice of ham’s………………. shoulder (?)……a second slice of bread descending its way towards you.

Now I can’t pretend to have ever heard cheese before. But if I were then, like you are now – a piece of cheese about to be imprisoned within the kind of butteriness that you’d honestly begun to trust – I think I’d have a lot to say. And even more to scream.

Meanwhile, the slice of ham is still squished up against you, face-to-face, unable to move because it’s inanimate (AKA “thoroughly well-cooked”) and is desperately asking what you’re freaking out about, but can sense the darkness looming up from behind it.

As I said, I’ve never heard cheese, and I’ve never heard the inside of a sandwich either, but I’ll bet its muffled.

Now I don’t want to be grim here. There’s no pain in the life of this cheese (can’t guarantee same for the ham) so have no fear of me describing the agony of teeth coming together through you – some cheddar cheese.

But, the idea of being chewed cheese basically just occurred to me and I wanted to share consideration for the sensation with you.

My favourite part was the suggestion of the cheese and ham nodding politely at each other. Its nice to get along.

There might be a metaphor in there somewhere, sandwich ingredients getting along and so on.

But I’ll leave that to you to be interested in, I’m just curious about being a piece of cheese.

Sam

Just Add Cheese. Because I Said So!

Posted: June 20, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Routes to millions of pounds, or more likely- dollars, seems to tread all the same ground.

Just add cheese.

I like to think of the number of people that are very well paid and have their own parking space purely owing to their idea of adding cheese to a product.

At times adding more cheese.

I have had that idea, but you’re going to need a good product to add cheese to.

I chose a piano.

I could sell the cheese, and I could have sold the piano- but the combo just wouldn’t move off the massive shelves you have to use for those things.

Then there are those people that realise that you’re about to invest in mozzarella all over a D-minor and so start building massive shelving units accordingly.

Those guys, the clever little and large mother fuckers, make a deliberate choice to not be one of those people that try to add cheese. When I was young, adding cheese was like growing up, ‘He’s added the cheese- don’t they grow up fast!” and now people are starting to make money out of those lucky, (can’t stress enough) LUCKY, bastard executives who now have everything (almost literally- they’ll have everything in their house- even trees). Their children will have an inheritance and I won’t like them either.

You know those children are going to be boring. Maybe not ‘church-boring’, but certainly ‘I won’t wear that collar, people might notice me’ boring.

And people like that, well, I need to have their inheritance. If you have an inheritance- either buy some orphans, or give it (and perhaps your newly acquired orphans- that didn’t work out) all to that hermit, if you can find him. I can’t deny that I’m partly encouraging this so as that should I ever go into that hermit phase- I can always hope that I’ll have an inheritance coming my way. To me in my hermit-chair.

I could be a hermit- I just don’t the people skills. You’re going to need a lot of other people to keep yourself alone for that amount of time, and if you can’t offer someone a hunk of bread (one of the few things you can actually offer a ‘hunk’ of) with a smile and a wave with a hunk-holding hand then you’d better hope that the inheritance is coming soon. Otherwise you won’t be alone for long, and that simply ruins the definition of a hermit. You might be a hermit at heart, but it’s the other people that make that career for you.

So if you ever have to baby-sit their boring children one day, you’d better get yourself over there, sit down in the dad’s chair, get up again, go to the fridge, and the settle down for a dull night with a nice, cold book. If the book’s cold- it’ll be a little more exciting and that’ll be crucial. If there’s an orphan there, get them to tell horror stories- it might even liven the dull one’s up a little.

Other than that- add cheese. Evidently, adding cheese also works.

Sam