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

Claivoyance: my new side-racket

Posted: July 17, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I am not clairvoyant in regard to any supernatural ability or actual belief in communing with the dead.

But I am prepared to say similar things for money.

Some people need a side-hustle in today’s (and yesterday’s) economy, and other’s – like me – need a side-racket.

Blogging will only take you so far and frankly the criminality just isn’t worth it anymore.

So why not lean into the supernatural, and why not be openly honest about it being both completely nonsensical and something out of which I’m looking to make the most?

For example, right from the get-go:

“Oh it’s your deceased grandmother and she’d like to say hello.”

Possibly (I don’t know – I’m not clairvoyant)…

“Not the living one, the other one. The deceased grandmother that without question died and that we can’t prove isn’t telling me to tell you that everything’s going to be alright and that you should leave a considerable tip.”

And it is at this moment that, with no morbid disrespect meant, I truly do hope you happen to have a dead grandmother.

“By the way, this might not resonate, but your great-great-great-great-great grandfather is exceptionally proud of you. You might not know his name or what he looked like, but he’s pleased as punch as to how you’ve turned out and he’d also recommends a significant tip.”

I can even be vague if you’d like.

“Also, that thing that happened at that particularly non-specifiable time that you might recall…we’ll I’m aware of that.”

I could get a little wooden caravan, or…just a car (perhaps a wooden one)…and could host clairvoyance get-togethers amongst those that are looking for hope from someone distinctly unqualified to provide some, albeit at remarkable value for money.

Bargain hope – you need crystal balls to dish that kind of humanity out.

“Now, let me deal my tarot cards.

“Will it be Death, will it be Love?

“Ah, the Pick Up 5 Uno card. That’s worse than Death and Love, but at least Napoleon, Caeser and Alexander the Great can relate – they’ve had similar bad draws, and they’re all playing it in the corner. They can’t find the Risk box.“

Napoleon would make a tremendous ghost, being of average height in the corner and French – very spooky. Very French. Very average-height for the time.

People might flock to me to hear my relayings from the afterlife, inspired by 100% fiction (maybe 97% fiction, since I believe Napoleon, Caeser and Alexander the Great have all died at some point).

Actually, maybe just one flock, filled with those quite prepared for me to miss-guess their dead cat’s name from 1992 after multiple attempts, or to miss-diagnose your financial worries as gout.

Being honest and open about my lack of belief or particular supernatural powers, might ease their frustrations about the fact people die, including – eventually – them.

They’re just looking for a little bit of hope after all.

And I’m willing to give them that, at any price.

Discount wonder, half-price divinity and “I’ll knock a bit off since it got wet” belief.

Maybe even Bring and Bless in Bulk.

Sam

P.S – I also bend forks. You just grab them and bend them, and then you have that bent fork you really, really needed. Possibly some hope too.

Issues physically, facially, farcically

Posted: June 28, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

So.

So, so, so (as the Cat in the Hat said)…

There’s not enough space on the planet.

There’s not enough space now, because there’s not going to be enough space eventually.

Take holy war (take it, please) out of the equation, plus economic turmoil, climate migration and historic grudges ‘tween nations, and we’re still left with a problem that even bunk-beds can’t solve.

If humanity is to continue as per its namesake, then bunk-beds simply isn’t going to cut it, and nor will anything other than colonisation of the nearest, reddest planet.

Oh look, how convenient. Mars.

Bunk-beds on Mars, that’s practical.

Tolerating neighbours on this planet (and I’m talking about Earth – you’ve probably been there) just isn’t in the community spirit.

I’m talking about elbow-room, and I’m talking about elbow-room in the manner of someone more than ready to do some pretty effing serious elbowing if the neighbours start coming too close.

It’s going to get physical, before it gets celestial.

Physical at my end especially, due to my FFF (Fat Fucking Face).

That’s cause enough for someone to want depart the planet for redder shores, but not without giving said FFF a good elbowing first.

And I’d elbow them back, partly due to the insult, partly due to the frustration of the insult being based in fact (FFFF – Fat Fucking Face Fact), and partly to take their spot in the galactic life boat to Mars.

They’d respond in kind to my unkind response, and we’d proceed to elbow each other until either one of us has departed the planet or until we’ve both realised that this amount of elbows to the face is only making our faces farcically fatter (FFFFF – Farcically Fat Fucking Face Fact).

It’s just water weight. Which is great since I understand Mars needs water.

I hope that makes sense.

Sam

Character flaws: something to stand on.

Posted: June 11, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When struggling, generally, I turn to writing.

I turn to it, because it is always behind me. Creeping up in prose.

Maybe I should do it more, since it’s inevitable, and I don’t like being crept up on.

Regardless…when I do turn to writing, amidst struggles, I like to focus on my weaknesses.

Humour makes the world go round, and sideways. My blog, and to a lesser extent – my life, is world-like.

Weaknesses, mine in particular, are a wonderful source of humour.

Like learning from my mistakes. I don’t indulge in that sort of thing.

I mentioned ‘turning’ earlier. Well, it’s more like spinning.

I 360 myself and step straight upon the rake that sent me spinning in the first place and ask myself: “can you believe this?”

Stupidity is the essence here, not the identity.

I’m not stupid, I know that much, I’m just struggling with lower level stuff, like progress.

I don’t progress, since I’m still figuring where I am. It’s hard to move forward from nowhere in particular.

You’ll know some people are goal-orientated. I’m not, but what is that ‘not’?

What’s the opposite of goal-orientation?

Procrastinating-manifestation? I do nothing, therefore I don’t?

Ultimately, I’m capable of the same errors I committed 20 years ago.

I’m terrified of my capacity to enjoy doing nothing, being swallowed up by demands upon my time; such as progress and learning.

It’s just not me. These are my essential aspects, the character flaws that make me.

Something to stand on.

Deduct these flaws and I’m still spinning, but the pirouette of my failings gives way to a roundabout with no exits, and other such awful metaphors.

I like not progressing.

I’m just more-me than ever, and I don’t require a goal to justify my existence, continuing or otherwise.

That being said, it does cause issues. Like boredom.

And so, I turn again to writing.

The other issue is that I upload my writing to a blog, this one, and then people like you have it thrust upon yourselves and have to deal with it.

Good luck.

Can’t blame me, I was just spinning.

Sam

I’d like to speak with someone in charge of the New World Order, thank you.

Posted: April 27, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m thinking of starting a political blog, but frankly I’m still getting over Liz Truss.

I can’t quite believe that was allowed.

At a certain point in your upbringing, you come to appreciate that there are people in charge who oversee this sort of thing and make for certain that lunatics are only permitted to a moderate level of government – not the big job.

Not the job that affects me.

I’d have honestly hoped there was a cabal of people in dark suits in dark rooms, in which the lighting does’t quite reach their faces, one chap in a fez, another stroking a white and fluffy cat, all the same ilk of casually menacing potency, ready to stop Liz Truss from happening.

I have to say this, I’ve extremely disappointed in the New World Order.

If we’re being kept calm like chattel on the way to slaughter, I’d like to complain about the quality of this slaughterhouse’s economic situation.

We may all be about to die, but does the price of fruit and vegetables really have to take the piss as it currently does?

Can’t you picture the cabals’ shrouded faces, either in the aforementioned darkness or a genuine hood they’d wear, panicking as they rapidly email the senior minion in Puppet Recruitment to urgently rectify this error?

There’d probably be a crow in the room, just for aesthetics perhaps, but even the crow’s beak is hanging open when it’s coming to understand the secret rulers in the global elite have made a big whoopsie.

Everything is more expensive, everything is worse, Truss herself seems to be on a campaign of lunacy elevation in which she constantly ups her craziness whilst being very keen to clarify: “That’s not funny.“

When you can’t trust in the powers-that-secretly-be to keep business running as usual, there’s really little point in tolerating this status as a slave to the future of the oligarchy if things are going to be so rubbish on the way to grave.

I’m actually quite fond of the economy, it’s why I get up in the morning (that and my kids).

Its now been years since Truss, with no remedy in sight, even satire hasn’t worked.

I’m thinking maybe its time to throw off the shackles forged by whomever it is that’s oppressing us lately.

And then….well…then hope that there’s an even higher level of shadowy cabal that can make the route to final slaughter in the meat grinder of global supply chains a little less expensive fruit and veg-wise.

I really do need to find out that Complaints Procedure.

Anyone got a email for Putin so I can begin the process?

Sam

The Pope has died. I’m available.

Posted: April 21, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It is the 21st April 2025 and the Pope has died.

I’m sure he was as positive and negative as any of us, despite the hat.

Coincidentally, I’m available if anyone is looking for a bit of Poping in their area.

I’ve done it all before in a very non-literal way.

I’ve never kissed someone else’s baby, nor someone else’s feet. But metaphorically, I’ve kissed many, many feet. Fewer babies (fewer baby’s feet), but still, I’m very forgiving.

I’m so forgiving, that frankly that’s the end of that sentence.

I’m so forgiving. So there.

Am I pious? More so than you!

Am I devoted? Kind of.

Am I observant of ecclesiastical doctrine? No.

However, if you’re looking for judgement – I’m you’re guy, and that’s your own fucking fault.

From most of what I can see, the previous Pope (prior to me – white smoke incoming…) there was a need for a little bit of change.

What change?

You know exactly what change was needed.

It’s the change that mattered to you.

That particular thing is so vitally, immensely important that it requires immediate attention obviously.

What that particular (etc., etc.) thing was, I’ve no idea, but to be clear – I’m still very happy to be Pope if you’re looking for one.

Can I make a difference as leader of one-point-something billion Catholics?

Undoubtely.

I can ruin things for everyone.

And if you thought the Catholic church had issues now…wait till you see what I’m willing to condem.

First of all – those who don’t like and subscribe immediately.

Second, those who constantly ask readers/viewers to like and subscribe. Get your own religion, loser.

Third, ah I’ve run out of steam. Work in the morning, no one is paying me for this, etc again.

Etc a third time.

A fourth etc, and RIP to the previous guy (I’m sure, really, he’s letting the big-guy know we all say “hi”) but by gosh I just need to log off now because this is just simply, frightfully, awfully, ongoing.

Amen (no offence).

Sam

25th anniversary of a new millennia – China has dragons!

Posted: January 1, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Happy new year!

I hope you had a good one. I didn’t really have ‘one’ – having slept through the celebrations.

I’ve had worse – such as the beginning of the year 2000, which today is the 25th anniversary.

I poked myself in the eye with a Union Jack flag, which was a crap start to the millennium.

And since then I’ve felt unappreciative of the timing of NYE.

It’s always 1000 years since 1000 years ago. Today is just 25 years since a particular 1000 years ago.

Tomorrow, a different millennia will have passed.

Whoops, there went another just then, but that might have been an adorable little century.

There are beginnings and ends across eternity, and I find focusing on only one beginning and end is just a little meagre.

All that time, all those stories, happinesses and sadnesses, era defining events redirecting courses of a trillion ships, and reliable irrelevancies, the things we’ll never know but still happened and will continue to tomorrow onwards…. saving consideration of that solely for each 31st December is a disservice to the time that has passed.

Plus, and more importantly, firework shows are dull.

It’s hard to get a good narrative going with a fireworks show.

They’re very samey – very quickly – so once you’ve seen the first minute of a fireworks show, you’ve already seen the rest. The first 60 seconds is all you need.

After that, you start to feel a bit dopey realising you’re part of a crowd all looking up at the same thing, like a cow in a herd only you’re doing something far less exciting than eating grass.

And it’s not just in-person. If watching-back the following day, you really needn’t watch a New Year’s Eve firework show specific to that year. I can watch 2008’s show and it’s genuinely much the same, as is 2010 in Paris, 2015 Sydney or 2022 NYC.

You also needn’t re-watch just on New Year’s Eve – August is doable too in case you want to insert some boredom in your summer.

I think the narrative issue is because a NYE firework show has to start with a relatively big bang and it struggles to temper its storytelling from there – unlike China’s drone-show last night.

Starting slow, building-up a story, with fewer bangs meaning you could hear the softer music, unleashing the fireworks towards a crescendo featuring a dragon which was so cool that I’m now delighted to announce it was real.

Yes it was.

They had a real dragon.

A real dragon, made in China.

Still, firework shows remain a broadly dull engagement.

I can picture someone in Ancient China living their Ancient Chinese life, attending a firework show for some national celebration, slowly realising they’re board too – partaking in an already old-age custom continued down the line to me as I watch London’s 2024 firework show above the Thames – also bored.

As well as the lack of dragons, I think the issue is the setting.

A dark night’s sky is a perfect blackly-blank canvas to hit with all those colours, but its a bit distant. If you go to a fireworks show, the fireworks aren’t actually there where you are.

A firework beneath your duvet first thing in the morning however – that’ll stay with you, and yes – so will the burns, but let’s focus on the memories.

Real dragons beneath the sheets would also result in burns, but perhaps this is something we just have to appreciate in the passage of time.

Anyway, happy new year.

But remember: millennia happen every day. As do their 25th anniversaries.

Sam

Aerodynamic nipples and the rest of us.

Posted: December 27, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

So, nipples.

Nipples.

Not very aerodynamic, are you?

Admit it.

When top-speed and head-first, humans (and yes I’m talking about the very specific circumstance of being fired out of a cannon whilst naked) are rather let-down by their nipples, which quite simply go against the flow.

There are other body parts that create similar issues (I’m looking at you genitals), but it’s nipples that are the focus of today’s blog.

Now I’m prepared to admit there are many uses for nipples, mainly in early-life, adult aesthetics and general humour (I’m not saying nipples aren’t funny. Everyone knows they’re funny, especially whoever named them), but otherwise they’re a massive liability when it comes to being fired naked out of a cannon, or taking part in a super bowl half-time show.

And I don’t know about you but I’d love to be fired out of a cannon.

I’d like everyone locally to watch and cheer as I survive.

It would also be a hell of a way to die. Doing something, perhaps not heroic, but definitely touching that line between brave and foolhardy. Definitely ‘doing something‘, either way.

“He died doing what he loved: tempting it.” they’d say.

Or “Those nipples let him down again, honestly – he always gave them too many chances.”.

Regardless, I’d happily be fired out of a cannon as a way of living life to the full or ending it, especially now I’ve said my piece about nipples.

Genitals can will have to wait their turn another day.

‘Every willy has its week.’

‘Every foreskin its fortnight.’

‘Every labia its lunar cycle.’

I suppose, of course, if things were to be more nipples-first, the issue of aerodynamics would be the rest of us – not the nipples.

Nipples would be innocent in that scenario. Guilty ribs though.

Wow.

I’ve disproven my own view via a matter of perspective. It was never the nipples, it was the POV and the rest of us.

I’m still going to continuing with blaming the nipples though, as they rarely have anything else blamed on them – compared to the rest of us. I find, from the opinion of others, the fault is not in our stars but usually my “stupid big fucking feet“.

They’re not even that big, but they tend to be perfectly big enough at the precise time to be exactly what isn’t needed – depending on the scenario.

Like nipples in a cannon. Poor little guys.

Sam

Social media: nothing has changed. But we must.

Posted: December 19, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Matters that Matter | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

About a year ago (when would have been a good time to share publish this blog) – there was a great deal made of ‘X’ (then, and forever really, ‘Twitter’) becoming a platform permitting right-wing content, bullying and dangerous topics.

I myself didn’t notice any difference, the only real impact being that WordPress would no-longer be so easily shareable to the X site.

Perhaps, it depends on where on the X site you’re looking. I wasn’t really looking at right-wing, bullying or dangerous things, so that might be why. I just desperately scrawling through it to see who was sharing blogs about what they had for breakfast.

But there was no change I could tell.

I did notice, however, that there was something still a major factor of social media. As I spent hours scrolling and scrolling through the content on X, Instagram, and Facebook, it eventually dawned on me that social media is a profound waste of time.

And I’ve only got so much time, and I need it to write about my breakfast (today, toast. Tomorrow, the world!).

Hasn’t it always been a waste of time? Perhaps a cool waste of time? Especially X?

In my life, Facebook was the original place to waste time: posting pointless updates featuring the latest and most hip abbreviations, sharing photos of people literally just sitting around with a variety of hand gestures, and ‘liking’ pages ranging from an esoteric movie (Ergo: “Hey, I’m esoteric, like this movie.“) to (and I don’t know what to call this): a page titled “Hey it’s snowing! Brilliant!“.

Photos continued to be shared on Facebook through my 20s, and now I can’t delete the damn thing because it is the sole location of my kid’s baby photos. Mine too, probably.

Twitter was meant to be the means by which my extraordinary blog would be shared with soon-to-be adoring fans, as well as a foundation for further research into the absurdly interesting concepts that I could soon write about.

But then, I was ‘followed’ by a local carpet shop in my home town and I realised its proclivity for wasted time was confirmed. They still follow-me, and they too don’t seem any more right-wing than usual (likely due to going out-of-business several years ago).

Instagram is brilliant, the best way to share images and video. A great place for a blog, surely.

Otherwise, every other social media seems to be the same.

TikTok only seems to differ from Instagram as it is a means of People’s Republic of China’s subversion of Western stability, whilst Instagram is less-so. Instagram is best at short videos, YouTube long ones, TikTok pro-sedition ones.

Rest assured, what we had for breakfast can be duly shared on each of these.

My point is that the whilst there’s focus of each social media, the fact is they’re all broadly a waste of time.

Yes, I’m sure you too have heard of people who met their one-true love on Facebook, or are making money from Instagram, or even using the platform to share truly inspiring content. But you’re not, you didn’t and you likely won’t.

You did, however, waste your time. And not in the right way.

Remember that time on Facebook when there was a specific scenario benefiting you with brilliant life-experience a great tale to tell? No, of course not. Exactly the same as when you were on Twitter and nothing proceeded to happen there either.

It’s better to have a bad day in bad weather than to waste time on social media.

That way, you can either make good use of time or waste it too, but it’ll be real-life. Which is useful either way. More social media – less you.

Social media is not an experience.

We’re programmed to find ways to use and waste time as humans. Look at me writing this blog – a far more productive way to waste time.

Ultimately, social media hasn’t changed. It didn’t need to. Neither did we, but we do now.

Waste time in real life, not online.

Sam

Now’s the time to write about it.

Posted: November 30, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty. | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

In 50 years, those there and then will wonder why there wasn’t more first-hand accounts of the 2020s.

There are lots of ‘accounts’ – but these are largely bots, or worse – idiots.

And whilst I always take a certain pride in ticking that ‘I can confirm I am not a robot’ box, I am accordingly an idiot too.

And the issue with idiots is brevity, which is why they’re so well suited to social media.

However, if you listen to an idiot for long enough you come to realise one of two things:
1. Actually, they’re not an idiot after all
2. Actually, you’re an idiot along with them

One or two, you’ll realise whichever depending on your idiocy.

We have people who aren’t idiots – journalists, who are inevitably historians.

But what does the typical Brit consider of the Russian ‘military operation’ (aka – definitely a ‘war’) against Ukraine?

What does the average French woman think about Queen II dying?

And does anyone know how the people of Papa New Guinea feel about the worsening lack of fish generally?

Who is talking? Who is taking notes?

There seems to be, as I myself feel, a reliance on Google being around tomorrow.

It probably will be, but also – who knows?

Do you keep a diary?

I don’t, because naturally I feel all my opinions are worth sharing in blog form, which is like social media but more of a long-form idiocy.

The difference between a blog and a diary however, is consistency. Like a a good cake.

Diaries are quality cake.

This blog is shop-bought.

However, we can increase the output to the point of being disciplined – it’s just going to require everyone being ready for a greater stream of idiotic thoughts and feelings from me.

For some, that might be a blessing.

One shouldn’t compare oneself to others, but only to oneself yesterday.

Or, you can compare yourself to me – and feel pretty great about yourself in contrast.

Think about it this way: at least you aren’t saying this.

So brace yourselves, for a torrent of inane and mundane is on the way.

Why? So in whatever tomorrow may come, the people may know what a truly average person thought and felt about things.

See you there.

Sam

P.S. For breakfast, I had eggs. And this climate crisis really is getting a lot of attention now. Hmm. Think I’ll some more eggs.

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