I got up at 5:30 this morning, which is normal for a school day, and it was raining. It was the kind of raining that isn’t hard, but steady, and it whispers quietly, yet firmly, that I should go back to bed. I didn’t, but oh lord, did I get close to closing my eyes on the couch as the coffee brewed. The wife didn’t want to get out of bed, and neither did the dog. When I went to wake the kid, it only took her a second to register the sound, and quickly ask if she could also stay in bed.
We all fought through it. We ate breakfast and dressed, and collected backpacks and a lunch bag. We walked to the subway in rain. We rode to our stop and walked to school in the rain. I ran errands, and did laundry at the local laundromat in the rain. The rain has made my clothes from this morning damp.
It’s not that cold of a day, but the building’s steam heat is on, and to cool the apartment, we have to crack the windows. That has let the sound of the rain in, as well as a little more dampness. The influence of the rain, the mood of the rain, has creeped into our home, and is begging me to take a nap. Maybe read a book? Then take a nap? I should take a nap…
As of now, it’s still raining, but it should taper off by the time I have to go get the kid. Walking around the neighborhood of her school, I’ll pass the brownstones with their wet stoops. It will stay cool out, like an early Spring day should, and the feeling of being a little lazy will hang off of everything.
I’m not great at it, but I am pretty good at impressions; especially at parties where people have been drinking for several hours. Now, I would like to get better at my impressions. Being that there isn’t a school for it, I’m left to my own devices for study. Currently, I’m working on a Keith Morrison impression which is developing nicely. I need to expand, and I’m thinking that a Warner Herzog will be my next goal. Then I want to go really obscure and have an impression of Bill Hader doing his impression of Al Pacino.
I wonder if the AI algorithms get together on the dark web and swap notes of how stupid humans are, and why people keep watching the same shows over and over?
My bracket is doing okay. I picked four games wrong yesterday. I had Clemson beating McNeese, which was the big upset yesterday. But! I had picked Yale to beat Texas A&M. Not that I’m a fan of Yale, and I don’t hate A&M; In fact I have four family members who went there. I had mentioned the other day in my Bracket blog that I always pick the Ivy League team for silly reasons. But this year, I did take a hard look at this game. Would I make the logical choice, and go with A&M, or would I stick to my plan and just make my goofy picks? My family will give me shit for picking Yale, and for many justifiable reasons. But like the McNeese win, it’s fun when the “little guy” defies expectations. Yet, I see the irony of viewing Yale as the “little guy” here. The tournament makes strange bedfellows, I guess…
I am sticking my toes in, and dabbling a little more with AI. You know, to see how it works, and also to hunt down the ghost in that ChatGPT machine.
I have been reading about people using AI to write a “first draft” of letters and reports, and then they go through and make the text sound more human and personal. The thought I had this morning was what would happen if I reversed that process. What if I fed to AI, ChatGPT in this case, was an old blog from May 6th, 2024, and asked it to rewrite the post to make it funnier and more accessible.
This is what it produced:
Something weird has been happening to me over the past couple of years—I’ve developed an unstoppable urge to buy blue clothing. Not just any blue, but deep, rich, “navy captain who lost his ship” blue. Oxford button-down? Yes. Jeans so blue they make the ocean jealous. Absolutely. I’m even considering a blue suit for a wedding, because nothing says “I’m here to celebrate love” like looking like a well-dressed blueberry.
And then there’s my newfound appreciation for khakis paired with a blue shirt. A strong combo, but I swear, if I ever add a puffer vest to complete the look, you have full permission to slap me. Hard. Unless, of course, I’m working deep undercover as a Finance Bro infiltrating a hedge fund happy hour.
Not sure why this is happening, but it’s happening. My wardrobe is slowly turning into a monochrome tribute to the color blue, and I have no control over it.
At first, I thought maybe it was some deep, psychological reflection of my mental state—was I subconsciously craving serenity? Was I low-key depressed? But no, I feel neither particularly Zen nor like I need to stare wistfully out of rain-streaked windows.
To mix things up, I started throwing on my old army coat over my blue shirts, hoping it would give me that rugged Quint from Jaws energy. In my head, I’m a grizzled, sea-hardened badass. In reality? Probably just a guy who looks like he got dressed in the dark at an Army-Navy surplus store.
Is this a middle-age thing? A subtle cry for help? Or have I just reached the evolutionary stage where a man must choose his signature color, and mine happens to be “50 Shades of Blue”?
Does blue make me stand out? Blend in? Who knows. But if that blue comes in a plaid pattern. Game over. I have to own it. It’s like some kind of involuntary response—I see a blue plaid shirt, and my brain just whispers, “Yes. This is who we are now.”
The evidence is stacking up: blue pajamas, navy ballcap, even my car is blue. Sure, my wife technically picked it out, but I’m pretty sure the universe was just reinforcing my aesthetic destiny.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I wore a lot of black—back in my pretentious arts phase, which overlapped nicely with my stage crew phase (a time when I believed dressing like an off-duty ninja was peak coolness).
Maybe I’ll grow out of this blue obsession. Maybe I’ll evolve into a paisley guy. Or worse… argyle.
And here was my original:
Something happened to me over the past couple of years, where if I go shopping for clothes, I want to buy the color blue. I especially like the color navy, but wouldn’t pass up the blue of an oxford style button down shirt. The bluer the blue jeans, the better, and I’m even thinking about getting a blue suit for a wedding I’m supposed to attend. I’m even starting to like the look of khaki pants, and a blue shirt, but swear to God, if I add a puffer vest to that look, you should walk up to me and slap the hell outta my face… unless I’m working undercover as a “Finance Bro.”
I’m not sure why this is happening, but I know that it is.
I thought that it could be a reflection of my mental state, but I feel neither depressed nor calm and relaxed.
I started putting on my old army coat when I have a blue shirt on. I would like to believe that I look like Quint, but I know that’s not true.
Is this a middle age thing? Does blue help me stand out, or blend in?
And if the blue is in a plaid pattern, good lord, I have to own it.
I have blue pajamas. A navy blue ballcap. My car is blue, but the wife did pick it out, but still…
There was a time when I wore a lot of black, but that was my pretentious arts phase, which coincided with my stage crew phase.
Maybe I’ll grow out of it. Maybe I move into a paisley phase.
Clearly, I am the better writer. I’m also funnier, as the AI seems to be trying way too hard to fit in a joke.
When I was a teenager, and well into my twenties and beyond, I spent hours debating with my friends about the mechanics, tropes, and clichés of horror movies. How most horror movies, more than any other genre of film, are made up of an uncountable number of rip offs and copies of more successful horror movies. For myself, as a person who loves awful movies, bad horror films are an entertaining gift that just keeps on giving.
So, when I started reading Mario Aliberto III’s “Something Out of a Horror Movie,” I was intrigued as to what he was wanting to accomplish is this flash fiction story. It reads like it was written but someone who loves the awful character clichés of the genre. What I appreciated in this piece was that as I started reading it, I couldn’t put my finger on if this is a story about characters in a horror movie, or if they are characters in “real life” that find themselves in a horror movie situation, or if these are characters that have seen too many horror movies and went to that places because of the situation they were in. By doing that, structuring the story that way, left me feeling off balance which played very well to the theme of the piece, and ultimately the climax of the story.
But what I enjoyed most was that this story took a stock clichéd character that I have seen in millions of horror movies, and made me think of her differently, and also made me view her actions in a fully well-rounded way for that character. Aliberto does this rather effortlessly, and compactly. The last paragraph is just great.
I will never look at the Bad Girl trope character the same way again.
