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  • ODDS and ENDS: Yippie Dog, The Week of Black Friday, and a Movie Marathon

    (But I wanted a torta…)

    We have a new neighbor in our building, and they moved into the “Bermuda Triangle” apartment. That’s the unit no one stays very long in, maybe six months – tops. Anyway, they moved in, and I have only seen the person once. They seemed friendly and we exchanged pleasantries. But they brought something else with them; a little yippie dog. Oh, how that little dog likes to bark its yippie little bark. Day, night, walking by their door, and sneezing too loud. Yip! Yip! Yip! At first my dog was annoyed at the yipping, but of late, she seems to have resigned herself to ignoring it. We can block it out, and it’s more of a novelty of an annoyance than an actual annoying thing. Yet, I still have to wonder what it’s like in that apartment, as that dog yips and yips and yips day and night. Yip!

    So… “Black Friday” is a week-long thing now. When did that happen? I don’t really care that there is now a week of shopping deals – whatever needs to happen to sell TVs is fine. It’s the use of “Black Friday” to represent an entire week, and in some commercials, the whole month. It feels like this is the first year of the week- and month-long Black Friday title’s use, but I can also see retailers gaslighting me, saying that it’s always been like this. And I should be shopping more. Do I need a new TV? I should get a new TV.  

    As we are closing in on Thanksgiving, and I am a huge MST3k fan, this would be the time to start thinking about watching a marathon of awful movies while on vacation. Sadly, I don’t think I can get the wife and kid on board to watch a bunch of old Joel episodes, let alone actually look for some bad movies in general. (Maybe Rob Hill over at Bad Movie Bible should put out a list of suggestion awful movies to marathon through for Thanksgiving?) No, I think if I want to make this happen, I have to actually be rather creative in my movie selection. We have done all the Star Wars movies, and Harry Potter, and even did all the Marvel movies once upon a Covid. I think I might have to sub-genera it, like all the Spiderman movies. Or, maybe all the different versions of Fantastic Four? Or all the Marvel films? How about Bill Murray movies he later regretted making? Or Gene Hackman “paycheck” movies? This could be fun, come to think of it.

  • French Café Music

    Every now and then, I get semi-obsessed with music. Either a band, song, composer, or genera. The last time I was taken in was when I discovered the works of Erik Satie, which caused me to listen to as much of his music as I could, and also find out as much about him as possible. I don’t think I’m alone in having these waves of obsession when it comes to music. It’s like short little love affairs, or infatuations.

    So, and follow me on this, I was looking up new egg recipes the other day. My goal was to find a new egg breakfast dish to make on the weekends for my family; something a little fancy, but also easy. (You know, just like me.) And I came across this video for oeufs cocotte. It was that background music that I got obsessed over. It’s “Valse de la Rose” and I think its performed by Les Petits Parisians. I could be wrong on that, but according to Spotify, it sounds pretty damn close.

    Besides deciding that oeufs cocotte would be my next culinary challenge, as I don’t cook many French inspired foods, that café music was playing on repeat in my head. After a couple of days, I got on my Spotify account and typed in “French café music” and sure enough, there is a playlist for that. I can only listen to so much of this style of music. Not that I get tired of it, but my wife and daughter do, and there are limits to my small obsessions that my family can endure.

    But today, I have to task of making mushroom stock, as it is needed for our Thanksgiving dinner, and the music is doing a nice job of underscoring the work that I need to do in the kitchen today. Sure, it’s a little silly and hokey, but still feels a little appropriate.

  • Short Story Review: “According to Alice” by Sheila Heti

    (The short story “According to Alice” by Sheila Heti appeared in the November 20th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Janet Hansen

    At the very end of “According to Alice” by Sheila Heti, there is an addendum which states:

    This story was written in collaboration with a customizable chatbot on the Chai AI platform, which Sheila Heti started engaging in conversation early in the summer of 2022. To create the story, she asked the chatbot questions, some of them leading and others open-ended, to which its answers were never more than a sentence long. Sometimes she repeated a question to get a new answer. She removed her side of the conversation and threaded together the chatbot’s answers, at times cutting and tweaking for comprehension and flow.

    So… this is an experimental short story. I love experimental, crazy, envelope pushing, outta left field short stories that play with form, structure, tone, format, and everything else. I like people who take the rules and throw them out the window and try something new. Sometimes it works and it’s amazing; sometimes it’s a dumpster fire of awful; but most of the time it’s just okay, but I value the effort. When it comes to “According to Alice,” as an experiment, it’s pretty cool as it raises many questions about literature and writers interacting with AI; as a story – it’s not very good.

    On the Experiment Side of Things: I have several friends that are in WGA, and the AI issue was a big part of the strike, and still an issue of trepidation for them. No one knows how, or if, AI will be a helpful tool for writers. Some are looking for ways to use AI, while others want to chase it out of town. So, to see Heti engage with AI is intriguing to me. Though from the addendum, it sounds more like Heti behaved like an interviewer, editing down the responses to create the story. If that is true, does that make her an editor? Or is she more like a collage artist? (Donald Barthelme did call collage the art form of the 20th Century. Maybe it’s being extended to the 21st?) I also had to wonder what writers had been feed into Chai AI’s learning to create the prose? (Being that ChatGPT stole many authors books for its “learning.”) If other author’s books were used in Chai AI, does Heti need to share credit with them? Does Chai AI also deserve credit as the writer of this story along with Heti? Also, how much editing and rearranging was needed to create this story? I see why The New Yorker printed this story for its “AI Issue” as it raises many ethical questions, as well as makes me wonder how much can a writer use AI and still call it “their” story? In the end, what makes someone, or something a creator?

    On the Story Side of Things: Yeah, I didn’t find the story to be very compelling. Oh, it moved along at a clip, but it never felt like it was going anywhere. Before I found out that it was “written” by AI, I had this thought that the story felt like what a freshman English major would write if they were asked to create an absurdist/surrealist short story. Sure, it has some jabs at Christianity and the Patriarchy, but I could never tell if these were meant to be honest criticism, or more an attempt at making a joke. The story, not surprising, doesn’t feel like there is a heart in it. And the fact that the AI element was revealed at the end, leads me to believe that I was supposed to think a human “wrote” this, only to have it revealed that it was written in conjunction with AI. That’s kind’a gimmicky, if I’m going to be honest. And also goes back to the ethical aspect; when does the audience need to know that AI was involved with the creation of a story?

    What I am saying here is that, yes, you should read this story. I respect that Sheila Heti is the type of writer, and an artist, to tackle AI, and see if there is a way for writers to use it. That does take courage, because as far as I know, she is the first person to give something like this a try. The end result isn’t the best, but if literature is going to continue to grow and explore as an art form, then experiments like this are needed.

  • Day Two with a Sick Kid (Random Stuff)

    To answer the question from yesterday’s blog, yes I am using my sick kid to procrastinate. Half the day has gone by, and only now am I getting around to do the stuff I need to do.

    I started the day on the right foot, though. I was up on time, and sat down on the couch and got about twenty good minutes writing in my journal. I hashed out all the stuff that had happened yesterday; sick kid, pediatrician visit, lack of production, and also I got stuck in a death spiral of thinking about all the mistakes I made five years ago, and how much of an idiot I was  and why I just can’t let that shit go, you know.

    Then the kid got up. She didn’t look good; low fever, headache, sick to her stomach. We sent her back to bed with some children’s Tylenol. In the quiet two hours that followed, I could have got some work done, but again, I found myself on my phone. I did the dishes, but honestly, that was another delay tactic on my behalf.

    A minute ago, we sat down and did her homework together. I mean, I was sitting next to her while she did it. It was more like overseeing homework. If she wanted some screen time, then I said she needed to get the majority of her work done, which she did. We only have to do thirty minutes of reading, and I intend to read the latest New Yorker short story.

    But I want to make chicken stock, so I have the base to make potato leek soup for dinner tonight. And I haven’t sketched in a while, so it would be nice to tackle that today was well. And that one flash story got rejected from another magazine – that would be the piece that I have been trying to rewrite for a week now. Yeah, I think this is the sign that I need to do the rewrite.

    Let’s see how much I can get done.

  • The Ol’ Sick Kid Bit

    I had plans today, but the kid got sick. Well, she got sick at school and I had to go and pick her up. I mean, she woke up early and wasn’t feeling the best, but she said it was only a headache and she could deal with it. Then, when she got to school, she started feeling worse, and her teacher called me to say that I should come and pick her up.

    Which I did. And she didn’t look good when I got her. Real pale, and whimpering a little, too. Just a sad sack. When we got home, she took a nap right away. She never takes naps, so the fact that she took one leads me to believe that she actually wasn’t feeling good.

    As for my plans… they’re shot to hell. I got the laundry done, and I will get a blog out today. Yet, I doubt I will make it to my journal, and there was this rewrite of a flash piece that I wanted to complete.

    But… We just watched an old David Tennant Doctor Who episode. That was kind’a cool.

    But… I’m still not getting my work done.

    At some point I have to start asking myself if I’m being a good dad, or am I rationalizing my procrastination? You know, using the kid as an excuse.

    I feel like I should be doing more, creating more, and then I also have this feeling come over me that none of this really matters. It is a fool’s errand that I am on; somehow thinking that any of this amounts to something.

    If it gives me purpose? If it means something to me? Does that have value?

    You know, following my bliss only seems to lead me introspective questions.