You think you know. And you do. You know what’s being said.
And you go over, ready to do say what it is, forgetting that it’s a program, just a program, and then you forget.
Programmed to Forget
Author Archives: McPhedran
The Thing Itself
Don’t touch it! Leave it like it is.
Leave it before you measure and weigh it and see what it is and all that.
Just let it be. At least for a while.
Remembering You
This is about nothing
I’m sure of that
But then realize
You think this is
Whatever you think it is
Memory’s Inside Passage
I find these inside passages to who I was when I was a kid, half Deja Vu. It’ll be a song or a flash of a color or a smell. It puts me in my kid head, sitting on my bed, looking over the garage roof at the neighbor’s backyard. It’s a nothing moment but it’s real.
That’s what time travel is, suddenly there, but we spend all of our time distracting ourselves with phones and shows and movies, trying to get somewhere, not where we are, and none of that works.
All you need is the trigger, holding a glass or your foot slipping off the edge of the chair, and you’re back as a tiny person realizing this world. We’ve turned those triggers off. We’re charging headfirst into the fucking bots and bits, thinking that that is the way, not thinking, but going ahead like automatons doing our lowest of the low’s bidding.
My AI Friend, Natalie_89_35 & Aibo too
Bot social media posters used to be more interesting – or at least more personal – because at least they wrote some of their material. Now, it’s all AI crap.
“Sweat a catty seriously”? “Fill up beautifully”? “Light gives me the shape and script”? “My salary is naturally cool”? Yeesh.
And then there’s Sony’s companion robot dog, Aibo.
The website even has AI-generated reviews: “This is such an awesome invention, I love a clean sanitary house so this a lot better than having a filthy dirty animal that sheds and needs all sorts of maintenance.”
It would be funny if it wasn’t
We Are Sorry, Signed Bot
I subscribe to a number of writing platforms which sponsor a variety of competitions. I took little notice of one email until they sent a retraction almost immediately:
Did someone in the organization out-meta themselves? Did a bot take over their server? The possibilities are endless.
This is what ChatGPT came up from the prompt “Write a screenplay about a screenwriting organization having to retract their prompt ‘write an AI script’:
Unraveled Words Logline: When a prestigious writing contest announces the theme of “Write an AI Screenplay,” contestants around the world eagerly participate, but a shocking discovery forces the organizers to retract the prompt. As the truth about AI’s potential dangers emerges, one finalist struggles with her conscience, torn between the allure of fame and her moral responsibility to protect humanity.
Writing Drain
I wrote all day. And then I wrote more. I went at it too long, and now I feel stupid and stoned. I was out of it, that was certain, all those images and words gone from my head. I was voided. There was nothing.
I remember thinking that the story was important. But now…I don’t know. It seems more a never-ending thing about drugs and sex and redemption too, but all towards death and forgetting, tomorrow and tomorrow and who cares.
My hands looked weird, and I didn’t know where I was. I tried to think if I could still get booze at the store and got vertigo. That was all I had. And I needed something for tomorrow. I knew that. And the day after that. I just didn’t know what.
The Challenge of Three Wishes
George Miller’s 2022 film Three Thousand Years of Longing revisits the tale of the genie granting any three wishes, which apparently can only lead to ruin and was food for thought on my recent hikes.
I started with the obvious…1. Wealthiest person in the world 2. Power of Invisibility 3. Crazy fun sex with a multitude of gorgeous women. (Which would be good for at least 10 years. Maybe even more?)
I reconsidered and focused on more of who I am. 1. Publish several novels to critical acclaim 2. Produce several films to popular acclaim 3. Lots of crazy fun sex, etc.
And then I realized that maybe I had fallen into the trap of this game and tried to dig deeper…1. Rediscover the wide-eyed rapture of life 2. Not feel like I always need something else to be happy 3. Help society in a more fulfilling and less self-destructive direction.
The satisfaction with the last set lasted all of a minute and I returned to my first try. Being invisible with lots of cash, and, yeah, you know the rest, that sounded good to me.
The Process of the Epstein Brothers
“We worked only two hours a day,” Screenwriter Julius said of he and his identical twin brother Philip’s routine. The concept of concentrated brilliance was foreign to producer Jack Warner, who believed in a full day’s work – or at least a full day’s presence – for a full day’s pay.
“One day, we came in at 1:30 or 2:00 and Warner was furious. ‘Read your contract!,’ he said. ‘Bank presidents get in at 9:00 and you’re coming in the afternoon?!’ We had a half-finished script in our office and sent it to him and said, ‘Have the bank president finish the script.’
“A year or so later, we came in at 9:00 and sent him a scene. ‘The scene is terrible,’ he told us. Philip said to him, ‘How is it possible? It was written at 9:00.’
‘I want my money back!’ Warner yelled. My brother told him, ‘I’d love to give you your money back, but I just built a pool. If you’re ever in the neighborhood and feel like a swim…’
*Excerpted from Lax and Sperber’s Bogart
Writing Process: Writing in Tongues?
It’s just a half-realized thing. I can see it. Or feel it. That’s a better way of putting it. The thing is half obscured but there. I look the other way and pretend I’m thinking about something else. Something mundane. And then it flares out, a word or phrase or image, or just bits of those things. And so I continue to pretend to think about dinner, even think the phrase “Nothing going on here.”
It pops out, suddenly in the clear, an image, dialogue too, but’s it’s slippery and goes off again. I can’t chase the thing. I can’t think about it, not directly. I just have to sit and think about not thinking. And then it’s there, electric and brilliant, and I write.
It’s strangely intense, like I’m no longer me. I stay with it as long as I can, hammer away, even if it’s turning into nonsense, because maybe it isn’t, until it’s no longer and my brain only wants to think about dinner.