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A fuzzy friend of mine pointed me to this amazingly fun website that has “translators” that use AI to “translate” text input.
But not into real world languages, oh no. That’s boring. Google Translate can do that, as can countless apps today.
No, this site “translates” your text into fun stuff. For example :
Here’s the opening few paragraphs of yesterday’s blog entry :
The world has stopped making sense.
So I go to do my weekly shopping, buying from Superstore via DoorDash. I bring up the Superstore site on DoorDash and immediately know something is wrong because the “things you previously bought” strip only has ten items on it
What the great big galloping FUCK?
I click on “show all” and…. nothing changes. Instead of my usual screen full of like sixty different products, I got just those ten things.
And therefore I am completely lost.
some guy you know
Now here it is “translated” into Windows 95 :
Error: System Failure! The world has encountered an unexpected glitch.
Initiating shopping protocol via DoorDash at Superstore. Homepage loading…anomaly detected: only ten items in the ‘previous purchases’ array.
What the blazes?!
Clicking ‘show all’… access denied. Instead of my traditional interface brimming with over sixty selections, I am left with a mere ten.
Fatal Error: System cannot proceed. Lost in the digital void!
And here it is “translated” into New York lingo :
Yo, the whole world’s gone wacko. I’m just tryin’ to grab my weekly groceries, hittin’ up Superstore through DoorDash, ya feel me? I pull up the Superstore page and right away I’m like, something ain’t right, fam—only ten items in my ‘previously bought’ section. What the actual hell? I hit ‘show all’ and… nada, same ol’ ten. Usually I got a full spread of like sixty items to choose from, but now I’m just lost in the sauce.
But by far the most amazing “translators” are the ones that do rap :
Yo, the world’s gone crazy, feels like a mess,
Headin’ to the store, gotta shop with finesse.
Hit up Superstore, DoorDash on the scene,
But only ten things, man, what does it mean?
I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ click ‘show all’ real quick,
Nothin’ changes, just a tiny flick.
Used to see sixty, now it’s just ten,
Lost in this maze, where do I begin again?
It’s not really great rap, but still. Wow.
See, all the other applications of AI are very impressive and I certainly have had a heck of a lot of fun trying them out, but this is the application that tickles me the most on a purely personal level, with me being a wordsmith and all.
And yes, pedants, I know that these “translators” might not technically be AI.
Ask me if I care.
So like, playing with language is kind of a “thing” with me. Other kids had toys, I had books and comedy and all the funny people on TV. For as long as I can remember, words have played a central role in my life.
I mean, I learned to read when I was only three years old. That’s how far back my obsession with language goes.
And my attempts to be funny. That’s one thing I can say for sure I am driven to do because no matter how often I completely failed to be funny, I just kept trying.
And the end result is the nonstop cavalcade of comedy you know and love today!
In a way, it’s weird that it took me as long as it did – until 2011 – to figure out what I really needed to do was write.
I guess I long suspected there was a writer in me somewhere but it took doing my Million Word Year to really get that shit jumpstarted.
And it’s been 1000 words a day ever since that ended.
It’s kind of impressive, really.
More after the break.
There’s got to be something wrong with you
For years I have been saying that there’s got to be something wrong with you if you want to be an artist.
And being one of them tricky artist types, I actually mean two things by this.
There’s the obvious meaning, along the lines of, “yeah, you have to be crazy to want to make a living in the creative arts, ha ha!”
But what I really mean is that I truly think there has to be something at least a little bit broken in your head for you to actually get good at it.
Some process has to have started in your head that, given time, sprouts like a seed and then just grows and grows in some obscure corner of the mind over the years, being fed everything you experience and learn, until it’s gargantuan.
The malfunction, so to speak, is what create the conditions for it to grow out of control like that. It’s the lack of a counterbalancing process, maybe even one that is normally vital in maintaining mental stability, that allows for this strange symbiote we call our talent to grow so enormous, even at our own expense.
It certain feels like it feeds on me as much as I feed on it sometimes.
This is why so many of us creative genius types are diagnosably nuts. It’s not a coincidence so many of us are plagued by our “demons”.
Without those demons, we’d just be normal, well balanced, ordinary people. We might be happier, maybe by a lot, but we’d be just like everybody else too.
So it’s rolling dice with the devil every single time. The demons might win, like they have with me for all these years, and keep you all to themselves, and not let you use that big bloated talent for anything productive, just lock you away in your own mind.
But you also might win and get to harness those demons and have them pull you into greatness, or at least get you out of your damned head for a while.
So far, I’ve been just hiding from the world while that talent of mine grows out of control and threatens to destroy its host.
That still might happen. I might roll snake eyes and then my health goes boom and I die or end up in that hospital bed full of tubes, helpless to do anything with all this talent I have been growing over the years.
But I might finally make it out of this goddamned gulag too.
And if I do, I am going to burn my name into the sky.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.