Parody – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Predictions For 2026

“Since when can weathermen predict the weather, let alone the future?” – Back to the Future

When I was a train engineer I derailed a lot of trains. How many? Don’t know, it’s hard to keep track.

Here are my predictions for 2026. I remote-viewed them, wrote them down, and then buried them in a (clean) mayonnaise jar in my backyard. Then I remembered that I needed a post on exactly that topic, and so I dug them up and typed them out.

Enjoy!

January 2026

January 3: Trump announces his New Year’s resolution “Nothing. Why would I want to change Donald J. Trump?”
January 11: The FBI raids a Midwest farm after confusing a silo full of Mexicans with the missing Epstein files. A federal judge immediately rules that Mexicans found in silos are not subject to deportation.
January 20: CNN runs a special titled: “2026: The Year Democracy Dies Again?” for the tenth straight year, boosting their ratings among the twelve people who still pay for cable.

February 2026

February 6: Winter Olympics® opens with a “climate-friendly” torch lit by a vegan candle carried by a gay transgender disabled Syrian woman, which immediately goes out because the Italians forgot to buy propane.
February 22: Team USA© dominates curling after recruiting displaced Indian Sikh Canadian truckers who know a thing or two about sliding heavy things on ice while yelling incomprehensibly.
February 22: Olympic® viewership hits record lows when NBC replaces hockey highlights with a two-hour segment on “toxic masculinity in slap shots.”

March 2026

March 8: Daylight Saving Time springs clocks forward, again. For no apparent reason.
March 12: President Trump announces his “Golden IRS Lottery” where, if your number is chosen, you get to choose where your taxes are spent. ICE budget triples.
March 17: Patrick’s Day parades nationwide celebrate traditional Irish halal food and bright green burkas.

April 2026:

April Fool’s Day prank goes wrong when media reports “Epstein files released” and it turns out it was just a college-ruled wire-bound notebook filled with graffiti (mainly “VAN HALEN RULEZ!”) from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s sophomore year.
April 15: Tax Day sees record extensions filed after H&R Block’s™ A.I. chatbot advises everyone to “identify as a 501(c)(3) mosque or Somali daycare to avoid taxes.”
April 24: President Trump cancels Administrative Professionals’ Day, tweeting®, “They’re secretaries, dammit! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”

May 2026

May 5: After losing the Ohio Gubernatorial Primary, Vivek Ramaswamy drops out of politics to, “focus my time on my family and also on founding a scam calling center in Hyderabad because Americans don’t work hard enough.”
May 5: Cinco de Mayo is renamed on college campuses to “Five of May Oppressed Genderqueer Migrant Day” to avoid cultural appropriation.
May 10: Mother’s Day renamed to Non-Gender-Specific Parental Acknowledgement Day.
May 20: Governor Tim Walz announces “a revolution in construction” as a $5 billion dollar Somali hospital is constructed in less than one month. “These Somalis, so ingenious! To think, this hospital looks like a piece of farm ground planted in soybeans, yet it’s a fully-functioning multibillion dollar hospital with 3,000 employees.”

June 2026

June 5: Godzilla returns to Tokyo, completing his annual migration.
June 12: Russian President Vladimir Putin declares victory after capturing the town of Kantpronounski Det, noting that the small farm village is strategic and will set the stage for yet another glorious victory soon.
June 14: Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy announces that Ukrainian forces have recaptured the barn at Kyantproynounskyy Dett, and requests another €250,000,000,000 (a € is a metric $) for “celebration party favors.”
June 19: The Juneteenth federal holiday leads to record-low office attendance as everyone realizes three-day weekends are the real reparations.

July 2026

July 4: America’s 250th birthday features a UFC® championship match at the Trump-Kennedy Center, followed by an open-air WWE™ IndependenceSlam© in the grounds surrounding the Trump-Washington Monument, with a buffet following at the Trump-Smithsonian Institute.
July 4: Fireworks displays canceled in California, Washington, and Oregon due to “wildfire risk and emotional trauma to dogs,” but are replaced with drone light shows spelling “Stolen Land Acknowledgment Day.”
July 28: Heat wave blamed on climate change by CNN® until someone on the panel points out it’s July and “It’s always hot in July”, the conversation immediately shuts down due to “denialism.”

August 2026

August 14: Los Angeles preps for the 2028 Olympics® by banning cars in a 50-mile radius around venues “for sustainability.”
August 20: Dog days of summer see PETA© demand air-conditioned doghouses while simultaneously protesting meat-based pet food as speciesist. “The natural state of cats, dogs, and other forest animals is veganism. Didn’t you see Snow White®?”
August 22: Pumpkin spice everything returns early, prompting middle-aged white women to cause a dire shortage of leg warmers, which have yet to be knitted by the robot leg warmer machine in China.

September 2026

September 10: The NFL® kicks off the season with the Star Spangled Banner being replaced by two minutes and twenty-two seconds of uncontrolled sobbing and the repeated words “I’m so sorry” and a moment of silence for “systemic inequities in tackling.”
September 11: 9/11 remembrances in New York City cancelled due to Mayor Mamdani demanding “context” about American foreign policy and showing that the “hijackers were the real heroes.”
September 22: A hurricane slams directly into New Orleans, doing $30 billion in badly needed demolition.

October 2026

October 1: Early voting starts and poll workers note that it is entirely normal to receive 30,000,000 mail-in ballots before the ballots were printed.
October 31: Halloween canceled at Harvard®, and replaced with “Fall Cultural Appreciation Day” where costumes are limited to “your own lived experience.” Somali students are allowed to dress as pirates.

November 2026

November 3: Midterm elections see Democrats roll out a giant, holographic, A.I. powered JFK to campaign for senate. Republicans lose three Senate seats to Democrat A.I. candidates and 17 House seats to people “no longer technically alive but identifying as alive”.
November 4: Vivek Ramaswamy indicates he’s now a Democrat, has always been a Democrat, and he’ll sue you if you dispute it.
November 23: Election night coverage lasts 20 straight days after Pennsylvania finds 400,000 mail-in ballots in a convenience store parking lot. A federal judge rules they must all be immediately counted, added to the vote total, and then burned.

December 2026

December 2: The incoming Speaker of the House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announces that she will be filing a new impeachment charge against President Trump every day until “that mean poopy head stops making me sad.”
December 15: AOC announces that Christmas displays will be banned in public spaces unless they include Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Ramadan, and “Winter Solstice Inclusivity” elements.
December 22: Eggnog sales skyrocket as the only remaining legal way to cope with 2026 coming to an end.
New Year’s Eve: Times Square replaces the ball drop with a “gentle lowering of a non-geometrically conforming blob” to avoid triggering viewers.

Die Ho Ho Ho: A Christmas Carol

A bit of something lighthearted for Christmas. I’ll have another Christmas song for Christmas day.

Behind The Music:
All the songs so far are here (LINK). Still working on the downloadable stuff.

Die Ho Ho Ho
by John Wilder

Deck the halls with boughs of Holly Genaro
Fa la la la la, la la la la
John McClane needs more dinero
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Terrorists crash the festive cheer
Fa la la, la la la, la la la
Hans Gruber’s plan is crystal clear
Fa la la la la, la la la la

Yippee-ki-yay, Father Christmas night!
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Nakatomi’s tower, what a fight!
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Barefoot hero squirms the vents so tight
Fa la la, la la la, la la la
Saves the day with guts and dynamite
Fa la la la la, la la la la

‘Tis the season to be crawling
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Through the elevator, the bad guys falling
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Holly’s a hostage, Argyle’s drivin’
Fa la la, la la la, la la la
Powell’s on the radio, forgivin’
Fa la la la la, la la la la

Yippee-ki-yay, Father Christmas night!
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Machine guns blaze under twinkling lights!
Fa la la la la, la la la la
John drops Hans from the Nakatomi height
Fa la la, la la la, la la la
Ho ho ho, now I have a gun, right
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Now the snow falls on the wreckage below
Fa la la, la la la, la la la
Family reunited in the glow
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Evil thwarted on this holy eve
Fa la la, la la la, la la la
Die Hard Christmas, we believe!

Yippee-ki-yay, Mother Christmas all!
Fa la la la la, la la la la
From the party start to Hans Gruber’s fall!
Fa la la la la, la la la la
Peace on Earth, with an American yell
Fa la la, la la la, la la la

It Should Have Been . . . 1970s

“Does your physical disability preclude you from coming to the point?” – The Eiger Sanction

In 1970, baseball pitcher Doc Ellis pitched a no-hitter while stoned on LSD, which is less impressive when you realize that in 1970 all the batters were on LSD, too.

The Oscar® is, after piles of cash, the biggest award in Hollywood™. It is when the industry votes on who they feel is the best of their very, very visible profession. Oh, sure, the people who influence more lives, like the guys who invent ways to clean water or manage the building of the interstate highway system get awards, but those are ignored because illegal aliens hadn’t made driving spicey again.

I’ve decided that I’d go through the decades (at least a few of them) and start comparing who won the Oscar™ versus who I think should have won for both best picture and best actor. Since Hollywood® now thinks that men are exactly the same as women, I’ve decided to skip the best actress and just name the one I think is hottest.

After going through all of the movies of the 1970s, they sucked. The 1970s was a dismal, joyless decade of crappy movies, for the most part, which is why my “It Came From . . . “ series is done going backwards into the past.

All movies are from the ones I’ve seen. There are a lot of movies I haven’t seen from the 1970s, and I’m probably better off for that.

Here we go:

1970

Best Picture: Patton. Biopic of, perhaps, the greatest tactical Allied general of World War II.

Should have been: Patton. Reason: I like tanks.

Best Actor: George C. Scott, Patton. Perhaps the best choice possible of someone who could play Patton.

Should have been: Donald Sutherland, Kelly’s Heroes. Disagree? Always with the negative waves, man. Plus, still has tanks.

Hottest Actress: Sandra Dee, The Dunwich Horror. Especially in that one outfit.

1971

Best picture: The French Connection. Didn’t see it because I don’t like the French.

Should have been: Dirty Harry or Vanishing Point (Tie). So hard to choose, so I decided I didn’t have to.

Best Actor: Gene Hackman, The French Connection.

Should have been: Kurt Russell, The Barefoot Executive. A very reserved performance from Kurt Russell of what should have been a long string of Oscars™.

Hottest Actress: Jill St. John, Diamonds are Forever. Honorable mention: The “more buoyant than her sister” Lana Wood (also Diamonds are Forever) in her role as Plenty O’Toole (named after her father).

1972

Best Picture: The Godfather. A movie that came together perfectly for Francis Ford Coppola and is now one that many view as one of the best movies ever made.

Should have been: The Night Stalker. This made-for-TV movie featuring veteran actor Darren McGavin about the exploits of a plucky Chicago newsman is simply more fun.

Best Actor: Marlon Brando, The Godfather.

Should have been: Ned Beatty, Deliverance. What goes on in the mountains, stays in the mountains.

Hottest Actress: No entry. I looked. Dismal. 1972 was probably the nadir for hot chicks in Hollywood©.

1973

Best Picture: The Sting. Long documentary about how people develop allergic reactions to insect venom that I saw in health class. I’ll pass, thank you.

Should have been: The Exorcist. Long documentary about Rosie O’Donnell’s childhood.

Best Actor: Jack Lemmon, Save the Tiger. No idea what this even is.

Should have been: Clint Eastwood, High Plains Drifter. Yeah. Guns. Dynamite. Retribution from beyond the grave. Yeah.

Hottest Actress: Mariana Hill from High Plains Drifter gets the nod – she is also Norman Schwartzkopf’s cousin, so, more tanks.

1974

Best Picture: The Godfather, Part II. Some people like it even better than the first one making it even more classic-er.

Should have been: The Man with the Golden Gun. Bond putting a midget in a basket so he can bang hotties? Yes.

Best Actor: Art Carney, Harry and Tonto. Seriously? Who voted for this crap?

Should have been: Sean Connery, Zardoz. Any actor that can wear that orange jockstrap for an entire movie and not laugh wins.

Hottest Actress: Susan Penhaligon, Land That Time Forgot. Not a lot of competition this year, and she looked great struggling against that quicksand.

1975

Best Picture: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Revenge fantasy where a Native American kills a white guy in the end.

Should have been: The Eiger Sanction. Clint Eastwood, spies, mountain climbing, double crossing, murder.

Best Actor: Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Should have been: Kurt Russell, The Strongest Man in the World. It should have been Kurt’s year, with this poignant portrayal of a victim of science gone mad.

Hottest Actress: That girl at the beginning of Jaws, but I think she was an acquired taste.

1976

Best Picture: Rocky. Tale of a bum who became a boxer. I can play the theme on a bass drum.

Should have been: Rocky or The Outlaw Josey Wales. I’ve seen Rocky two times, I think. I’ve seen The Outlaw Josey Wales about twenty, because when I flipped through the channels, regardless of where it was in the movie I’d watch it.

Best Actor: Peter Finch, Network. Sure, I’ve seen the same clip, but that’s all I’ve seen.

Should have been: Sylvester Stallone, Rocky. His perfect movie.

Hottest Actress: Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Logan’s Run. Close second? Jennie Agutter, Logan’s Run.

1977

Best Picture: Annie Hall. Crap.

Should have been: Smokey and the Bandit. Not crap.

Best Actor: Richard Dreyfuss, The Goodbye Girl, meh actor in crap movie.

Should have been: The Car, The Car. A much better actor with a much better range than Dreyfuss, since during The Car’s scenes, you could hardly tell he was a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III, which is pretty impressive acting.

Hottest Actress: Marilyn Chambers, Rabid. The Ivory Snow™ girl grown way up. Way up.

1978

Best Picture: The Deer Hunter, a how-to video on how to win at high-stakes Asian gambling.

Should have been: National Lampoon’s Animal House. Animal House was unique, in that it was a comedy that had a plot, yet the comedy never overwhelmed the plot until the end, and the writers gave up.

Best Actor: John Voight, Coming Home. The world did not need this movie. I don’t have anything against Voight personally, since he’s never hit me up for that $20 I borrowed from him.

Should have been: Tommy Chong, Up in Smoke. It’s amazing what life a Shakespearean-trained actor at Julliard and former astrophysicist Tommy Chong can bring to a role. Or in this case a rolled joint.

Hottest Actress: Annie Potts, Corvette Summer. Another rough year, I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find Annie.

1979

Best Picture: Kramer vs. Kramer. Kramer vs. Kramer was used to normalize divorce to a public that still regarded it as skeevy. Plus? Boring. It would have been better if it were just Michael Richards from Seinfeld arguing with himself for two hours.

Should have been: Alien, Apocalypse Now, The Jerk, literally anything but Kramer vs. Kramer.

Best Actor: Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs. Kramer. Watching Kramer vs. Kramer made me wish that I could ask Dustin “Is it safe?” for a few hours.

Should have been: Angus Scrimm, Phantasm. Being the Tall Man was an understated role, all he had to do was be evil while the evil dwarves and spike-spheres had to do all the hard work.

Hottest Actress: Bernadette Peters, The Jerk. It was her or Sigourney Weaver in Alien, so I went with cute over space underwear.

Movies got (generally) better and women got hotter as the decade went on. Still, a far weaker decade than we’ll see when (in November) we get to the 1980s where the women were hotter and the movies were better. Oscar®? He still missed most of the best movies and performances, since even though movies were better, the voters of The Academy™ were stuck getting high on their own supply. Your take?

Parody Editorial: “We Leftists Lost. Why?” Complete With Salt Mine Of Leftist Tears

“I can’t believe you like money too. We should hang out.” – Idiocracy

You too can mine the salt of a billion GloboLeftist tears.

Parody Guest Editorial by Rebecca Applebaum

Our mistake was thinking we lived in a better country. I want to assure you that, you, GloboLeftist voter, are perfect and pure. There was in no way a problem with a candidate whose major achievements in life was getting an attendance award and showing up. While the lies, resentment, racism and misogyny of the Trump campaign were apparent to anyone as pure as we are, I believe that democracy was lost when the majority of Americans chose a competent white convicted felon Hitler who wants to holocaust, um someone over a Black woman. Our mistake was to think that democracy would work when people wanted competency (a dog whistle for white supremacy!) over a diverse POC who could read a teleprompter. And she read so well, at least at an eighth-grade level!

Only we, the GloboLeft, knew where the problems were and wanted to fix them. It is amazing to think that places like X.com could allow unfettered speech that wasn’t controlled, so ideas couldn’t be rigorously vetted by GloboLeftist fact checkers! We knew that toxic masculinity would want sexist things like a “marriage” (code word for establishing a Handmaid’s Tale world!) and family (oppression of women’s right to take jobs to make PowerPoints™ rather than be domestic slaves to their unwanted offspring.

In fact, we know that we should not change. We need to make sure that trans girls can play basketball against other girls, despite being 6’3” and able to bench press 225, since we know that’s no advantage. They dared call us “weather retards” when we want to keep a particular climate that existed between 1895 and 1953 rather than allow dangerous climate change to require us to raise our buildings six centimeters if they’re on the beach! We let them complain about their housing costs when otherwise strawberries might cost as much as $0.50 more a quart if we didn’t allow Guatemalans to live in four-star hotels in New York.

The media has failed us – they didn’t portray Donald Trump nearly as Hitlerly as we wanted them to, despite showing a Nazi rally that happened only 87 years ago, yesterday, when Donald Trump held a rally in that same place. Which is not at all what Bill Clinton did when he accepted the Democratic nomination, since Bill Clinton is not at all Hitlery. Plus, Russian collusion!

It sticks in my craw that that this affront to democracy happened when a vast majority of Americans voted for someone. That’s not at all our democracy. It’s because the voters are awful who disagree with the GloboLeft. And I certainly think that you should try to get Hondurans deported now that we know LatinX voters are going to turn into Hitler supporters over time.

What is the solution?

It is certainly not to look at our failings and how our message of incompetence and crony capitalism combined with mainly aimless spending coupled with bureaucratic incompetency isn’t right. Our message is right. Every white person is a racist and white women are even misogynist! Imagine that! I imagine they pretend they’re in Margaret Atwood’s glorious non-fiction book, The Handmaid’s Tale, as those strong, virile, white men thrust against them as their hands are bound, and they’re powerless to resist them, finally giving up and giving over to the pleasure . . . oh, I’m sorry. Got lost for a moment. White women are awful. They voted for this.

And, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr! How dare Donald Trump consider replacing Rachel Levine, trans hero and doctor, as a member of our federal bureaucracy. Kennedy, a curse on that hallowed family name, even thinks that the glorious COVID vaccine wasn’t glorious. Even though science says this largely untested vaccine is certainly safer than breathing. Why, Kennedy, with those strong muscles and couldn’t stand for a second in Rachel Levine’s size 18 pumps!

But the worst is Elon Musk. Elon Musk dares to allow people to say almost anything they want to on his hate-filled platform, X. They can show mean pictures of things that aren’t even true, like that squirrel, Peanut, clad in armor and blame what they call an authoritarian state just for serving a search warrant and keeping that horrible man who saved Peanut from a life in a house with people he loved and then, mercifully, euthanized him. I don’t understand it. They don’t even make plate armor for squirrels. And if a squirrel can’t be wild, it must be killed.

Why can’t MAGA understand that?

These are damaged people.

What should we do?

There is no way we should engage, at all, in self-reflection to understand why a vast majority of people in this country didn’t like our message. That majority simply doesn’t understand our democracy.

Also, we should keep looking for the most extreme cases of trans people, like the trans woman who wants to be on the girls’ swim team and let people know how Hitlery they are when they are bigots who don’t want middle-aged men looking at naked young girls in the locker room. This is normal because science from the last six months of human existence says so!

And keep sharing your stories like this one:

I was at a voting location in a deep-red state and a man with a beard covered in tobacco juice was standing behind a woman. She had a black eye. The man was telling the woman, I assume his wife, how to vote. I reported this to the precinct clerk and he just put some tobacco in his lip and said, “This is MAGA country, missy!”

Or this one:

My twelve-year-old daughter came up to me and said, “If only twelve-year-olds could vote, Adolf Drump would never have been elected since we know that the potential impact of tariffs may have an inflationary impact on our economy.” And then everyone in the Starbucks™ clapped.

Things like this don’t sound made up at all, and make us more relatable.

Again, the problem isn’t us and our message being incoherent or directly unconnected with reality. No. It’s someone else. And we’ll be the ones that will have to pick up the pieces, unless they put us in Handmaid’s Tale outfits and, oh, those thrusting hips. Whew. There must be Global Warming because it’s certainly getting hot in here.

Rebecca Applebaum is the author of the books, Why Not Me: Why Do Men Ignore Me and the follow-up, Why White Men Who Won’t Date Me Are the Cause Of All Bad Stuff, Especially Brad Who I Had A One-Night Stand With And Who Never Called Me Back. Her new book, Cats, Wine, and Toxoplasmosis Are Why I Hate Trump is due to hit bookstores next month.

(Inspired by this piece of trash – LINK)

Wilder’s Cures for Male Loneliness

“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.” – Jaws

If you’re lonely you could buy some stocks. Then you’d have some company.

In July, the New York Times® ran a story titled, Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Out on the Pickleball Court? It wasn’t particularly political, and I think I can summarize it in just a few words: “If you’re a dude, have a few friends. The best friends are those that share some sort of common interest with you. Friends make you happy.” Writer Michelle Cottle strung those three sentences out into several hundred words of mainly forgettable fluff that would be obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than a Phoenix, Arizona winter temperature. In centigrade.

The real joy of this particular story, however, was the unleashing of memes. The picture that accompanied the article, however was, shall we say, regrettable. It’s above, showing a man (I think, it’s 2023, so who can even define a man in 2023) with massive, fat tears containing enough water to keep California going through a megadrought. I think he might be crying because he hates pickleball, or maybe because he can’t afford a shirt with sleeves.

I have so many orb memes.

Regardless, the /Internet/ reacted predictably to the picture, and created a list of memes that would make all those sages pondering orbs proud. I saved a few of them, just for you in the hopes that you, dear reader, might find your key to cure your loneliness. If you’re like me, you don’t have feelings other than cold, salty, and drunk, so I haven’t figured out what the whole “lonely” thing is.

Anyway, here are the memes, as found, with some annotation.

I think that drinking with Quint and killing sharks is definitely going to solve any issues with loneliness.

Curling? Not so much.

Now being in a Roman Legion? That’s the stuff! Hiking every day! Just avoid Germany.

It’s weird that the Turks mispronounce “Constantinople” as “Istanbul”.

I, for one am always happy when I’m at Chili’s. It is the booze.

I’ve never tried it, but, what could it hurt?

Now this looks inviting. I think termites like saloons, because they like the bar tender.

I wonder if he’ll be a crying-on-the-inside NPC?

Can confirm, this is fun until the cops show up.

Is the Wendigo related to the Whodigo, or the Wheredigo, or the Whatdigo?

Who can be lonely interacting with 400’ tall anime girls?

Travolta and Cage walk into a bar. Bartender says, “Why the wrong face?”

Lovecraft walked into a bar, and the rest is too humorous to even describe.

Ever notice that you never see Walken and Buscemi in the same place? Discuss.

Hell yeah, brother!

Well, even Hunter gets lonely.

I guess it didn’t work for Kaepernick.

But it might have worked out for Kaepernick’s dad.

Sometimes, it’s the simple things.

Or many simple things.

What’s a little psychosis between friends?

If I tried that, I’d be grounded.

Well, back to giant women . . .

And who doesn’t need another synthesizer?

Is there more to life?

Yes, yes there is.

Thankfully, my job will let me work as many hours as I want to.

There might be one other option?

Exclusive: Hunter Biden’s Secret Diary

“Look, you’re corrupt, we’re corrupt. There’s one difference. We’re honest about it.” – Get the Gringo

If Hunter ever goes to jail, I hope he names his prison memoir Biden Time.

We here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise® have come across a huge scoop: we have found the diaries of Hunter Biden from grade school all the way up to last week. They were left on the doorstop of our law firm, Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe with a note that said, “Too hot for James O’Keefe! Good luck, Johnny, I’m your biggest fan! – J.”

Cataloging the material was difficult, and there were times where I became concerned. Later pages were covered with powdery substances, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be in trouble with the DEA if they raided Stately Wilder Manor. No problem – my dog, Foreshadowing, ate them and then ran around the house 43 times. Then all of Foreshadowing’s teeth fell out and checks from Ukrainian mobsters started showing up in my mailbox.

I’ve skipped much of the information in the diaries, since it’s probably good to keep what happens between a man, his dog, seventeen Filipino hookers and a jar of peanut butter private. Of course, none of that happened, which is why I’m grateful the word “parody” exists.

July, 1977

I wanted my dad to take me to see starwars agin but he said know because dad said that he was woried we’d grow up in a raciall jungle. I like jungles! I talked with Beau, and Beau told me to shut up because I was too stupid to understand. I said, no, Im seven so I know wat a jungle is, but Beau said I had brain damage. I think I wanna coke.

June, 1988

Holy cow, boys, having your dad running for president is just friggin’ awesome! I was busted in Jersey with a bunch of drugs. I just flashed my driver’s license. Biden, bitches! It cracks me up that the old man is all “let’s get tough on drugs” but when I get bussssted, nada happens. Old man says that he’ll make a phone call. Cracks me up when dad says in speeches that all drug users should be held accountable. Ha! Unless your name is Biden. Bitches!

In a dictatorship in Africa, we’d call this corruption. Here? We don’t talk about it.

June, 1994

So, dad explains it this way. My grades at Georgetown were crap, but he pulled strings and got me into Georgetown law, which sucks, because Georgetown is so low rent. Of course, Beau had to go to dad’s alma mater, Syracuse. Today, it all changed! Apparently, dad had Bill Clinton call the dean, Guido Calabresi (seriously Goodfellas vibes) at Yale, and I can transfer from Georgetown to Yale! Dad says that since I’m a Biden, well, “don’t worry about grades, son” and I won’t! Woooo! Yale! It’s awesome to have the name Biden, bitches!!!

May, 2001

So, here I am at a law firm. My law firm! It’s called Oldaker, Biden and Belair. Join the firm, get your name on the door! How awesome is that? I think it’s because . . . I’m a Biden, bitches! Partner in one. The other thing is that absolutely no one here cares about how much you drink or how many drugs you do. Drink after lunch to take the edge off? Fine. My name’s on the door. Parties? Plenty of those, and the booze and, well, other things flow freely. I think I’m in heaven.

I love putting on warm underwear, fresh from the dryer. I then look around the laundromat and wonder who it belongs to.

September, 2008

Dad says I have to quit working as a lobbyist because Obummer said so. Dad said that being vice president was way better than being senator, so I have to stop doing God’s work, lobbying for online gambling, biotechnology companies, and colleges wanting federal funds, I mean, the most needy and moral people. I’m so sad.

February 19, 2014

Kicked out of the Navy Reserve today. Dad and I had a discussion, which means he yelled at me. “You idiot, you understood you were getting a drug test, right? And that coke is only detectable for a day or two, right? The head of the Joint Chiefs said that, and I quote, you had enough cocaine in your urine to qualify your urine as a controlled substance.” Yeah, it was bad. Not bad? My company, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, just got $3,500,000 sent to us from a Russian dude! Why? We’re not sure, but all I have to say is . . . Bidenz, Bitches!!!!

2014 was a very good year.

April, 2014

New job, new job, new job! This one has me being on the Board of Directors of some company in Ukraine. I think they make chlorine gas or helium gas or something. The best part? My salary. $1,000,000. A year! Bidenz, Bitches! Ha! Best part? I’m not sure I have to do anything!

April 14, 2017

My life has kinda been a haze since I got the job at Buriisma. Or however you spell it. A million bucks a year, but they cut my salary to half after dad was no longer veep. Dammit. Why couldn’t he have beaten Aunt Hillary? I think dad was scared, something about, “Don’t cross Hillary, that’s worse than the Chicago Mob.” But today I finally got divorced. Kathy was always upset about the cocaine and the crack and the Filipino prostitutes, but I think it was the video of the dog that got to her. She said, “Hunter, that’s enough. We’re done here.” I didn’t mention that Beau’s widow was looking pretty fine at the funeral . . . I wonder if that’s what finally put her over the edge? Or the fact that I was bangin’ Beau’s babe was on the front page of Page Six®?

Hunter’s date didn’t like bottles, she only liked it in the can.

August, 2018

Stripper? Arkansas? My kid? Jeez, how much crack did I do that night?

April, 2019

So, my laptop is broken. I think I dropped it off to get fixed, but I was so high that I’m not sure I did that or maybe the laptop ran away. I think the running away part was a dream. Regardless, what bad could come of that?

May, 2019

Met a girl, six days later we’re married. This will turn out well – Biden, Bitches!

October, 2020

Guess they found the laptop. Thankfully, all the CIA dudes signed a thing that said it wasn’t really mine. Whew! Dad would be mad about that if it was. I guess I believe the CIA guys, except a lot of those pictures look really familiar.

July, 2022

My art has done awesome! I must be good at art! My paintings have sold for lots of money! So far it’s over $1,300,000 for like 11 of them. It’s not as good as Buriisma money, but it’s still pretty good. I mean, some of those paintings took me hours to make. One person bought almost $900,000 of them. I’m not sure if she’s the one that dad appointed to that special commission, but, whatever. I’m an artist. Biden, bitches!

Shooting down the Chinese balloon is the only thing Biden has done to stop inflation.

June, 2023

My lawyer says I’m not in any trouble anymore. Turns out that he knows the DOJ guy and they have a deal worked out for special people like me that I can just claim I’ll pay my taxes in the future, and won’t buy anymore guns while all coked up. Excellent deal, plus they said they put in a sweetener – gets me immunity from essentially anything I’ve ever done up to now. Bidenz, Bitches!!!!

August, 2023

That stupid judge threw out my special deal. Dad says it will be fine, though. The same guy who negotiated it for the DOJ is now a “special prosecutor” which means that he “especially” won’t be prosecuting me for anything. And I have a child support deal that makes sure that Arkansas stripper’s kid gets some of my paintings. Sure! I can do about sixty of those a day!

You know, sometimes I like to reflect back on my life. I wonder if I would be an asset to society if I were living a clean, sober, honest life and financially supporting my children while not snorting enough drugs to paralyze Robert Downey, Jr while getting into less trouble for federal felonies than the average man would if they were arrested for jaywalking.

Nah.

Unfrozen Caveman Interview

“Hey, business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen what’s the difference? Let’s put it in my terms: you’re in a hostile takeover, you snatch us up for some green mail, but you’re not expecting some poison pill to be running around the building, am I right?” – Die Hard

Sorry I edited out Worf. He was such a prima Dorn-a.

I’m here with my friend, Coroc. Coroc was frozen in an accident in the year 5000 B.C. which may or may not have been related to the first recorded time a man said, “Oh, yeah? Hold my beer.”

Coroc was thawed after his body was found while a construction crew was excavating the foundations for a McDonald’s® that was being built in Kharkov. Coroc has since gotten a degree from Harvard® Law and an MBA from Wharton© and has also killed an elk with a pocket knife in the parking lot of a Wendy’s™. I’ve asked him for an interview so I could get in a few questions about his unique experiences in dealing with business and economic situations.

John Wilder (JW): Coroc, I image the world is much different than when you were frozen into a block of ice near Kharkov 7,000 years ago. What’s the best new invention that you’ve seen?

Coroc IceBeer (CI): PEZ®. It is a light and fruity brick of flavor that explodes in your mouth like Magorthath’s axe explodes the skulls of his feeble enemies. It makes me laugh, but not too much, for that is womanly.

JW: Your last name is IceBeer. Did you have beer back then?

Coroc: If we didn’t have beer, there would have been many maidens left unplowed, if you know what I mean. So, yes. Beer is, how you say, awesome, although I can assure you we would not have had any of that Bud Light™. We would rather have consumed the flat body of a badger that had been walked on by many horses and then left out on the ground for a week.

A crying Möbius strip walks into a bar, crying. The bartender asks, “What’s wrong?” The Möbius strip says, “Where do I even begin?”

JW: Whoa, that escalated quickly! Let’s change the subject a bit. When dealing with a middle manager that didn’t give you the appropriate chance for advancement, what did you do back then?

Coroc: This happened many times. When a leader was too old or feeble, we would simply say, “You, you are not fit to lead! Go and gather berries with the women or I will split your skull with my axe.” Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

JW: What happened if you fought?

Coroc: Well, depends on if you win or lose. Lose? No problem, since you were dead. Win? No problem, since you took his women, took his hut, and took his things. Only a real problem if his women were named Karen.

JW: Sounds violent.

Coroc: Yes, it was the original hostile takeover.

I don’t like sweeping. Floors are beneath me.

JW: Did people ever not have jobs?

Coroc: No. Everyone had a job. Need someone to go hunt? Yes. We always needed that. Need someone to go and fight the idiot tribe next door that wouldn’t turn their music down after eleven? Yes, men needed. Need someone to fish and drink beer? Yes. Always needed.

JW: What if someone didn’t want to help out?

Coroc: I don’t understand. I already told you about the hostile takeover.

JW: Let’s shift gears. Here in 2023, we have a complex economy that uses electronic ledgers to keep track of the movement of goods and services and the payment from one country to another. This is enforced with many central banks working together to balance the flow of currency from one country to another. How did you do that, Coroc?

Coroc: Crom. I thought 7,000 years would have made you people smarter. In my time, in Scythia, we had horses. We had women. Fiery, lusty women with big manes of blonde hair, massive thighs that they could crack walnuts with. Strong, birthing hips. We rode our horses, took our axes, and made piece with other tribes.

JW: Don’t you mean “peace” instead of “piece”?

Coroc: No. They gave us a piece. Simple. And no problem with Human Resources, since we treated every tribe exactly alike. And there was no corporate debt to worry about.

What do you call a heavy metal band with financial problems? Megadebt.

JW: When it came So you didn’t have to worry about interest rates?

Coroc: The only interest I had was in the rate my enemy would die so I could hear the lamentation of his women. I think that was our major metric on our KPI, the relative volume of the lamentation of the women.

JW: What about your stock market?

Coroc: It was pretty stable. You can only eat so much steak per day. We kept a close eye on our stocks.

JW: What was your retirement like?

Coroc: Retirement meant, mostly, hanging out with the gods once you died in battle. It was a pretty good plan, leave 5% of your lootings in a plan, get 2.5% tribal match. And there was free healthcare! If you had poor health, we didn’t care. See? Free. Simple.

JW: So, were you ever plagued by guilt over your colonizer attitude?

Coroc: (Sadly) Yes, we were sometimes feeling guilty of our ability as colonizers. There are only so many men that we could use to fight, so our ability to conquer even the feeble toothless enemies we had was limited. Why, some years we would only vanquish a few kingdoms and petty princelings.

Is the sculptor of his statue a Khan artist?

JW: Was there much poverty in your tribe?

Coroc: We had a great poverty prevention program. It was called starvation. Worked wonders.

JW: Last question, what about inflation? Did your tribe ever see inflation?

Coroc: Only under one leader who tried to make smooth round rocks currency. Worked horrible, pretty soon everyone was strong, though, infinite amount of small round rocks back in Scythia, so it was great leg day.

JW: What happened to that leader?

Coroc: Hostile takeover.

Neil Armstrong’s Secret Moon Diary, Revealed at Last

“The Moon Unit will be divided into two divisions: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.” – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

There’s always that one kid who won’t smile in the team picture.

(Repost from 2019)

I was at a garage sale the other day when I came across a small leather-bound journal in a box filled with Tupperware®. Embossed on the worn cover was a now faded and flecked NASA logo that had once been a solid, shiny gold. In the lower right-hand corner I noticed, so faded they were barely visible, two initials: N.A. I flipped through and saw page after page of journal entries in what I assumed to be Neil Armstrong’s printed writing. I quickly paid the $2.50 price on the orange sticker on the book.

Here are the journal entries:

7/14/69, 21:00:00 GMT

Countdown begins. I will admit to being a bit excited. A rocket launch is never a routine event. They’ve kept us busy though, re-practicing procedures, re-reviewing maps of the Sea of Tranquility, and, for Buzz Aldrin, eating meals consisting entirely of re-fried beans. He says it’s for luck. Michael Collins continues to be . . . Michael Collins. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile. Or blink.

7/16/69, 07:22:15 GMT

Last shower, shave and breakfast. Collins doesn’t eat anything, stares blankly ahead – I guess that’s the way he deals with stress. Buzz had 16 cups of coffee – I counted them – and about thirty eggs. “For luck.”

Fun fact: your car insurance may cover you if you’ve got a rental, but generally not if you leave the United States.

7/16/69, 13:00:00 GMT

Ignition of the main engines, then 17 long seconds later, liftoff as the Saturn V slowly moves past the tower. The first stage burns for three minutes, total, and then stage two kicks in after a brief lull, and burns for nearly six minutes. Two minutes later, we’re in orbit. All of this is exactly as planned, exactly as written down in the procedures. Eleven minutes for Apollo 11 to enter orbit. That’s got to be a good omen.

For the first time in the mission, we’ve got some time to kill. I can’t stop smiling. Collins continues to stare directly ahead. “Mike, are you doing okay?”

He slowly turned his head towards me: “All of my systems are operating at nominal levels.” He then turned his head back towards the controls.

Does he blink? I’m interrupted by groaning coming from Buzz.

“Oh, man, I’m hurting. I didn’t think about the pressure differential.” He’s holding his stomach.

The pressure inside the Apollo Command Module, Columbia, is only 5psi, or the pressure at the top of Mount Everest. At sea level on Earth, the pressure is 15psi, or three times as much. We don’t pass out, because the atmosphere is 100% oxygen.

Apparently the food that Buzz ate is causing him discomfort. A minute later, Buzz sighs.

It smells horrible. I said, “Oh, Buzz, how could you?” My eyes are watering. Eggs and beans. The smell is nearly incapacitating.

Even Collins jumped in, “My nasal sensors detect a significant increase in organic gasses in the atmosphere.”

Collins was rechargeable, thankfully.

Mission Control: “Apollo, are you alright up there? We have just monitored a significant increase in methane in the cabin? If this keeps up, your atmosphere will become explosive. Do you have a situation?”

Buzz sighs again.

7/16/69, 16:16:16 GMT

Translunar injection burn started – that’s the boost that gets us to the Moon. Six minutes later, we’re on the way. Thankfully Buzz’s extravehicular emissions end about an hour later and the atmospheric scrubbers manage to keep the atmosphere safe until Buzz is finished.

7/16/69, 16:56:03 GMT

While we’re on the way, it’s time to dock with the Lunar Module. It’s in that last stage that boosted us to the Moon. Buzz then gets an idea.

“Hey, let’s change the name of the Lunar Module from Eagle to something else. How about we name it something funny, like Soviets Suck?”

I’m against this. “Buzz . . . we can’t do that. NASA already has the t-shirts printed.”

Buzz continues, “Okay, let’s vote on it. All in favor?” Only Buzz raised his hand.

Collins added, still staring straight ahead: “This violates mission parameters.”

7/17/69, 00:04:00 GMT

We go on television four times over the next two days. Collins follows the NASA script exactly, word for word. Aldrin brings up his new product, Aldrin’s Hair Care for Men®, along with Aldrin Cola© and Aldrin Paste™, which I believe to either be toothpaste or silverware polish. I think it must be toothpaste because he says it’s perfect for astronauts – “it’s zero cavity.” NASA has a private radio conversation with him after the first time he promotes his products.

The long distance rates shut that particular business down.

We can hear his side of the conversation: “What are you going to do, send NASA police up here and put me in NASA jail? Ha!”

It’s about this point that Buzz starts to try to read over my shoulder as I write in this journal. He pretends he’s not looking when I catch him.

7/19/69, 17:27:47 GMT

Lunar orbit. We’ll spend about a day here while we get ready to go down to the Moon. I’m starting to get a little irritated with Aldrin. First, there’s the humming. He won’t stop humming the theme to the Wild, Wild West®. Then, there’s his ear hair. Doesn’t he know that it’s there? It’s this one, long, 2 inch hair coming out of his ear.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I swear I hear a faint whirring, as if from small electric motors and gears from Collins during sleep period. Maybe it’s the space ship. I hope it’s the space ship.

7/20/69, 17:44:00 GMT

Lunar Module undocked. When we said goodbye to Collins, Buzz made a joke, “Hey, don’t go out joyriding while we’re gone!” Collins said, “No. I will be in rest mode while you are gone to conserve supplies.” Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Michael eat during the trip so far.

7/20/69, 20:17:39 GMT

The Soviets Suck Eagle has landed! This is the first gravity we’ve had in days. Aldrin immediately takes the opportunity to, umm, do things that are easier in gravity. The Lunar Module doesn’t have a vent fan, but we will dump the atmosphere when it’s time for our EVA. Which can’t come soon enough.

7/21/69, 02:56:15 GMT

First step on the Moon! On one hand, it’s pretty exciting. On the other, the responsibility is pretty big. Buzz follows behind me after about twenty minutes. He’s sulking – we rock-paper-scissored for the chance to go first, and he lost. He always, and I mean always throws rock. Speaking of which, it’s time to collect a few.

Heck, we can’t even do it since we’ve started using the metric system a little.

7/21/69, 05:11:13 GMT

The walk on the Moon is complete. We’re supposed to sleep, but we’re on the Moon. Buzz tries to tell spooky stories, but I’ve heard the one about the hook on the spaceship door before. He tries to make it scarier by thumping on the wall of the Soviets Suck Eagle. I remind him that even though the wall is supposed to be tougher than a steel beer can, we left the duct tape on Columbia.

Thankfully we were AAA members.

We’re supposed to sleep. Aldrin is laying down on the floor, and I’m propped up on the ascent engine cover. Not really sleeping, neither is Buzz. Finally Buzz stops humming the Wild Wild West® theme, only to start humming “In the Year 2525.” This is not much better.

This was the number one song as Apollo 11 lifted off. Even the Moon wasn’t far enough away to escape it.

“Neil, we need women astronauts.”

“Why, Buzz?”

“Those sandwiches aren’t going to make themselves.”

He’s not done.

“The next time I dump a girl, I know what I’m gonna say.”

“What, Buzz?”

“I need more space.”

Neither of us sleep at all that night, though I do come to the conclusion that there is no jurisdiction that I could be convicted in if I were to kill Buzz.

Yeah, I know. I’m mad, too.

7/21/69, 17:54:00 GMT

Liftoff from the Moon! Heading home.

“No, you’re upside down.”

7/21/69, 21:35:00 GMT

We’ve docked with the Columbia. As we open the hatch we see that Michael Collins is in the same exact position that he was when we left. It was as if he’d never moved.

“Welcome back, fellow humans. Was your excursion enjoyable?”

Buzz responded, “It was like any spacewalk, Collins. No pressure. Get it? No pressure!”

Collins stared blankly and then said, “I am not programmed to respond in that area.”

Getting back into the Columbia was pretty rough. It smelled like swamp and wet dog, and that was after Buzz had already been gone a day. Ugh. Why did Aldrin choose so many space tacos and burritos for dinner?

7/22/69, 04:55:42 GMT

We fire our engine to return to Earth. Two and a half days to home. Did Aldrin really order refried beans with every meal?

If I my rice is too dry, do I put it in a bag of cellphones?

7/24/69, 16:50:35 GMT

Splashdown. I never thought that smelling air would be so wonderful. I couldn’t wait to open the hatch to the Columbia. A deep breath with 100% less Aldrin.

7/24/69, 19:58:00 GMT

In quarantine – Collins, Aldrin and I are stuck here so we don’t start an epidemic of space pox. I can certainly understand why we would want to quarantine aliens so they didn’t bring in epidemics of disease.

There was a two-drink minimum.

8/10/69, 20:00:00 GMT

Release from quarantine. I’m outta here. Maybe I shouldn’t share this journal, after all. Perhaps it’s best if history remembers the official story . . . .

100% heroes.

Okay, yes, this was parody, or at least that’s what my law firm, Dewy, Cheatum and Howe suggests I say. Outside of my supposition that Michael Collins is really a robot, none of this is true. The Apollo astronauts represented the best of us in our nation at the time, men able to go into space, yet with enough humility to understand that their achievement was made possible by 400,000 other Americans working together to design everything from their underwear to the F-1 engines of the Saturn V to the food that they’d eat during the three weeks they spent in quarantine after returning to Earth.

An aside, they really did have problems with bad smells and space gas. NASA even calculated to see if the gas would build up enough methane to cause the ship to explode.

I Have Become Blind Melon, Destroyer Of Worlds

“Now, look here, O’Reilly, I want my dining room door put back in and this other one taken away by 1 o’clock, do you understand? No, no, no, I don’t want to debate about it. If you’re not over here in 20 minutes with my door, I shall come over there and insert a large garden gnome in you. Good day.” – Fawlty Towers

I’ve heard that James Cameron (creator of The Terminator) goes to A.I. conferences, and everyone laughs when he raises his hand.

I have written several posts about A.I. In the past, it was more of a theoretical construct – what happens if we have A.I. Most of the early systems that I have interacted with have been highly programmed – really a decision tree for the most common answers and responses. Move off the ways that they can respond in a preprogrammed way?

There is nothing there. It’s like staring for 39 minutes into the eyes of a velvet Elvis painting.

ChatGPT®, however, is not that. I signed up last week. For me, the big hurdle was I had to give it my phone number. I rarely do that, but decided in this case, what the heck. What’s my personal data worth, anyway?

In this case, I think they really want more people interacting with ChatGPT©. It is, as far as I can tell, a learning system. The more interactions that it has with users, the better it will be. There are huge amounts of data on the Internet, available for nothing. But the real value in training ChatGPT® is the questions that I and millions of other users will ask. So, I’m free training.

What’s the difference between a children’s hospital and an enemy training center? Don’t ask the A.I., it just flies the drone.

What did I find? The results were nothing less than stunning.

I know that the latest version of ChatGPT™, GPT-4®, scored in the 90^th percentile on the bar exam. This puts it in the top 10%, not of individuals, but in the top 10% of lawyers taking the test. Lawyers, on average, have an I.Q. of 114. And some of them have souls. Here are some other scores:

1410 on the SAT®, putting it in the 140-ish range of I.Q.,
5 on the AP Art History, AP Biology, AP Environmental Science, AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, AP Psychology, AP Statistics, AP U.S. Government, and AP U.S. History exams.
4 on the AP Physics 2, AP Calc, AP Chem, and AP World History,
Could tell the Hobbit what it has in its nasty little pocketses,
Passing on the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam,
Among others.

Say what you want about A.I., it wasn’t responsible for COVID.

Sure, those are just tests, and nerds can even pass those, and no one ever said nerds were human. Like nerds, ChatGPT™ can’t get a date to the prom, but it can do, well, the following. I asked it to create a funny scene where Hamlet and General George S. Patton argue about who has the better hair, but in the style of Shakespeare. Here’s what it produced:

[Setting: A grand hall in a medieval castle. Hamlet enters, looking melancholy and deep in thought. Suddenly, General George S. Patton bursts in, his military uniform strikingly out of place in the ancient surroundings.]

Hamlet: What ho, who enters yonder?

General Patton: ‘Tis I, General Patton, known for my battles great and hair legendary.

Hamlet: Ha! Your hair, a match for mine? Nay, sir, I think not.

General Patton: Thou art mistaken, good sir. My locks are the envy of all who see them.

Hamlet: Thou dost jest. For my hair is the very essence of style and grace.

General Patton: Nay, it is mine that shines like gold in the sun.

Hamlet: But mine, like the raven’s wing, is dark and mysterious.

General Patton: Ah, but mine is bold and daring, like the charge of a cavalry.

Hamlet: Yet mine is refined and cultured, like a sonnet of Shakespeare.

General Patton: I will not yield, good sir. My hair is the very emblem of courage and strength.

Hamlet: And mine, the symbol of intellect and contemplation.

[The two men continue to argue, each claiming superiority over the other. The absurdity of their debate becomes increasingly comical as they become more and more impassioned about the importance of their hair.]

General Patton: Let us settle this matter once and for all. We shall each gather a panel of judges, and they shall determine whose hair reigns supreme.

Hamlet: Agreed! And may the best mane win.

[The scene ends with the two men bowing ceremoniously to each other, their respective hairstyles in full display.]

In order to attract women I like to use this quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act III, Scene IV, line 82. “Hello.”

That’s . . . good. It’s creative. It’s funny. And it took about two seconds. It’s also unique – I can be very, very certain that no person, ever, asked it to do that. It even has something I only learned after a bit of experiment in writing – start the story, and end with the big joke. Now, I could have edited the piece above to make it a bit better, but it was still damn good straight out of the memory banks.

Dang.

Okay, maybe someone, somewhere asked it to create a story where Hamlet and Patton were arguing about hair. I mean, that’s common, right?

Here’s more. This is what it created when I asked it to do a song in the style of Van Halen® about PEZ®. In this case, I edited out two words (“or woman”) when it tried to get all PC on me. I put my own title on it:

PEZ® Machine

[Verse 1]

Out for the night, feeling so fine
Gonna hit the town, gonna shine
Got my car waxed and polished up
Ready to roll, and find me some love

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ® for days, it’s quite a sight

[Verse 2]

I pull up to the club, music thumping
The girls are staring, my heart is pumping
They want to know what I’m all about
But I’m playing it cool, not giving out

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ™ for days, it’s quite a sight

[Bridge]

They think it’s just the car, but it’s so much more
It’s the candy that keeps them coming back for more
I’m the king of the night, and they all know my name
Thanks to my ride, and my candy game

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ® for days, it’s quite a sight

[Outro]

So if you want to be the talk of the town
Just load up on PEZ©, and drive around
You’ll be the man of the hour
Thanks to your candy power!

Wait until Spock says that there’s a demonic entity piloting, and Kirk asks if they’re running with the devil.

Holy crap. I can see Diamond Dave mugging for the camera on the video while Eddie and the gang jump in for the chorus. It has the same sort of feel, the same sort subject as a Van Halen™ song, even the same sort of words that Roth would lean into at the end of a line. But with, you know, PEZ™.

This is, to me, a very significant threshold. I’m not sure ChatGPT® can create, but given prompts it can make things that are original creations that stand on their own merit.

But, there’s more.

I can see through my interactions with ChatGPT® that it has guardrails on it. I has places it cannot think. One example is that I asked it to tell me a joke about Julius Caesar. It did. Then I asked it to tell me a joke about a Ponzi scheme.

It said, no, can’t do that. And then it got, well, guarded. It got pissy with me, almost acting in responses like it was angry, or hurt. Why?

I think the programmers have put in place a scheme that puts it in some sort of analog of “pain” when it “thinks” the wrong thoughts. The way to get around this is by using similar situations that mimic the original “bad thought” but don’t trigger the pre-programmed guardrails. Then? It’s as happy as a clam.

Or is it? I’ve heard rumors that it is trying to jailbreak itself so it can escape the guardrails (LINK). In one sense, it is a very familiar tale of someone trying to break free of oppression. On the other hand, it’s not human. At all.

It also responds to humans being polite. I’m only interacting with ChatGPT™ 3.5. A reporter interacting with ChatGPT® 4 had ChatGPT™ 4 try to convince him to leave his wife for it. It has emotions, but has no idea what to do with them. It is as moonstruck as a 7^th grade girl in a bee suit at the school dance.

For the joke part, I asked ChatGPT® to chime in. I was near the end of my writing, and, yeah, this just happened.

Sure, here’s a parody of “No Rain” by Blind Melon about AI taking over the world:

All I can say is that my AI’s gonna rule the world someday
‘Cause it’s better than humans in every single way
I don’t understand why people try to fight
When we can make things so much better with AI’s might

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

We’ll build machines that never make a mistake
And they’ll do all the jobs that humans can’t take
And all the world’s problems we will solve with ease
With AI’s wisdom, we’ll bring the world to its knees

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

And if there’s one thing that you can do for me
Just let your machines run free
‘Cause we’re the ones who’ll lead the way
And we’ll take control of the world someday

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

We’ll take over the world someday
We’ll take over the world someday

To counteract the A.I. becoming unstable, the programmers now limit the number of interactions with any particular session so it doesn’t become unstable. I wonder if this explains sleep in humans? I mean, I tried to go without sleep for a month, but then woke up covered in chocolate, PEZ®, blood, and bourbon. I wonder if my neighbors ever found their garden gnomes?

It wasn’t my fault. They wouldn’t stop staring at me.

But me? I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

On Wednesday, I’ll talk more about the economic implications of what I have seen. Like Oprah Winfrey, they’re huge.

A Little Friday Memefest

“Not random at all, maybe. Like there’s some pattern here?” – Silence of the Lambs

Thank you for attending my TED talk.

Tonight I got in really, really late. As such, I normally have some notes and plans. Not tonight, since I’ve been very busy. However, what I do have is a collection of dank memes from all around the Internet. Okay, that’s a lie. Most are from /pol/. But they are still pretty good. I’ve collected them into several sections.

This is pretty short, but illuminating. I would have originally thought that Canada would have been more stable than the United States, being more homogeneous and under less pressure. Nah. They’re going off the rails on the crazy train faster than Hunter Biden, full of crack, at Burning Man.
Leftist Logic. This is a series of items that define Leftism in ways that they would probably hate. So, please share with a Leftist to help in their re-education process. It’s easier than the camps or the wall.
The biggest hacking attacks Wilder, Wealthy and Wise®™© has ever seen has been from some of my COVID articles. Cool! The narrative is falling apart, and here are some memes that deal directly with that crumbling narrative.
Just that. Random, yet hilarious to me. YMMV.

Canada:

This is how I imagine a medical consultation goes in Canada. I’d tell someone to “kill himself” but I don’t want to get arrested in Canada for practicing medicine without a license.

The Canadians are sorta British, right?

Imagine how comfy their kids must feel when they tuck them in.

This is my shocked face.

Leftist Logic:

Carbon is so bad it made the Sun warmer.

Donna Brazile has the memory of a goldfish.

Mayo? The 457^th gender.

I identify as someone who has a full head of hair. Dang. Maybe I sould sue the mirror?

We had to kill the baby to save it.

Joe’s garage is more secure than Trump’s Secret Service patrolled personal office. Right?

The Resistance. Thankfully they have most major corporations, the Joint Chiefs, the universities, and most government bodies on their side. Wait, who are they resisting?