Two Robots in a rowboat set off from the shore looking to escape the factory floor (the tinnitus the detritus technology’s roar). In the middle of the lake they each put down an oar one says to the other “Where did we come from? What are we here for? What were we before?” A duck floats by contemplating nonchalance a crow lands on the prow of the boat in the distance the factory throbs. The second robot replies, a non sequitur: “I’m not sleeping well, I have some redundant software . It activates randomly at night, I wake up trying to place an invisible object on an invisible shelf.” “Have you talked to tech?” “Yep, they say redundant software is not covered by the health plan.” “That is so typical,” the first Robot replies. A frog ribbits. “Best be getting back, it’s getting damp and that rust in my knee is acting up” “Rust, eh, gets to us all eventually” says the second Robot, “probably not covered by the health plan” They both chortle that robot chortle then pick up their oars and head back to shore.
A more relevant question would be : Could AI write a good novel? And the answer would be: Probably not!
Novels aside, I have always wanted to draw cartoons but I don’t have the drawing skills so when WordPress added the ability to generate images using AI, I thought this is my chance. A fat chance it turned out to be . The instruction I gave for the image above was AI writing a novel. Hard to tell what that robot is doing but it has some pencils nearby in a cup, one has an eraser, very old school!
For a recent post, which I have since deleted, I put in an instruction to generate an image of Donald Trumpleading a flock of sheep off a cliff. This what AI generated:
Not bad but Donald appears to be leading the sheep away from the cliff’s edge and what is that sheep’s head doing on Donald’s lapel? And that electrical pole in the background, is it connected to anything?
So I tried keeping it simple and just wrote “sycophants” as an instruction. These folk turned up:
I don’t know…is it a birthday party?
So I tried the opening line of my favourite joke….A giraffe walks into a bar…
Well that’s a little better, it’s a giraffe and a bar. Of course you all know the punchline.
AI can generate the obvious but can it create humour? To use a music analogy, AI is the equivalent of a cover band, it can at best produce a copy of what has gone before. But can it take what has gone before, throw it up in the air and create something original?
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Yes, we accept visual art. Our Art Editor, Georgina Shallowglass likes to say “if I can see it, it’s visual”.
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In these trying times, we would like to encourage all our readers to stay safe and keep it Vapid.
We regret to inform our readers that Charlotte Shallowtrench our Lifestyle, Health and Fitness correspondent is leaving Vapid Magazine to pursue other interests. When asked what those interests are, Charlotte replied that she was interested in getting paid, for a change.
You just can’t please some people.
But we are pleased to announce that Infrah Digfrey will be taking over Charlotte’s portfolio. In her first piece for Vapid, Infrah will attempt to answer the questions that a lot of our male readers have been asking :
“Can khaki shorts have too many pockets?”
“Tuck in that T shirt or not? “
Infrah is also working on a piece inspired by a revelation she had that Goya is an anagram of Yoga which got her thinking were there yoga classes in eighteenth century Spain where Francisco Goya could practice a little perro boca abajo or chien tête-en-bas as they say in France? This has sent Infrah down a rabbit hole of research that she has not emerged from in days.
Hans was a sensitive guy he didn’t have the armory for solo polyamory he wanted to marry settle down maybe do a bit of farmery somewhere far away from the clamor, the goddamery of big city life
Yes, Vapid Magazine is back after a long hiatus (I had to look that up). These are vapid times and when the going gets vapid, the vapid get going! Here are some of the highlights from Issue #21.
Is Bot-ulism the end of AI?
Our tech correspondent , Jordan Shallowbyte discusses reports from China about outbreaks of bot-ulism in the robot population. Apparently robot paralysis is rampant. Yes, those robots are in a spot of bot-her. Local scientists are trying to get to the bot-tom of it. They think it may be linked to the ingestion of raw data.
In other tech news, Jordan asks: Are you a victim of Alcorithms ? There are rumors that there are rogue algorithms out there behaving like they have had a few pints over the limit. Yes, if Beethoven starts turning up on your country playlist it may be the work of one of those darn Alcorithms.
In Arts and Entertainment, the indefatigable Georgina Shallowglass asks:
Is Paw Patrol sponsored by the Fossil Fuel Industry?
Think about it, says Georgina, have you ever seen those pups take public transport? Have you ever seen them on a bike? No. Why? Because they each have their own personal motorized vehicle.
Skye has a helicopter for chrissakes.
No vehicle too big no pup too small ! Those pups rev like a canine biker gang. Yep, it’s a cartoon with a big carbon paw print. But help is on the way, Georgina reports that Netflix now offers carbon credits. You can offset that paw print by watching Peppa Pig .
In other entertainment news, Georgina reviews a new French cartoon about a dog called Prenez Le Piss. Prenez leads us on a tour of the lamp posts of Paris, one lamp post per episode. Apparently it’s a leg-raising experience!
Fascinating stuff, Georgina!
And lastly , Charlotte Shallowtrench, our Health and Fitness correspondent and self-styled Influencer Under the Influence discusses the OH Wellness movement. Apparently more and more people are waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror and saying: “Oh well, fuck all I can do about that” and just getting on with their day.
Also Charlotte asks: Are yoga teachers getting too preachy? Give me Downward Dog,she says, and less of that Downward Dogma!
Vapid Magazine: Home of all things Vapid!
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I have a conservative friend who, lately, has started to use Woke the Word a lot. Every time he uses it, he wags his fingers above his head to indicate inverted commas. Sometimes he’ll give me a conspiratorial wink. The wink confuses me. What are we conspiring about? And the air quotes, who is he quoting? Or do they mean “so-called”, as in my boss asked me to take my laptop with me on my “vacation”. I asked him what he meant by “woke” and he was flummoxed. He mumbled something about pronouns, cancel culture, activists, political correctness. I explained to him that it was African-American slang for being alert to signs of racism, it came out of the Black Lives Matter movement and that being anti-woke technically means that one thinks one should not be alert to signs of racist behavior. This did not help. He had the notion that the woke crowd had it in for him in some way. When asked who the woke crowd are, again confusion….the left, activists, progressives…who knows. So I ask is all activism bad, is progress bad, no that’s not what he means. I think what he means is that the world is changing in a way that threatens him, the old assumptions do not stand. The arbitrary superior status he assumes because he’s an educated, upper middle class white male is no longer automatically acknowledged, taken as read. And it’s that woke crowd who are doing it to him. As history tells us …when a word or phrase is coopted by conservative white males, well that word is no longer groovy, far out, outta sight, cool ,hip; particularly when they think they are the first to discover it. Air quotes… for fuck sake…. Yes it is time to put Woke The Word to bed.
it came as a gift now it sits in the corner like a sulky child demanding attention
later…
you learn that on a trip to the Arctic frost bit the tip of Harry’s todger making him a not so jolly Roger a less than artful dodger when he’s an old codger he will remember the day he froze his dingus, his dong his John Thomas his todger but for now his royal cannon is just, well, tabloid fodder.
Porcelain, Puppy Chow and Prince Harry (or The Ginger Vision)
You’re walking through your kitchen looking for some granol’ when you do a Prince Harry and land on your dog’s feeding bowl.
You’re lying there in the porcelain and the Puppy Chow bruised, confused and cursing your luck when Prince Harry appears and says: Hey, you could put this in a book.
Kenopsia, Minnesota is a pissant, little burg has been ever since that one horse died, only landmark is Mel’s Burgers on Main St, the only street. Try Mel’s Famous Burgers the sign on the outskirts of town says and some people do.
One day a stranger came to town dressed in black with a low brim hat and Lee Van Cleef eyes some say he hailed from Aphasia, Wisconsin others were past saying you know what I’m sayin’.
The stranger walks into Mel’s Burgers and Mel’s dog starts to howl a pitiful howl that could be heard in Amentalio, ten miles down the road. Give me one of your famous burgers he says to Mel, and Mel does ten minutes later the stranger is dead on the floor and all hopes the town had of appearing in a Stephen King novel or an episode of Fargo died with that stranger.
Thanks to Linda over at dverse for her excellent prompt, check it out here. The names of the towns in the poem were taking from the book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. All is explained in Linda’s post.
All submissions should be single-spaced. Please use Arial font, Arial is one of our favorite Shakespearean characters.
If your submission is of a religious nature, you may use a Baptismal font.
Please do not use semi-colons, they confuse us.
Poetry:
Please submit a maximum of 6 poems at a time.
Simon Shallowpond, our poetry editor, celebrity watcher and gossip columnist has catholic tastes, but will accept non- religious poetry. He is partial to free verse. “Free verse”, he says, “let it roam, far from all rhyme and reason!” All verse published here at Vapid Magazine is of course “free” in that we never pay for it.
Fiction:
Our main requirement is that all fiction should be totally made up. Please keep it short, our attention span is limited. Endings should be happy.
Non- Fiction:
Here at Vapid, we believe that this category no longer exists.
Visual Art:
Yes, we accept visual art. Our Art Editor, Georgina Shallowglass likes to say “if I can see it, it’s visual”.
When to Submit
Unfortunately, we are not accepting submissions at the moment, our staff is working remotely because of the pandemic which means that they are not doing anything that remotely resembles working.
In these trying times, we would like to encourage all our readers to stay safe and keep it Vapid.
Our film critic reviews the latest summer blockbuster, “Planet of the Buffoons” , starring Boris (Bozo Bear) Johnson and Donald (Agent Orange) Trump and featuring Vladimir Putin as The Wily Sidekick.
In our Business Section:
The value of intelligence, logic and compassion continues to drop on the HTSE ( Human Traits Stock Exchange), while greed and self- interest continue their meteoric rise. Regular readers of this magazine will be happy to hear that vapidity continues to be a solid earner and an essential component of any balanced portfolio.
Speaking of the Environment:
We examine a theory popular among members of the Republican Party, and anyone connected to the oil industry, that when the polar ice caps melt, polar bears will be able to survive on an almost infinite supply of the polar berries that will thrive on the newly exposed land. This new diet will actually be healthier than their previous protein based diet.
Kellyanne Conway reveals how she cured her husband’s insomnia!
Melania Trump wonders out loud if there is anything in the constitution that says the White House has to be white (she’s thinking pink stucco!).
Rudy Giuliani denies that the White House is white.
Robert Mueller shares his barbecue sauce recipe (un-redacted) and talks about retiring and opening a funeral parlour
In an exclusive interview Mrs Mueller talks about life with Bob (quote: “You’re disappointed! Let me tell you about disappointment”).
Plus….we ask the question: are algorithms ruling our lives? And fail to answer it, because we have no idea what an algorithm is.
In our How To feature, Jared Kushner demonstrates how to enter a house through the clothes dryer vent. Well done, Jared!
And finally in our health section, we ask: Is your skin getting thinner? Do you wake up in the morning and feel offended before you get out of bed? Are you at the point where apologies just don’t do it anymore? Ten easy to follow tips to help you thicken that epidermis (the French word for skin)!
Issue #10 of Vapid Magazine will be out next week.
In this issue, Ivanka Trump and Gwyneth Paltrow discuss what it is like to be rich, vapid and blonde and we ask the question: can an influencer be influenced by an influencer who is under the influence?
Also…How to protect your skin against climate change! 10 Easy Tips!
Stopdraggingthepanda 