Lies, Damned Lies, and ChatGPT: Pooh Bear the Kitty

So this week it’s time for the next installment of Jim Needs To Produce Filler Material While He Has Company Lies, Damned Lies, and ChatGPT , but before we get to that, I wanted to post another obviously LLM-generated comment that the animals received over on their blog. This follows the previously-established pattern of being clearly related to yet not really understanding the post to which it is attached, followed by asking a question in an attempt to elicit engagement.

“This is a very enjoyable and witty post! I especially liked the part where Aragorn uses his clever word play to distract the children. My question for the author is, what inspired you to incorporate a conversation about small pickles into this scene?”

The post in question does doesn’t actually involve clever wordplay, although it does involve small pickles. So there you go. And once again I am quite sure that the AI Content Analyzer has overrated the human content involved in this comment.

Perhaps previous commenters were right and the AIs are working together … 🤔 But anyway, on to the authorized LLM content! Last week we did Feathers the Rat, and this week we do Pooh Bear, a kitty who, unlike Feathers, actually did overlap with Dennis the Vizsla, but only for a month or so, as she quite unexpectedly developed internal bleeding from an undetected tumor on her spleen that ruptured*, forcing us to make a snap decision to put her to sleep. She therefore did not make very many plot-related appearances in Dennis’s adventures, but she was around more than Feathers. Can ChatGPT get her information right? What do you think?

Pooh Bear the Kitty is a beloved feline character from the popular webcomic “Dennis’s Diary of Destruction,” created by cartoonist Gary Northfield. Although Pooh Bear is a fictional character, he has captured the hearts of readers with his adorable appearance and mischievous antics.

Pooh Bear is a ginger tabby cat with a round face, big eyes, and a fluffy tail. He first appeared in the comic strip on March 12, 2012, when he was introduced as a stray cat that had wandered into the backyard of Dennis, the main character of the comic.

Despite his cute and innocent appearance, Pooh Bear has a mischievous streak that often gets him into trouble. He is known for his love of stealing and hoarding objects, particularly shiny or valuable items. This has led to many hilarious and chaotic situations in the comic, with Pooh Bear causing chaos and confusion wherever he goes.

Despite his naughty behavior, Pooh Bear is a lovable and endearing character that readers can’t help but root for. He is often seen cuddling with Dennis or other characters in the comic, showing that he has a soft side beneath his mischievous exterior.

Over the years, Pooh Bear has become one of the most popular characters in “Dennis’s Diary of Destruction,” with fans clamoring for more stories featuring the mischievous feline. He has even inspired merchandise, including plush toys and t-shirts.

Overall, Pooh Bear the Kitty is a beloved character that has captured the hearts of readers with his adorable appearance and lovable personality. While he may be mischievous, he has a heart of gold and is sure to continue delighting readers for years to come.

ChatGPT, Makin’ Shit Up Again

So in case you couldn’t tell, the answer to the question “Can ChatGPT get her information right on the first try?”** is a resounding “No”. For starters, Pooh Bear is not a ginger tabby cat, she was a grey Persian. Also as you may have noticed from the pronouns I’m bandying about, she was not a he. But boy would it be nice if she had inspired all that merchandising, eh? Get a job, ya four-legged bums!

Tune in next week for the next entry in Lies, Damned Lies, and Anecdotes ChatGPT, in which we finally get to an animal who did appear in numerous adventures with Dennis and the rest of the gang. Will ChatGPT make shit up about her, too? Let’s ask the original AI!

* What is it with ruptures around here, anyway?
** As has been previously noted, if I were to try to get ChatGPT to refine its answers by asking follow-up questions, the results would improve. But what fun would that be?

Teaser Tuesday: “Speak Easy”

Look at this, two Teaser Tuesdays back-to-back! Must be because I had a busy week and didn’t have time to take notes on amusing things my wife said about Killing Eve … But anyway, this time, I was reading Speak Easy, by the heavily-overrepresented-in-Teaser-Tuesdays-on-this-blog Catherynne M. Valente:

It’s an emotional support pelican.
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The Early Years: “The Tree”

So this week I thought I would find something in the pile of my elementary school stuff that my folks have shipped out over the years, and I came up with a something which, at first glance, I thought might contain some kind of spooky story about ghosts or woodland spirits, but after actually flipping through it, I would have to call it a (very) early precursor to one of the ridiculous adventures that one might see over at the animals’ blog. That something is my five-page illustrated epic novella, “The Tree”.

It may look like an inexpertly excised stomach, but it isn’t.
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The Early Years: Party Time! Excellent!

So last week I posted a scan of an old mimeograph of the rules for first grade; these rules indicated that there would be in-school parties for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day, and I mentioned that I remembered the Halloween parties and the distribution of Valentine’s Day cards from everyone to everyone, but that I didn’t really remember the Christmas parties. Because my folks read the blog—they were, of course, the source of the giant pile of elementary school era documents from which I pull my posts for “The Early Years”—my father sent along a few pictures of some of those long-ago festivities. I don’t know if these are specifically from first grade or not (I’m no good at figuring out how old kids [including my past self] are just by looking at them), but they’re definitely from elementary school, I can tell that much …

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“Hate That Tune”

So the other day my wife and I had to head out to pick up our cat Chaplin from the specialty vet (Chaplin has this thing where he periodically decides he doesn’t want to eat his food anymore, which is not something a young cat should be doing; we are still trying to figure out if there’s some physical cause for this or if he just wants to find out if we’re willing to spend as much money on cat vet bills as we are on dog vet bills*), and because it was low on gas, we took her car instead of mine so that we could fill the tank**. And that meant we got to listen to Spotify on her phone via CarPlay, as opposed to what we (used to) do when we (used to) go places in my car, which is listen to the music I have on my phone***. At first I had her play a few songs by a few artists I had recently discovered, but then I told her to just play whatever she wanted; and thus I discovered how my wife listens to Spotify:

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And All It Took Was A Pandemic

Some years ago—never mind how long precisely*—I acquired a board game called Zombies!!!

All it took to get us to finally play this game was a pandemic.
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Cross-Post: The Liebster Award

As I’m sure most readers are aware, I also run The Oceanside Animals blog (formerly Dennis’s Diary of Destruction). Proving the truth of the admonition never to work with children or animals, because they will steal all the scenes in which they appear, their blog has always been much more popular than this one, but every once in awhile, they share their fame with me. This week, I got to tag along with them on their Sunday Awards and Meme Show, when they were given the Liebster Award and I got tagged for it as well. Naturally most of the space in the post is devoted to Charlee, Chaplin, and Lulu, but I got to answer a few questions too. The show is reproduced here in its entirety with the kind permission of their agent.

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Teaser Tuesday 9/10/2019: “The Strain”

So I am finally getting around to reading The Strain, the first in an apocalyptic vampire trilogy by Guillermo del Toro (whom you may have seen mentioned here once or twice) and Chuck Hogan (whom you probably, uh, haven’t). I’ve had this book lying around since like 2015, so, yeah, it’s about time it floated to the top.

 

TheStrain_Worm
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out …

 

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Type O’ Typos

Last week I finally finished the last round of paper editing on Father’s Books. This was supposed to be just to find and fix typos, but turned into yet another round of “let’s move this sentence over there” and “I can cut this paragraph” sorts of edits. Which is not to say there weren’t typos too. Most times there’s nothing much interesting about typos, but every once in a while they’re cute.

cat_track
Meow.

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Subtitles

Over the past several years, after Dennis the Vizsla Dog became a little old man dog, he got in the habit of being noisy in the evenings, loudly complaining via barks and whines that he wanted everyone to stop watching television and go to bed at, oh, 8pm* or so. To an extent, this could be managed with things like the Treat & Train or simply by the occasional tossing of treats (which Hipster Chaplin thought was wonderful, because he was faster than Dennis at that point, with a better nose). Another way this was managed: Putting on subtitles for everything we watched. Because if you can’t listen, you can always read.

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