Language is the Entry Fee. (Writing with AI) (audio: noxsoma.substack.com)

(The complete audio to this rant is posted at 4:20 EST on Substack. Here’s a preview. You can get the full length LP on the stack, or on Hive.)

Good Moonday Lunatics. Welcome to a brand new week on Planet Abundance. How are we going to rock our worlds this week?
Language is the Entry Fee.
“I can see you seeing me, but can I feel you feeling me?” Anonymous.
During Prohibition in the United States, corrupt enterprises called “Speakeasies” sprang up where those with the means and the lust could consume the demon spirits, gamble and fornicate with a flapper or two. Or so we’re told by credible witnesses of the era. It was language that got you through the door. A candidate would whisper a “password,” which would allow said candidate to pass into these dens of sin.
The first rule of Night Club is, you don’t talk about Night-Club, and if you did, dare not speak above a whisper. Soft talk was “easy” talk. As in “take it easy.” Soft & low. Thus, since humans must have a name for such things, these places became known as “speak easies.”
Every era has its language, every profession has its jargon, every subculture has its slanguage, and every writers’ platform, has its dominant idiom. The geopolitical side has it’s lyrics, “choke point” shows up a lot. The military side has its own rhythm, usually a lot of “tactical” this or “strategic that.” They write of “strategic defeats” or “victories,” and so on. You, (the General Ewe), know it when you hear it, without knowing you know it. There’s corporate media speak, a five minute tet-a-tet between the hard-hitting hostess and the recalcitrant government representative.
Hostess: “You stated in a recent speech that the grass was blue, but a blogger has posted a video suggesting that this is not the case. What’s going on here.”
Guest: I have not seen that video. But the real question is not whether the grass is blue, which it is…
Hostess, interrupting: So you’re maintaining that the grass is blue? Just take a look outside, the grass is observably green.
Guest: Well, that depends on your definition of the color “green.” But, look… (pause). Let me be clear. The alleged color of the alleged grass isn’t the point. The price of gasoline will be falling in the Red States and the blue grass states will be receiving negotiable green from Orange if they turn their districts red. Our green initiative will take thousands of families out of the red and put them in the black, in time to enjoy a prosperous white Christmas.
Hostess: “Thank you for that concise explanation and optimistic forecast.” Now here’s a word from Big Pharma.”
We have a list of literary genres we monitor on Substack. We also have a list of individuals we enjoy, whether we believe, or agree with what they’re writing, or not. We read some authors, because they are not American. They provide an outlander’s perspective of the crumbling empire. We also enjoy perspectives from the fringes, or near-fringes of society. Not simply living on the edge, but thinking on the edge. And even those who have taken their lives to the edge, and have returned. We get bored easily, and we like the variety.
AI-enhanced articles, is where variety breaks down. Regardless of the topic. Regardless of the writer, or his/her experience, AI has a way of condensing macro-diversity into a corral of recurring words, terms and phrases that begin to make even our emerging favorite writers undigestable.
“Here’s why that matters.”
“Read that line again.”
“I knew it, even before I had language for it.”
“This thought is worth sitting with.”
“When viewed through the lens of…” whatever.
There are a few more, but Mind finds this penta-crap most annoying. They are like potholes in an otherwise well paved road. We’ll be metaphorically cruising through an interesting reflection, or an autobiographical therapy session, or even a geopolitical analysis, and all of a sudden, one of these buzz-trend sentences shows up, and it gets the acid reflux boiling and we must change lanes.
“If this tree in the road landed on you, sit with it for a moment. Experienced through the lens of the mythical environmental eco-system, such activity could have a profound impact on your personal journey, moving forward.”
We need some quick relief, from a bottle of Kaopectate.
Contrary to the beat of this rant, it’s not a call to action. Or even to, in-action. Keep doing you. Your curmudgeonly chronicler may pass on your silicone syntax, but others will certainly find your work, and accept it for what it’s worth to them. Your ideas and experiences have value. AI-assisted writing can be a gateway to something special. One might experience a critical mind within noting that, “all of my songs sound alike. I write a few lines and then, this pops up, ‘This was not my beautiful house, it was a condominium of shame that wore it’s past like a dirty trench coat with nubs of thread where buttons used to be.’ And then after a few more ‘sit with this’ and ‘land on that,’ you get some quasi-poetic gushing, “the weight within was a chasm of emotion crying to be named, acknowledged, appeased and satiated.”
Then, out of nowhere, but probably out of everywhere, your creative nervous-system kicks in and suggests, ‘you don’t need no stinkin’ AI to write your story. You want to be free to use unconventional grammar, misquote song lyrics, misspell words, make up words, write in dialects. Any two-bit scribbler can drop f-bombs. They are as common these days as farts. It takes genuine thought and creativity and “memory” to spin a journalistic basketball on your middle finger, suggest it, without writing it down, and feigning ignorance when confronted by critters of letters.
“Who me? I don’t get your reference.” (Guilty laughter always gives it away.)
Here’s the Moonday Motivation that nobody asked for.

Stay sane, stay strong, stay safe, stay savvy, stay serene, stay sovereign, stay subscribed.
PEACE.