‘My hero!’ the damsel cried

A transcribing program I use to convert recorded words into text insists on referring to me as Mark LaPlum when attempting to distinguish between speakers. Mark LaPlum said this, Mark LaPlum said that. It annoyed me at first, but I’ve come to kind of like it. Why, a fellow named LaPlum could be a character in a Saturday morning cartoon or a newspaper comic strip. He could be the handsome and courageous hero in an old fairy tale where damsels are saved from wolves or villains with long, pencil mustaches. This LaPlum character has got it going on to the point where I have every intention of making him my alter ego. I don’t know where I’m going to get a cape at this time of year, but LaPlum will know. That cat knows everything!

Hammer time

I got plenty of mileage out of the AI manipulated photo that convinced half the region that Lewiston’s giant hammer had been blown over in the wind. I’ve written two whole columns about the fiasco thus far and frankly, I think I nailed it. Ha! Get it? And this is only a small sampling of the wit and cleverness that Mark LaPlum has in his arsenal!

Master of irony

While writing one piece about the the goofy hammer drama, I attempted to use AI — just for the irony of it, mind you — to deduce whether “it lies on the ground” or “it lay on the ground” was the grammatically correct way to state the position of the alleged hammer. AI spouted a bunch of acid-trip gibberish in attempts to answer my query to the point where I ended up more confused by the answer than I was about the original query. I ended up getting my answer the old-school way. That is, I contacted the most stern, unbending and pedantic former school teacher I know and she got me straight in no time. I have to stay after school cleaning chalkboard erasers, but that’s a small price to pay.

Throw the ball! Throw it now!

I’m no expert on football, but it looked to me like Patriots quarterback Drake Maye was playing scared for the entirety of the Super Bowl. To be fair, the entire team appeared too rattled and too unprepared to do anything much against the Seahawks’ vaunted defense. My favorite headline about this sad affair was the one that declared, on Monday: “Patriots offensive line surprised to learn Super Bowl was yesterday.” That came from the Babylon Bee, of course, and I would describe it as LaPlumian-level wit.

Did you know…

That when the temperature drops below 10 degrees, as it does all the $%$!!@ time this winter, it’s not only federal law but a biological imperative that one declare “Boy, is it cold!” every single time one so much as opens a door to the outside? If you don’t do this, you could die, and if you don’t believe me, ask AI. AI will know for sure.

Mark LaFlamme is an award-winning Sun Journal reporter and columnist. He’s covered the nighttime police beat since 1994, which is just grand because he doesn’t like getting out of bed before noon. He is the author of eight published novels and rides a dual sport motorcycle everywhere he goes. Unless it’s winter, in which case he just sulks a lot.