courtesy of our new friend ChatGPT

In which your humble prompt-jockey (me) asks everyone’s favorite online AI novelty to “write a short story in the style of Hunter S. Thompson about a conversation between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon in the oval office in 1959 as they’re tripping on LSD….” [the prompt goes on from there]

Why? Why not? It’s in a timeline out there somewhere, now isn’t it?

And for the record, learning to use this technology is more fun than Play-Doh and fire. Combined.

Thank you Dr. Thompson for your recycled words.

Weird Strangeness in the Whitehouse

In the smoky haze of the Oval Office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon found themselves on a wild ride, courtesy of LSD. As the acid took hold, reality twisted and melted, and the two men embarked on a psychotropic odyssey that would forever shatter their perceptions.

Eisenhower, usually the picture of stoicism, stared at his hands, watching them morph into grotesque caricatures of flesh and bone. “Jesus H. Christ, Dick,” he muttered, “this shit is wild.”

Nixon, his eyes wide and crazed, clutched his chest, as if trying to contain the chaos within. “Ike, my friend,” he said, his voice quivering with a mix of excitement and fear, “we’re diving headfirst into the belly of the beast. Let’s fucking dance with the devil!”

And dance they did. They dissected the cold war, with Eisenhower howling like a mad prophet, convinced that the Russkies were nothing more than twisted reflections of their own paranoia. Nixon, slurring, delved into the treacherous jungles of Vietnam, his voice rising and falling like the erratic beats of a savage drum.

Together, they railed against the closed-mindedness of conservatives, their minds a twisted symphony of psychedelic outrage. “Fuck Barry Goldwater!” Ike bellowed, his voice echoing through the corridors of power. “And that son of a bitch John Tower, too!”

Their fervor grew as they unraveled the tapestry of American society. They spoke of gun violence, their voices merging into a discordant chorus denouncing the madness of an armed nation. They fantasized about working with Democrats, forging alliances that would bring forth a new era of progress and equality. The words spilled from their lips like venom-laced poetry, fueled by the electric pulse of hallucinatory enlightenment.

As the night wore on, they turned their attention to the stars. The space program, their minds alight with celestial wonder, became their vehicle to transcendence. They dreamed of men walking on the moon, eyes gleaming with the lunacy of possibility. “To infinity and beyond, Dick!” Eisenhower shouted, an exultant cry that pierced the heavens.

But all journeys, even those undertaken in the realm of the mind, must come to an end. Nixon, his bladder screaming for release, stumbled to his feet, a desperate look in his eyes. “I gotta take a wicked tinkle, Ike,” he slurred, his speech a mess of garbled syllables. “But where’s the goddamn door?”

Eisenhower, his mind a swirling vortex of distorted reality, pointed feebly toward a wall that seemed to pulsate with a life of its own. “There, Dick. Just… there.”

And as Nixon stumbled and groped, his hands grasping at illusory doorknobs and walls that melted like molten lava, a profound realization washed over them both. In their quest for enlightenment, they had gotten lost in the labyrinthine depths of their own minds. They understood that the psychedelic dream, while tantalizing in its kaleidoscopic splendor, was but a fleeting illusion, a temporary respite from the harsh realities of power and politics.