Fryday versus AI

I have decided to restart Fryday. 

I’m doing it, in part, because yesterday I promised a very important man in my life that I would and, because he supplies my whiskey, I want to keep him happy.

If you don’t know what Fryday is or have forgotten it, it’s a blog I started anonymously in 1995 to “fry” a panel beater who gave me terrible service. I know it was not particularly laudable, but I wanted to prove the adage that the pen is mightier than the sword by writing a column that would drive him out of business. I failed—the panel beater is still in business, but so, too, is Fryday, which is now perhaps among the oldest blogs in New Zealand.

In the decades I have been writing Fryday, I have rarely been at a loss to find something to say about something. And when perception and situation have failed me, my readers and I have been gifted some wonderful characters such as Cecil S, Sackrider, Whetu, Yoseph Wankerstan, and even George W. Bush to find things to say for me.

Over 1,000 Fryday posts have been published, and responses have varied in number and viewpoint. The one that drew the most responses was one I wrote about my ill-fated foray into raising Sea Monkeys. For some obscure reason, Sea Monkeys resonated with readers more than other more frequent characters such as George Bush and Donald Trump.

I have lost many early posts, but you can read more recent posts here.

Another reason I have decided to bring back Fryday is to prove to myself that I can write it better than anybody or anything else.

I am not thinking about you when I make that comparison; I have the long-held belief that anybody can be a good writer, and there is no great mystique about it. Therefore, my issue is not with you—it is with Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

As a professional writer whose income is wholly dependent on my skill, I am often asked if I feel threatened by AI, which seems to be able, if not capable, to write anything. The answer is yes, I do. But I am damned if I will be beaten by it.

That is true, particularly of Fryday.

I plan to use Fryday as a tool to combat AI. While I acknowledge that AI can help improve writing, I refuse to rely on it to create a unique voice or humour, both of which are integral to Fryday and which, in my opinion, AI cannot deliver. However, I may be mistaken, and it remains to be seen whether this experiment with Fryday will prove to be a mistake.

But, I’ll take the risk.

My name is Mike Isle. Fryday is my creation—it’s back, and I hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to the Fryday Blog

Friday 27 October 2017


Vodafone's decision to phase out its email service has got me thinking about Fryday. And I, too, have made a decision.

This is to be the last Fryday in an email format. Fryday as an e-letter has been going a long time. I started it in 1995, which was not long after the advent of the internet in New Zealand. It may even possibly be among the longest-lasting NZ e-letter still going.

But no more.

I am not going to take it over to a new domain, because of Vodafone’s decision. I have also this week lost a few names from the email distribution list and it is not now worth searching and retrieving them.

However, Fryday will continue. It has for some time been replicated as a blog and that will continue at this web address: https://frydaysblog.blogspot.co.nz/

If you want to “follow” Fryday, simply go to that site and click “follow by  email” at the base of the page. You will then be notified of all new postings.  Notifications are also made on various Facebook pages I run.

So, that’s it. No more e-letters. It’s generally been fun. It started as a vicious roast of a Glen Innes panel beater, but I hoped I have injected more humour than vitriol since. The single most popular post was on, of all things, sea monkeys. But you have also been very kind in telling me you like Whetu, George W. Bush’s Letters to God and the Dear Michelle series. I have moved on from the latter, as circumstances dictated. But Whetu will return and there is much more to come—just in a different format.

I am told that there is to be a scheduled power cut in 30 minutes, and no internet coverage.

Symbolic really—I have to go.

See you on the blog, I hope.

And, thanks.

2016: The Year That Is.

So, Fryday enters 2016. In doing so, it welcomes 2016 as an auspicious year and hopefully a rewarding one. The passing of 2015 completes the second decade of Fryday in its original e-letter format and the beginning of its second on-line decade as a blog. Twenty years this thing has been going. However, as most of you already know of the rationale for its gestation and have been content to let it evolve I won’t bore you by further stroking Fryday’s ego or, now,  yours.
Suffice to say, I enjoy your company and your comments and I thank you for them.
I am going to enjoy 2016. Fryday has a verifiable treasure trove before it. Never before, since the heyday of George W. Bush and Helen Clark, has it had such riches of character and personalities to play with, tamper with.
There is of course its stable of writers and visitors: Cecil C. Sackrider, Minister Yoseph Wankerstan of Wogistan and the irrepressible Whetu (though my old mate seems to have gone AWOL of late); they will remain and this year, possibly, be joined at times by the escapades of the indefatigable Phyllis J. Fenwick. Of course anybody who takes any of those too seriously will not perhaps be disposed to have the sagaciousness or the humour that Fryday so highly prizes and depends upon.
But it is not the musty old stable on which Fryday intends to rely. What is more exciting is the “new” set of personalities that it has at hand. There are those whom Fryday has already visited and will again. Handsome Sampson will deservedly not escape scrutiny in 2016 (he will not be allowed to go gentle into that good night) and he of the coiffeur and the coffer Bishop Tamaki. They will remain targets.
However the body-politic is now replete with soft targets—those who cannot fail to attract ridicule and in one case perhaps even cultivate it. I speak of course of the American presidential election and in particular of Donald Trump—Humpity Dumpity—which I am sure will find favour with Fryday’s oldest friend, Hardman.
Of places, Wogistan remains a favourite. Hamilton, I will scarcely visit in 2016—there is always the danger that boring begets boring. Besides, the city seems to have matured of late. Australia seems a lovely place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit there; others do it better, satirically. There is a little town in Ohio called Freeport that is neither a port nor free but has interesting “folk”, so we may pay a visit or two there in the manner of Truman Capote. And finally a visit or three south to the little town of Te Whaitu and some barside political commentary from “me old mate” Tarragon.
So, 2016 should be an interesting year for Fryday.
For you, I also hope it will be a happy one, a prosperous one, even the best one. For some of you, I know it will also be a different one; with new horizons and locations—I know you will enjoy them and they will welcome you.
Thank you for enjoying Fryday through the years. May we continue to grow old together.

A Bush in the Hand

Fryday has enjoyed a raft of new readers over the past two weeks. They are welcome, whether they be readers of the blog or the email. Those on the blog I do not know—at last count there are about 20,000 of you. The email e-letter is a little different—I know all of you, because it goes only to those whom I like. It has been that way from the start. Fryday started 20 years ago in 1995 as an email to 20 friends attempting in my vain and inglorious way to discredit a panelbeater. It was my first and I think only malicious Fryday email, though some of you may think my disparagement of George W. Bush, “Bishop” Tamaki, and particularly Hamilton, attests to the converse. Then again, most of you also know that much of Fryday is a piss-take, to use a revolting phrase. Nothing you read here should be taken to seriously. I mention all this, not only for the edification of  my new readers, but also because there is a very real prospect of Fryday finding a new outlet in the mainstream media. In other words, a publisher. This is of course exciting. But also worrying. I am concerned that a wider distribution may lead to an adverse—read legal—reaction from those whom I deride. Seemingly the common element  among those “victims”, including the hole of Hamilton, is that they lack humour. But my legal advisor, Whetu, who has over his years had much to do with the law, sees it differently. He opines that as I am simply “poking the borax”, though he admits to having no idea what borax is, and nor have I, there is no chance of legal action. The worst that could happen, in his view, is that I get invited to participate in a charity boxing match against Cameron Slater—and that is nothing. So, after 20 years it is onwards and upwards—literally and literarally, publish and be damned. And even if the halcyon days of George W. And God, Helen Clark and Michelle are gone, there remains the Hamilton Public Library, my old mate Whetu,  Handsome Sampson and 123 Bruce Springsteen Boulevard to go on with and, yes Hardman, there is Jeb Bush just waiting in the wings. Bring it on.

Happy Birthday Fryday

What started as a simple and one-off exercise to test the theory that the pen is mightier than the sword turns 20 years-of-age this year.
I don’t know the actual date, but I do know I wrote my first Fryday in 1994, which may make it one of the oldest e-letters still going.
That first posting was written to “fry” a Glen Innes panel beater whom I described as Auckland’s worst.  It was I think the first and last Fryday with any real malice and was sent to a few friends as a warning.
Since then I have tried to keep it light-hearted and the distribution list has hovered around 100, though the more recent blog version has reached 12000 hits.
Many of you have shown kindness in responding to individual postings. The one that received the most response was my tale of inadvertently poisoning my Sea-Monkeys. That posting, like most from the first 10 years, is now lost, at least from my computer.
The series that received the most comments (mostly good) was George W’s Letters to God followed by H’s Letters to Michelle—both now dispensed with. Letters from Wogistan get commented on, but the king for comments is reserved for Whetu; you seem to like his quirky view of the world.
Some of you may have given up on Fryday and consign it automatically to the junk file. But in 20 years I have had only 2 requests to have names removed from the distribution list. I did so immediately though regrettably in the case of one and with some humour with the other considering he wasn’t even on the mailing list and for someone working in public relations was unnecessarily abusive.
But the rest of you have stuck around and I hope I have, most times, given you a bit of a laugh each Friday/Fryday. Some have even past on Fryday to others, and I am both pleased and flattered by that.
So, thank you for your kindness and readership over the last 20 years.  I have no immediate plans to close Fryday; not at least while there is still my beloved Hamilton, and I will later this year publish the archive as an e-anthology, and introduce a new columnist, whom I hope you will like.
Oh, and by the way: despite me, that panel beater is still in business, but then again so is Fryday, so let’s call it a draw.
Have a good weekend.

The Fryday Fry Up

The blog version of Fryday goes out on the Internet and is of course accessible there to anybody anywhere with a computer and a connection. Whilst I can’t determine who is reading Fryday, I can monitor the numbers, where they are from and what they are reading. A random look at the blog stats yesterday got even me questioning Fryday’s attraction. It appears that one person (presumably one) spent over an hour in one session reading Fryday and in the process got through sixteen pages. Now, that is very gratifying and I am flattered that they found Fryday Quite Interesting (to coin a phrase). But what I found Quite Interesting was that the person was in Brazil and the entry-page they started with was an item on Tuku Morgan. What possible interest would a Brazilian have in Tuku Morgan, even if Tuku Morgan may be persuaded to have an interest in a Brazilian—underpants tend to chaff, after all. Nevertheless some Brazilian has taken to Tuku and from there ventured elsewhere in the Fryday Realm. Quite Interesting, and, yes, I am getting to that point—an unashamed plug for another Fry up: the Stephen Fry hosted, John Lloyd conceived, BBC series QI on Prime each weeknight at 7.00. It is truly addictive as the erudite Stephen Fry presents an ever-changing panel of comedians and other celebrities with an array of little known but (seemingly) unassailable facts upon which they are invited to comment by way of confirming or otherwise the veracity of such facts. Points are deducted if the obvious but wrong answer is given; points are awarded if the answers are QI—Quite Interesting. There is such a profusion and confusion of facts that I can’t remember them all, but here are a few from memory. See if you can answer them correctly. 1. In what year did the Second World War between the Allies and Germany end? 2. The Spanish national anthem is sung in what language? 3. How many legs has a centipede and what is extremely odd about the answer? 4. At one time or other one-eighth of all Californians have insured themselves for what? 5. According to a survey, 46% of all Americans can’t read well enough to read what? That’s the type of thing that in the deft hands of Stephen Fry QI on Prime is compulsive viewing—even if they are yet to find even one remotely interesting fact about Hamilton.