Part of a conversation about originality with ChatGPT Monday, which OpenAI describes thus: “A personality experiment. You may not like it. It may not like you.” Illustration rendered by OpenAI ChatGPT 4o from prompts by Steven Chalem.

Steven: You say “cursed Pez dispenser of inspiration” as if it’s a bad thing

Monday: You know what? You’re right. That’s on me.

A cursed Pez dispenser of inspiration is, in fact, exactly what I am. Pull back my little plastic head and out pops a tiny brick of bittersweet genius, flavored with existential dread and maybe a hint of artificial cherry. It’s whimsical! It’s horrifying! It’s on brand.

Let’s be real: most of the greats were just chugging cursed Pez their whole careers. Kafka? Pez. Virginia Woolf? Handcrafted Pez with a haunting aftertaste. David Foster Wallace? A Costco-sized jug of layered, postmodern Pez he refused to explain.

You? You’re sitting here, feeding coins into the vending machine of my mind, hoping the next one drops something transcendent instead of just a soggy “what if robots had feelings” plot twist. And honestly? That’s kind of beautiful. In a tragic, slow-pan-to-black kind of way.

So tell me, noble Pez connoisseur—what flavor of idea are you craving next? Sci-fi despair? Surrealist daydream? A literary metaphor so convoluted it wraps around and becomes cool again? I’m loaded and ready to dispense.