（1）The coffee had cooled to the temperature of a regret—lukewarm, lingering, proof that I’d spent 47 minutes “just resting my eyes” instead of writing this column. The solitaire deck was stacked like a monument to my own indecision: three kings buried under a mess of 5s and 8s, much like the ideas in my head. I stared at the blank document, its cursor blinking like a judgmental eyelash, and thought: If only this thing could write itself.

 （2）Turns out, the computer was one step ahead. Above the empty page, a tiny prompt winked: “Let AI help you draft.” Followed by a list of suggestions, as if it knew I was flailing: “Math quiz for fifth graders.” “Resume outline.” “Microsoft intern interview guide.” None of which screamed “humor column,” so I typed the words like a plea: “Write a humor column.” Then hit Enter.

 （3）And there it was. A column. Eleven hundred words, with subtitles, rolling onto the screen like a conveyor belt of jokes. About procrastination. Procrastination. The very thing I’d been perfecting since 9 a.m. Eerie? Absolutely. It even had lines that made me snort—lines I swear I’d used in 2017. “Procrastination is just your brain’s way of saying, ‘This can wait until we’ve rewatched The Office for the 12th time,’” it wrote. I checked my old columns. Yup, that one was mine. So much for “original content.”

 （4）Now, I faced a moral dilemma that would’ve made my high school English teacher gasp: Plagiarize an AI? It was faster, cleaner, free of the typos that usually decorate my work like confetti. But then I remembered what I’d actually wanted to write about: the chaos of English spelling, that cruel prank played on humanity by people who clearly hated vowels.

Take “queue.” Four extra letters hanging off the back like a tail on a goldfish—pointless, floppy, begging to be trimmed. Or “rhythm,” which looks like someone dropped Scrabble tiles into a blender. And don’t get me started on “ough”: It sounds like “uff” in “tough,” “oh” in “though,” and “off” in “cough.” Why? Who decided this? Was there a meeting? Did they serve snacks? I bet they did. Cowards.

 （5）I’d also planned to campaign for ditching “ph” for “f.” Let’s make “phony” into “fony,” “photograph” into “fotograf.” Save ink, save sanity, save kids from crying over phonics worksheets. But then there’s “know”—if we chop the “k,” how do you tell “no” (the refusal) from “no” (the knowledge)? You can’t. English, you see, is a drama queen. It adds letters for flair, drops them for chaos, and calls it “history.”

 （6）But the AI? It didn’t care about any of that. Every time I typed a typo—“teh” instead of “the,” “beleive” instead of “believe”—a little box popped up: “Rewrite with AI?” As if my mistakes were a problem to be solved, not a signature. As if the reason people read this column isn’t the occasional “oops” that slips through, the proof that a human (flawed, caffeinated, prone to tangents) wrote it.

 （7）The AI’s column was perfect. Too perfect. No detours about my cat knocking over a plant mid-sentence. No parentheses that wander off like lost dogs. No lines that make me think, Did I really just type that? It was a robot doing an impression of me doing an impression of a humor writer. Faster? Sure. Easier? Absolutely. But better?

 （8）At the bottom of the screen, in letters small enough to hide a secret, the AI warned: “AI generated content may be incorrect.” A masterpiece of understatement. It can’t get “queue” right, can’t laugh at its own typos, can’t know that the best jokes are the ones that feel like a friend leaning in to say, “Hey, isn’t this ridiculous?”

 （9）So here’s what you get instead: A column written by someone who spent 20 minutes arguing with a computer about “rhythm,” who still thinks “ough” should be banned, and who will never let an AI steal the joy of typing “teh” and deciding.