In Walter Mosely's noirish Leonid McGill detective series, a 50-something ex-boxer-turned-gumshoe-cum-philosopher muses over what he calls an ancient Samurai expression about resilience:

Nana korobi ya oki. “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

But what say we talk a little about creativity, instead of the screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, and AI paraphernalia that, in reality, are just means to the ends.

That is to say, tools.

The hell with economic ditches dug out by erratic policy. 

So, okay, there’s a temptation to talk about zigs, zags, and remote Pacific Islands with zero US trade facing a 10% tariff hit.

Or maybe it's "go pound sand, US political ad geniuses," because our not-so-delighted neighbors to the north have just schooled us, big time, on how the doing should be done.

Talking here about the much-discussed:60 rink-side uplift of creativity and charm that features Mike Meyers in tandem with Mark Carney, the newly elevated Liberal PM (link at bottom).

Mike McCurry, an old friend who Wiki reports as Bill Clinton’s former press secretary — and history records as one of the best to ever hold down the podium — doesn’t call bullshit on me.

At least, not exactly.

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A few weeks ago, I was gifted a copy of Princeton professor of moral philosophy Harry Frankfurt's eye-blinking book, "On Bullshit." 

You read the title right. Copyright © 2005, Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691—12294-6.

But what's so fascinating about this epic, if "epic" is the right word for a 67-page hardcover, sized somewhere between Mao's "Little Red Book" and a pocket prayer guide for the perpetually cynical, is what it doesn't cover.

If bullshit is the problem, what's the solution?

Okay, the original genius line was “Do This or Die, penned by Bob Levinson for DDB, circa 1960.

But, hell, times have changed. Right?

Sticking a finger in the increasingly roiled adland air — damn, I hate to see Leo Burnett rebranded as roadkill — it’s increasingly clear that a whole lot o’ folks are betting that AI as a Service is the future.

“Good morning, A.I., what do I call you?”

“Hello human wetware, you can call me Uncle Mort. I also answer to Morty, but only to my closest mishpocheh.”

People pay attention to what interests them, and sometimes it happens to be a drone.

Or, as the increasingly over-quoted Gossagism has it, an ad.

For proof, we didn’t have to look much further than the New Jersey night sky — a state overly maligned, if you ask me — for the last couple of weeks.

The AI rubber is definitely meeting reality road, and here’s one net impression: Creative quality, fidelity, and credibility are all winding up as roadkill.  And not just for the short term. Coke’s holiday production cost-control Frankentest was just the initial lump of coal.

As everyone knows, we’re just a few short weeks of Hanukah-slash-Christmas-slash-Kwanzaa. And since those twerk up against New Years like Miley Cyrus on stage, it’s also time to get ahead of the bloggish crowd and the competition while defying both the calendar and common sense.

Or  "I create, therefore I still have a job"? Apologies for the morning ponder, but it's the third Thursday in November, which means it's also "World Philosophy Day," a UNESCO-sponsored global think-a-thon intended to focus our attention on guiding principles of being, knowledge and reasoning, morality, and you name it.

Call it deja, deja, deja, deja vu, all over again, again. The same fingers pointed, the same circular firing squads assembled, the same blame assigned, and, most of all, the same words spoken each time we Democrats suck wind.

Searching for distraction, re-reading an article from the New York Time's crack Wirecutter product review squad headlined, “Apple’s new AI features? Overhyped.”

Like all things done in moderation, it's okay for advertising to sip some of its own Kool Aid. 

Lately, however, it feels more like the industry is adrift on a sea of sugary delusion and those purple, red, and oddly glowing orange icebergs up ahead are about to inflict serious damage on our theoretically unsinkable ship.

Or talking out of school. At least, not entirely. But after years, okay, decades, of waiting for advertising to find and follow its better angels, I keep playing Charlie Brown to Lucy’s football-yanking set piece.

I'm talking about the pundits cueing up cheek-by-jowl, pixel-to-pixel and podcast-to-podcast on the marketing lessons to be learned from the Kamala Harris phenomena.

Translation: AI’s Jedi mind tricks really do work on a big slice of the audience.