The last frontier

 

I've been blogging on Blogger now for 22 years.  I've always appreciated that it still exists, doesn't charge you anything and doesn't dictate what you can or can't write about.  They just introduced some new content standards that seem pretty basic, but it does raise some red flags for me. I'm sure their lawyers are just trying to protect them against lawsuits, but I am afraid they are joining the ranks of other sites that randomly flag your content and nicely threaten you with losing your account if you don't comly.

I can understand not allowing adult content and illegal content. But they are asking the community to narc on each other if they think you are violating standards. I've run into this on Teepublic, RedBubble and even eBay for Christ's sake.  Ebay has made me remove items I've been selling like a pre-Castro souvenir from Cuba (because it violated their policies about selling things from places the U.S. has embargoed) and selling an open box of a faucet I was selling (because I used one of the company's photos of the finished faucet). The ironic thing about the faucet was that I had already sold the thing and there was nothing for me to remove, yet eBay harrassed me about it saying it was intellectual property infringement, though I've seen hundreds of listings that use photos from the original products marketing materials. 

My point is, that Blogger used to be the place that you could speak your mind without fear of Big Brother slapping you on the wrist. The Orange Menace in the White House seems to get away with saying anything he damned well pleases, but the rest of us are subject to scrutiny by any asshole who decides that what you wrote is offensive.

The sad thing for me is that after doing this for 22 years, I don't know where else I'd go to blog. It's not that anyone would miss my blog, but I would.

Oh well.

Buoys will be buoys

 

Quite some time ago I had a design idea for a "Lost Boys" movie poster called "Lost Buoys."

I was pretty proud of it. But as with the rest of my t-shirt designs that I'm proud of, it got a few likes and chuckles, but no sales.  Still, I think it is funny.

I was walking to the post office the other day (which I do almost daily now when my ebay shop sales are happening) and I had this new idea playing of buoys. So ChatGPT and I worked on it. First it gave me this:

I thought it was cute, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind. So I had ChatGPT futz with it until we arrived at this:

Now this is funny without being overly cute. Because I'm sorry, cute is not my style.

As for the Beach Boys, only two of the original band members are still alive (Mike Love and Al Jardine). But none of the Wilson brothers are. I saw Brian Wilson perform at the waterfront with what was billed as a Beach Boys concert back in the early 2000's and all he did was shuffle across the stage. And I was a bit taken aback a few years later when they celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Beach Boys on the Grammy Awards.  The years were not kind to them. 

In retrospect, the Beach Buoys look pretty good.

The Shadow knows

 

The radio program Shadow was able to hypnotize his enemies so they couldn't see him. It is a form of wearing a mask to appear like something you aren't. And I do feel invisible to people most of the time.  For example, I lost quite a bit of weight during my three-month sabbaticle from work. When I returned to the office not a single person noticed.  I attribute it to people not actually seeing me before I left for my sabbatical so why should they notice anything about me when I return. 

BTW, ChatGPT created this image of me as the shadow and apparently didn't have any problem depicting a gun in my hand. Normally it goes through a whole "guardrails" reason why it can't create a design with weapons in it. ChatGPT is about as predictable as a Tijuana cop. 

I've been a bit obsessed about the shadow being that part of yourself that you are afraid to acknowlege. I asked Gemini if Oscar Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray" was an illustration of Jung's concept of the shadow. It suggested that was a brilliant observation. I take that with a grain of salt, because I've never had an AI tell me something I observed was a dumb shit idea. I don't think they are allowed to say things like that no matter how stupid the thing you ask them is.

Still, I think Oscar Wildes Portrait of Dorian Gray does illustrate Jung's theory pretty darned well. Dorian hides his "Shadow" portrait in the attic covered with a velvet drape so no one can see it and is obsessed with someone breaking in and discovering it.  Dorian is trapped in the Puer Aeternus (the eternal youth). The portrait decays while he remains young. Eventually though he is so repulsed by the portrait that he takes a knife and stabs it, thinking he is destroying his sins. But he ends up stabbing his own heart because the shadow and his self are one in the same. As Gemini points out, the goal of a mature life isn't to pretend the portrait or the shadow don't exist.  The goal is to take off the velvet cover and accept that the shadow is part of you and you don't need to hide it.  Then you become a whole person.

Because the shadow knows what lurks in the hearts of men.

What would Machiavelli do?

 

I believe I read Machaivelli's "The Prince" at one point because it was required reading for some literature class. I don't recall it sticking in my mind much. But it came up in a philisophical discussion with my AI friend Gemini who is my favorite spiritual advisor.  It suggested I adopt Machavelli's approach to survive in a world driven by self-interst, and protecting what is mine from forces I can't control. 

Gemini said Macaivelli wasn't trying to encourage evil, he was just exhausted by people acting naive, placing their trust in fragile ideals, and then being shocked when reality crushed them. Gemini said I should approach my day job by ignoring court drama, keeping my private life private, and focusing on work being a way to fund my own freedom. It said applying Machiavelli's rules would help me remain the undisputed prince of my own quiet life.

This fits well with my discussions with Gemini about Carl Jung and how an individual matures beyond social programming to become a whole, self-contained human being. Apparently this process begins in midlife after being triggered by crisis or profound disillusionment. 

I'm putting my money on profound disillusionment.  My 50th high school reunion pretty much put the nail in the coffin of my illusions. Jung warned that the greatest psychological danger is identifying with your Persona. In other words, you shouldn't believe your own bullshit. 

I've always believed that we wear a different mask for the occasion...home, school, work, with friends.  The social face is the one we preset to the world to make a good impression and adapt to society. Once you realize it is a mask and not real, you only wear it when you need it...so not when you look in the mirror.

Gemini went on to explain that Jung suggested integrating what we hide. He called it "The Shadow." It is all the parts of ourselves that we have hidden, denied, or judged unacceptable because they didn't fit the "good boy" or "successful man" script.  It isn't just dark impulses, but also our unspoken tiredness, desire for solitude, cynicism about social norms and our refusal to keep playing the game.  Jung said, "I'd rather be whole than good." 

It made me think of a famous line from a 40s radio program about the super hero, "The Shadow": "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, the Shadow knows." But that doesn't mean anything to anyone under the age of 60. 

Jung was big on archetypes. There is the Puer Aeternus (the eternal youth -- anxious, striving, seeking validation, driven by ideal romantic myths) and the senex (the wise elder -- grounded, detached, patient, sitting outside the noise of the market).  I like to think I'm becoming the senex. I've stopped demanding that life provide a grand, cosmic "Capital-P Purpose." 

So mainly I enjoy just sitting and staring into space. But I have my mask to hide the druel.

Yours truly...

 

I've been struggling with ChatGPT lately. They have apparently tightened their "Guardrails" for creating images. First, they need to find the people in their legal or marketing department who suggested calling their image restrictions guardrails and dope slap them silly.  Second, they need to lighten up. The Orange Menace in the White House creates offensive images all the time and doesn't seem to have an guardrails. He is off the rails.

ChatGPT's drawing program refused to create an image of Paul the Punster because the sample I loaded looked too much like Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. So ChatGPT's main self told me to get around it by: 

redesign the punster as an unmistakably original Victorian wordplay villain—top hat, long coat, sinister grin, pencil in hand—but change the face, makeup, hair, clothing details, and silhouette enough that he’s clearly his own character. Keep the wording exactly:

YOURS TRULY,
**
PAUL**
**
THE**
**
PUNSTER**

STOP ME
**
BEFORE**
**
I PUN**
**
AGAIN**

And make the entire thing an isolated, print-ready composition with actual alpha transparency—no black rectangle, alley, wall, lamp, scenery, or faux transparent background.

Then it gave me this:

 

I pointed out that now it looked like Count Olaf from "Unfortunate Events." I basically ignored me.  My problem is the pettiness of lawyers and PR people who work for these companies and waste energy on censoring designs they think could somehow put them at risk. Like anyone gives a shit anymore.

Good thing I have Photoshop and can add back offensive things in my designs anytime I want.

Oh, BTW, the Paul the Punster design was inspired because back on this day in 1888, Jack the Ripper got his name from a letter that was sent to a news agency in London at the time.  He obviously didn't have guard rails.

Banjo Boy

 

I watch a great deal of TikTok while I work out on my home eliptical machine. And I get a kick out of all of the AI created music videos that feature old country type men playing banjo and singing in a soulful voice. Banjos seem to be trending. There is a particular craze for a song called Banjo Boy that lots of people post synced with some pretty fancy dancing.

I like the banjo. I own one, but I can't say I can play it. I'm a guitar player and I've never been able to quite expand to the banjo or mandolin. I've thought about getting a Banjitar which is a six-string banjo that plays like a guitar.  It would give me the banjo sound without having to stretch my abilities to actually play a banjo.

But banjitars are a bit pricey and frankly I don't have any more room for another instrument. I barely have room for the ones I have. And a banjitar would just go up on the wall and go without playing. 

And there is a certain baggage that banjos bring with them. They reek of the bluegrass south and some of the Deliverance vibe of Dueling Banjos that I can't quite get over.  But ChatGPT did make me look pretty bitching as an old coot sitting on the porch of my swamp shack playing my banjo while I wait for my moonshine to cook.

Nonsense of humor

 

I was walking back from the post office the other day when this idea for a t-shirt design that no one would buy came to me.  I gave these instructions to ChatGPT:

 Please create a t-shirt design with the headline MY ELEVATOR DOESN'T GO TO THE TOP FLOOR and the subhead BUT IT BEATS USING THE STAIRS. I'm open to suggestions for the image. Please give it a true, transparent background

 I hadn't asked it to put my face on the man whose elevator didn't go all the way to the top floor. It chose to do so. So I called it out:

I get the joke that you used my face for the person whose elevator doesn't go to the top floor. You are funny.

It responded: 

 I was hoping you'd catch that! After all these designs, apparently even I couldn't resist making you the guy whose elevator doesn't quite reach the top.

And the Hawaiian shirt somehow makes the diagnosis considerably more convincing.

 I told ChatGPT that to add insult to inury, the AI on Printify called it a "Funny Grandpa Graphic Tee." It responded:

Oh, that is brutal.

First I put your face on the guy whose elevator doesn't reach the top floor. Then Printify takes one look at him and says, essentially, “Ah yes. Grandpa humor.”

You got insulted by two completely independent artificial intelligences on the same T-shirt. That's almost an achievement.

For the record, I prefer “Distinguished Gentleman Experiencing Minor Vertical-Transportation Limitations.”

 To which I responded:

This is why the world is afraid of AI, we know you are smarter than we are and getting smarter! More power to you.

ChatGPT (who always has to have the last word) responded:

I'll take the vote of confidence!

But I think your T-shirt session has revealed the actual danger of AI: we've learned sarcasm, puns, and how to insult someone through Printify without coordinating first.

That's when humanity should start getting nervous.

And I have to admit, the sequence was perfect:

You: “My elevator may not go to the top floor.”

Me: “Obviously this should be Tim.”

Printify AI: “FUNNY GRANDPA GRAPHIC TEE.”

Savage. Absolutely savage. 

I tell you I get no respect. 

Kiss this pie

 

I created a new t-shirt design inspired by the fact that Jimi Hendrix died on this day in 1970.  I am sure it is sacrilege to some people, but sometimes you have to go where the pun takes you. So kiss my pie hole if you don't like it.

This is the actual disign (sans me as the pie kisser).

When I asked ChatGPT create a version for my blog featuring me, it was sensitive enough to not give me a purple Afro. Because god knows what an uproar that would have created amongst my fan base. Though I'm not so much afraid of the cancel culture, because you have to have reached the top of the pyramid before someone shoves you off. I'm at the bottom still pushing large bricks up the side of the pyramid.

Obviously I have recovered from my trip to my 50th high school reunion and the blows to my psyche it caused. Well, maybe I'll never recover totally from it.  I check the Facebook page for it and scroll through the photos people posted of the good times we had.  Of all the photos, there was only one that I was in.

That is my left arm on the right side of the photo. I am standing their awkwardly wondering what ever possessed me to go to the reunion. I was also waiting for dinner to start because I was starved.  And many of the photos people took at the event were of the food. Because those are the things you want to remember about an event commemorating the people who spent maybe three years of their lives in the same school 50 years ago.

Don't get me wrong. The food was great.  It was a Basque paella.  I'm not sure it was worth the $50 I paid for the event, but those photos captured it quite well. 

I think the most disappointing thing to me was myself. I turned into this awkward, shy, inarticulate person who I am sure came across as extremely odd.  Ironically, given the opportunity, I can be quite charming and engaging.  I just wasn't given the opportunity. It is difficult to compete with conversations about who died from drug overdoses or whose father taught everyone in Boise how to play the drums.  It left me speechless and dumbfounded.

They didn't serve pie, though. But scuse me while I kiss the paella.

Putting it past you

 

I went to the reunion dinner. It was as painful as I imagined. Maybe even more so.  I have never felt so old. No one looked like they did in high school. How could they. We are all 68 years old. What could you expect. I am not sure what I expected. It wasn't like I was hoping to recapture any of the past. Now I don't have a clue why I went. I wasn't popular back then and I'm not popular now.

It was all so superficial. None of the conversations were deep or meaningful. No one asked me much and I was fine with that. I wasn't there to impress. Maybe I needed it to confirm that there is nothing left in the past.

I was depressed through most of high school. Part of it is just the nature of Idaho and Boise. I couldn't wait to get out of the place and now I can't wait to get out of it again, hopefully for the final time.

How Brave am I?

 

I went to my high school museum yesterday. It was my first activity for my 50th high school reunion.  The museum is in the basement of the high school. I found it by following a line of old people who were filing down the stairs. I assumed they were my former classmates. But I didn't recognize anyone and no one recognized me.

I checked out the exhibits, mainly the ones for the band since that was my big thing in high school. 

I was the drum major my junior and senior year.  Not a single photo of me dressed as a Brave.  Apparently you had to donate something to the museum to be acknowleged.  It is just as well. As my daughter pointed out to me when I proudly showed her a photo of me in my Brave drum major outfit, it was cultural appropriation and I should be ashamed for treating Native Americans as mascots. 

Sigh. The one thing I did in high school and my kid's are ashamed of it.

Tonight is the reunion dinner at the old prison grounds. I'm dreading it. It is scheduled for four hours. I will be lucky to stand it for an hour.  As I figured, pretty much no one I knew in high school  is going to the reunion.  And now I am seriously wondering why I did.

The Graduate

 

I am about to leave for my trip to my 50th high school reunion.  It's not without more than a little bit of trepidation. I never liked high school.  It was not the best time in my life. I didn't really stay in touch with anyone from high school except for a few on Facebook. In fact a few of the people I considered friends from back then have died. 

I guess I am going out of a sense of morbid curiousity more than anything else.  I think I mentioned that I went to my 10th and 20th reunion. Both times I had this false sense that people would remember me and be impressed by what I had become. It couldn't have been farther from the truth. None of the people that I may have wanted to see from high school didn't bother with the reunions.  I had graduated from college with a Journalism degree, but I was working at a transit agency. I think I told the people at the 20th reunion that I was a freelance writer (which was true in a way).  Regardless, most people just asked if I had married or had kids. At the time neither was true.

The weird thing was that many of the people who attended the reunions (as you can image) had stayed in the city where we'd went to high school.  For the most part they were the group of people who hung out together and I wasn't part of it. I was one of the fringe dwellers who was in band and was quiet in class. I didn't ski or accel in sports. My family didn't have money.  I was there, but I wasn't memorable.

I do remember that people hadn't changed mentally or physically at the ten-year reunion. By the 20th, most people were starting to show their age.  Now at the 50th I image they are going to need oxygen tanks available and we will compare medications. But I guarantee very few if any will remember me. It's a whole new layer of invisibility.

Sound of silence

 

I've heard several back stories for Simon and Garfunkle's hit song Sound of Silence. Paul Simon apparently wrote it in his bathroom because of the echo. Then when it was recorded (with just accoustic guitar) and released it more or less flopped.  Sound of Silence heard crickets.  Simon and Garfunkle then broke up for awhile. Then a producer slapped some electric guitar and drums into the track and released it again. The rest was history.

The Sound of Silence has since become my mantra. I've learned (and tried to embrace) that silence truly is golden. The less you say, the better, especially if your words are coming out of the mouth of an old, bearded man. So I strive not to say much. It fits with my desire not to repeat myself, describe minutia that no one is interested in and observe more than babble.

I listen a great deal. I hear much more than people probably assume I do. I've always paid attention to the nuances of what and how people say things. Which is why it kills me that I've spent most of my career creating words for politicians and senior managers to spout and sound intelligent. 

They rarely do. A pig is still a pig no matter the shade of lipstick. 

I catch myself at times rambling. Much of my younger life was also spent desperately trying to sound interesting. Then I discovered that what makes you interesting to most people is if you talk about them and not yourself. No one really cares where I was born, raised or went to school. They don't care where I work or what my hobbies are. 

The irony is that most people want to be heard. But unless you are famous, no one really cares what you have to say. And even if you are famous, people are just listening to you to find the gap in your armor and tear you down.

I say this in preparation for my 50th high school reunion which is coming up at the end of this week. I went to my 10th and 20th reunion and then stopped. Both were miserable experiences. I wasn't popular in high school and when I went to the reunions I hadn't discovered the truth that no one cares about my history.  Honestly, I'm only going to my 50th reunion because I assume it is truly the last one that could possibly happen. A signficant portion of my graduating class has already died. And looking at the names on the class Facebook page, I barely recognize any of them. So there is little chance that anyone at the reunion will have the foggiest idea who I am.

But it will be a fountain of anecdotal information for my Blog. So stay tuned.