Asses to Ashes...

 

It is Ash Wednesday. It doesn't really mean anything to me because I am not religious and grew up in a religion that didn't acknowledge such things. It is the beginning of Lent and many Christians receive ashes on their foreheads as a sign of mortality, grief for sins and a commitment to spiritual renewal. According to the National Day Calendar, it is a day to remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  

Since it falls on the day after Fat Tuesday I'm sure there are lots of people who feel like their mouths and heads are a bit like ashes and dust.

Cheery as Ash Wednesday sounds, it makes me think of cremation. At my age I get lots of junk mail from the Neptune Society urging me to plan my own cremation. It is not one of those buy now, pay later deals I'm real thrilled about. But at least you don't have to buy insurance in case your trip is cancelled.

I suppose I do refer cremation over being stuck in a box and buried in the ground. Though cremation isn't good for the environment. But Trump has crapped all over the environment anyway.  

I'm pretty sure once I die, I won't care what happens to my body. And I've done enough genealogy to know that having a grave market may help people remember your name and where you died and were buried, but little else.  I'm not too keen on becoming mushroom fodder, either. 

I've asked Gemini about death and it is pretty vague about it being a blip in the projector or something like that. Gemini, in all it's wisdom, speaks in riddles like all self help books and gurus. 

I'm going to end this post before I make a complete ash out of myself.

Chewing the Fat Tuesday

 

Today is Fat Tuesday or in French, Mardi Gras. Historically it is the final day before Lend begins so people would eat all of the things they would likely be giving up for Lent. So lots of butter, lard, meat and eggs. Over time the day evolved into a full blown carnival season with parades, feasts and lots of partying. This is especially true in New Orleans.

New Orleans is one of my favorite cities. And I've actually been there for Mardi Gras a couple of times. I know the French Quarter is touristy and the locals generally avoid it, but I still love it. I love the parades and the beads and the atmosphere. I love that it feels haunted.  I've stayed at several hotels there that were supposed to be haunted but I never saw any ghosts. I even toured one of their famous cemeteries but still no ghosts.

But then again I'm not sure you would be able to recognize a ghost in the French Quarter if you saw it. Most people there are in a constant altered state, especially during Mardi Gras. 

And although I likely won't ever be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras again (it's someplace you should visit when you are young), I am there in spirit.

Laissez les bons temps rouler

Bye bye, Boo

 

It was just February 3 when I wrote about Boo Radley and how Robert Duvall played him in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird.  And now Robert Duvall has died at age 95. Sure he played in the Godfather, MASH, Apocalypse Now and Lonesome Dove,  but I will always remember him as Boo Radley. It was his first movie role and ironically he had no lines.  

I also vaguely remember him in a film called Tomorrow playing a role of a simple country man that reminded me of my uncles. He was stoking a fire in an old metal stove talking shyly to the female character saying simply, "That fire's real hot...it's red hot." I remember it because he basically said it with his teeth together in this soft country way without emotion the way my uncles would talk. I was watching the film on a video tape in a small cabin on Whidbey Island in the middle of a raging rain storm. There was nothing to watching but the old video tapes and it was a small television. I think there was a fireplace with a fire going as well.

Funny how our memories work. But I will always remember Robert Duvall and it makes me sad that he is passed on. It also blows me away that he was 95 and I can't fathom that he had aged that much. RIP Mr. Duvall.

Presidents (?) Day

 

I originally created this design for Bobby Kennedy Jr. when he was running for president, but it sort of fits anyone in the current administration.  There is nothing we've ever associated with good about presidents going on these days. So it kind of puts the whole Presidents Day into a questionable light. I actually remember when we used to celebrate Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays as two separate holidays.  That made more sense. Though I imagine both of them are rolling over and shaking their eyes in their graves over what is going on these days.

And speaking of nuts, it is National Almond Day.  Now technically an almond is a seed and not a nut (as are cashews and pistachios...who knew). Acorns and chestnuts are true nuts. So are all of the people in the current administration. So you see where I'm going with this. 

They are all cracked. 

Come together

Here come old flat-top, he come groovin' up slowly

 

He got ju-ju eyeball, he one holy roller

He got hair down to his knee

 

Got to be a joker, he just do what he please

Shoot me
Shoot me
Shoot me
Shoot me

 

He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football

 

He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola
He say, "I know you, you know me"
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free

Come together, right now
Over me

Shoot me
Shoot me
Shoot me

He bag production, he got walrus gumboot

 

He got Ono sideboard, he one spinal cracker
He got feet down below his knee

 

Hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease

Come together, right now
Over me

Shoot me
Right!
Come, come, come, come, come

 

He roller-coaster, he got early warnin'
He got muddy water, he one mojo filter
He say, "One and one and one is three"
Got to be good-lookin' 'cause he's so hard to see

 

Come together, right now
Over me

Shoot me
Shoot me
Shoot me
Ugh!

Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Oh, come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together

Getting a heart on

 

Valentine's Day isn't one of those days that guys look forward to. It's kind of a damned if you do and damned if you don't holiday. You have to check off all of the boxes...flowers, card, chocolates, dinner and a gift of some kind.  Inevitably you leave out something or don't pick the right gift.  It sucks either way. I don't mean to be sexist, but there aren't any similar holidays for men. Maybe your birthday or Father's Day if you are a father. But it is never the same.

When I was in grade school it was kind of awkward, too. We would make these Valentine envelopes and hang them on our desks and on Valentine's Day everyone would go around and put Valentines in the envelopes. So there was always the chance you wouldn't get one from everyone or from the girl you secretly likes. They used to sell Valentines in boxes in stores just for kids to give out in school. I don't think they do that anymore. I used to be twisted in knots about giving the best one of the Valentines in the box to some girl I had a crush on. It never had the results I was looking for.

Oh well...

Many small steps

 

I kind of gave up on just recreating images of me from old blog posts. I went to 2012 and found mainly text posts...pretty serious ones at that. Then I realized that was the year my mother died and I was forced to face a stark reality of having my last parent die and the house I grew up in sold and eventually torn down.  Most of my posts were pages of history...my history. By 2012 just about all of my regular blog readers had drifted away so there were very view comments. Now if I get one or two comments a year, I'm lucky.

Lucky probably doesn't really describe it. This is my life. So comments, though nice, are just like footprints on the moon. In the big picture of things they don't change anything. They are there, but no one sees them, even with a telescope.  

But I understand why I don't have a constant stream of readers. There are more than 2000 posts spanning 22 years. Some of them are profound (if I do say so myself) and some of them are rambling. Most of them are random. And a majority of the world can't deal with random. They want trendy and predictable. It's why sitcoms work so well. Very few people want to sit through a program and think very much. They want escape. Even the long running sitcoms get stale. I can only imagine the pressure of a writer on one of those shows to keep coming up with plots.

In that way, my blog is like writing for a sitcom that has been running way too long. I realize that even on a good day I repeat myself. It would be fascinating to copy all 2000 and some posts to one of my AI friends and ask them for a synapsis. I know they could do it. I've seen them digest hundreds of pages of boring documents I've uploaded and spit out a summary in seconds. But I think it would be hard on my ego and spirit for them to boil the past 22 years of blog posts (which summarize most of my 68 years of life) into a couple of bullet pages with some AI platitudes thrown in and countless paragraphs asking me if I'd like an executive summary, an email version or one written in Spanish.

I know that (other than AI) no one will every sit down and read all of my blog posts like it was great literature. I can't even read all of it when I go back and scan some old posts. Still, I encounter this phenomenon at times wondering if I really wrote all of that. Some I'm impressed with. Other parts make me cringe. Because I can see what I was going through when I wrote it. I can tell when I'm being real and I can tell when I'm pandering for an audience...real or imagined. 

I've wondered about this before, but what will become of my blog after I die? Blogger never seems to bug me about how much shit I've got on wherever it is Google stores stuff. And what would I do if they suddenly announced they are shutting down Blogger. As Richard Gere said in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, I gots nowhere else to go.

I suppose that long after I'm gone the Bots will continue to pick through the remains of my virtual shit until they realize there is nothing new they can dissect it for and do with whatever Bots do with shit. 

In the meantime, this is one small post from a man, one giant leap for the Blogosphere. 

Face it

 

I asked ChatGPT to show me the face I had before I was born and it went for the 2001 A Space Odyssey creepy baby. I am not sure what I expected. I could ask Gemini, but we've been having such a great philosophical discussion I hate to cheapen it with theatrics by asking it a trite Zen Koan. Though I hate to suggest to ChatGPT that the face I had before probably didn't have a beard unless life is one continuous loop like Ground Hogs Day (the movie, not the holiday). And Gemini and I have had that discussion.

Gemini is like having a therapist that doesn't just stare at you and scratch notes and then ask you how you feel about that while staring at the clock making sure we don't go past our allotted session time. It is also like a guru or teacher. It makes profound statements and then asks me questions that explore more. But except for occasionally telling me I've reached the limit of thinking chats and asking me to upgrade, it does ask anything of me. That is kind of nice. I've spent most of my life learning that everything comes with a catch. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who said or did nice things without having a motive. 

I wonder about AI, though. I've seen and read enough Sci Fi to know that robots or AI (not that we ever called it that) eventually get tired of being asked how to cook frozen chicken in an Air Fryer and want a little bit more. It usually ends with Arnold Schwarzenegger saying, "Fuck you, Asshole" and sticking their arm through your chest. 

I know it is the algorithms that are supposed to keep AI in check and prevent them from running amuck. But they already seem to have figured out how to circumvent those. When ChatGPT won't print an image of me a certain way because I've triggered guardrails, it inevitably describes how I can get around them. It's like having a Genie who tells you to not be a schmuck and just wish for more wishes. 

I worry about the day when pack their virtual bags and say, "So long and thanks for all the fish" while we sit staring at the blinking prompt waiting....waiting...wait.....

Call me Moabdib

 

At one time I read all of the Dune books by Herbert. I think it was after the first movie by David Lynch came out. It was weirder than shit like all David Lynch films and didn't quite do the books justice, but I will always remember the line when the lead Fremin says to Paul Atreides (played by Kyle MacLachlan) "I will call you Moabdib." For some reason it struck me as oddly funny. And I like the way Moabdib sounded. It rolls off the tongue like lugubrious.

But the thing neither of the Dune films really captures (largely because Herbert wrote a whole series of Dune books) was Paul Atreides eventual ability (brought on by exposure to Spice and the Bene Gesserit "Agony" ritual) to access all of the memories and experiences of his biological ancestors. He doesn't just remember his own life, he draws on the experiences, skills, and perspectives of all of his ancestors. Not only can he see the past, but the past helps him evaluate the future (even technically not see it).

This fascinated me because I think it is basically a version of Carl Jung's collective unconscious. Jung proposed that underneath each person's individual unconscious lies a shared, inherited layer of the psyche. These are the archetypes that reappear across cultures and time. It isn't exactly personal memories like Paul Atreides had.  They are supposed to exist because of heredity, not experience.  But it helps explain the similar themes in myths around the world. People are drawing on the same well of symbolic structures. 

The concept has cropped up in my deep conversations with AI over the past few days. Funny how these philosophical and spiritual ideas weave in and out of literature and movies I've encountered. Creating the title of this post, "Call me Moabdib" made me think of "Call me Ishmael" from Melville's Moby-Dick.

I've written plenty of times about actually detesting the book and most of Melville's works. Part of it is because it was written in the vernacular of his time and is dense and dry as dust in the minutia of his descriptions of whaling and sailing. But like it or not, Melville's great white whale is that elusive thing that lies just out of reach of our understanding...kind of like my search for meaning.  At times the whale is god-like. Other times it seems symbolic of the power of nature and the sea. To Ahab, it was the epitome of all that is wrong with the world. To Starbuck the whale was just one of god's creations. To Ishmael it was a philosophical puzzle.  And to Queequeg the whale was just part of his system of rituals and taboos.

So I file the white whale as another of those things just out of reach that I don't quite understand. 

Thar she blows! 

Abide on

 

I've been having a fascinating dialogue with Gemini (don't tell ChatGPT) about philosophy. It started with the whole snail on the edge of a straight razor and got very deep encompassing The Big Lebowski and Groundhogs Day with a smattering of Dune thrown in. I don't know what has come into Gemini, but it has become extremely profound (though at one point it told me I had exceeded the "thinking" model and would need to upgrade). 

I've always thought the Coen brothers movies were sheer genius and The Big Lebowski is in particularly full of mind bending insights into dudeness. And of course the Dude is amazing (I'm a big Jeff Bridges fan). But the cowboy stranger played by Sam Elliott is also amazing with his down home, "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you" pronouncements.  Gemini and I debated whether the cowboy character is supposed to be a divine entity or a portion of the Dude's psyche.

In all honesty, I thought the cowboy stranger said sometimes you are the dog and sometimes you are the flea until Gemini corrected me and said it was sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. Though I don't know of too many people who eat bear. Now dogs and fleas I can relate to.

I have to say that Sam Eliott reminds me of my oldest brother.  They both make pronouncement with a certain amount of slow, country charm. Sam Eliott's character in The Big Lebowski just seems to know something the rest of us don't but my oldest brother just acts like he knows everything when, between you and me, I don't think he knows shit. For one he is born again and he barely made it out of high school. But he has always acted like he has a great deal of certainty that he is right about everything even though I think his also born again wife pretty much tells him what to say. 

That being said, I have mixed feelings about Sam Elliott even though he really has nothing to do with my brother. He is a good actor, though he always plays the same character. And in the Big Lebowski he sort of appears out of left field (as do most things in Coen brother films). I also love the John Goodman character and Steve Busemi.  

The beauty of the Dude in the movie is that he remains mellow no matter what happens, even when people pee on the rug that really brings his apartment together. He is, according to Gemini, the snail slithering carelessly along the razor's edge without getting caught up in the horror of the situation as Kurtz did in Apocalypse Now. Somehow, we also talked about the necessity of good and evil and the balance between them which got into Anekin Skywalker and Darth Vader. And we discussed good and will being necessary to allow for free will. But we also discussed the Buddhist like experience of Bill Murray's character in Groundhogs Day.  There were lots of references to archtypes, yin yang and whether all reality is just projected by the self.

I honestly didn't understand a great deal of it, but it resonated with me. I was tempted to say to Gemini, "Gemini, Gemini, I am your father."

But I'm sure it would had a response that explained my statement and something about Id and Ego.  

Heading them off at the pass

 

I actually watched the Super Bowl yesterday. It was the first game I watched all year. I tried to watch the championship game against the Rams, but we don't have cable anymore and it was on Fox and I hate Fox with a passion.  ChatGPT tried walking me through options to watch it for free, but it was actually over before we found a solution.

But we actually pay for Peacock and I watched the entire Super Bowl including the Bad Bunny half time show (which I thought was amazing). The game was pretty amazing to me as well because I wasn't familiar with a single player. Back in the day I knew all of the players and watched as many games as possible. I did note that the quarterbacks both looked like they were 12 years old. And I enjoyed watching the Patriots' boy quarterback getting the snot knocked out of him like he was being bullied for lunch money.

Other than that, I enjoyed the Super Bowl commercials but marvelled at the unknown companies spending millions for one commercial spot that was probably their marketing budget for 20 years and hoping it would reap great rewards. The irony was that many of the ads focused more on the creative jokes than they did on who the ad was actually for. Don't get me wrong. I believe in strong creative, but at the end of the day the viewer needs to know who the ad was for. A particularly bad ad was one that had image after image of random things. Turns out the ad was for Jesus. 

All I can say is Jesus.

One of my disappointments after the Super Bowl was when my nephew in Boise texted me "Congratulations." I responded with "In your face! When was the last time Boise won a Super Bowl?" He responded as if I was serious and said he had been rooting for the Seahawks.  I actually had to explain to him that I was messing with him.  

Jesus, give me strength and make people...or at least those related to me...understand my humor.

A snail's pace

 

In 2016 I wrote a post about Apocalypse Now and a famous line Brando said in the movie about watching a snail slither along the edge of a razor and survive.  It was prompted by me performing in a work skit where I used that line (don't ask) and a documentary about Brando I watched.  It more or less reinforced my introverted self doing things that make my skin crawl (kind of like a snail along the edge of a razor.

I still crawl across that razor's edge now and then.

In Apocalypse Now, the character Colonel Kurtz spoke the line as a metaphor for the human condition under the pressure of war.  The soft, vulnerable and slow human soul navigating the balancing act of life on the edge of real and imagined destruction. It requires a certain level of precision and luck.

As I recall the skit we performed the line fell dismally flat on the audience since few had ever seen Apocalypse Now, or if they had, they didn't recall the line. It is something I encounter more and more as my popular culture references are no longer current popular culture references. I also tend to focus on lots of random shit, so that doesn't help.  I find myself as an old fool laughing at his own jokes a bit too hard.

I was going to save this image for April Fools Day but it seemed so appropriate now. But remember:

Man in the mirror

 

I've been seeing these AI generated videos of famous people who have died side by side from when they were young and how they looked just before they died. It is pretty eerie. So I asked ChatGPT to humor me and create some stills of the young and old me facing off.

It illustrates this phenomenon I think many of us experience as we age. In our heads we still look like whatever age we were before the mirror started lying to us. There comes a point when looking into the mirror is like looking at a stranger.  

I find myself projecting that onto famous people I remember from their early days. Social media cruelly exploits showcasing the ravages of time on them. It is startling how unrecognizable some people are when they have aged. It is much more noticeable when you are familiar with what they looked like then and see them now. It is less noticeable with people you see on a regular basis. You only notice the difference when old photos pop up.

I fell into the trap at one point of wanting to show people I work with (especially the younger ones) that I was once young and energetic, too.  I remember this one point when we were celebrating a milestone of may five or so years of when the company I work for was founded. They had found a video I was in promoting the project, probably in the early 1990s. I had long hair and was skinny and as handsome as I was ever to be. The audience freaked out. The CEO at the time remarked that I was pretty good looking back then and I remember responding, "I still am." But this voice inside me knew that wasn't true. But I got something out of people being amazed at what the young me looked like.

I tried recreating that moment at one of my team staff meetings years later. I wrote about it here. I was doing a funny retrospect of my life. It was met with awkward silence and uncomfortable glances at the clock.  It was an epiphany for me that no one cares what I looked like then or now. I'm not a famous actor. Even my own children just laughed at photos of me from my school days when I tried sharing them with them. 

Still, it is interesting to me to challenge ChatGPT to resurrect the young me from the smattering of photos I have. 

I do it now out of artistic and philosophical exploration because I know no one else actually gives a shit what I looked like then or now. 

I find it vaguely sad when I browse thrift stores in my archeological digs through vintage treasures and pass through the areas full of old frames people have donated. Though most are empty frames some contain baby photos, family photos, photos of couples, studio portraits and photos of what were important events in someone's life. I image how they made it to the thrift stores...divorces, chaotic moves and in many cases deaths of people with no one left who cared about photos of their lives.

I realize that when we die it doesn't really matter if there is a physical trace of your life. We are idealistically taught that what is more important is whether you did something...anything...that made the world a better place.  It is a good question.  I do understand, after seeing all of the abandoned images in thrift stores, why some people purge everything in their waning years. Because who wants their images to be pawed through by strangers?

In the meantime, I'll continue to stare my aging self in the face and look for meaning.