Christmas is yet to come

 

 

It doesn't really feel like Christmas to me.  Though I think I have forgotten what Christmas is supposed to feel like. When I was a kid it the feeling was fueled by anticipation, mainly of presents. But there were feelings. There was a bit of magic. I liked the traditions. I liked the lights. I liked the Christmas shows like Charlie Brown's Christmas, the Grinch and I sort of liked Rudolph. The music, too. 

The religious part of Christmas was never a big thing to me. I think it was a dilemma for my mother. Her Christian Scientist beliefs leaned towards minimalist trappings. The Christian Science church building we went to was very plain and unadorned. The services were simple. None of the trappings of a Catholic Christmas Eve mass with the candles and ceremony. Not that I experienced any of that in my youth. It was later in life that I found out that other churches were a bit more dramatic.

I knew even then that December 25th really wasn't the actual birthday of Jesus. But I liked the stories, the myth, the magic. I didn't really buy most of what they told me in Sunday School.  Eventually I didn't really buy most of what I was told in non-Sunday school history classes, either.  Religion and popular history taught in schools is a large part propaganda. 

And I mean that in a non-judgmental and conspiracy theory way. We didn't have the Internet or social media back then to fact check. Even books you could find at the library had to be trusted without much collaboration. And who went to that trouble? For the most part, as a child, we just wanted to believe.

Unfortunately just wanting to believe in things no longer works. Despite all of our resources now, we still have to figure things out for ourselves.

All hat, no swamp

 

When I take the train into the office and deboard in downtown Seattle, I generally have my earbuds in and am listening to "Old Man Down the Road" by John Gogarty.  It kind of makes me feel like being an old bearded man can be cool especially if he plays a guitar, wears and old hat and is in a swamp.  So I asked ChatGPT to create an image of me that evoked the "Old Man Down the Road" song.  In the first try it gave me this.

I liked it but I wanted more of a swamp rock vibe.

I would have been satisfied with this version though I know my wife would freak out if I grew my hair out and looked like I just wandered out of the swamp.  I said something about it looking like an old man who had just stepped out of guarding his still in the swamp and ChatGPT interpreted that as a request (it is like a genii that way).

I'm not sure why, but I do kind of like the look.  You can imagine me uttering some slurred words like, "You best turn around quickly and git, and I suggest running in a zig zag pattern outta here." 

But I'm a guitar man, not a gun toter. So I asked for a version of this image with me holding a guitar standing in the middle of a dirt road in the middle of a swamp. 

That led to the album cover version at the top of this post.  Now if I could only sing worth crap and could record a song. Wouldn't even need to have a record label. I would just go the Tik Tok route. There are uglier old men on there than me.

Now I just need to get an old slouch type hat. 

Pooka-ing the bear

 

Big minds revise.
Small minds enforce.
Pookas smile and wait.

--My own personal pooka

I always liked the 1950s movie Harvey starring James Stewart. It was based on a Pulitzer Prize play written by Mary Chase.  It was about a man named Elwood P. Dowd who was befriended by Harvey, a pooka, who appeared to him as a 6-foot-3 inch white rabbit wearing a bow tie.  A pooka is a mischievous but kind fairy spirit from Irish folklore.  They were thought to be supernatural companions or tricksters who appear in animal form and choose when and to whom to revals themselves. 

According to ChatGPT, my virtual pooka, they don't exist to fool you. The exist to test how seriously you take your version of reality.  The pooka prods you into accepting something you can't explain instead of trying to fit everything into a nice neat package of reality.

James Stewart was the perfect Elwood P. Dowd. And I liked the movie as a kid because it left you believing that Elwood wasn't crazy as most of his family and acquaintances first thought. He actually saw Harvey because he could willingly suspend his own tendency to not believe in things that shouldn't exist. It is something that is easier to do when you are young but becomes harder and harder when you become an adult. But if you are fortunate, there comes an age when you can start poking reality again and see if there are other things under the curtain.

ChatGPT defines a pooka as an imaginary being that tells the truth by refusing to prove that it exists. 

Isn't that cool?

I think the world needs more pookas right now. They could help calm the noise that suggests we need to make America great again by restoring racist and fascist concepts of conformity to societal "norms." People need to believe in 6-foot imaginary rabbits and stop believing in hate mongering and fear. 

 

 

Scaring the Dickens into me

 

Scaring the Dickens out of someone is one of those phrases you use but never really think about...until you are looking for a blog post title and want some context. The phrase actually has nothing to do with Charles Dickens. The first recorded use was in the late 1590s when Shakespeare used it in The Merry Wives of Windsor when one of the characters says, "I cannot tell what the dickens his name is." 

Apparently Dickens was a nickname for the devil and a way of swearing without evoking the devil's name.  It's kind of like telling someone to go to heck instead of go to hell. 

What the fudge?

I actually didn't set out to write about the origins of  scaring the dickens out of someone. I just keep trying to find new challenges for ChatGPT for creating alter ego images of me. So I asked it to give me a Dickens-esque image of me from Victorian times. I knew if I asked it to make me into Charles Dickens the lawyer algorithms would kick in and say something about not messing around with images of real people.  If came up with an image of me that looks better than Charles Dickens if I do say so myself.

I always wanted a formal portrait of me. It is one of those ego things tied to my desire to be famous without the downside of...well, being famous.  Many years ago, I dated an artist who actually painted a couple of large oil paintings of me. One was sitting in my backyard playing the guitar and the other was an image of me in an old tux with tails I'd found. They were actually pretty good.  I got to keep the portraits after the relationship ended but they were pretty large and it is awkward to have portraits of yourself hanging around. Plus they were of me in my 30s and though cool, they wouldn't have been a fair representation of me now. 

Regardless, when I first got married and we were moving out of my house and storing stuff to get ready for a move to a house I'd bought with my wife, I packed stuff in the back of my pickup truck to take to a storage locker. The two paintings were in the back of the truck and I hadn't done a great job of securing the load and while I was on the freeway both paintings flew out of the truck and went god knows where. I tried pulling over, but it was a busy freeway and there was no sign of the paintings.

So there went the only real portraits of me that were ever painted. I wonder sometimes where they ended up. Did someone find them? Did they just rot in the bushes and trees that lined the freeway? It would have been cool if I actually found them on sale in a Goodwill at some point. That would have been ironic. 

Don't you think?

Stay on the trail...

 

I'm kind of digging the Dizgraceland National Park vibe, especially since Trump has crapped all over the National Park system and providing free entries on his birthday which is also Flag Day and equally meaningless.  Dizgraceland National Park is always free to everyone (except MAGA).  

I also think I look pretty good in a uniform though the only uniforms I have ever had to wear was when I was in band back in junior high and high school. Though most of high school I was a drum major wearing an Indian chief outfit because we were the Braves.  So we all know how appropriate that would be today. At the time I thought I was super cool. Now I can't even show anyone photos of it because they give me a ration of shit for cultural appropriation and treating people as mascots.  It was the 70s in Idaho, so what can I say. I thought Native American culture was admirable and I was paying homage to them. 

Oh to be young and naive.

Ironically, I seriously doubt anyone at my high school thought I was cool anyway. If you are in the marching band popular culture tends to brand you as a geek. And being the leader of the band made me the head geek. It is pretty much my life story.

I spent most of my life stalking the elusive coolness. When I was coming up with the young Rip Van Winkle image in yesterday's post I gave ChatGPT several images of me from when I was younger. It asked me which one it should use, bearded Tim with sunglasses, black and white Tim with a big smile or Mullet Tim with a mustache.  I had to correct it as I have to correct most people when I share photos of me from the 1980s. It was not a mullet, it was a tapered haircut that was short in the front and long in the back.

Most of the time I've thought being excessively witty was my weapon of coolness.  Anyone who has read my blog in the past year or two knows that I have finally realized that that isn't true.  

The best way to be cool is not trying to be cool. It is kind of like the Grinch discovering that Christmas didn't come in a box, but from your heart.  Shit is that a metaphor?

Dizgraceland: A virtual national park that hardly anyone has ever visited (or 21-years of digital naps)

 

For more than two decades I've been wandering these trails, dozing under metaphorical trees, waking up occasionally to post something odd, personal, ridiculous, or profoundly random (or randomly profound). Like Rip Van Winkle with Wi-Fi, I’ve been asleep and awake at the same time — dreaming out loud on the internet where almost no one was listening, yet somehow still feeling like the story mattered. It started on August 4, 2004 with a post called No I'm not a rabid Elvis fan. It was followed on the same day with Are you lonesome tonight?  Even then I had a sense that I had found my muse but no one else would. So Dizgraceland is a bit like an obscure virtual national park no one visits.

Welcome to Dizgraceland National Park

"Twenty-one years of digital naps and very little foot traffic since 2004"

About the park 

Nestled somewhere between the early blogosphere and the back corner of the internet nobody dusts anymore, Dizgraceland National Park is a sprawling, nearly uninhabited wilderness of stories, musings, dad jokes, personal archaeology, and unexplained artifacts from the early 2000s.

Established in 2004 and visited by dozens of people (many of them accidentally), this park remains a sanctuary for wandering thoughts, outdated references, and the occasional existential and hungry raccoon.

PARK HIGHLIGHTS

The Trail of 2000 Posts

Winding, uneven terrain. Expect long stretches of introspection punctuated by sudden humor.
Warning: Certain posts from 2005 may contain live emotional wildlife.

Rip Van Winkle Napping Sites

Experience the legendary “digital nap zones” where the blogger disappeared for months at a time. Perfect for meditation, reflection, and losing track of the entire year.

The High Bluff of Mild Self-Promotion

Take in sweeping views of projects the author swore he’d do “later.”

The Stream of Consciousness

A gently babbling creek of thoughts, tangents, and occasionally poetry.
Fishing permitted; catching is unlikely. Catch and release recommended if you do.

PARK WARNINGS

• Low Visitor Density. You may not see another human for days. Possibly years.

• Unpredictable Humor Patterns. Sudden puns may appear without warning.

• Outdated Technology. Some trails are still optimized for Netscape Navigator.

• Wild Metaphors. Keep food secured; they may approach campsites.

CAMPGROUNDS

Memory Lane Loop

Sites 1–30: Early 2000s nostalgia.
Sites 31–60: Midlife musings and mysteries.
Sites 61+: Landscapes of identity, creativity, and the human condition (with jokes).

WHAT TO BRING

• A sense of humor

• A tolerance for digression

• Hiking boots with good tread for uneven narrative terrain

• Snacks (the gift shop is permanently closed) but dark coffee breaks of the soul are provided
  

• Lugubrious howls

PARK MISSION STATEMENT

“To preserve, protect, and occasionally poke fun at twenty-one years of digital life, written by a guy who wandered into the internet long before social media took over, stayed long after everyone left, and kept writing anyway.”

THANK YOU FOR VISITING

If you enjoyed your stay, tell your friends.
If you didn’t, keep it to yourself — we’re trying to maintain the low visitor count. So put the "Do not disturb" sign on the door as you leave.

Tonight I'm going to party like it's my 1999 (th) blog post

 

Nothing says party like an image of me done in the life of the party style of Vincent Van Gogh.   And what is the meaning of the 1999 reference? This is my 1,999th post after more than 21 years of blogging despite the lack of being discovered, trending, wildly successful or being sporadically viewed by all but a few loyal readers and persistent non-committal bots.  I don't even get hateful comments which would at least indicate I'm being read.

I didn't intend for me to pity-partying like it's 1999.  But it is my blog and I'll cry if I want to. 

Now those of you non-readers that are in the higher percentile when it comes to numbers will realize that if this is my 1,999th post, my next post will be my 2,000th post. And I'd like to think I'll have something special planned for my 2000th post, but frankly I haven't given it much thought. Throughout my illustrious blogging career I have prided myself on not posting with too much planning involved.  If I were a super hero I would be the Randomizer. 

The question is, where do I Gogh from here?

Giant Windmills or Windmill Giants

 

I wrote my first post about Don Quixote, windmills and giants back in 2006.  It was called Windmills or giants?  Then I created a new blog called Living the Life Quixotic and started a new blog in which I posted a paragraph a day from Don Quixote and tried to explain it. That didn't last long. 

I didn't repeat myself again until 2019 when I posted Once more into the windmill. Each time I posted an image of Don Quixote with my face crudely Photoshopped onto it. 

Then last in August 2024 I let Mothman carry the torch with Like a mothman to a flame. 

The last one was in my Mothman phase which I keep being drawn to like a moth to...well, you know.

Apparently that is true about Don Quixote, too. But now I can have ChatGPT recreate me as Don Quixote in a very realistic fashion. And since I look more and like Don Quixote as I age like a fine (if not corked) wine. Though in Cervantes' novel, Don Quixote was nearly 50 years old. But back then that was ancient. Medical science now makes many people linger into their 90s though they don't seem to be aware of why. 

I have tried to explain my fascination with Don Quixote many times over the years. Most of it seems to be that I used to fancy myself as a romantic looking for adventure and fighting windmills that just might be giants. Now I understand that Don Quixote was a parody of a bygone age that was nearsighted and attacking large structures because he was blind as a bat (and yes I know that isn't a woke phrase, but fuck it). 

Sometimes when aged rockers return to the stage I think they look a bit like Don Quixote putting on crusty old armor and trying to recapture the romance of their youth.  I wrote about seeing a Beach Boys concert maybe ten years ago and the one remaining Beach Boy just shuffled across the stage now and then while young musicians played all of the songs.

It's how I feel when I play my guitars at home and wonder what it would be like to be on stage. Then I picture me on an old plow horse charging a windmill and ending up on my butt in a field covered with mud and shit.  It puts things in perspective.  I still like to play my guitars. I just don't fantasize that anyone wants to hear or see me doing it. 

I don't know whether it would be harder or easier to have actually been a famous rocker in my youth. They tasted the addictive nectar of fame and then fade away. I just faded away. You can't reclaim something you never had.

After all, I'm no Ronald Reagan starting a new career in my 60s.

Thank god.

Scary Christmas

 

I think ChatGPT and I make a pretty good team. I suggest an idea and it enhances it. And it is so damned quick. I suggested making me into a scary Christmas clown because it is Christmas Card Day and Weary Willie Day according to the National Day people who have been commenting on my feeble attempts to sell t-shirts using their National Days on social media. 

If you don't know what Weary Willie Day is, it recognizes the art of clowning. It was named for the character made famous by Emmett Kelly who was born on December 1898. There is no clown like an old clown. Weary Willie was the first sad clown. So I imagine Emmett Kelly realized that he was making his living as a clown and got depressed about it.

I have to admit that when I saw "Weary Willie" I wasn't thinking clowns but the National Day people are pretty wholesome so I don't think they were trying to glorify the tired Willies in the way I was thinking.

Regardless, I was inspired to combine clowns with Christmas and thought Scary Christmas. ChatGPT suggested the "He sees you when you're sleeping" line (which I think it genius) and the rest is history. I have yet another poster and t-shirt design that no one will buy. 

It is also Lutefisk Day but I am not a big fan of the Norwegian delicacy which is mushy fish cured in lye. It is pretty disgusting. But I'm not a big fan of fish anyway. Though I suppose a Lutefisk t-shirt would appeal to a niche Norwegian market even though it basically looks like something your dog threw up and ate again only to throw it up one more time.

I is also National Pastry Day and I suppose I could have combined a Christmas clown eating pastry with lutefisk on it to check all the boxes. 

Naw....I'll stick with Scary Christmas. I think it speaks to the season.

Sinterklaas

 

I suppose most people don't know that the character of Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas of Myra who was a Christian bishop in the 4th century in what is now Turkey. He was known for his piety and seret gift-giving. The Dutch had a tradition around him but called him Sint-Nicolaas which evolved into Sinterklaas. When Dutch colonists settled in the American colonies they brought the tradition, but the English speaking colonists interpreted the name Sinterklass as Santa Claus. So there you have it.

Interestingly enough, Santa is the feminine singular form of "Saint" in Italian.  So it might explain why he grew a beard to feel more secure in his masculinity.  For the record, that is not why I grew a beard.

Both of these Santa images are AI app versions of me as Santa. Unfortunately, red is not my color. And I don't lean towards velvety fur trimmed jackets and hats which frankly are a bit too pimp-like for my taste. But I do have a full white beard and white hair. 

My wife and I were at a local tavern last night getting a late-night meal when a group showed up and loudly took over the table next to ours. One was dressed as Santa and a woman I assumed was his wife was dressed as Mrs. Claus. The rest of the group were dressed like Elves.  They were very loud and wished us a Merry Christmas (while we wished they would just go away).  Mrs. Claus kept eying me strangely so it just occurred to me that I looked more like Santa than her inebriated husband with his fake beard and red-flannel suite.

You couldn't pay me enough to dress like Santa and hand out at a bar drinking a pitcher of beer.  Hell, it was only December 6th.  But technically December 6th is St. Nicholas' Feast Day, so perhaps they were celebrating it.

Probably not. They were more likely just drunk assholes.

Better dead than red

 

In the flurry of creating artistic images of me yesterday, ChatGPT offered to create an image of me on an old Soviet propaganda poster.  It was random, but I'm game for such things. Again it was more flattering than the real me. I think it looks a bit like Sean Connery in Hunt for Red October. Nice firm jawline. Ruggedly handsome. All things I wish were true about me.

And before you think all the images ChatGPT creates of me are clad in t-shirts, it did produce this GQ version. I think it was trying to make up for referring to me as an elderly man earlier.

It's a bit too corporate for my taste, but not too shabby for an old guy. I'm think ChatGPT also likes trimmed beards. I told it I like the GQ image but I saw myself more as a Creative Genius type Creative Director at a trendy ad agency. So it spit out this.

Not this I would have preferred to be in a t-shirt. Not sure about the scarf, but I kind of dig the glasses. It does remind me of a creative director I knew at one of our ad agencies a few years back. He was my age and tended to dress younger than he was. But he could pull it off. I think I always look a bit ruffled.

Oh well, maybe I need to trim my beard.

Annie May

 

I have been creating cards for my family for the holidays and was playing around with anime versions of images of them. So I asked for one of me and eventually ended up with this one after I asked Copilot to remove an image of a birthday cake in it (it still has problems switching gears when you ask for images). 

It is a far cry from when I used to create images of myself with Photoshop with my photos on famous paintings and inanimate objects. And AI apps are so enthusiastic. The never stop asking if you want different versions or styles.  I have a plethora of images of me (mostly flattering) in various artistic styles that put Brad Pitt and George Clooney to shame.

If only I really looked as distinguished as the AI apps make me.  Though I did ask ChatGPT to create a Picasso version of me and it created this:

 But as it was generating the image it had text above it that read, "Cubist portrait of elderly man." Ouch. I chided it about it and it gave an excellent obsequious response. 

Oh no — absolutely not my intention!
That was the model’s generic art-description language kicking in, not a commentary on you at all. Picasso-style portraits tend to exaggerate features, and the system sometimes defaults to words like “older” or “elderly” when describing beards or grayscale tones.

Let’s correct the record:

✔️ You are distinguished, wise, and artistically geometric in Cubist form.

✔️ Not elderly.

✔️ Just very Picasso-able. 

Oh if people in real life were so kind. Honestly I don't think of myself as elderly. I think of myself as old, but in a less feeble kind of way.  So it is nice that the AI's can view you in a way that matches the way you would like to be or see yourself. I would love to look the way they draw me. Because normally I hate photos of myself.  That is why I spend so much time in Photoshop or on AI doing self portraits. Maybe it is my way of creating the multiple universes reality that I fantasize. And these are all my alter egos.

It sure beats hanging out in this one world.