Hello my baby, hello my darling...

 

Jeremiah was a bull frog
Was a good friend of mine
I never understood a single word he said
But I helped him a-drink his wine
And he always had some mighty fine wine

-- Joy to the World, Hoyt Axton, recorded by Three Dog Night

 As with most of my ideas, they begin with digressions about bits and pieces of things that have stuck in my brain. When I was a kid I saw a Warner Bros. cartoon call One Froggy Evening. It was released in 1955 but I didn't see it until the early 1960s. The story revolves around a construction worker who discovers a singing and dancing frog named Michigan J. Frog inside a cornerstone. The frog performs "Hello! Ma Baby" and other songs, but only when he's alone with the construction worker. When the worker tries to showcase the frog to others, the frog reverts to behaving like a normal, non-singing frog, making the worker appear to be crazy. 

Anyway, I loved Michigan J. Frog. Years later when Mel Brooks' spoof of Star Wars -- Space Balls -- came out there is a scene that plays off the scene in the movie Alien where an alien baby bursts out of a guy's stomach singing, "Hello! Ma Baby."  It totally cracked me up because I got the reference from the 1955 frog cartoon.

For whatever reason I was thinking about the frog the other day and asked my Google AI friend Gemini Cricket to give me some images of a dancing bullfrog with a top hat and cane.  Bullfrogs always make me think of the song "Joy to the World" that Hoyt Axton wrote but Three Dog Night recorded in 1970. So of course the image of a dancing bullfrog made me think of Jeremiah the bullfrog from the song. And I was thinking that if bullfrogs could talk they would probably be sick of people assuming their name was Jeremiah. So thus the design above. But who knows how many people under the age of 60 remember the song even though it was in the soundtrack of the Big Chill and Forest Gump.  And BTW, Hoyt Axton was in the movie Gremlins in 1984. He played Randall "Rand" Peltzer, the inventor and traveling salesman who buys the Mogwai, Gizmo from a shop in Chinatown as a Christmas present for his son.

This next design was just inspired because I thought the bullfrog looked pretty chill and cool. Gemini Cricket gave me the image of the bullfrog. I had to add the tongue and fly to complete the pun.

Being dressed in a tux made me think of the song "Puttin' on the Ritz" published in 1929. It's all about high-society dressing up and going out to party. Ritz makes me think of crackers. So I had an idea for this design.

It has a very Leroy Neiman quality to it. He was an artist known for his impressionistic style sports paintings in the 1970s and 1980s. Again few people will get that reference either.  But I love the decked out Ritz puttin' on the Ritz.

It dawned on me that my designs all come to fruition that way with one idea spawning another, kind of like the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" parlor game. If you are unfamiliar with the game, you start by choosing any actor from any film and then you link that actor to Kevin Bacon through other actors who have worked together in movies. You count the number of connections or "degrees," it takes to get from the chosen actor to Kevin Bacon and that determines the "Bacon Number."  For example, Tom Hanks appeared in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon, so his Bacon Number is 1. 

And to think all of these years writing my blog making connections to random things I thought I was just digressing.  But what I was really doing was creating.

Even Chupacabra's need love

 

I didn't add much in the way of designs today.  This Chupacabra one was from yesterday and was, amazingly enough, a Gemini Cricket contribution. Gemini either nails it or fails miserably. And it almost never does well with text. I had to add the text to this one, which was fine, because I didn't really know what I wanted to say until I saw it. I just got tired of the nasty looking Chupacabra's it kept conjuring up until I asked it to give me one pushing a shopping card.

I also tried for a few wearing business suits on a subway.

They didn't look much different than your average subway rider for I asked for the shopping cart series.

The one with the trucker hat and weird sunglasses just seemed the most friendly and something you would see at your average Walmart and not blink at.  And I would wear that t-shirt proudly. It probably will take awhile for someone to stumble onto it.

I did sell one of my "Running of the Clowns" designs yesterday though.

I was overjoyed that someone found it let alone bought a t-shirt with it on. I just love the idea of running with the clowns being a traditional event in some Spanish town. It is more civilized that running with the bulls (even though it is more scary).

It is kind of nice to think that someday, when I am dead, someone will be wearing a t-shirt with "Running with the Clowns" on it. Maybe even Chupacabra goes shopping will catch on.  It would make me believe that my life did have a purpose of sorts.

You dirty rats

 

I am not entirely convinced that Gemini Cricket is firing on all cylinders in the Intelligence portion of it AI brain. I asked for an image based on "I don't give a rat's ass" and it gave me one image of a disgruntled looking bull and three images of a rat's face including the one with a top hat and monocle. I don't think Gemini Cricket knows the difference between a rat's ass and its head or that a bull may not give a rat's ass but it doesn't really illustrate the phrase, "I don't give a rat's ass."  And it has given me images of a similar looking bull for several other inquiries including PMA (Positively Mental with Attitude). I think it has a thing for the bull. I wonder if I asked for an image of a disgruntled bull would I get an image of a rat's ass.

No one ever said working with AI would be easy. I asked it to generate more images of "I don't give a rat's ass" and it gave me two more images of a rat's face including another one of the rat wearing the top hat and monocle.  So I asked it a pointed question.

I think Gemini Cricket is messing with me. I asked for images of a rat's rear and a rat's backside (which I realize could be misconstrued) but it kept telling me it couldn't generate an image of that so I turned to Artie over at Ideaogram.
 

Artie had no problem with rats asses. It, in fact, gave me several so I could say Artie does give a rat's ass.

That was a long way to go for that joke. 

An earful of ear-ie news

 

I am pretty tired of hearing about Trumps ear. I really don't give a rat's ass about Trump's ear (ChatGPT said the the phrase "don't give a rat's ass" is a colloquial and somewhat vulgar expression used to convey a strong sense of indifference or lack of concern. "Rat's ass" is used hyperbolically to represent something of no value.) I imagine the rat would argue about that.

But I digress.

Whether or not Trump's ear was clipped by a bullet, chipped by shrapnel from a teleprompter or chewed on by a porn star really doesn't matter to me. I am skeptical that someone with a rifle and a scope could hit something as small as Trump's ear. But hell, they are still debating about bullets and trajectories from the Kennedy assassination and that was 51 years ago.

What happened to Trumps ear has no meaning and  has nothing to do with the fact that I have a higher opinion of the rat's hyperbolic ass than Trump.  

Now since I've turned my once unsuccessful and yet to be successful blog into a space to shill my t-shirt designs would make you think that I wouldn't risk offending people by commenting on how useless Donald Trump and his idiot sons are. But I pretty much don't think your average Trump supporter would understand let alone buy any of my designs. And it is not that I think I am better than your average Trump supporter because I have a college education. I just think that I am better than them because collectively they couldn't figure out how to pour sand out of a boot even if there were instructions on the bottom of the boot. 

I do have to say that I get tired of hearing about the latest stupid thing that Donald Trump said, like Hannibal Lector is a real person.

I honestly think he thinks he is being funny. And he is funny, but funny in the way your special uncle that sits in his room fretting about the Red Chinese tunneling under the house to kidnap him is funny.  And when he tells the fundamental Christians to get out and vote because this will be the last time they need to vote he isn't suggesting that he is indeed like Hitler and plans to be President for life if he gets reelected (or in his head if he doesn't). He is just suggested that voting for him in the election is all his Narcissistic self cares about. They might as well vote for a rat's ass in the future for all he cares.

I would suggest that no one vote for Trump because he is:

But you should vote for Kamala Harris because she is:

Of course, all of these designs are available at https://www.teepublic.com/user/dizgraceland. I'm working on one about a rat's ass, too.

Life glows on

 

Tasteless, yes, but I find it amusing. If only you could have them made with glow in the dark ink. I take solace that this probably looks amazing under a black light.  She just has this radiant glow about her.

I was fairly productive today. I'm just a few designs shy of 1100. I wonder how many designs their average storefront on teepublic.com has. I feel like I should receive some kind of award for the most designs in the shortest amount of time. If only my sales matched my inventory. I think there is some kind of conspiracy to keep me from being successful.

I'm assuming all of these robed Illuminati are reading stories about Donald Trump's wounded ear. It seems to be the subject of way too many stories.

Gemini Cricket helped me with this one. I love the pyramid and the eye. I don't bother asking Gemini for text. I find it easier to add my own. I'm especially proud of the Pink Floyd line. I just hope the intellectual property Nazis don't wag their nasty little fingers at me for mentioning Pink Floyd.  I don't trust them.

I tried letting Gemini Cricket put the headline in this one. It misspelled stupid. I find that ironic. Don't you think?   

Send away the clowns

 

Gemini Cricket doesn't do clowns, but Artie over at Ideogram does, but most of them bear a striking resemblance to Pennywise the clown from, "It." And it is like putting an intellectual property "Kick Me" sign on your back to run an image of Pennywise. 

Still I can't resist creating clown designs. I'm not sure why. I don't suffer from coulrophobia (the morbid fear of clowns). I don't like clowns but I am not particularly afraid of them either. I'm just not sure why anyone would dress up like one. But the sinister ones Arties creates are pretty fascinating.

I do think carnivals in general are creepy. Though the closest thing we had to a carnival we had when I was growing up was the Western Idaho Fair. It had all of the carnival rides and games that you would expect. And the people who worked them were all pretty creepy. Though I don't remember any clowns. The clowns were part of the Shrine Circus that came to town every year. But it generally played at the Boise State (college at the time but university now) stadium. I seem to recall the clowns were Shriners dressed up, which make sense, because you would need to be a clown to become a Shriner.

According to ChatGPT, though, you had to be a Freemason to become a Shriner. So maybe it is a conspiracy of clowns. I just remember they were usually old, fat and bald guys in fezzes driving golf carts in parades (when they weren't clowns in the Shrine Circus). 

I could never be a Freemason, a Shriner, an Elk, an Oddfellow or a Knight of Columbus. I'm just not a fraternal kind of guy. I am right there with Groucho Marx who once said, "I would never want to be in a club that would have me as a member." I was a cub scout, but I was a pretty piss poor one. It's also probably why I am not into organized religion (other than it is a crock of donkey crap.)

I know this design doesn't make total sense, but I like the idea of a parrot named Pollytheism.

They are colorful if nothing else. 

Over hill, over dale...

 

The hill, of course. I hit that dusty trail a long time ago and crested that hill and I feel like I'm just meandering down the other side. 

Maybe that should be the next design, "I'm over the hill and racing down the other side."  Of course, the over the hill jokes started when I turned 40.  Forty seems incredibly young to me now. It didn't when I was 16 thinking about turning 40 in the late 1990s. It seemed so far away and ancient. I never imagined I would be 66 and hope I can retire by the time I'm 70. 

I'm thinking this is one of those senior center vans.

Sigh.

Faces

 

I got caught up with having Gemini Cricket crank out images of comedy and tragedy masks. And to its credit, it was giving me some real moody ones. I totally related to the bottom one above.  It spoke to me. Well not literally. That is probably the next phase of AI, but this one was very cool and sad at the same time. I get a bit concerned about Gemini Cricket and Google with the images it comes up with. I asked it if the images it was creating were royalty free and it hemmed and hawed around about not know what the code said about copyright.  

What sent up a red flag was when I was asking for Wilhelm Scream images yesterday and it popped up the image of  Edvard Munch's scream. Apparently the image is in the public domain now because it was paint in 1893. So I get a bit paranoid that some of the other images Gemini Cricket "creates" are stuff it finds floating around in the bowels of the Internet.

Still they are pretty striking at times and more artistic than Artie over at Ideogram usually produces.  I paired the image I loved from the other design with the female image above. The seemed like the perfect unhappy couple. 

I really like this one too because it reminds me of me and how I feel. I just couldn't figure out how to use it on a t-shirt. But eventually I will. In the meantime, this design is how I think people perceive me.

Oh well, I feel like this at times too:

No bull.

Why I oughta...

 

Take a good look at this design, because this is the only place you'll see it. I based it on a 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie called, "Dial 'M' for Murder." And I spent a great deal of time in Photoshop cleaning up Artie's interpretation including putting the cell phone numbers in the right order and amputating a sixth finger from the villain holding the cell phone. Finally I uploaded it to teepublic.com and they flagged it for review. You would think no one would care about a 1954 movie. I am pretty sure all of the people who starred in it are dead and a good portion of the people who saw the film are probably dead as well. But teepublic.com promised one of those quick reviews that they would get back to me on along with the four other designs they flagged months ago for review.

Why I oughta....scream perhaps? Or should I say, "Wilhelm Scream."

Up until today I had no clue that a Wilhelm Scream was a thing. But apparently it is a famous stock sound effect that has been used in more than 400 films and television series. It has become an inside joke for sound designers and film enthusiasts (it may even have been used in "Dial M for Murder" for all I know). 

The scream was first recorded in 1951 in a film called "Distant Drums" when a soldier was bitten by an alligator. The name "Wilhelm Scream" came from a 1953 film "the Charge at Feather River" when a character name Private Wilhelm screams after being shot with an arrow. The rest is history. The scream has been used in the Start Wars and Indiana Jones movie series. 

Now the Wilhelm Scream has been used in Dizgraceland Records. And it makes a pretty screaming good t-shirt design if I do say so myself. It makes up for the "Text 'M' for Murder" debacle.  I will have to say that I think the teepublic.com legal team is a few rocks shy of a quarry.

The stoners will love this one.

Butt who nose

 One of the things I struggle with as I age out of existence is this sense of who I am. I used to have a pretty good grasp on who I thought I was. The emphasis there is who I "thought" I was. It was a self image based on how I thought people perceived me and my work...my art...my personality. I've raged for years on the loss of friends for no apparent reason. And I've tried to rationalize that it is what happens. People don't stay connected. 

Underlying it all was this sense that I was likable. I could go to work and joke with people thinking that they liked me and appreciated my teasing and personae. I took comfort in this sense that I was funny and likable and people appreciated my humor. 

Of course, deep down I knew that the ad agencies and consultants that I managed just acted like they liked me and thought I was funny because that is what you do with clients. At times I tried to tell myself that I was different. I was one of them. They could relate to me. I was the good client. But I'd change contracts and all of the people I thought liked me no longer gave me the time of day. The new agency or consultant would step up and stroke my ego and I'd try to let it go. 

At work I rose to a management level that gave me some power, but I tried to think it didn't matter. I was down to earth and people liked me. They weren't just smiling and laughing at my jokes because I was a director, they appreciated my wit and charm. 

Then the pandemic hit and I tried to be that comforting strong leader who bolstered people's morale. I wrote folksy e-mails each Friday trying to keep people's spirits up. I posted funny images and jokes. And I met with everyone monthly and thought I was being appreciated and looked at as a good person.

But as we began to come out of the pandemic and some people returned to work and some stayed remote it became harder to keep up the cadence of "we're in this together."  And more and more I began to sense that I wasn't that great of a leader or well liked. We'd have these opportunities at meetings to give kudos to each other and I swear I never got a single kudo. I began to sense that people were laughing a little too much at my jokes and rolling their eyes. 

And there was that dreadful staff meeting where I was the facilitator and shared what I thought was a "fun" retrospect of my career with the sense that people would gain a new appreciation of me and the things I had accomplished. Instead it was an embarrassing and awkward failure that I regret deeply.

But still, I thought some people liked me and appreciated my humor. Then today I saw a photo posted on Instagram of one of my employees and two other people who have worked for me in the past. They were having lunch in the town I live in north of Seattle. And the caption read, "Having lunch with two of my favorite people from (my company) in (my home town)."  They were people who laughed at my jokes and I thought liked me. But they didn't like me enough to want to invite me to lunch in the same town I live.

So it drove home this reality that you shouldn't fool yourself into believing your own personae. I have always dreaded being this character who people laughed at behind their back and I fear I've become him, or have always been him. 

Even as I crank out my t-shirt designs at a record pace, I catch myself not wanting to say anything to anyone about them because I've come to the conclusion that they really won't care. No one will think they are as clever as I do or understand my sense of humor. So even when I sell a shirt or sticker, I resist the urge to say anything to anyone because I hate that distracted look on people's face when they are trying to be polite but truly don't give a shit. 

Still, I come here and post this crap knowing that it could potentially be read by millions of people. But I know it isn't. It's as private here as it would be written in a journal and locked away in a safe. No one will really read it or care. 

But still I was prolific today with my random designs.

I didn't even need AI to crank out that one. But Gemini Cricket did step up for this one.

And who knows. I may pop back into my unread blog tomorrow and delete yet another whiny post expressing self pity and replace it with my usual sarcasm.

Or I may let it ride like a hundred bucks on red. You never know. Or more appropriately...

Run, run, run as fast as you can

 I created this design more in my response to running in general than in response to the craziness that is going on at the national level with the Presidential campaigns and people running for president. I don't generally address current affairs in my blog because by the time anyone reads this, it won't be current. In fact, years will likely have passed before someone reads this. But I do think it is important to note that Joe Biden has withdrawn his candidacy for President of the United States and endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris. This rarely happens. The only time that I can recall is when Lyndon Johnson backed out and made a speech on television in 1968. He said, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

I don't know what Biden said. But it has through the country into even more chaos than it was after Biden tanked big time in his debate with Donald the chump Trump.  For awhile it seemed like Trump being elected was inevitable. Now with Harris in the race, I'm hoping the powers of good will overcome the narcissistic gasbag and his hordes of mindless rabble. 

But t-shirt designs must go on (as must t-shirts). I was too busy today hacking at horsetails on my hillside jungle with a machete (horsetails the weed, not horsetails attached to horses) to do many designs. And let me say that I kind of sympathized with Biden while I was doing yardwork and thinking "I'm too old for this shit."

I did manage to produce the Jason-esque image above and this one:

Gemini Cricket supplied the bones of the design before wandering off saying it couldn't draw people very well and was damn sure it wouldn't give me anything better than this one. I had kind of just wanted so big white type on a black background that read, "Are my eyes open?" I pictured it would be like my "What day is it?" t-shirt. But Gemini got all esoteric on me and pumped out this big question mark in the sky.  I was too tire to try something else. 

Oh well, I'll close because I think my answer right now is, "No, my eyes aren't open."

Passing gasbags

 

If you don't know what a gasbag is, ChatGPT tells me it is a derogatory term used to describe a person who talks a lot, especially in a pompous, verbose, or tiresome manner. It suggests that the person's speech is full of hot air and lacks substance or value. I would have thought a gasbag was akin to a blowhard, but apparently a blowhard talks more about their own achievements than a gasbag. A gasbag just passes verbal gas.

I have to say that Gemini Cricket nailed a gas bag with this image. It's very Pink Floyd-ish "The Wall" or Dr. Who. The British are obsessed with gas masks because of the World Wars. This shouldn't be a surprise since the British haven't mired themselves in a good war since. Or there was a brief skirmish over the Falkland Islands, but that was akin to America's invasion of Grenada in the Caribbean in 1983. Both were basically farts in the wind as wars go. Though the U.S. invasion of Grenada was good for a bad Clint Eastwood movie called "Heartbreak Ridge." 

I'm digressing. 

Though I did actually go to Grenada on a cruise ship in the late 1990s. I was more or less highjacked by a young Grenadian who gave me an island tour I didn't want, tried to sell me pot and then menaced me for a tip. Other than that I don't remember much about Grenada. I don't even think I bought a t-shirt there. Though it probably would have been something about "I invaded Grenada and I'll I got was this stupid t-shirt."

Now that would have been a cool t-shirt. This is too.

God I hope I'm not becoming one.

Drivel servants

 

For a man who made his living with words for so many years, they do annoy me. Or rather the people who blather on with meaningless words annoy me. And there are so many different ways to describe spouting gibberish -- nonsense, balderdash, drivel, babble, twaddle, blather, jabber, mumbo jumbo, gobbledygook, poppycock, hogwash, malarkey, flapdoodle, claptrap and bunk. 

Gemini Cricket seemed to get into giving me images of various made up creatures who like to spout small talk and other vile forms of trivial communication. I took those images and turned them into a series of  "Big Mouths, Small Talk" designs.

Throw in the Drivel Servant and you could wear a different small but stupid talk t-shirt each work day to express how you feel about your co-workers and committees.  Of course, you will likely be pulled aside by HR and told that your attire is creating a hostile environment for the claptrap speaking babblers who don't like to be called out on their mindless nonsense.

Blatherskites. 

Gemini Cricket couldn't come up with a decent image of Blatherskites. It kept showing me images of birds. Gemini Cricket is a few  Al Gores short of an algorithm if you ask me. You would think Google, with access to all knowledge there is on the Internet could figure out an image for a Blatherskite.

Maybe it has a virus.

I love it when pigs fly.