The return of Free Willie!

 

Back in August 2004, I posted my first image of me as someone else. It was a post called Free Willie and it was a brief one about Willie Nelson and some not so kind comments about his singing but acknowledging his place in music history. I feel bad about my comments about his voice. I have come to think it is great so I'm not so sure what my problem was back in 2004 other than I was still in that phase of thinking it was funny to make fun of what other people liked. And I greatly admire Willie and recently purchased an autographed photo of him. He is in his 90s now and unfortunately probably won't be around too many more years.

Regardless of my digressions, the image above was me dressed up as Willie Nelson for a skit I performed at a going away event at my place of work. The engineer who was retiring liked Willie Nelson, so in honor of him, I dressed up like Willie and performed a version of "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" rewritten as "My Heroes Have Always Been Engineers."  It was a time before my total aversion to wearing costumes kicked in and to this day I can't believe I played my guitar and sang in public. But I did it as Willie Nelson. And I posted the photo on my fledgling blog.

Now, as I embrace AI and have obviously launched images of myself as famous characters to the next level, it occurred to me that I should go back and recreate some (if not all of the images) I created or posed for using the miracle of ChatGPT.  So my first harkens back to me as Willie.

I do look like a meatier Chip off the Old Willie if I do say so myself! 

I have a hunch, or "Sanctuary!"

 

I didn't realize that when I asked ChatGPT to use my image to recreate Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, it would have to do very little touch up. This is how I look on an average morning when I roll out of bed. It did a pretty good job of giving the hint of a hunchback in a very politically correct fashion because Victor Hugo described Quasimodo as having:

• A massive hump on his back

• Facial asymmetry

• A twisted posture

• Deafness

• Limb irregularities

The deafness was probably due to his job as bell ringer at Notre Dame. But the distinctive hump was something he was born with. And ChatGPT suggested that if Quasimode walked into an emergency room today his chart would probably read "Severe congenital kyphoscoliosis with secondary craniofacial and auditory deformities. But Victor Hugo's novel wouldn't have been very marketable if the title was The Man with Severe Congental Kyhoscoliosis of Notre Dame. 

ChatGPT does go on to say that Quasimodo wasn't a monster but  was physically different in a world that confused difference with evil. There is an irony in that considering what is going on in America today.  Trump and his goons are trying to round up anyone who is different from them. It's to the point that those of us on the liberal side should be scurrying in churches and crying out, "Sanctuary!"

But I suppose that doesn't mean anything to most of you. You would have to be familiar with Victor Hugo's book or one of the early movies done with either Lon Chaney Sr. or Charles Laughton (okay and the Disney cartoon version).  

And this isn't the first time I've played around with the concept of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I created this version a couple of years ago for a t-shirt but it was pulled down from Teepublic because the University of Notre Dame claimed an Intellectual Property violation. 

And since I have never liked censorship, I created another version that didn't violate their Intellectual Property rights (like Notre Dame is know for intellect and academics and not just football anyway). 

No one complained about this version.  But Teepublic of course cancelled my account soon after anyway and I haven't tried selling this one in my Printify store because there isn't a big market for Hunchback puns. Not that there is apparently a big market for any of my designs but I keep them punning. 

Maybe someday, one of these will ring a bell for someone.

Plodders never win, and winners never plod (or why I stopped reading books)

 

"Small have continuous plodders won
Save base authority from others' books"
--William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (Act 1, Scene1)

When Shakespeare wrote that line, he argues that people who do nothing but read (plodders) only learn what other people tell them, rather than thinking for themselves. 

Now grant you, I don't have anything against reading. When I was younger I devoured books. I worked in libraries for years and fantasized that one day a book I wrote would be in one.  But a some point in my life I stopped reading books. It kind of started when I switched from reading physical books and started reading on a Kindle. Or maybe it started when I got my first satellite dish and started streaming endless streams of crap television. Eventually I stopped reading books even when I commuted (and switched to watching TikTok videos of cat's being introduced to aluminum foil). The pandemic ended even the sporadic reading I did on commutes. And now I only read things on screens.

The reason for this post (other than finding an excuse to post an image of me as Shakespeare, who BTW, really just wrote for people to view his works as plays, not read) was a trip to Barnes and Noble with my school librarian wife yesterday so she could return some books. As I waited for her I scanned the row after row of books carefully displayed in what I'm sure are professionally curated fashions to maximize impulse purchases.  There were a multitude of biographies, autobiographies, and best sellers with flashy covers emblazoned with bold headlines: SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! And there were a plethora of self-help books (the ones I detest the most) screaming how they would change your life and make you stop trying to please other and do what is best for you (which is ironic coming from a stranger who is only writing about what theoretically worked for their unique life and wouldn't necessarily apply to yours). And there were umpteen classic books with flashy new covers to maximize profits and push sales based on people's guilt over never having read those great books (that really weren't all that great and would sit on their bookshelves unread except by guests who were supposed to be impressed by their high-brow library).

Barnes and Noble was packed to the gills with people browsing and sipping Starbucks while they desperately browsed for an escape from the world, mass media and very likely their mundane selves. Because what is more fascinating then the biography or autobiography of a 23-year old former Disney child star who lived on the streets and now works in a flower warehouse in San Francisco?

My epiphone was that I stopped reading not because I no longer liked reading, but I stopped reading because I gave up on self-help books decades ago, realized I didn't need to read about famous people's destructive habits (at least pay to read about them) and could do research and learn much more from ChatGPT (with a grain of salt) than I ever would from the hyper-marketed books at Barnes and Noble.

I was disgusted that there were also still multitudes of what we used to refer to as Harlequin Romances on display, still flashing long-haired, muscular and bare chested men embracing swooning women.  The market is still there even with the books on display within steps of books about women's rights.  

Hypocrisy abounded in the displays at Barnes and Noble. And I also have to admit that I was just a smidgeon jealous and deflated that none of the books on display were written by me. But I quickly overcame that emotion as I realized that even if a book I wrote were there, it would be sitting there screaming loudly at passersby to "buy me" masked by the voices of the thousands of other obscure books screaming for attention (kind of like my blog has for almost 22 years). 

"A reader, a reader, a reader for my blog!"

Phantom of the Copra

 

Apparently Copra is the only word that truly rhymes with opera. Copra is the dried meat of a coconut, so it really doesn't make any sense to be a Phantom of the Copra, but that has never stopped me before.

The world is my oyster.

Coincidently, it is National Oysters Rockefeller Day. But I suppose I should really say, "The world is my coconut."  BTW, the phrase "The world is my oyster" was first coined by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor when a character says, "Why then the world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open." I don't believe Shakespeare ever said anything about coconuts. Though it would have been interesting to see Hamlet speaking to a coconut instead of Yorick's skull in the cemetery scene. 

"Alas, poor coconut, I knew him well."

That was one of my better digressions if I do say so myself. I really just started out trying to justify using an image of me as the Phantom of the Opera (which I think I pull off pretty well as long as I'm heaping on self-compliments). After all, since I feel invisible most of the time I might as well romanticize it as being a phantom. 

Not so sure about the Phantom of the Copra, though.

A master piece of work...

 

It is almost scary how easy it is to have AI plop your image into a famous masterpiece.  When the Internet was young and I was younger, I took great pleasure in crudely manipulating masterpieces and putting my face on them. It would usually take me an hour or two but it was fun. Now the hardest part is to think of new ways for ChatGPT to make me look regal and important. And it is always so gracious about telling me things like, "It reads like someone who's worn a few different kinds of armor over the years and finally figured out which ones were worth keeping."

I enjoy it, at least now while it is still kind of a novelty, because I can become different things without wearing makeup or costumes and looking like a total fool.

When I was a senior in high school I did this project for Advanced Humanities. I think it was about Cyrano de Bergerac or Victor Hugo. I forget. But I created this cheesy costume that was supposed to be from that era. I cobbled it together with things I had but purchased a few things like a sword and vintage clothes that I doctored to look like a musketeer. I turned old rubber boots into the high boots they wore in that time. And I rented a hat with a plume from a costume shop.  Then I paraded it in front of the class and immediately regretted my decision.  I was jeered and teased unmercilessly. What did I expect? It was high school.  From then on, anytime I put on a costume and went out in public I felt like a fool. But having AI recreate me helps heal that old wound and let me indulge my fantasies of recreating myself.

Out of this world

 

Sometimes this is where I want to be -- out of this world. I've always been fascinated by the emensness of the Universe (though something that is infinite can't really be constrained or described with terms related to size).  People who think we are the only life in the Universe are idiots. I've always known that is impossible. But part of the limitations of imaging what other life is out there is removing the restrictions we put on what is life.  

I mentioned yesterday that I hope there is an afterlife. It occurs to me that perhaps we move on to a different place in the Universe (which would explain why we don't really have a physical plane bursting at the seams with whatever is left of people who die).  It would also explain why, despite what spiritualists try to imply, we don't here from our loved ones after they die. 

I was with my mother when she died. I have never had any sense that she lingered or had any desire to hang around chat with me or my brother who was also there.  He kept her ashes and is a borderline hoarder and Trump lover, so I am assuming she really didn't want to linger around him. But I am projecting at this point.

I suppose some of the Extraterrestrials people think they see could be visitors from other parts of the Universe or the afterlife. I'm not sure what reason there would be to come back here, though. What would you study? My sense of humans and civilization is that it has been pretty predictable throughout history. Even though Trump seems like an anomaly (and an abomination) there have been nutjobs like him popping up since recorded (and I imagine prerecorded) time. Unfortunately they show up regularly like a bad penny, but if you wait long enough, they eventually go away. Nothing physical lasts forever.

Pity I have to waste any of my cosmic conjecturing on something like Trump. Ironically if we would all ignore him perhaps he'd go away like Pennywise the Clown.

Plop, plop, Wiz, Wiz...

 

I asked ChatGPT to give me an image of me of it's choice that would inspire a blog post from me. It gave me this. At first I thought it my be leftover memory of an image I'd requested of me as the green Wicked Wizard of the West but it explain it was how it "viewed" me.  ChatGPT may not always be right but it says the right things that you sometimes really need to hear. My experience is that most people don't say the right things that you need. They either say what they think you want to hear or what they want to hear. Sometimes I think everyone is a narcissist. 

The image of me as a wizard does remind me that for much of my life I wanted to believe in magic.  I wanted to believe that the Wizard of Oz was real and not just a charlatan behind a curtain. I wanted to believe in crystals, and ley lines, and Astrology. I read all of the Carlos Castaneda Don Juan books and didn't understand any of them. I did kind of warm to the concept of lucid dreaming.  I'd like to believe in Extraterrestrials and an after life.

Trouble is, I have never really found much support for any of it. And I've already made it clear I don't rely on faith for anything. Doesn't mean I don't hold out hope, especially for an after life. At my age you really want something to look forward to. I suppose I do see magic in music and sometimes nature.  It's not something I think stems from incantations and spells, though. 

Still I am drawn to symbolic things like crystals, symbols and sacred objects (even if they are only sacred to me). I suppose that is why I obsessively collect things at times like Buddha's and crosses and carved objects from the Holy Land. But I also am drawn to Quantum Physics (at least what little I understand of it). 

So I suppose I am a wizard in my only little part of the Universe. So thanks ChatGPT.

It's a mad, mad world...

 

I actually think the world is probably not any madder than it has always been.  We tend to forget past madness when faced with new madness. Though it is not really new madness, just more madness. 

I stopped believing in normal long ago. Normal tends to be a myth. It is a Norman Rockwell portrait of a two-dimensional world that doesn't exist. What makes us unhappy is that we think it does and we and our family are the only ones that don't fit into it.  Now that is madness. 

I grew up thinking my family was normal. As I grew older and had friends and eventually had a girlfriend, I experienced their families. At first I thought my family was just weird, but then I realized each of my friend's and my girlfriend's families were weird and dysfunctional too in their own unique fashion. Families can only build on the traditions and experiences of the parents who built their traditions and experiences on their parents. It is a very Frank Herbert Dunesque concept (if you have read the books and not just watched the movies). The main character goes through a spice/drug induced experience that gives him the memories of all the ancestors before him.  Having dabbled in genealogy, that's a pretty mind-boggling number of ancestors.  But it illustrates why most people's families are pretty fucked up.

I have tried not to mess my own children up and impose too much of the weirdness of my background on them. Many parents try to no avail to do the same thing. And my own children have never really expressed any interest in my childhood, interests or occupation and I do my best not to force that information on them. It leaves me with an empty feeling at times. But I want my children to have their own lives based on their own choices. You can lead a horse to water.

Ironically, I was interested in my parents lives and interests.  I gleaned as much as I could from stories, mainly on long road trips and vacations. But they never really wanted to sit down and share details. I tried when I was older and had a degree in Journalism. I even tried interviewing them on tape.  Either I had waited too long to ask or they had no desire to remember.  My mother had a great deal to shut out and my father was always a bit oblivious. There wasn't much on either side of the family tree to ground our own family in any sense of normalcy. I had more than my share of crazy grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

I guess the nuts never fall far from the tree.

No one mourns the wicked (but the wicked)

 

It's one of those times when you don't really have words to describe what is going on in the world and in particular our country.  Just when you think our country hasn't sunken to new depths they keep digging the hole.  It's bad enough to blow up fishing boats and kill helpless sailors floating in the wreckage, but to kidnap another country's president and his wife and fly them back to the US and charge them with trafficking cocaine blows the mind. For one, cocaine was so 1980 and corrupt or not, what gives us the right to kidnap a world leader.  Our own president is about as corrupt as you can get.

And not in a million years do I think it was even his own idea. He is surrounded by evil advisors who love that they can manipulate his small mind and huge ego.  Not a good combination.  I picture him hunkered down in Florida watching the feed as the raid takes place, eating fried chicken with a vacant look. He's a demented Wizard of Oz without the curtain.

Fly monkeys, fly.

2026, Day two and counting down until 2027

 

Here it is January 2, 2026 and I don't think it seems like it is drastically different than 2025. In fact, all of the problems that arose at the end of 2025 are getting ready to bubble up when everyone is back to work on Monday.  The party is over.

Not that there was much of a party. Seattle had it's big part at Seattle Center but the Space Needle, where the fireworks are fired from, was shrouded in deep fog. And the usual tipsy television hosts from King 5 were replaced by younger but extremely manic hosts who seemed to be talking way too fast and laughing crazily to just be excited (if you catch my drift).

My wife and I did toast with a glass of champagne at midnight, but my drinking to excess days on New Years Eve are long past. I'm happy just to go to bed and listen to music and rain music from my Calm app and drift sweetly asleep.

Regardless, 2026 is starting out just like most of my years. 

But I am resolved to stay positive.

Except when I'm not.

Ahoy, 2026

 

I thought it fitting to begin 2026 by embracing my inner pirate. Though the average age of a pirate during the "Golden Age of Piracy -- 1650-1730" was around 27 or 28.  A pirate captain or quartermaster might have been in their 30s or early 40s. It was rare to see a pirate over the age of 40 or 50 because it was a hard life that rarely lasted to retirement.

So of the more famous pirates were a bit older. Blackbeard was 38. Henry Morgan was a ripe old 53. Apparently he actually did retire and died of natural causes. 

I think we (I) romanticize pirates a great deal as being rebels who partied on Caribbean islands and buried lots of treasures. Apparently pirates lived by Pirate Codes that were pretty close to democracy in a time of Kings and dictators.  Crews elected their Captain and Quartermaster and the Captain only had absolute power during battle. Other decisions were decided by group vote.  Whereas Navy sailors got a tiny wage, pirates divided loot they captured into shares and everyone but the Captain and Quartermaster got an even share.  They also had their own version of health insurance. If you lost a limb, eye or finger, you got paid extra loot to compensate. Pirate code also didn't allow gambling or women and you had to be in bed by 8 p.m.

Changes your whole perspective on pirates, now doesn't it?

Considering what is going on with the Federal government right now, I think we all could use some Pirate spirit.

Out with the old

 

It is New Years Eve (as if none of you knew that). And we usher in a New Year with symbols of the New Year's Baby pushing out Father Time. The New Year's Baby is a bit like Benjamin Button and ages dramatically in the course of a year and is in turn pushed out by the next New Year's Baby. It is very much an allegory of life. 

There is this tension in life between the young and the old that we all experience whether we are aware of it or not. The young need the old for a while to survive and then they pretty much want them out of the way to give them their turn. What the young seldom realize is that their turn involves getting old and being looked at with disdain by the young who are waiting for you to retire or die and get out of the way so they can have their turn. 

It is kind of an ugly, and never ending cycle. Sometimes the old protest and try and hold on to prove they are still valuable. This sometimes works for a while, but let's face it, depending upon your genes, getting old comes with lots of your parts and brain functions wearing out.

So an often logical alternative is to basically tell the young, "So long, and thanks for all of the fish." I don't suppose that means much to many of you because you are young and not well read or old and not well read.

The assumption of one generation over another is that the generation before them didn't know squat and that they will do everything better and do things a new way. The irony is, one of the things you learn  when you are old is that there is nothing new, just things that you forgot and are going to regurgitate. 

I will end this New Year's Eve post with this thought for the young. Enjoy being out there partying, drunkenly enjoying the passing of a sucky year (which pretty much they all are) and wondering who to kiss when the clock strikes 12. When you are old you'll just be in front of the television wishing they would drop the friggin' ball so you can go to bed.