All that glitters...

 

I was at a conference for most of the week in Savannah, Georgia. So I didn't blog.  I did end up watching lots of hotel television with endless Pawn Stars, History's Greatest Mysteries and the Curse of Oak Island (which is a series I've watched for several years but only in hotels...it is about treasure seekers at this island who don't seem to know when to give up and stop digging).  I watched tons of programs about the Spanish conquest of the New World and their endless search for El Dorado. One thing I noted is that they never seemed to find it and when they did find gold, it was never enough. 

And I noted that in ever village they passed through they asked where El Dorado was and the villagers always pointed to the next village. I'm thinking Conquistadors were not the sharpest sword in the scabbard because they kept marching on oblivious that the villagers just wanted them to leave without excessive pillaging.



Still people think that El Dorado is out there just out of reach. I always ponder this when I see the commercials that swarm Ancient Mystery and treasure programming. There are lots of offers to diversify and buy gold or silver coins as a way to have money in case everything goes to hell.  The thing that baffles me is that gold and silver really are just metals we've assigned value to because they are fairly scarice (especially to Conquistadors). If the world went more to hell than it is now, wouldn't food and water be more valuable than a hunk of metal?

It is this line of reason that made me stop believing in religion in my early teens.

That takes the muffin

 

Do you know the Muffin man

The Muffin man, the Muffin man

Oh, do you know the Muffin man

Who lives on Drury Lane?

            --The Muffin Man 

I have never been particularly fond of muffins. They seem to be an odd mutation of a cupcake sans the frosting. But it is National Muffin Day and I wanted to get into the spirit. The Muffin Man song has been stuck in my head since my college aged kids were toddlers. 

Make it stop.

I'm not making a t-shirt out of this image of me as a Muffin Man because I'm sure it violates someone's intellectual property or copyright. Because you can't write brilliant lyrics like that without copyrighting them. I have always wondered if the "Muffin Man" is a euphemism for a drug dealer.  I get this image of a shady character saying, "Hey, yoose know the muffin man? Yeah, the muffin man. He lives on Drury lane."

If you ask AI about the origins of "muffin" you get lots of vague references to "Low German," "Old French" and "Guttural Dutch." The first English spelling was "moofin" from 1703 where I imagine an Dickens-like character uttered the words, "Wud ya like ta 'av a moofin, gov'nuh?"

Apparently all of the roots of the muffin share the characteristics of being small, soft (unless you are at a conference and eating the free continental breakfast) and cake-like.  Cake-like is the key because muffins seldom taste like cake and seem like the Putennesca of baked goods because bakers seem to throw whatever shit they have leftover in the kitchen into them

The fact that I wasted a whole post on muffins is a miracle in its own right.  

Move along. There's nothing but a muffin to see here.

One thousand and one (give or take a thousand) Arabian nights

 

As with most mornings, I started with checking the National Day Calendar to see what National Day I might hang my t-shirt designs on and shamelessly try to hawk them on social media. It is a challenge on many days because National Day exists to help various organizations drum up support for their causes or brand.  For example, today is Iwo Jima Day, National Vet Girls Rise Day, National Lash Day (eyelashes, not S&M), National Chocolate Mint Day and National Arabian Horse Day.

At first I didn't get any t-shirt leads, but I do like horses. I toyed with having ChatGPT create an image of me as an Arabian horse but I was concerned about what part of the horse it would use. So I opted for a Lawrence of Arabia type image which I am quite taken with. Though I think I look more like Anthony Quinn or Alec Guinness than Peter O'Toole.  Not that most people remember the movie or any of those actors except perhaps Alec guinness because he was Obi wan Kenobi in Star Wars. 

But then I remembered I had created this image of a Greek horse head from the British Museum many years ago and I did turn it into a nice t-shirt.  I call it Horse of a Different Color. 

The tie to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (though I remembered it initially as 101 Arabian Nights...probably because I was thinking of 101 Dalmatians) was that it refers to a medieval compilation of stories told nightly by a character Scheherazade to postpone her execution. It represents a magical, unending sequence.

That pretty much describes my blog.  Well maybe not magical. But it never seems to end.

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.