Lowering the bar

 So I get this email from teepublic.com this morning:

Dear Dizgraceland,

This is to notify you that, as a result of a violation of our terms and conditions, we have removed or disabled access to the material that appeared at www.teepublic.com/user/Dizgraceland and have deleted your account.

Please note that our removal of the aforementioned material and our deleting your account may result in the interruption or cancellation of previous processed orders involving your submissions to TeePublic.

If you believe that your work has been removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, you are welcome to contact us and we will consider the matter. However, nothing herein shall be construed as an agreement or course of dealing by us to in the future take any action or refrain from taking any action, and TeePublic reserves all rights.

That was it. They deleted my account and more than 1500 designs I've worked months on. And you may be smarter than me, but can you understand from that email how I violated their terms and conditions?  And don't you think they owe me an explanation? I responded asking what I had done to violate their terms and conditions and they sent me this:

Hi there,

It appears your account was flagged for violating our terms and conditions. Please make sure to check out our Terms and Conditions here: https://www.teepublic.com/terms

After reading these in full, if you still feel this was done in error, please fill out the form on the following page: https://teepublic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=7138964965783

Under the drop-down labeled "Please select the option that best describes your issue". select the "I am a designer and there is a problem with my account." option.

This form will ask you for information about your account as well as for any attachment that can verify the authenticity of your work. This could be PSD files, AI files, or any other documentation that shows you are the creator and owner of the works you uploaded to TeePublic.

Due to the high volume of designer accounts, we are unable to respond to every inquiry, however, we do read every response to this form and you will hear from us if your account is reinstated.

Best,

So I filled out the form and I am pretty sure I will never hear from teepublic.com again. Something makes me think it had nothing to do with anything I posted in my teepublic.com store. I think it was stuff I posted here about how ridiculous it was that they kept pulling things they said were violating intellectual property rights. And then when the pulled the "This is a t-shirt design" that was just a big "T" on the front of a shirt and I questioned them both here and in an email response to them, they just took the low road and deleted my account. 

Perhaps I shouldn't have said I hate lawyers.  But I do  hate lawyers. The canned emails they sent me were obviously written by low functioning lawyers.  What in the hell does, "Nothing herein shall be construed as an agreement or course of dealing by us in the future take any action or refrain from taking any action and TeePublic reserves all rights" mean?  It's not even a complete sentence.

ChatGPT says, "The sentence is clarifying that TeePublic is not making any commitments or promises to act (or not act) in a certain way in the future, and they retain full control over their actions and legal rights. It's a way of ensuring that they are not bound by any unintentional interpretations of the document."

Regardless of whether they reinstate my account or not, I'm simply looking for other options. But I have to tell you, the thought of reloading 1500 designs on a new site doesn't appeal to me. Obviously, I should be more discerning, but even so, it is months of work that was negated by teepublic.com without any explanation.  

In the meantime I'm trying https://www.zazzle.com/store/dizgraceland. Sigh.

No guts, no glory

 

It's what's inside that counts, right? ChattyGPT helped me with this one. It's got a lot of heart for an AI program.  And I didn't have the heart to ask it to help generate a design for National Trigeminal Neuralgia Awareness Day.

Today was also National Propane Day. I was tempted to create something about National Propane Day Gives Me Gas, but I just recycled something I'd already done for propane some time ago.

For some reason, I haven't sold any of these. That stinks. As you recall, I shared my version of "Propane" written to the tune of Eric Clapton's "Cocaine" with Cynch, the company that delivers propane tanks to your door. They never thanked me. That stinks, too.

Oh well, Happy National Chocolate Covered Pretzel Day and National LED Light Day, too.

Orange you glad you don't drink orange wine

 

It is National Orange Wine Day and I actually thought someone made wine from oranges, but it turns out that orange wine is actually a type of white wine made from white wine grapes. It is called orange wine because it has an orange hue. Still, it sounds gross. And I'm not sure it warrants its own national day. So although I had ChattyGPT create a National Orange Wine Day image, I am not going to load it on teepublic.com.

I did, however, load this image.

I was in downtown Edmonds this afternoon with my wife and daughter and a photographer taking her senior pictures and we we were outside the Edmonds Opera House - Masonic Temple. So I took this photo with the idea that it would make an interesting t-shirt.

And it does. Now will anyone buy it? According to this British guy who writes a blog about making t-shirt designs (teepublic.com suggested I read him), the print-to-order technology allows designers to capture niche audiences because you don't have to worry about minimum orders and masses of people actually wanting your designs. I think there is a modicum of truth in that. I've sold two or three of these:

And I'd say this is pretty niche. Though I'm pretty proud of it because I did it without the help of any AI Art program. I colored a black and white image myself.  Apparently there are fans of obscure urban legendary cafes in Boise, Idaho out there.

Who am I to judge? After all, I created the design.

Orange you glad I did?

We all shine on

 

I was listening to the Beatles channel on Sirius Radio today and they were playing all of this tribute music to John Lennon for his birthday. So I figured it was his birthday. But it isn't until October 9th. He was born in 1940. He was only 40 years old when he died. If he had lived he would be 84 years old. It is hard to imagine what he would be doing. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still performing. I am not sure John would have been. He never seemed to like being a trained monkey.

John was always my favorite Beatle. I really like Paul McCartney's work and his voice, but John just had this edge to him that I was fascinated with. Sad thing is that I really didn't like much of his music after the Beatles. I love the stuff Paul did with Wings, but John's solo career never seemed to click except for a few songs. And anything he did musically with Yoko was just wrong. Yoko may be a good person, but she should never be allowed near a recording studio. 

Still John loved her (which is why he probably never thought her voice was as bad as it was).  I have never understood why that piece of shit Mark David Chapman killed John. What had the man ever done but deliver genius music to the world. And ironically Chapman is still alive. He was only 25 years old when he killed one of the greatest musically geniuses of all time. Who knows what John would have gone on to do if Chapman hadn't have ended his life. If there is a hell, I hope Chapman ends up there.

Casper the dyslexic ghost

 

The concept of a dyslexic ghost just came to me this morning. ChattyGPT now can generate images. We'll see how long it puts out for free before it begins going down the same path as Ideogram and Gemini. Gemini now creates what it claims are higher quality images. But it only spits out one at a time and it pesters you about subscribing to a non-free version. I'm not sure what I'll do when I eventual have to fork over money to use one consistently.

This was one of the designs Gemini helped me with. I posted it on teepublic.com and I'll be damned if someone didn't buy a t-shirt with it on it. That is a new record for me. I feel like Sally Fields accepting an Oscar ("you like me, you really like me). Google it.

Still I feel pretty good that someone liked it right away.

Oh, no word yet from the teepublic lawyers about why they pulled my "T" shirt. Though I was at a restaurant this evening and saw the Texas Rangers playing on television. The "T" on their hats looked very much like the "T" on my offending t-shirt design so maybe that was it. 

Oh well kcuf them.

La cucaracha que se rió

 

Now there's a cockroach you don't want to step on with your bare feet in a hotel room in the middle of the night when you've go up to go to the bathroom.

And speaking of cockroaches, the legal team at teepublic.com pulled one of my t-shirt designs because they claimed it violated my terms and conditions.  It was this one:

I asked them to tell me why it violated my terms and conditions. It isn't obscene. It isn't racist. It isn't a hate design. It doesn't violate anyone's copyright or intellectual property. It is a fricking "T" for Christ's sake. It's basically a t-shirt site. Watch. They'll tell me the Latin phrase isn't allowed or some BS like that. It's on several of my designs. Temere Ineptias just means random nonsense. Though ChattyGPT is now trying to tell me it means reckless nonsense or careless foolishness. 

I hate lawyers.

All hail the phototaxis

 

Why are moths attracted to flames, porchlights, streetlights and and other artificial light sources? Well, according to ChattyGPT:

"Moths are attracted to flames due to a phenomenon called phototaxis, which is the movement of an organism in response to light. Moths, like many other insects, are generally positively phototactic, meaning they are drawn toward light sources."

Apparently, moths use natural light sources like the mon or stars to get around at night. They keep the light source at a certain angle as a guide for flying straight. But when they run into an artificial light source like a porchlight, it is much closer and gives off light in all directions unlike the moon or stars. The moths get confused and begin spiraling toward the light. If it happens to be a candle flame, well, you know what happens. They've hailed the phototaxis and get burned by the fare (so to speak).

One can only image what Mothman does.

 

Being much bigger than you average moth, I think Mothman just grabs candle flame and gets pissed. So then it needs a break.

See how I cleverly segued into Mothman and coffee? It was so skilled, you likely didn't see it coming or understand why. 

Nor, do I imagine, many of you care (and I use the term "many" of you more figuratively than literally since it is difficult to quantify the smattering of random people who actually read my blog). 

But I like to think of my blog as the flame and the few who navigate here are the Mothmen and Mothwomen (to be cisgender about things) who hop aboard the phototaxis before realizing they should have taken an Uber.

I am okay with that.

Giving up the ghosts

 

See? You thought I was blowing smoke yesterday when I said I'd do some ghost designs that fall in my usual OCD patterns. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Go to my store at teepublic.com and see some of the many iterations of these themes. And I didn't forget the Ghost of Mothman. I just haven't finished it yet.

Oh hell, here is the rough of it.

If he was holding a cup of coffee he'd be great for the whole coffee day theme. I can image that a Mothman stays up all night and can use some caffeine to keep focused.

I have to say I'm pretty pleased with these. I created a whole new album called "Scary, scary night." I'm hoping to capture the Halloween market. We'll see. This is the first time I'm ahead of the curve for trends. I figure people have just enough time to order some in time to be Halloween Hip at work or on Zoom. 

Though I've been known to be wrong. I keep thinking I've learned in my thrift store pick and flip venture. I was at several thrift stores over the weekend and thought I had picked up some pretty saleable items. But apparently honey pots with a map of Slovenia aren't on the cutting edge of collectibles. I also violated my own new rule of not buying anything made of glass and picked up a Hersey's hot fudge sundae glass thinking it was super vintage and desirable. But apparently 50 or so other people have done the same thing recently.

I did go into a new thrift store on Saturday with my daughter. It was a St. Vincent DePaul's. It was a bit scary. This guy kept coming up to me like I was his long lost friend and asked me if I had found anything good. Then he proceeded to show me the red ball cap he found that read, "Make America Drunk Again." He thought it was priceless and kept punching me in the arm to emphasize his point. 

I felt like Mothman and the flame was stalking me.  Perhaps thrift stores mess with my cloak of invisibility. 

Sigh.

I'm forever blowing bubbles

 

It is National Chewing Gum Day, which technically isn't National Bubble Gum Day.  But both involve chewing which made me think of cows chewing their cud. That in turn made me think of cows chewing gum and blowing bubbles.  I love this image of a cow blowing a bubble that highlights the sun either coming up or going down. It didn't seem right to use it to shill chewing gum for the chewing gum lobby. I did another design for that.

I like that the cow seems surprised that it has just blown a bubble. I also enjoy creating designs for these farcical National Day days that aren't really flattering for the fake day. Because let's face it, no one really looks good chewing gum. It is kind of a nasty habit. 

Again I posted on X and Instagram and get no response. I can understand not getting a response on X because everyone is either dissing on Trump or dissing on Harris. But WTF is the deal with Instagram? 

Oh well. I should give the National Day days a rest again anyway. Halloween is coming up so I should create some more Halloween themed t-shirts. Maybe a ghost blowing bubbles. Or ghosts playing poker. Or the ghost who laughed. Or ghost of Mothman. 

I think I'm in a rut. 

Maybe National In a Rut Day.

Wake up and smell the caffeine

 

Okay, at least National Coffee Day seems like it could be a real thing. You would think Starbucks would make a big deal over it. 

I'm half way expecting that Starbucks will send out their intellectual property police and have my over caffeinated mermaid pulled from teepublic.com. I thought it was genius though. I posted it on X and Instagram and people are going nuts over it. Okay not exactly nuts.  Okay not exactly paying any attention to it. But I'm okay with that. Being invisible has made me a bit more tolerant of being ignored.

On a totally different subject, Kris Kristofferson died today at aged 88. I was a bit blown away because I didn't know he was that old. Not to speak bad of the dead, but he always looked like he was 110 years old anyway. It was that leathery skin. Must have been from growing up in Texas. Though Kristofferson isn't your usual Texas name. And Kris Kristofferson just sounds made up. You would have expected him to have been called something like Bubba Burnside.

Weird thing is, I always though Kris Kristofferson looked like my Aunt Irma. She had (and still has) this classic country face. But then again, I thought Jimmy Dean looked like her too. He sounded like her when he talked. And since most of you probably don't know who Jimmy Dean was, he was a country music singer in the 1960s. He was also from Texas. He had his own television show. Later he became more famous for selling Jimmy Dean Sausage. Must be the Texas accent that reminds me of my aunt. Though none of my family are from Texas (thank god). There just seems to be an accent that poor white people take on no matter where they are from.

Anyway, I thought Kris "Bubba" Kristofferson was a pretty decent songwriter.  "Me and Bobby McGee" is a classic even though Janis Joplin made it famous. She was also from Texas. She didn't look like my Aunt Irma or sound like her. But she did have a better singing voice than Kris Kristofferson. I never thought he had much of a singing voice. He starred in the remake of "A Star is Born" with Barbara Streisand.  He played a pretty good washed out (and drugged out) rock start whose voice was shot. I don't think he was acting. I don't think Johnny Cash could sing worth shit either. He wasn't from Texas. He was from Arkansas, though, which isn't much better. The states share a boundary. So maybe there is a pattern here.

Sorry Kris Kristofferson. You were a pretty good actor in "Blade." And I remember you in "Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea." It was an odd roll and pretty close to being pornography. Odd on top of it being based on a novel by "Yukio Mishima." Mishima wasn't from Texas though. 

If there was coffee or caffeine in any of these songs or movies, it would have been a nice tie in to it being National Coffee Day. Instead I'll just end with:

But I digress.

Boo yah...

 

It's National Ghost Hunting Day.  It's one of those National Days that don't stand a ghost of a chance to catch on. Anyway, I don't think ghosts want to be hunted.

Regardless, it is National Ghost Hunting Day. It is also National Drink Beer Day, National Strawberry Cream Pie Day and National Good Neighbor Day. I suppose I could have created a design for a National Drink Beer, Eat Strawberry Pie and Go Hunt  Ghosts at your Neighbor's House Day, but it seemed a bit much. The spirit just didn't move me.

Boo yah.

I'm keeping a list

 

I've always pretty much kept a list (in my head anyway) of people who have slighted me. Unlike Trump who would act on his list if he became president again, I don't really do anything with my list but occasional go through it in my head and remind myself that those people are on my list. That list includes Mrs. Kimbro, the grade school teacher who smacked me on the head when we went to her class to sing and the kid next to me was talking.  The list also includes the junior high school custodian who made me clean a mustard cup off the wall in the school cafeteria because I sat in the wrong seat at the wrong time.  My 5th grade teacher who looked and acted like the Wicked Witch of the West is on the list along with Mr. Young, my driver's ed instructor who gave me a "D." Pretty much anyone I ever dated or had a relationship with is on that list, too. 

It isn't actually National You're Going On My List Day. I didn't like any of the National Day days today (scarf day, corned beef has day and crush a can day) so I figured WTF, I'll create my own and bypass the whole farcical application process. I posted it on X and I imagine Trump is all over it. 

I (well Gemini) created a couple other designs about going on my list.

I was a bit concerned about the one that looks like Grim Reaper because it could be perceived that by going on "my list" it is a threat associated with what the Grim Reaper represents. But I didn't tell Gemini to imply that the person wearing that design was putting people on a list being kept by the Grim Reaper. It, the mamby pamby "I can't generate an image of that" AI art generator came up with it on its own. Nasty little bastard.

But perhaps it will be a warning to the snot nosed little bots sent out by the intellectual property police to leave my designs alone or they are going on my list.

That is not a threat. And if it is perceived as one, blame Gemini and Google.