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Thursday, March 21, 2024

Just desserts

 

Before you correct me, I know it should be "just deserts" not "just desserts." But you need to know the rules before you break them and I used "just desserts" on purpose. It seemed totally appropriate for a giant graham cracker oozing chocolate battling an equally giant marshmallow man.

Where does he come up with these, you ask? I don't really know. For some reason it is the way my mind is wired. I don't even know if it has anything to do with years of experience coming up with headlines and one liners. 

And forgive me for gloating here because after popping out five our so design ideas in a day I sometimes want to tell someone and get some nod of approval.  But it isn't something I get much of.  For example, I was proud of this one:


My daughter had starred in a high school production of Mean Girls last summer. She was Gretchen, one of the Plastics ( this will only mean something to you if you have see the movie or the stage musical by Tina Fey...plus they just released a movie version of the musical recently).  Anyway, I thought this was hilarious. So early this evening I show it to my daughter and she politely nods and smiles and says, "That's funny." Then she goes back to eating her chicken teriyaki. 

I kind of wanted more of "that's so funny, how did you do it?" I mean it isn't all AI Art. It was my idea and I had to do some Photoshop work because AI Art left a human girl's face on one of the squirrels. It isn't easy grafting together a squirrel face.

I just get the feeling that I could have hand painted the thing over a period of weeks and I would have got the same bored reaction which loosely translated to "Yeah papa, another one of your dad jokes that really aren't that funny."

I didn't even bother showing her the Stay Puft Man versus the Graham Cracker design. I probably have to explain the whole, "Want s'more?" line. And once you have to explain it it defeats the whole purpose of having a way with puns and dad jokes.

My whole business model for these designs is to try to appeal to a wide swath of the public but at the same time appeal to certain niche groups who will get the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) nuances of my punny references. 

So far it isn't working, but as with my blog career and two decades of waiting, I figure it is just a matter of another decade or two before I'm discovered.


What? You doubt it? E tu Brute?


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