The shape of the universe

 

I tried reading some article today about what was the shape of the universe. The headline was something bait and switching like "The shape of the universe is like a hall of mirrors." My eyes glazed over after about two paragraphs and I never did find out what the shape of the universe was or why I should care.

ChatGPT tells me there are three options: flat, positively curved or spherical and negatively curved or hyperbolic. I decided to ask Artie to give me a design where the universe was in the shape of an easy chair and have a headline expressing a bit of disappointment that it wasn't something bigger and grander.

The design cracks me up because I'm not sure I totally get why I asked for a universe shaped like an easy chair and I doubt anyone will get it. But temere ineptia, right?

I still don't know what good it would do to know the shape of the universe or whether it was expanding or contracting. I file it under "why should I care." I feel that way about most news I read these days. It all seems to be a crock of shit.

This is another one of those obscure sayings that I doubt most people under 65 will have heard. I like the way it sounds though: "He don't know shee-eye-it from Shinola." Most people writing news these days fall into that category.

They don't have the benefit of the fast experience people of my generation have to draw upon.

This is true. 

Don't get me started about Slip and Slides.

Don't badger me

 

I now remember that in addition to ticks and rattle snakes creating anxiety in my young life growing up in the wilds of Idaho, I was also taught to beware of badgers. They are not friendly animals as this photo would imply. They dig holes and live in dens underground and don't like visitors. I imagine they have the reputation of being persistent (i.e. don't keep badgering me) because if they come after you, they don't want to stop. 

My oldest brother killed one in the desert after it came after him (or so he claimed) when he was out hunting for something less aggressive like a pheasant. He blew it's head off with a shotgun. I think it may have just popped out of its den and both of them were surprised. And my brother was in a macho stage of his life when he just like shooting things. So the badger was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Badgers do have lots of teeth though and I wouldn't want to surprise one. They also don't see too well since they are nocturnal animals and are better in low light situations. So my brother did have the advantage over the badger in broad daylight of being able to see it coming. He also had the advantage of the shotgun. 

Animals rarely have the advantage when you come to think about it. And my brother was the one tromping around on top of the badgers home turf. So ironically my brother was the one badgering the badger.

Life is full of twists like that.

What? The sun doesn't revolve around me?

 

I had another one of those damned epiphanies (or ongoing realizations) today at a meeting ironically about designs for a company store that would sell, among other things, t-shirts. As you may or may not know, I work in public transportation. And we are trying to merchandize products that appeal to what the industry affectionately call transit enthusiasts. 

I, however, have been in the business too long to affectionately call anyone an enthusiast who gets overexcited when they see a train. I call them a foamer. I believe I shared my Trainbie design some time ago with an undead person with a train engineer cap on eating a locomotive. I thought it was quite amusing. 

So as I looked at the tame and boring t-shirt designs that were being shared with me for transit enthusiasts I couldn't help but pop my Trainbie design into the meeting chat thinking once again everyone would appreciate how very clever I am.

The only comment I got was "Terrifying." 

Once again I realized that what I thought should have elicited laughter and appreciation for my creative talents was met with more or less "crickets." 

Part of me was thinking that I was dealing with designers and my experience with designers over the year is that they tend to act like they are the only ones who hold the secret to what is aesthetic and appealing visually. So my Trainbie design wasn't what they would consider good design.

After all, I had created it before I found Art AI. And I had crudely put it together with various images via Google. 

So I deleted the design from the meeting chat and later this evening I asked Artie to create a Trainbie design for me.

Here was the one I created:

And here was one that Artie created with my direction:

Okay, I admit Artie brought in a bit more details, but I still think the essence of what I was trying convey about transit enthusiasts was the same.

Then I had another epiphany. The reason why I felt the t-shirt designs I was being shone at the meeting were boring and lackluster was that they were created by a designer without any direction. They created what they thought was a good design from a designers point of view.

I believe that what really makes a good design is starting with a good idea. There needs to be a Creative Director orchestrating things. And regardless of whether or not anyone appreciated my foamer design, I think it was a good idea. And when I asked Artie to riff on it, my friend AI artist did so without the hinderance of ego or making it what a designer would want. 

It was my vision. And I think it was a good one.

Now if only others would have that epiphany. 

Nervous tick

 

When I was a kid and we went camping a lot, there were two bugaboos my mother would always freak us out about -- ticks and rattle snakes.  I don't recall having any encounters with rattle snakes, but ticks were another story. I think I had them burrow into me on two occasions. One was on my ear lobe and the other time one was in my belly button. 

The thing about ticks is that you don't want to pull them off when they have attached themselves to you because if you pull off the body and leave the head, it can get infected. So the way we were taught to get the off was to heat up a needle and hold it at the base of where the tick had attached itself and they would back out on their own because of the heat of the needle. 

Thus my latest pun, Nervous Tick. Artie took awhile before it got the tick to look the way I wanted it to. But I was please with this one.

My other pun of the day came after see something about "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God." It is one of the Beatitudes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. There was a time in my youth where, in addition to knowing how to detach a tick, I knew all of the Beatitudes and the Commandments. 

Anyway, I saw a t-shirt that said, "Blessed are the peacemakers" and I immediately thought of this:

It is sacrilegious I know, but at my age, although I don't have a pacemaker, I respect that they are available.

I'm figuring the over 60 market will buy this design in a heartbeat.

Tim keeps on slipping, slipping into the future

 I heard "Fly Like an Eagle," by the Steve Miller Band today. It was released in 1976 which coincidently was when I was released from high school. So time does keep slipping, slipping into the future. I did two versions of this design. One had a "Time keeps on slipping, slipping past into the future." I figured that was different enough to slip by the Intellectual Property Police. 

We'll see. 

I toyed with changing it to Tim keeps on slipping, slipping into the future, but I figured the market was pretty narrow for that one. Besides, since my middle initial is E, I fancy my name is Time sometimes.

I did produce this one for the Tim's in the world:

If you are a Monty Python fan (and you probably shouldn't be reading my blog if you aren't), you'll probably recognize this as a line the Enchanter Tim said in Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail.  John Cleese played the part and warned King Arthur about the vicious Rabbit of Caerbannog that had a nasty tendency to bite knights heads off.

I didn't make the connection when I had Artie create this design with a rabbit running with scissors. But it dawned on me as I was putting this together that Tim the Enchanter was associated with a killer rabbit. Coincidence? I think not.

But then again, I also created this design today:

Other than Goo-Goo-Ga-Joob, I can't think of how it relates to time slipping into the future, Tim the Enchanter or a rabbit running with scissors. 

Come to think of it I was listening to the Beatles channel on Sirius in the car, too. That would help explain this design, too:

Hopefully you are a Beatles fan and understand these last two references. If not, the Long and Winding Toad I created a few days ago must really confuse you.

Oh well...

And the worms ate into his brain

 

Robert Kennedy Jr. claims to have had a brain worm some time back that caused him some cognitive issues (as one might suspect a brain worm would). But he now claims he could eat another five brain worms and still win a debate with Biden and Trump.

No one can confirm whether Bobby Jr. actually had a brain worm (since they are actually a parasitic worm known as a pork tapeworm). But the man's dogs don't all seem to be barking. It is a shame that the son of a great man like Robert Kennedy could produce a know like Bobby Jr.  Because in this case the nut did fall a bit far from the tree.

Oh well, he did inspire a t-shirt design.

I wasn't too prolific today. Maybe it is because the sun is wigging out and sending odd magnetic waves through the earth's atmosphere. I was just out on my deck with my wife and daughter trying to figure out whether we were seeing the northern lights or not.  If we were, I am a bit disappointed because I thought they would be a bit more colorful. 

Part of me just thinks the world is ending. Hopefully it doesn't end until I post a thousand designs on teepublic.com. I think it would be ironic if I did finally start trending with my designs and then the world ended.  How fucked up would that be. Especially if my final design was something like this:

It took awhile to convince Artie my AI art friend to produce this tower of pancakes design. I made the mistake of telling it to make it look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and it kept making it a building and not a stack of pancakes. I finally had to say just give me a huge stack of pancakes that was leaning and it gave me this. It stuck the American flag in the top. I didn't ask for it. I'm not big on waving the American flag around these days.

Flags won't matter anyway if it is indeed the end of the world.

Rather be Dead...

 

I was never a Grateful Dead fan. It's not that I have anything against them. I just never listened to them. I couldn't tell you a single Grateful Dead song. That didn't stop me from creating a Jerry Calavera design (don't tell anyone, but Jerry is kind of Jerry Garcia).

I was very careful not to try and focus too much on this being a Grateful Dead inspired design. Because even though Jerry is dead, that doesn't stop the intellectual property police who will claim he told them through a Ouija Board that he doesn't want anyone to profit off of his name or image but his legal representatives. 

Ouija is a trademarked term, btw.

On the subject of designs being reviewed, teepublic.com finally released my "Chain Reaction" designs. They didn't mention why they were being reviewed or why they were no longer suspect. The chain designs are now ironically unfettered.

As you can see, I am on a Calavera kick. This gnome was done in tribute to the real Day of the Dead garden gnome I hand painted years ago. It was pretty cool, but the acrylic paints I used couldn't withstand the elements and the little guy doesn't look good these days. But this design does.

As does this one:

I swear Artie, the AI app, reads my mind when it cranks out these interpretations of my design instructions.  It even took this stretch of an idea about Archimedes and turned it into something kind of interesting.

I should have had him saying something like, "Do you want fries as part of that equation?"

 I don't suppose that would mean much to anyone.  But hey:

Get it?

Potato Calavera

 

Growing up in Idaho, I became very sensitive to living in a state where your license plate proudly proclaimed "Famous Potatoes." I never really gave it much thought as to why Idaho potatoes were famous. It was an example of marketing to the extreme by the Idaho Potato Commission trying to promote potato farmers. 

I believe Idaho actual produces more sugar beets than potatoes. The sugar beet just didn't have the right PR firm backing it or the license plates would have read "Famous Sugar Beets."

That would have really sucked.

I don't remember eating potatoes growing up anymore than other people. Though fried potatoes and baloney was one of the few dishes my father could cook. And it tasted just about as bad as it sounds.

Potato Calavera was the only design I created today because I was having Artie create Mother's Day Card designs for me. I have been making my own greeting cards for several years now. I just don't see the point in going to Hallmark and buying a card someone else came up with and giving it to someone and hoping they would be impressed by how thoughtful you were to go to all of the trouble of browsing cards and then plunking down several dollars for some pretty lame greeting cards.

Beyond implying that I am cheap, making my own greeting cards shows that I care enough to take the time to make a customize one.

I tell you though, using AI to create them is a whole lot quicker and they look a whole lot better. I just wish Artie could spell worth shit. I for the life of me don't understand how you can give it exactly what you want it to say and it will inevitably drop words or add extra ones. And often I don't notice until I've posted the design on teepublic.com.

Apparently knowing how to spell isn't part of the AI algorithm. Oh well, potato, potahto.

Running with the clowns

I seem to be focused on clowns a lot lately. It is not that I like clowns. I'm not particularly afraid of them like some people, either. Perhaps it is my subconscious sending in the clowns. But that is part of the absurdity of how I feel at times. 

Remember temere ineptia. 

I do like the absurdity of clowns replacing the bulls in the "encierro" or running of the bulls. If you run in front of the clowns though I suppose the risk is greatly reduced over running in front of bulls who can overtake and trample you. What is a clown going to do you (unless it is a Stephen King story)?

Ahhh....the oxymoron of a being a sad clown. Artie, my Art AI friend seems to lean towards images of Pennywise the clown from IT when you ask for clowns (even the sad ones).

I guess "Sad Clown" isn't that far away from being "Bad Clown" after all.

I did experiment with some designs today that I haven't uploaded on teepublic.com. I was interested in trying to create something in a traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e style. Ukiyo-e literally means "pictures of the floating world." I am more familiar with the woodblock prints done in this style. I just couldn't think of a subject that would be unique as a Ukiyo-e design. I tried asking for a Japanese version of Grant Wood's "American Gothic." I want to call it "Japanese Gothic." Here are a couple of the results:

Both are super cool, but honestly not quite t-shirt material. They would make great posters, however.

Then I envisioned an Ukiyo-e version of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon. I didn't give this one a title. I suppose it could have been something like "Samurai Moon" or "One small step for a Samurai" but I kind of liked them without a title.

Again, they don't quite seem to be something you'd put on a t-shirt, but still I am intrigued. I am a bit hesitant to do too many in this style for fear of being accused of cultural appropriation. But then again I don't really give a shit what someone wants to label it. 

This kind of gives you an idea of the process I go through coming up with ideas. I find it very gratifying in the sense that Artie allows me to experiment without having to waste too much time on ideas that just don't pan out. 

In that vein, I did produced this one that I kind of like:

Now that is one hell of a t-shirt design. 

 

 

The long and winding toad

 

This road to being a successful t-shirt, sticker, coffee mug and magnet artist is long...and dare I say winding, too. Good thing I have my AI friend Artie with me to feed my puns.

Now if Artie could help me figure out how to get people on eBay or Etsy buy amazing stuff I found at Goodwill for a pittance and resale for beau coup bucks. I think I've been down this road as well.

On another topic, I had another design pulled from teepublic.com today. Warner Brothers objected to my riff on Ted Lasso's locker room "Believe" sign: "Deceive." Some people just have no sense of humor. And I'm glad teepublic.com stands up to them. 

Wait, they cave every time like a sand tunnel at high tide. Who cares that umpteen hundred people have posted designs actually using "Believe." Just because I did such a great job making "Deceive" look like "Believe."

Well screw them. I bounced right back with another design they can't claim to violate anyone's Intellectual Property (except maybe Donald Trump).

Even with having my first "Deceive" design pulled I still managed to pump out 14 designs. I can't seem to let go of Zen designs. Artie helped me with this one about asking a magic mirror to show me the face I had before I was born.

It makes me chuckle. 

As I meander down the long and winding toad or road to being a famous artist I've now cranked out what will soon approach 700 designs. Yet still there isn't a glimmer of recognition, even by teepublic.com (other than informing me on a regular basis that they are pulling something). 

Still I cling to my mantra of being the king of random nonsense.

I feel like leaping from a balcony onto a stage and shouting, "Sic semper temere ineptia!"

I don't suppose that means anything to anyone, does it.

Wax on wax off

 

Just so you know that inspiration comes from just about anything, guess what I was doing this morning when I thought about this design idea? Be thankful I have a bidet or you'd be looking at something along the lines of "Wipe on, wipe off" (not to self...ask Artie about wipe on, wipe off design). 

I decided to call Art Ai "Artie" instead of just Art.  It seems to fit a little better than just "Art." 

Anyway, Artie did have a little trouble with the concept of a cotton swab just going into an ear part of the way and not all the way through the head. I had to fix the design with Photoshop. Which reminds me, some time I'm going to just do a post on Artie Bloopers. It does some pretty outrageous ones. 

I realize that having an Asian character doing a riff on Mr. Miyagi's "Wax on, wax off" training is kind of stereotypical. But Artie couldn't seem to create a non-Asian character in a Karate Gi. So I gave up an used the Asian instructor image.

I've found Artie isn't real sensitive when it comes to race. Or perhaps I'm oversensitive considering I work for a government agency and am scrutinized a great deal. 

Oh well.

I was working with Artie on an image of someone walking down a lonely street and it went right to this super cool image.

I had to work with the sign because Artie originally had it say "Heartbreak Hotel Hotel." I wanted it to have a "No Vacancy" sign with "Vacancy" lit up and I changed it to "Heartbreak Motel" to avoid the Intellectual Property police. Something tells me they may still try to squeal like a stuck pig about it.

Speaking of pigs, I was on a "Happy as" kick today as well and found this Southern idiom "Happy as a Dead Pig in the Sunshine." The explanation for a dead pig being happy in the sunshine was that when the pig corpse heats up the lips retract an it looks like it is smiling.

Got to love the south.

ChatGPT also told me about a saying called "Happy as a Sandboy." I asked it what the hell a Sandboy was and apparently in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain it was a common saying. Apparently it was the fashion to hire young boys or men to deliver sand to pubs and sprinkle it on the floor to soak up spills. They usually just got paid in beer so they were generally cheerful blokes.

So I figured WTF and had Artie whip me up a "Happy as a Sandboy" design.

At first Artie gave me this design:

I thought it was pretty good but then I started think I might get some flack for depicting a boy swigging a mug of beer. So I had Artie age the boy a bit.

Maybe someone in Britain will take a shine to it and buy a t-shirt. T-shirts are really big in England.

Finally I created another design for fans of Dizgraceland.

First can on the moon

 

I was thinking about different firsts other than the first man to walk on the moon. At first I was going to create a design with an image of a frying pan on the moon with the headline "First Pan on the Moon!" I still may. Then I graduated to the idea of the first can on the moon and having it look like an old outhouse with a crescent moon on the door. Seemed appropriate.

At first I just had Art AI show an outhouse. Then I thought it would be funny just to have an astronaut coming out of the can with toilet paper on their boot. I was afraid Art would balk at this since it had trouble with a mummy coming out of a tomb with toilet paper on it's foot. But apparently Art (I'm just going to call it Art from now which was one of my dad's nicknames...the other one was Peanuts but if I started calling Art AI Peanuts I think I would confuse people) anyway, apparently Art has no problem with an astronaut coming out of a bathroom with toilet paper on their boot. Let's put aside the issue of getting out of the suit to do your business and ignoring the fact that the suits have built in poop and pee packs (kind of like Donald Trumps suits).

Anyway, I like the result. This is a t-shirt design I would proudly wear provided I wanted to spring for the cost of buying one. Technically they aren't that expensive until you factor in shipping. And teepublic.com seems to be running sales that never end. They remind me of the Oriental Carpet places that used to be all over Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle. Some of them had signs in the windows that read "Going out of Business, Everything Must Go!" Thing is the places never seemed to go out of business and always had the same sale going on.

Not that I ever went in to one to see how the price of an Oriental Carpet on a going out of business sale compared to an Oriental Carpet at the regular price. I realize the term Oriental is offensive to some though this isn't used in reference to Asian people. ChatGPT reminded me that an Oriental carpet is also known as a Persian rug. Though I don't think Persian is particularly acceptable anymore since Persia is now Iran. 

Regardless, I never really wanted to go into a rug store that claimed to be going out of business in Pioneer Square. I also remember there used to be lots of waterbed stores in Pioneer Square too. They didn't claim to be going out of business, but they did have women in lingerie dancing in the windows a lot trying to get you to come in an theoretically buy a waterbed. Though I don't think that is what most drunk young men wandering around Pioneer Square at the time thought the women were selling.

Come to think of it you can't buy an Oriental Carpet or a waterbed in Pioneer Square anymore. Amazon seems to be the only choice for those types of purchases anymore. Though Amazon hasn't resorted to dancing women in lingerie to get you to buy a waterbed yet.

I never owned a waterbed, but there was a time when I was about 15 or so that my parents gave me a water chair.  It didn't really look like a chair. It looked more like a mini water bed. And it wasn't very comfortable or practical. I remember having to bring a garden hose in through my bedroom window to fill it. It wasn't heated and it took up a hell of a lot of room. I think it eventually sprung a leak and I had to trash it.

I think I have been digressing. 

This design is inspired by a character in Tom Robbins' book Even Cowgirls get the Blues. It was a doctor who told one of the other characters in the book that Picasso was asked by the Spanish army to design camouflage paratrooper uniforms. Picasso told them to dress the paratroopers like harlequins. The doctor then said, "I don't suppose that means anything to you."

I love that scene. Though if I tried to find it in the book now I will discover I remembered it all wrong.

But that's alright.

I still crack myself up. And I have to go to the can. 

Who is steering the boat?

 

I started the day with some great designs with horned-helmet Vikings (which is something no Viking actually wore) finding themselves in a herd of Texas longhorns. And for whatever reason I decided it would be funny to have them say something like "What is this bull shit?" but translate it into something close to Old Norse. Apparently Icelander is the closest language to Old Norse in the present time. So I found an English to Icelander translator and translated "What is this bull shit?" into Icelander and put it on the image of three Vikings surrounded by longhorns.

I thought it was hilarious. But for whatever reason, teepublic.com flagged the design for review to see if it violated their standards. I reviewed their community standards and the only thing I can think of for them flagging the design was that it wasn't written in English and they thought I was writing something obscene or hateful against Vikings (people who washed their faces in piss and killed and raped people for fun).

It kind of put me in a mood. So I started coming up with really esoteric designs like this:

The only way this will mean something to most people is if they know that in one of the first movie roles Tony Curtis had he played a knight with a limited speaking part. He was supposed to say something like "Yonder is the castle of my father" in a British accent. But Tony Curtis was from the Bronx and he read his line in a heavy Bronx accent and it came out "Yonder is the castile of my fodder."

Funny if you know the back story and give a shit.

Later I thought of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Marlin Perkins. I am not sure why I thought of Marlin Perkins. I don't normally give much thought to Marlin Perkins.  He was the host of Wild Kingdom from 1963 to 1988. Well he was the host until he died in 1986. I remember the show because it always came on on Sunday evenings before Disney's Wonderful World of Color. I thought it was kind of boring and Marlin Perkins seemed like a fossil and obviously read all of his lines from a script in a very stilted and lifeless fashion. 

And since the show was sponsored by Mutual of Omaha, an insurance company, Marlin was always saying things like, "Just like the mother Anaconda eats her babies' predators, Mutual of Omaha is there to protect you." And he was always talking about his co-host Jim Fowler who seemed to enjoy wrestling wildlife a bit too much.

So I came up with this design:

And even though the insurance company that sponsored the show was Mutual of Omaha, I slipped in the "good hands of Allstate" into the moon because I thought it was symbolic that Jim was about to be killed by a Croc and would soon be in good hands in the Wild Kingdom of  Heaven.

Again this design depends upon a pretty complicated backstory but still it is pretty funny to me.

I created several others including this one because every time I hear the word "Yacht" I think "Piñata."

It has no deeper meaning than that other than I thought it would be fitting for a man dressed like a pirate to be trying to bring down the Pinyacht-a with a cutlass.

And just to take a final swing at inspirational things I created this spoof on Ted Lasso:

There's a ton of Trump jokes in that one.

The Long Dark Coffee Break of the Soul

 I wasn't feeling dark when I started this design. But Art Ai must have sensed some existential crisis and it kept giving me dark images. I love this one especially. 

Of course, if you are Douglas Adams fans you'll recognize that this is an American version of his "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" which is a play on the phrase "the dark night of the soul." I don't think Douglas Adams was trying to be as serious as this image.

This one was a bit more Douglas Adams-like. I love that the character looks as though he has been sitting Rip Van Winkle-like in this chair for an infinite amount of time yet the coffee is still hot.

He obviously didn't buy the mug from Starbucks because every Starbucks mug I've ever had immediately sucks the heat out of the coffee like a cooling tower at a nuclear energy plant. I wish someone would invent a mug that has heat coils in the ceramic and keeps the coffee at a nice hot temperature. 

But I digress from my reflections of the soul.

I had Art Ai create this one for me. Or at least this is the me I fantasize I look like. My hair just never stays full like that and my beard, though approaching that length still fights to maintain its unkept look. And this fantasy version of myself is trim. But regardless, this aged man truly looks like he is staring at a cup of his soul. 

I suppose that was my point. Or this is: