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?

Space Needle, the final frontier

 

Don't needle me about this post. I'm waiting for the Space Needle people to begin screaming intellectual property and pointing at me in a biblical "unclean, unclean!" way. If they do it will just be because they didn't think of this first and sell overpriced t-shirts at Seattle Center.

On a bright, optimistic note, I sold one of my designs the other day on a sticker. There is 50 cents I would never have seen without all this hard work and the support of Art AI. The dam is about to burst now! Not sure what I'll do with all of the extra income.

Space seemed to be a theme today.

Well, I actual had Art AI create a bunch of Ford Galaxy designs last week. I had this inspiration that there was a galaxy called the Ford Galaxy and that is where all of our beloved old cars go when they give up the ghost. Technically the Ford car model is the Galaxie, but I think that is kind of stupid. I think this is an image of a 1958 Ford Galaxie.  But all cars of that era pretty much look the same to me.

I am aiming for the vintage car foamer with this series. 

Other than creating new t-shirt designs, working, driving my kids around and giving the pets attention I spent some time today dropping my son's seven year old gaming laptop at a computer repair place. It, like the Ford Galaxy in the above design, died. And like medical doctors, the laptop technicians ruled out an expired batter, battery charging ports and not using a charger issued by the company who made the computer. And like medical doctors they still didn't know what the real problem was, but they were happy to keep charging me to find out. In the case of my son's laptop the computer place today said the mother board just gave up the will to live because none of her children came to visit and she felt unfulfilled as a mother board any more.

Once I pick up all of the parts from my son's dead laptop tomorrow I think we'll bury it in the backyard along with umpteen dead goldfish. I just wish we had sent it off to live on a farm before it expired.

I think there is a t-shirt design in here somewhere.

Polterguests

 

Most people know that a poltergeist is a type of ghost or supernatural entity that basically messes with you. It is a German word that translates to "noisy ghost." 

There was a movie called Poltergeist that came out in 1982 (which was coincidentally the year I graduated from college).  It was about a family living in a modern (1980s modern) subdivision. The family's home becomes haunted by some really nasty poltergeists. The haunting begins when the 5-year Carol Anne starts seeing the ghosts in the static that used to show up on old televisions when the broadcast went off the air or you turned the channel to a channel that wasn't broadcast on.  Carol Anne's famous line from the movie comes from her sitting in front of the television and then saying in a creepy voice, "They're hereeeeeeee."

So that in a nutshell was the inspiration for this design. I just thought that poltergeists and polterguests were pretty much the same thing. This design would probably be more appealing during the holidays when most people have a influx of unwanted noisy guests (usually family).

It took a few tries going back and forth with my Art AI program, but eventually I think it nailed it. I was kind of picture Cousin Eddie and his family from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. 

Though I do wonder if anyone under 60 will remember the movie Poltergeist or Christmas Vacation. I think they should make movie trivia from the 80s and 90s a requirement in high school so these generation gaps in popular culture knowledge don't slip through the cracks.

Which reminds me of a conversation that came up at work today. This young man said something about someone named Geraldine. I commented that who would name anyone Geraldine. The young man said he liked the name. I responded that he must not have heard of Flip Wilson. He stared at me blankly.

For the youth-impaired who may read this, Flip Wilson has television variety show in the early 1970s. He was a comedian. One of his characters was Geraldine Jones whose catchphrase was, "The devil made me do it." 

Ironically there were t-shirts at the time with the phrase, "The devil made me do it."

Today the MAGA freaks would think such t-shirts were signs of devil worship.

If you don't know popular cultural trivia from generations before you are born, you are doomed to repeat those popular culture mistakes.

Sigh.

Once more into the breach

 

Okay today is my birthday.  I took the day off and basically enjoyed not being on call to work. I worked on designs. I went to Starbucks and got my free birthday coffee drink. It was okay.

I removed my birthday from Facebook. And frankly it was kind of nice to not having people wishing me a happy birthday just because it popped up on Facebook. I kind of just wanted to be wished happy birthday by people who remembered it was my birthday. 

I got happy birthday wishes from my dentist, my acupuncturist, my public library and my eye doctor. So much for only hearing from people who remembered it. Okay my nephew texted me a happy birthday. And of course my wife. One old friend sent me an ecard of Dolly Parton singing me a happy birthday song to the tune of 9 to 5. That was a bit surreal because it was personalized for me. And I didn't even know Dolly Parton knew who I was.

And what does my birthday have to do with an image of an ancient drive in theater at Stonehenge? Absolutely nothing other than I visited Stonehenge about 35 years ago. I just needed some image to post because I've long since gotten past any blog posts that don't have an accompanying image. And the Stonehenge design is pretty random and probably a bit obscure for most people. 

But it is unique like me and it is my birthday. 

I also have started to feel a bit self conscious about every post being about my design storefront. I've been afraid it was starting to get old. But no one has complained. And no one has complained because I'm pretty certain no one is reading any of them but the Google bots and they don't really give a rip about anything they are sent to look at. They are just gathering data for Google.

So the bots don't care that I really have never liked my birthday (though this one has been nicer than most).  Birthdays usually make me want to break into a rendition of Tennessee Ernie Ford's 16 tons and point out that it means very little other than I'm another day older and probably deeper in debt. Though fortunately I don't owe my soul to the company store.

Oh well, the day is almost over. And tomorrow I'll be back to posting about coming up with more designs at 4 a.m. and not being able to fall back asleep because I am anxious to run them by AI Art and co.

Happy Birthday!

It's uneasy to be green

 

So it is finally St. Patrick's Day and I didn't do a single thing related to it. No green beer, no corn beef and cabbage, no stupid leprechaun hats, shamrock pins or "Kiss me I'm Irish" tshirts (though I could have made one).

I created most of my Irish shirt designs last month to give people plenty of time to stock up before St. Patrick's Day. I guess they are waiting until next year now to stock up.

No one snatch up this one of me as an old Irish dude, either. Perhaps it is the same face I used for several pirate designs. Or perhaps no one wants an old man face on their t-shirt for St. Patrick's Day. 

I assume people still go out to bars on St. Patrick's Day. It has been so long since I went out on St. Patrick's Day, I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to go. There used to be a ton of Irish bars in Seattle. Most seem to have gone belly up.

But I also lost interest in whooping it up on St. Paddy's Day when my DNA test revealed I don't have a whole lot of Irish going on. Most of my ancestors came from Great Britain.  Go figure.

Despite not doing anything for St. Patrick's Day I was actually quite productive this morning with creative ideas for designs. Here's one I especially like and it is more in line with my English roots and love of the Beatles.

It took me several tries to squeeze this one out of the AI Art program. It kept wanting to put Bigfoot in with several Beatles from the 60s.  I almost cried when it produced this one. I did have to do some Photoshop work to remove extra arms from some of the Bigfoot characters. Not sure what that is all about. And I would have preferred if the Bigfeet were dressed more like the Beatles were in the original Abbey Road photo. But AI Art seems to have an artificial mind of its own.

I also produced this one that is more of a homage to my white trash Idaho roots:

For whatever reason "The Recline of Western Civilization" popped into my head at about 5 a.m. this morning along with the Big Foot designs, one about Track giving you runs, and one about a cheap skate. 

I am using both versions of the "Recline of Western Civilization" because I really like them both. There were some disturbing female versions, but I'm still debating whether to put one of them in the store.

They just crack me up though.

I will end on a story about how people react to my sense of humor in real life. I went to a pet food store yesterday to pick up some cat litter. The cashier asked me if I would like some free samples and asked me how many cats I had. I told her two. She held up two packets of cat treats and asked me if my cats liked duck. I responded, "I don't know I've never asked them." I wasn't really trying to be funny. It seemed the logical response when someone asks you a stupid question like that. 

The cashier didn't laugh. If fact she didn't say much else.

I don't think she'll be buying any of my t-shirts.

Talking through a hat

 

Technically I talk through many hats.Though ChatGPT says talking through your hats describes someone who speaks nonsense or makes unfounded claims (sound like any MAGA presidential candidates you know).  It implies that the person is talking without having any real knowledge or understanding of the subject matter. 

I still don't know how speaking through a hat would convey that.

My point with the many hats concept is that more and more people don't specialize and do multiple things. I've always felt I have done that. The problem is that it reinforces this feeling that I'm good at many things, I'm just not great at them. Which is what this image says to me. It is inspired by the beach vendors you encounter when you spend any amount of time on the beaches in Mexico. There are usually several guys selling hats to protect you from the sun and often the have stacks of the hats on their head or in their hands. They literally wear many hats but I'm pretty sure none of them are the ones they would choose to wear.

I got up pretty early this morning because my wife was taking my daughter to an orchestra workshop about an hour north of our home. They had to be there by 8 a.m. I got up at the same time they did as a show of support. And I have found myself waking up earlier and earlier.

Once they left, I began working on my t-shirt/artwork/coffee cup/magnet/sticker/pillow/poster and tapestry designs. I worked on them off and on most of the day. And I started feeling like I could actually do this as my job (as long as it was just for myself and I had complete license to create whatever I felt like without having to put up with the normal bullshit I do in my real job. Oh, and the other condition is that I don't need to do it to survive.

It makes it a lot easier to wrap your brain around creating stuff if you aren't doing it out of necessity. 

I was concerned when I first started doing this that I would run out of ideas quickly or get burned out. And that may still happen, but so far I have found that I get inspired my many random things.

Like hats.

Oh, and speaking of happy clams, I went ahead and tried out modifying my instructions to the Art AI to add an element of foreshadowing that the happy clam may be headed for an overheated hot tub it wasn't expecting. And I liked the results:

It is pretty amazing that the AI Art thingy can actually take my direction and eventually give me something that matches what is in my head. If you have ever done creative work or advertising you are probably aware of people called Creative Directors. That is what I have fancied myself to have become (or aspired to become) in the work I do for a living after I stopped doing copywriting. My work with AI Art is teaching me that even though you aren't technically physically creating the work, you are still creating it through your direction and vision.

At least that's what I've been telling myself to make me happy.

Why is that pot of water boiling over there?

Happy talkee, happy talk, talk, talk

 I will be the first one to admit that this happy clam image is pretty darned creepy. You should have seen some of the other versions AI Art dropped on me. But they are a far cry from the original Are Clams Really Happy image I posted in 2006 (which was one of my most popular posts. 

And this clam looks real happy. I toyed with asking AI Art to include someone in a chef's uniform in the background boiling a big pot of water just to add a little plot twist to the whole thing (and I may still do that).  The beauty of having a tshirt design storefront is that I can plaster as many designs as I want out there. It doesn't cost me anything.

So far it hasn't earned me much of anything either.

In the post I brought up other sayings that imply how happy people are.  One of them was this really obscure one that came out of Australia or New Zealand: "We would be happy as Larry if it were not for the rats." That's a puzzler. But that didn't stop me from having AI Art create this:

I have to say I really love it. ChatGPT was able to shed some light on what the phrase actually mean: "In essence, the phrase is used to highlight a contrast between a desired state of happiness and the reality of an unwanted or troublesome situation, such as dealing with pests like rats. It's often used humorously to acknowledge life's imperfections and the unexpected challenges that can arise." Got to love ChatGPT.

Larry does look a bit too happy surrounded by rats that also seem to have mutated in the AI Art process. But I really like the outcome. I would wear this tshirt despite the potential looks it would get.

I do have to say that as I revisit old blog posts from 20 years ago, I am starting to feel less enamored with the quality of stuff I thought I was producing. I am feeling self conscious and a bit embarrassed about what I thought was funny at the time. Even the puns seem forced and stale.

Could this be why my blog never took off?

Larry says, "Nawwwwwwwwwwwwwwww." I'm not sure what the rats think though.

The mummy should have gone before he left

 

Years ago, I used to do theme weeks at Dizgraceland. I did Egyptian week back in 2006 and had one image of a mummy stepping out of a sarcophagus that had a toilet in it. And there was a piece of toilet paper stuck to him. The mummy coincidentally had my face. Because back then I still thought it was a novelty to put my face on everything.

But it wouldn't be something that someone would generally want on a t-shirt. So I upgraded the image. It wasn't easy. The AI Art site couldn't quite fathom that I wanted the toilet in the sarcophagus. So eventually I had to piece together the image. I think it is pretty damned good. 

There was a point where I did a series of posts on wanting to be knighted by the Queen of England and having a title. I wanted to be Tim Edwin the Fair and Flatulent.  I created several primitive coat of arms. I decided to recreate one of them here: 

Alas, I never did become a knight. Turns out the United States does not really allow its citizens to be royalty (despite what Trump thinks). So my royal aspirations fell by the wayside.

I did create this pretty cool ultimate coat of arms today, though:

I think the AI Art program nailed this one. Though it did give me a series of random one that didn't have arms on them. Not sure where the disconnect was. But it finally succumbed to my dad joke nature and gave me my pun. 

So I won that one. Or I pun that one.

Silly rabbits Trix are still for kids

 

I had this epiphany that I should go back to old blog posts and recreate some of my earlier images. This one goes back to 2004 when I first started blogging. I wrote a post about Fibonacci numbers, a mathematical sequence based on the rate at which rabbits multiply. I was fascinated by the fact that such a sequence even existed. The cool thing is that the pattern within the Fibonacci sequence exists throughout nature.

I had learned about this in my early years in college. When I worked in the periodical collection of my college library I discovered there was even a Fibonacci Journal. I was so enthralled with this kernel of obscure knowledge that when I started blogging I had to show off and post about it. I included a small portrait of Fibonacci (Leonardo of Pisa) who wrote a book about the sequence in 1202.

So today I fed some of the information into the AI Art site and came up with this gem of Fibonacci surrounded by rabbits multiplying...literally. Quite a far cry from my initial post.

I didn't really post that many images when I started blogging. When I did they were rough and small. You had to be concerned about loading speeds back then when many people were still logging on to the internet via telephone modems. So graphics couldn't be too complex or large. I also hadn't really mastered Photoshop yet (not that you can ever master it).

Who would have thought that 20 years later I would converse primitively with an artificial intelligence site that could turn my thoughts into images within seconds. I can't even imagine what it will be like in another 20 years. Though I imagine I will either be dead or pretty darned close to it. But maybe I'll be producing holograms of real rabbits hopping around Mr. Fibonacci.

Changing topics quickly, I had another design pulled out of my store yesterday. It wasn't even a very good one.

I think it was the James Bond people who killed it (pun intended...all my puns are intended). I find this ironic because I was sure it would have been the 7-11 people who would have taken umbrage with it and cried foul (which is pretty much what the food from 7-11 is). But the teepublic people weren't very nice about taking this one down and warned me not to try and repost it or I would risk having my account removed for repeat violations. This confused me because I have never done that.

It did make me so paranoid that I went through my design inventory and removed anything I thought was of imminent risk of offending the intellectual property police. This ruled out anything that related to a iconic movie or institution. 

Now more than ever I am happy I discovered AI art because I think it's primary directive is not to use anyone's proprietary images, trademarks, logos or names. So the intellectual police and their bots that search for such things are probably hard pressed to find something to get nasty about.

God knows I would hate to have my account on teepublic cancelled at lose that extra 50 cents of income each month.

Show them your nuts

 Obviously my blog and my designs are not the most politically correct. If I created this as part of my day job I would be responding to complaints that using the term "Nut Job" was offensive and not sensitive to the plights of the mentally ill. And if this was created as part of my day job I would apologize profusely and say that the term "Nut Job" referred to the person's profession as a street nut vendor.

But this isn't my day job and if someone complained I would just ignore them or say something like "nuts to you," or simply to fuck off. The humor to me is the double meaning and layers of complexity of this nut job. I love the crazed look on the man's face as he hawks his nuts on the street. He is showing people his nuts on many levels.

Here's another less than politically correct design:

I don't think you are allowed to use the term "hunchback" when referring to someone's deformity in this day and age. Victor Hugo had no problem with it. But he published the book in 1831 and they were less concerned with niceties at the time. I am not sure anyone uses the term "hunchback" anymore. It would be considered "ableist" (a term I despise).  According to my good friend ChatGPT, the modern term to use is "kyphosis" or "hyperkyphosis." It is a medical condition that creates an excessive curvatue of the spine and a rounded or hunched back. HyperKyphosis of Notre Dame probably wouldn't have become a classic for Victor Hugo.

The hunchback football player of Notre Dame cracks me up and I'm hoping it will appeal to the less politically correct who are still sensitive to such things but will think it is funny (even though it suggests we will all go to hell for doing so...not that I believe in hell or heaven for that matter).

It took awhile to get AI Art to create a hunchback football player. Apparently it is more sensitive than I am. That's my hunch anyway.

Yes, if there is a hell, that's where I am going.

Turf's up!

 

Spring will be here soon and some people will be mowing a sea of grass. Not me. I have a dinky lawn that I mow with a battery powered lawn mower. At times I think it would be fun to hang ten on a bitchin' riding lawn mower though.

Okay, it would be fun for maybe a day and then it would just be work.

This was another of those ideas that came to me at about 4 a.m. But it was Daylight Savings Time so my body still thought it was 3 a.m. But the design ideas were popping. Trick is remembering them when I get up.

This one struck me as fun. But the AI Art site struggled with it. It kept giving me these bizarre looking matches that didn't really look like matches. I finally used the background it created and messed around with images of matches I found through Google. It took a lot of Photoshop work. Not sure it was worth the trouble. 

The Turfs Up one was a natural for AI so I just had to add text. That's my kind of partnership.

Intellectual police pulled me over again this morning for a Gospel of Elvis design.It picture three stained glass images of the king that AI created. I made the mistake of adding lyrics from All Shook up (Bless a my soul...).  I think that is what triggered it getting pulled down. Sony was the narc this time and they probably own that song. I just dropped the lyrics and reposted it. Seems ridiculous. It's not like I was selling the figging song.

I did this one last night:

It was inspired because I was grilling some chicken and ran out of propane. AI Art did a pretty good job with a singing propane tank.  I had actually come up with a whole song about propane about two years ago during the pandemic. It was a pretty good parody of Eric Clapton's song Cocaine.  I left it in the comments of Cynch, a company that delivers propane tanks to your door. I thought sure they would make a big deal about it on social media.

But crickets.

Once again, I am too clever by half. 

Finally I was messing around with AI Art and asked it to show me the face I had before I was born and the sound of one hand clapping. It spit out some pretty disturbing stuff, but several photos of babies.

How original. I ended up using some of the AI Art and a photo of me from awhile back (altered with a Snapchat filter). I think it is pretty damned artistic. Doubt anyone will buy it though. My face doesn't seem to be a big seller. 

Even the face I had before I was born.

Temere ineptias

 Now this is a dramatic image for Dizgraceland I can really get behind. I just asked my new friend AI Art at Ideogram.ai to throw something together for Dizgraceland the blog and it spit out this. I really like the way it combined the "C" and "E" into a single letter and added the the "Unraveling the Mysteries."

I added the latin inscription "Temere Ineptias" (which sounds like something Harry Potter would say while he blasts you with his wand) and "The Blog."  I'll let you figure out what "Temere Ineptia" means on your own.

Seriously this has this whole mystical Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings vibe that really makes my blog seem somewhere you'd like to visit and whisper in awe as you tiptoe around as I unravel "the" mysteries. It is important that I don't just unravel mysteries, I unravel "THE" mysteries.

Makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn't it?

I turned it into a t-shirt design just for the fun of it. Because it would look really mysterious and bitchin' as you walk around in a smoking jacket at the local Walmart. Though I imagine spelling Dizgraceland with a mutant C that is also an E will confuse the yokels. They don't know high-brow design when they see it. 

Makes me seem more mysterious as I unravel before your eyes.

On that note, I'll throw out another of my designs that me and Ideogram whipped out (though I think they should have called themselves Idiosyncrasy).

Now I am sure I am not the first one to suggest Hamlet be played by a pig (but you have to admit it works on many different levels). It took a few tries to get the image I wanted and I did have to manipulate it with Photoshop. Because I wanted Hamlet to be holding a pig skull not a human skull and I wanted Horatio and the ghost of Hamlet's father to be swine as well. 

I am happy with the end result.  It would make a great stage adaptation of the original. It could be billed as "Shakespeare, the other white meet."

Not really sure what that means, but I'm sure I'll unravel THE mystery eventually.

The Snowman always rings twice

 

So I've been having fun with the AI Art program. It still blows me away that you can create these images in a matter of seconds that are based on your vague description of what you'd like an image of. It beats Googling things an patching them together in Photoshop. And the AI art has no restrictions (yet) on how you can use them.

I still wonder if the Intellectual Property police will try and find something to bitch about. I've noticed that if you describe something that potentially has rights issues the AI misspells the name or adds and "s" or "ing." 

My friend ChatGPT says you can upload your own photos into the AI art programs and it will incorporate them into your ideas. I just can't figure out how to do that. I think you have to get the paid subscriptions. I'm too cheap at this point ot pay $20 a month to create images that may go on a t-shirt that will earn me $2.

I'll stick to the free subscriptions for now.

I do notice that AI leans towards the abstract (like this payphone image). It looks old, but not like any phone I ever saw. And AI also seems to be a bad speller.  Some of the images I've had it create have words with letters missing in them. 

I've also been upgrading some of the designs I did on my own with the AI images.

I really like this one of a Ouija board. But notice AI doesn't use the real alphabet on the board. And I had to spell out Ouija because I think AI thinks it is trademarked.  But I love the spirits.

I also had it create this super cool Magic 8 ball:

I predict AI Art is the art of the future now. But who knows what I'll get when I ask again.

The muse becomes cymbalic

 

Those of you new to Dizgraceland won't recognize my muse and (tor)mentor, the Monkey Playing Cymbals. He (I assume he is a he, but I've never looked...if you catch my drift) is a rather old battery operated toy monkey playing cymbals that doesn't really work, but can be made to play the cymbals manually. 

He (they since there are three of them in this design and he/they could be gender fluid) have sat on the shelf above my desk at work for probably 20 years or so. I should bring it (him, they) home since I work most days now in my home office.  But  then I'd have to put up with the Monkey's chattering about change and being left alone for so long in an empty office.

Regardless of the human attributes I am projecting up on this more or less inanimate object, it has been my muse for years. So it seemed fitting to incorporate it he them into a t-shirt design. Fortunately I have plenty of photos of the monkey in various poses. It is amazing the different looks he they them have for a battery operated toy that no longer operates.

So if you are new to Dizgraceland and stumbled in here looking for the meaning behind my random t-shirt designs you now have a bit of background about the monkey. He (let's just go ahead and call him he from now on since that is the pronoun I seem to automatically fall back on)  is not new to my Photoshop fever dreams. He actually had his own blog for some time (Monkeyplayingcymbals.com). I eventually grew tired of maintaining it and paying for the domain name. But for awhile I played with many Monkey personaes. 

This isn't one of them. This was something I came up with today. As you can see, the Monkey is quite animated when I dress him up. I neglected to tell him that Sea Monkeys were not, in fact, monkeys and that he is dressed like a brine shrimp.  I imagine that would have triggered some feces throwing. 

Though being a mechanical monkey he fortunately doesn't have any real feces to fling. But I don't want to take a chance with being hit in the eye with a spring or a spare gear. 

I've learned not to monkey with the Monkey.

Though on that note I did find a new site that generates AI art. ChatGPT tried to explain it to me as technologies that range from machine learning algorithms to neural networks that analyze data, patters and content and generate new content.  I asked it to create a Monkey Sea Monkey and it spit out this:

I thought that was pretty cool (and a bit disturbing). I wouldn't want to encounter it while snorkeling off the beach in Cabo after a few cervezas.  But I wanted to see something closer to a mechanical sea monkey playing cymbals.  Here's what it came up with:

My Monkey Playing Cymbals doesn't like it and says it raises concerns about the potential for AI to replace artists altogether (and Monkey Muses I suspect).  I think it is something I wouldn't mind having sitting above my desk for another 20 years. 

Who am I to stand in the way of progress and new improved monkey muses.

Stop chattering at me Monkey!

Off (or on) my rocker

 

I suppose I should apologize to my great, great grandfather George for potentially putting him on a t-shirt with an electric guitar. But he survived the civil war so I think being immortalized by me shouldn't cause him too much concern. 

This design was inspired by an e-mail I got from Reverb.com about some Indie Rockers selling their old equipment. This made me think of someone sitting in a rocker. And my great, great grandfather seemed the logical choice. 

Prior to serving in the civil war (on the Union side if you must know) George was a farmer. And before that he made chairs. And before that he spent time in a state asylum. Nothing in my family history elaborates on George's time in the asylum or why. At the time there were many reasons to be put in an asylum other than having the cheese slide off your cracker. He could have had a drinking problem. He could have had chronic migraines. Or he could have just been poor and ended up in the asylum.

But eventually George got out, started farming, married my great, great grandmother (20 years younger than him) and had a passel of kids including my great grandmother. He and my great, great grandmother also raised my grandmother after my great grandmother died in child birth a few years after my grandmother was born. So I owe part of my existence to George (on or off his rocker).  He was also the only one of my close relatives who had the resources to have portraits done. So I have a large portrait of George on my office wall.

And if you've followed my blog religiously you will have read that I think George and I bear a very strong resemblance, especially with the bitching beard I'm now able to cultivate in my old age.

I wish I knew more about George. My great, great grandmother got more family press and appeared more family portraits than George. Being 20 years older than my great, great grandmother unfortunately meant he also died many years before her. So no one seems to know much about him. I probably know more about him than anyone else in my immediate family. I wonder sometimes if his other kids that moved away to California have progeney that know more. But I have no contact with them. 

The three portraits I have of George all show him sitting staring pretty vacantly into the camera. This could be because of his age. Or it could be because he was weary from farming. Or it could be he was weary from having so many kids.  Or he could have been flashing back to his days in the asylum. 

It's probably best that I don't really know. This way I can imagine he was a kind, gentle man of few words who would have appreciated appearing on a t-shirt, magnet, sticker and coffee mug as an Indie Rocker.

Marching orders

 

I can't even tell you what the hourly rate for marching to the beat of a different plumber costs, especially nights, weekends and holidays (when most plumbing problems happen).  I thought the "wearing clogs" line was a nice touch. I toyed with including an image of a clog (shoe, not drain) but I'm getting more and more sensitive to intellectual property bullshit. A plunger is a plunger and there isn't much in the way of intellectual property other than, "That's my plunger, it's got my name on it."

The beet design is a bit more esoteric and might confuse a few people who don't know what the hell borscht is. I kind of have an affinity for beets. My mom gave me a packet of beet seeds when I was a kid. I planted them and actually grew some beets. As a food, I think they are a bit disgusting but they have their place in the food chain.

I also liked that Tom Robbins featured beets in his novel, Jitterbug Perfume. It has been a long time since I read the book, but I seem to recall he suggests the beet was a divine vegetable and a symbol of immortality, rebirth, sex and passion. Tom Robbins has a tendency to make such broad, random and quirky pronouncements. 

So the beet shirt has a special meaning to me (beyond the $2 I could get if I sell a t-shirt with the design). I still can't stomach the things.

Finally, I came up with this design about 5 a.m. this morning.  Most of my design ideas come from thinking of words that rhyme with other words in recognizable phrases, songs or sayings. This one reflects the many eye rolls I've seen from my own children at what they call my "dad jokes."  These are usually followed by a mumbled, "That's not funny."

I would wear this shirt proudly.  Maybe I should start a "gofundme" account to order my t-shirts for myself. The challenge will be (other than getting anyone to donate to such a thing...and they donate to more outlandish things) would be getting around my wife's eye rolls about me having too many t-shirts and suggesting I need to get rid a one for every one I acquire.

Pause for a climactic lugubrious howl.

Doctor, doctor, give me the news...

 

I thought about just putting a footnote on the Thorax, I speak for the vital organs design that it was something Dr. Seuss considered and then rejected for the Lorax (which really makes no sense at all). But then I started think about other potential ideas Dr. Seuss could have had before he arrived at his classics.

I am particularly proud of How the Winch stole Christmas! But I tend to be easily amused by my own sense of humor. I think this is nature's way of protecting my fragile ego.

The Rat in the Hat is a bit disturbing but more predictable than the Winch who stole Christmas. 

I'm hoping they are all so far from the originals that if Dr. Seuss has heirs (which a Google search says is in dispute), won't think I am any risk to the intellectual property of the man who wrote great prose like, "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish." I could never hope to compete with that kind of genius.

And let us not forget Seuss's forays into elder abuse with Hop on Pop. And his foodie rant against Sam, I am, and his attempt to get the main character to eat green eggs and ham. How could I even come close to anything intellectually close to those gems. 

I imagine you can tell I am still bitter about Paramount challenging me over Grease Monkey. On the bright side I hear they are hemorrhaging money on their streaming service. So I suppose attacking me for the pennies I might have generated through a Grease Monkey t-shirt is justified. Can't have the rabble storming the parapets of Paramount and adding to their loses.

Speaking of getting screwed:

Okay, I'm not sure who would think I'm violating their intellectual rights on this one. Shakespeare seems beyond caring and the screws don't seem to care (though they can turn on you when you least expect it). 

I am indeed, too clever by half.

The trouble with this design is that you have to be aware that Taming of the Shrew was a Shakespeare play and a Shrew is a nasty tempered woman. Calling a woman a shrew is not politically correct these days. Taming them is also not considered politically correct either.

The irony here is that when Shakespeare wrote the play, all of the parts (male and female) were played by men. So the Shrew they were taming was another guy (non-binary or not).

The other irony is that when I was a kid and was aware of Taming of the Shrew I had just seen a movie called Killer Shrews (a shlocky Sci Fi film produced in 1959) about mutant, giant shrews on an island.  So I assumed taming shrews referred to taming giant mutant mole-like animals like the movie (where the giant shrews were actually dogs in bad make up). So you can imagine how confused I was when the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton movie version of Taming of the Shrew came out.

The Shakespeare Shrew was probably quite tame compared to the giant mutant shrews.

Once again, I am too clever by half.

Know what I saw? Wood.

 

I have been getting a bit nostalgic as I scour the ether for design ideas. This is a postcard I created that could have sold big in the 1960s.  We spent many summer vacations at Redfish Lake in the Stanley Basic on Idaho near the Sawtooth Mountain range.  I also took my only backpack journeys into the Sawtooths a couple of summers on forced marches with my oldest brother and my nephew.  It taught me to appreciate hotel rooms and despise insects bigtime.

Still the Sawtooth Mountains were beautiful and obviously named after a crosscut saw blade. I added a few circular saw blades because they seemed to add to the esthetic. Doubt most people know the difference anymore.

I also created an homage to Twin Peaks with some creepy Shining vibe thrown in for good measure.

I do find myself shying away from movie and television spoofs. I had another design pulled this morning for more intellectual infringement issues. It was  a version of Grease the musical with a monkey face. I called it Grease Monkey. Apparently it was too close to the original poster because Paramount asked that it be removed, putting them in the same book as HBO with me for pettiness. I think the common denominator I've discovered is that I posted both my Whitewalker spoof and the Grease spoof on Instagram. Apparently the companies scan those to prevent artists from being too intellectual with their properties.

No one seems to care what you post on Twitter X because their is definitely a low intellectual quotient going on there. Also a low rate of value to post anything you are trying to sell on Twitter X too. God knows the man wouldn't want me to wrestle 25 cents worth of profit off from something they think violates their intellectual property rights. 

I do have a problem with the concept that there is such thing as an original idea any more anyway, intellectual or not. I just need to be more discerning in who I flatter through imitation and how much I imitate. 

Live and learn. 

Grease Monkey was kind of a turd anyway and not worth flinging onto social media.

Moby Brick -- or the Well

 

I'm not a big Herman Melville fan. I read Moby Dick and found it to be one of the dead driest novel I'd ever read (right up there with Tristam Shanty back in Junior High, and it was pretty boring).  I read Moby Dick long after high school not because I had any great desire to read it (it is god awful long). I read it to impress a woman I had started dating who was an English Literature major. 

She lent me the book and I read it through bored to tears. I thought it was terrible. His minute description of the whaling industry was painful and unnecessary. But still I read it.

I never did impress the woman. But in the long run, it was for the best. I think English Literature majors prepare you for very little other than pulling espresso at Starbucks (ironic considering I'm talking about Melville and Moby Dick and Starbuck was the first mate of the whaling ship in Moby Dick. It was a whale of a bad book and I say that even though I risk sounding petty.

I believe the great white whale (Moby Dick) and Captain Ahab's obsession was intended to be some kind of religious allegory for something. Ahab loses his leg to the whale in a failed attempt to kill him and spends the rest of his pegleg life trying to catch and kill the whale.

There was a 1950s movie made from the book starring Gregory Peck (Atticus from the movie To Kill a Mockingbird) as Captain Ahab. I vaguely remember watching it as a kid. Regardless, I called on my vast knowledge of Melville and Moby Dick to create the above design of Moby Brick, a Great White Well. 

I figured I would make another vain effort to appeal to the high brow audience who would understand the reference. I do wonder, however, if they are really the market for t-shirts, magnets, stickers or coffee cups.

This really blows, Captain Ahab.

A Pirates Plunder

 

I really like Jimmy Buffett's song, "A Pirate Looks at Forty." Though I think I mention this in an earlier post that 40 is kind of a ridiculous age to be looking back wistfully and when I play the song on my guitar, I always change the line to an over-60 victim of fate because it is more applicable and realistic.

Plundering pirates came to me in the wee hours of the morning as I pondered t-shirt designs and I came up with this one. But I also developed an alternate one that I like too.

There are a couple of odd definitions for plunderwear if you Google it, but it hasn't been overly used so I don't feel like I pirated or plundered it from anyone else. It may appeal to pirate buffs even with another version of my grizzled old face on it.

Though I have resigned myself to the fact that I don't seem to have a firm handle on what appeals to people these days in the merchandizing realm. But I continue to be inspired and motivated to crank out at least one design a day.

I've kind of taken a break from Trump designs. There really doesn't seem to be a market for them and no one on Twitter X pays any attention. Twitter X reminds me of the Western Front in World War I with two great armies entrenched on opposite sides occasionally venturing out into no man's land to try and gut each other. But most of the time they stay in their own trenches hurling clever insults at the other side that never actual make it to the other side. But everyone in the trench gets a good chuckle out of it.

Twitter X informed me that today was my 14 anniversary of being on Twitter X.  Hard to believe. And I still don't see any point in Twitter X.

Other than making clever insults on posts about Trump and and his stupid followers. But even that is getting old (kind of like the disturbing post with a drunk Rosanne Barr babbling incoherently on a podcast trying to explain why her lipstick looked like it was applied while she was driving a Mac Truck...it wasn't pretty). 

Arrrrr....

The (In)Visible Man returns

 

Back in 2007 just before I turned 50 I wrote a post about Mr. Cellophane, a song from the musical Chicago. This is ironic to my now being well past 60 so I have long since surpassed invisible. Not sure what that looks like? Nothing, I suppose.

But after challenging myself to come up with an invisible t-shirt design I started with this one:

It appeals to your average t-shirt buyer who wants to make a statement (and a dad joke) and you can't lose by saying something about not wearing pants. On a humor note it works on many different levels not to mention forgetting to wear pants when you are old and realizing no one noticed anyway. Not that I'm advocating this to anyone. It can get you arrested if someone notices. But you generally just have to act confused and lost and they'll take you home.

No, I am not speaking from experience.

But I wanted more out of my t-shirt designs. I like to make more of an intellectual statement about human existence and the futility of things. This is because I like to justify no one buys the shirt because they just don't get it and don't want to have to explain it to people when they wear it.

That's where the first design above came from. I wanted to do something with those plastic models I remembered as a kid of an invisible person where you could see their guts and bones. Everything on the outside was transparent. I searched for "Invisible Man" and got lots of images of Claude Raines from the Invisible Man movies. Then by accident I discovered the geniuses who made the models called them Visible Man (and eventually Visible Woman who was much more popular with boys going through puberty). 

The Visible Man reminded me of the song from the Chicago musical where one guy sings about no one sees him, they look right through him and he should be called Mr. Cellophane. I annoy my daughter everytime I think about the song and break into a chorus of, "Cellophane, Mr. Cellophane..."  Problem is I don't really know many of the words and can't carry a tune in a shit bucket.

But I digress.

I struggled at first as to how to turn the Visible Man into a t-shirt about being invisible, especially when I insisted that I put a cartoon version of my head on the Visible Man body. It was easy to apply a quote from the Mr. Cellophane song but I needed something to tie it up with a neat, esoteric bow that had profound meaning to me but not necessarily anyone else. 

That's where the line, "This is getting old" came from. It works on a level that my discussion of being invisible on my blog all of the time is getting old, but it also pointed out that this is what getting old is like. But how to explain why this old man that no one knew from Adam's head was on the Visible Man's body. That's where I added, "This is getting old, man." It introduced that this was coming from an old man's perspective and it had that subtle Great Lebowski pronouncement of "This will not stand, man" vibe. 

Didn't think anyone put that much thought into t-shirt design did you? 

I like to think that many of the thousands (if not millions according to the teepublic.com hype) of designs on the website are placed there in a vain attempt to showcase people's art. I have taken the approach that the t-shirt isn't just the medium, it is the art.

At least that is what I tell myself to justify the amount of effort I put into this shit.