Is AI imagery a space for fine art?

A few months ago, I began viewing AI imagery as fine art. Yet, I’m not sure if it’s that.

Analysis of the proposition to prepare computer intelligence for Facebook and Instagram posts

Criticism arises over the proposal to train AI to Facebook and Instagram posts

Intelligence: The capacity to gather and apply information and abilities.

If Meta scrapes Facebook and Instagram accounts for training AI models, isn’t that alarming? Those outpourings of people’s lives are the impetus for Meta’s AI, becoming alarming, for Mark Zuckerberg, with his faith in open source AI, has become yet another hero of technological change (to be honest, if he weren’t already great).

Why would anyone want AI trained on Facebook and Instagram accounts, with all their forms for human experience, their amoral attitude toward young users of their platforms, their ill-advised influencers, their criminal element and the recognition that OpenAI is not nearly as fool with how ChatGPT-4o will behave and how ChatGPT-3.5 behaves?

To me, it doesn’t seem like a great strategy. Regarding social media, Facebook might be the most popular, but not the most insightful.

Social media: Computerized media that permit individuals to interface with one another (frequently namelessly) and to share data. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp.

Data: Computerized data (the type put away by PCs) normally consists of numerical information encoded as zeros and ones in double coding.

This approach is completely ridiculous. It seems rather impractical, to put a burden on the users of Facebook and Instagram in any shape, for anything based on artificial intelligence. Why train an AI on information filtered through the vagaries of what is a human experience (social media)?

Having the resources to train LLMs does not mean that it should be done recklessly. Reddit and Microsoft are both allies of OpenAI, which I suspect will come out on top if we do achieve AGI, but danger should not be discounted.

Curator of AI + Art at the ETH Zurich AI Center, Adrian Christopher Notz, is the individual who most convinced me that AI imagery could become fine art and that AI video could become cinema. “Without photography, neither Van Gogh nor Picasso would have taught us to see the world in new ways,” he thinks.

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2024/04/artificial-augmented-creativity-a-new-era-of-art.html

I continue to feel reluctant to put money into the hands of AI firms, even the best-known, although from time to time a little of that is necessary.

Film director Harmony Korine, whose current film Aggro Dr1ft uses, I have read, frequent scenes that employ AI-enhanced cinematography, is certainly a reputable and notable filmmaker, yet has not shirked from the new interest in AI.

Figures like Notz and Korine, in the fields of fine art and film, seem to have no problem at all enjoying AI applications when it comes to their craft.

I am just not sure Mark Zuckerberg will have the same positive net benefit if Meta becomes the top player in AI.

I have read that if Apple plays it hand slyly, it will steal the thunder of both Meta and OpenAI, but an email three weeks ago from Poe, who I found with Quora, let me know that ChatGPT-4o is available.

It is said that ChatGPT-4o will change the shape of computing. The workforce may change as well. So would film and fine art, potentially. Fashion may as well.

The first worldwide Miss AI contest is being judged this month. It has likewise occurred to me whether a symbiotic AI friend might attract the kind of dialogue I would be interested in reading.

I see myself as a writer, although I haven’t written anything in the way of fiction since November.

Reading a dialogue between an AI character and a person who finds that appealing might spark a truly forward-thinking dialogue.

Quora is another platform that invites the kind of discussion I might find interesting in reading. It both interests other users in a question posed and it presents an answer as devised by Poe, if you’re interested. You’re welcome to leave a link, to follow, and to comment.

Patrick

patrickcoholan@hotmail.com 

https://twitter.com/findingenvirons?lang=en

https://www.facebook.com/findingenvirons/

@patrickcoholan

https://www.tiktok.com/@patrickcoholan

What’s the trait you value most about yourself?

Daily writing prompt

What’s the trait you value most about yourself?

View all responses

My social media includes a personal blog on WordPress because I like writing in long-form and I am comfortable with WordPress. A healthy portion of the Internet is constructed with WordPress.org and WordPress.com is for actually putting your blog right on their site.

These days you can choose to answer a writing prompt which is convenient for writing something right away that has a theme that other users on WordPress may likewise be deciding to write about. A writing prompt is an idea that generates a blog post or other piece of writing (or art).

The trait I value most about myself is my intellectual ability for application in my day-to-day life. I am happy to regard myself as a person with only average intelligence, but considering that I am an honest-to-goodness human being given how many troubles I might have had in my lifetime that I didn’t encounter, I hold fast to an ideal that even with only the average intelligence of a human being I am still fortunate that I have that much intellectual ability on which to draw, as for example, when I am doing social media content.

I have spent the last year exploring AI imagery. When filmmaker Harmony Korine presented his latest film Aggro Dr1ft to festivals such as the 61^st New York Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival this year, and the Toronto International Film Festival this year, it wasn’t receiving normal blockbuster-size distribution yet (and I’m not sure that it even will get that kind of distribution—I wonder if it will get an expensive DVD or Blu-ray release). Korine shot his film entirely with NASA Infrared cameras to give the film pools of colors where heat signatures are being recorded.

In addition, Korine has included AI imagery to add to the experimentalism of the scenes that comprise the movie. How great would it be to see this one? The reviews I read explained that it is such an unconventional movie that it affects your sensory perceptions in a manner that cannot be ignored.

Immediately upon learning what Korine did, I saw that I could try cinematic generative AI with the Runway AI app. I had already learned about what Runway does, which I think I heard of on Twitter several months ago, and decided that Runway’s amazing video generation would round out the ideas I already had for utilizing stock video and AI on TikTok. With the explosion of AI and the controversy about whether TikTok should be banned in the United States, TikTok’s terms of conditions specify that TikToks that utilize AI imagery need to convey that is what is going on (to be transparent).

In practical terms, the TikTok algorithm seems reluctant to pick up TikToks made with AI. One of my TikToks done in AI did a little bit on the algorithm and the next few didn’t go anywhere. Today I am trying out including a link to a new cinematic generative AI sequence.

I don’t know if referring to Harmony Korine is as apt as I feel it could be. He has a reputation as a great filmmaker, and I am only trying an idea that is similar to the work he has done (I wouldn’t really know right away what to shoot if I did have an Infrared camera from NASA). I know enough about waxing poetic in cinema circles, at least I think I do, that “remixing” an idea somebody like Korine has and trying something similar to that isn’t too bad a jumping-off point for similar AI imagery.

A link to a new cinematic generative AI is here: https://1drv.ms/v/s!AoZ7i5SXd_eE4TgiBSRal2xi_Dpn

 I put this together a few minutes ago with an answer to this writing prompt. I will try to remember to see if WordPress will carry this post anywhere. You’re welcome to give this post a ‘like,” to follow my blog, and/or to leave me a comment. Thank you.

The Anchorage Daily News printed a story yesterday, about contemporary motel living in Florida, at the following link: https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2023/09/28/what-one-motel-tells-us-about-survival-in-post-disaster-america/

Three More Seasons in 2023: 10 words a theme/goal

Mortality
Stoicism
Configuration
Self-reliance
Kindness
Apologies
Content
Acceptance
Persistence
Necessity

Experimental escapism
—
“Last year escapism became a dominant theme in graphic design, as creatives sought to draw viewers into mesmerizing, imaginative worlds. The trend is still going strong into 2023, but now escapism is getting experimental.

“Much of this experimentation is inspired by recent advances in technology, as 2022 witnessed the viral emergence of AI-generated art, the Metaverse, and the interstellar images made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope. These have left their mark on the creative industry. Designers are taking inspiration from these technological experiments and merging them with their creative expertise…

“The result is exploratory compositions that feel like windows into the digital psyche. This brand of escapism has darkness and moodiness to it, containing impossible landscapes that are artificial yet still conceptually adventurous. This year, designers are leading us deeper into the artistic unknown than we’ve ever been.“

Yesterday, POLITICO Magazine published an opinion piece by their Possin laying out his views (which do not necessarily represent the State Department’s).

“In the spirit of constructive dissent, let’s take a look at Possin’s arguments.“

In short: “the U.S.,” he writes, “is at risk of blowing its approach to the next generation of the internet. When it comes to formulating digital asset policy, we need to embrace the internet’s inevitable evolution. We need more technologists, fewer lawyers, and less bias in favor of financial sector incumbents.”

Those are experts, art critics, and a futurist. I am giving journaling this way a go with prompts written by Robert Duff, Ph.D. He’s a psychologist, self-help author, and podcaster known by @duffthepsych

Born in 1977

Share what you know about the year you were born.

1977

Merry Christmas!

I was born in the year 1977. About two months after I came into the world, a little-known sci-fi movie was a surprise spring hit that quickly became a sensation with cinemagoers. The film in question was Star Wars.

It makes me wonder if I should become a Jedi or follow Jedi beliefs.

1977 was the year Pink Floyd released their masterpiece Animals. I believe the late godfather of punk Lou Reed made the album Street Hassle that year, which many more years later he admitted he mostly regretted doing. In this day and age of gender identity, Lou Reed is sometimes criticized for being hostile to trans people.

Never Mind the Bollocks, the band’s sole studio album, led the way. In those days, Queen Elizabeth II was the British monarch, and they flaunted their success to the Royal Family.

The Ramones and maybe The Clash made albums in ’77, too. I just read an article about Patti Smith’s integration of her presence in the rock music scene with art’s photorealistic movement in the Washington Post. AI users are now able to use AI to create original images, including some that may be photorealistic.

In 1977, The Fall was already making music and making waves. I believe that they had really just started making music the previous year.

I’m glad I grew up to be a nice man.

In your opinion, what is your best quality? #bloganuary

Today is the thirty-first of January, and this month I’ve taken my cue from WordPress writing prompts called bloganuary. I’m using up all available time, and I am behind, so I am getting here with a thought that bloganuary for me might run a little while into February.

I like to exercise my ability to reason, which is part of why I blog. In addition to interacting with other bloggers, there are other things I like about blogging, but writing prompts like bloguanary make me feel like I’m learning from others’ ideas and applying my own understanding to them. I appreciate it, which is likely a similar thing numerous different bloggers appreciate. I know a little about blogging professionally, but I’m not sure I would ever try that. A small hobbyist blog is easier to manage, and if money is not changing hands, there is a little less to worry about.

My love of reading helped challenge my instinct for the intellectual back then, and I enjoyed school because I was asked to apply my own skills to instructional activities, but I don’t think I ever developed the study skills to become an academic myself. As a result of my godfather asking if I would be interested in assisting him with his research, I was able to gain some insight that a ninth or tenth grader might not otherwise have.

I observe these plunges into my own mind to see what I can incite in myself and how I can address it on the page. Bloganuary has been fun this month. As for now, it’s been a strong month for my blog, but I’m hoping to return to my usual kind of “studied foray” in the future. Thanks to WordPress for organizing the prompts.

Photo by Jess Watters on StockSnap

What does it mean to live boldly? #bloganuary

Star Trek identified the concern: “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Here are a few specifics on how to be a touch bold.

Photo by Steve Johnson on StockSnap

Don’t worry about your age. While it is more than “just a number,” there isn’t any reason to close door after door because you feel you are too old for an opportunity. Use your judgement about what you can do, but don’t exclude yourself from taking chances when you’d like to because you feel your age is creeping up on you.

If you watch video on YouTube, be sensitive to the reality that the YouTube algorithm provides you with recommendations to keep you watching, as in passively consuming video content. Apply some originality to your searches so that you hear creators who are bolder and less often provide a company line. That said, I have inferred that you should “deep dive” with caution. Looking into the distant past can amuse and give you a relevant sense of nostalgia, but concern yourself with today, and perhaps the past few days, and not with videos from the vaults of yesteryear.

If you are in touch with the pulse of the zeitgeist, perhaps you should venture onto social media that’s less behemoth than services like TikTok and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube (and…). I would caution you not to waste your time because creator messages will get repeats, on the most Earthshaking of the services. But if you are Internet-savvy, be bold and get aboard where you want. Mind some of the imitations will inevitably remain imitations.

Love on when you can. It isn’t easy in 2022 to be as bold as you would like, for I would say the world is getting dystopian. Hang on. It will probably be another rotten year, but 2023 will be another calendar year. Know when to advance and when to pass. It’s a judgement call. Remember a card game analogy: somebody else could play your hand and win.

MCMXCVII #badglowup

For Jim Adams’ blog bounce, for Sunday, January 10, 2021, Jim has requested MA, meaning a tune with a title that begins with either the letter M or with the letter A.

https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/mature-audience/

I thought of a song with an unusual title, that begins with A.

“And Then (The Hexx)” is a song by Pavement, a b-side on Pavement’s “Spit on a Stranger” single in May 1999, I read somewhere. It sort of provides a conclusion to the 1997 Pavement album Brighten the Corners. Quietly now, that’s the Pavement record where the entire quintet is performing–it’s sometimes known as “dream pop.”

A second version of the song “And Then (The Hexx)” is again the conclusion to the next, and last, Pavement album, Terror Twilight. Strictly speaking, to the best of my understanding, the song is “And Then (The Hexx)” for the Brighten the Corners b-side, and simply “The Hexx” for Terror Twilight.

Rock musician Steve Malkmus, who around the year 1990 put together ideas for what became a classic all-American rock record, Slanted & Enchanted, while the young man was in high school in Stockton, California. Nice work if you can get it.

“And Then (The Hexx)” is eerie, and it has happiness to it as well.

Malkmus has reinvented himself twice since Pavement folded. First he played as Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and more recently, since 2018, just Stephen Malkmus. I’ve seen video of Malkmus performing his songs by himself for the groove denied tour.

Terror Twilight producer Nigel Godrich was keeping active on Twitter in December 2020, when he tweeted on the thirteenth of December, 2020, that, despite what Godrich called “the dark” of December, Godrich preferred the advice,”get your SAD lamp out and party!” SAD indicates seasonal affective disorder, mild depression brought about by lack of sunlight, in a cold climate.

Just updated my @stationrotatio1 December Vibes…… dark and beautiful month… I’m looking forward to the new year and new times with salivation. Stare at a wall and enjoy…. or get your SAD lamp out and party! #stationrotation https://t.co/nslwbKGr5v https://t.co/gcbQXFs5el— nigel godrich ?? (@nigelgod) December 13, 2020

The feeling echoes what Steve Malkmus said for the 2002 documentary Slow Century. Godrich’s observation is certainly deliberate.

“Get your handkerchiefs out,” Malkmus says, “and party.”

Writing for a Chicago online mag highlighting music, motion pictures, and TV, consequence of sound’s DAN CAFFREY says, “‘Spit on a Stranger’ looks back on a relationship that’s gone kaput — maybe a relationship with a band.”

I have the impression that, of the five band members in the band in 1999, that other than Steve Malkmus, they wanted to hang it up.

When touring the Terror Twilight record, Malkmus often hung a pair of handcuffs on stage, from his mic stand, to illustrate how he felt making a living in a rock band.

Dissected: Pavement
BY DAN CAFFREY
ON AUGUST 11, 2015, 3:00PM

https://consequenceofsound.net/2015/08/dissected-pavement/full-post/

“Terror Twilight,” Caffrey writes, “has a reputation of being Pavement’s tamest album, and that’s true, musically speaking — the tempos are sturdier and there’s much less yowling, despite a ripping harmonica solo (?!) from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.” Wikipedia says Jonny Greenwood, from Radiohead, played harmonica both for “Platform Blues,” and for “Billie,” both of which are Terror Twilight songs, Billie penned about Billy Graham.

Whether the various elements of Terror Twilight, Caffrey says for consequence of sound, scare the shit out of you or not, the lyrics prove that, even when they had run out of momentum and had to be practically forced by Godrich to come up with new material (the band reportedly was more concerned with playing Scrabble than recording) — even when music didn’t sound quite like itself, Pavement was still Pavement.

I saw in a more recent interview, it is somewhat eluding me where I heard this (I think it was organized by Vanity Fair for Seattle radio not too long ago), when Malkmus was talking about getting ready to play shows with Pavement, Malkmus said that to this day he enjoys the game of Scrabble.

I presume that’s Pavement fandom knowledge. Malkmus has said publicly he got really quite good. In a round of Scrabble, you make words on the game board utilizing letters, which add to the score.

Anyway, some fans consider “And Then (The Hexx)” to be a Brighten the Corners song, because of the 2009 rerelease of Brighten the Corners with the second CD with “And Then (The Hexx).” It is also the conclusion to Terror Twilight, which when discussed is usually just called “The Hexx.”

I still like to think of “The Hexx” as “And Then (The Hexx),” and that’s why it fits into Jim’s MA prompt challenge. However, the true release date of “And Then (The Hexx)” should be 1997, not 1999.

Pavement
And Then (the Hexx)
Composed by
Stephen Malkmus

Release Year
1997

The Hexx

MCMLXXXIX

I liked to read when I was a young kid.

In the early 2000s, the Internet, a frontier, the first blog I wrote was on MySpace. A girl I’d met in school said it was a brilliant site. It was a real long time ago.

These days, all these years later, I was looking at the post-https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2020/10/03/no-rules/ -when I got an idea. Jim suggested that fans teach specific insights into the songs they enjoyed.

For the eleventh of October, Jim suggested a few prompts, such as the word Hold, which reminded me of Hold On, on the Lou Reed album “New York,” a good album. The idea of the prompt is to identify a song with a specific word in the title, or the lyrics.

The late Lou Reed was a singer and guitarist whose album “The Velvet Underground & Nico” made a name for himself. Over twenty years later, the song Hold On, on the record New York, was more of Reed’s art-rock, ostensibly intellectually-minded rock music, if you consult a definition of art-rock. Art rock features elements of a classical style, as in, with Hold On, the stand-up bass instrumentation by Rob Wasserman, who played the bass parts throughout the album.

1989

Now Rhino has presented three entire records to expand upon the original album. They’ve presented the same songs as on the 1989 album, now also in live recordings of the songs, and also alternate versions characteristically called rough mixes. The new edition further includes a DVD edition of the concert film for the New York record.

The song Hold On speaks, it’s clear, to life in New York City. The lyrics seem to recall news stories about the city, as in, for example, the first verse of the song recalling the twentieth of December 1986. That’s when a racially charged beating by the police, of two African-Americans, in Howard Beach, contributed to tensions throughout the city.

I think Reed was guardedly optimistic that the problem of racism in NYC would change, as black people continued to be less compromised by race and social class.

I also think Reed could have been thinking of the impact Warhol made on the art world, with lyrics for Hold On like, “Something’s happening here.” I think beyond singing about the flavour of life in the city, and it’s a powerful song, there’s a theme how Warhol’s art had reverberated mightily, so the idea that something’s “happening,” a word tied to Reed’s shows with the Velvet Underground, and the dynamic of the art-rock he wrote while managed by Warhol must speak to that, I take it. A “happening” was the style of Velvet Underground shows under Warhol’s direction, including projections of Warhol’s films, strange light, and the loud noise of the band.

Photo by Dmitri Popov from StockSnap

There is evident power in Reed’s voice, in the song. The Tompkins Square Park revolt happened on August 6–7, 1988, the year before, in Tompkins Square Park, situated in the East Village and Alphabet City neighbourhoods of Manhattan.

The Big Apple

I think, without art, people don’t have the same legacy they have had, ever since cavemen drew pictures. I also think the creative components of social media draw in many artistic people. Look, here are the lyrics to Hold On.

Thanks to Jim Adams for the prompt “Hold.” He does not agree with my point of view, but I see he has a good command of writing prompts.

Hold On

There’s blacks with knives and whites with clubs
Fighting in Howard Beach
There’s no such thing as human rights
When you walk the N.Y.streets

A cop was shot in the head by a 10 years old kid
Named Buddah in Central Park last week
The fathers and daughters are lined up by the coffins
By the Statue of Bigotry, hey

You better hold on
Something’s happening here
You better hold on
Well, I meet you in Tompkins Square

The dopers sent a message to the cops last weekend
They shot him in the car where he sat
And Eleanor Bumpers and Michael Stewart
Must have appreciated that

There’s a rampaging rage rising up like a plague
Of bloody vials washing up on the beach
It’ll take more than the Angels or Iron Mike Tyson
To heal this bloody breach, hey, hey

You better hold on
Something’s happening here
You better hold on
I’m gonna meet you in Tompkins Square

A junkie ran down a lady a pregnant dancer
She’ll never dance but the baby was saved
He shot up some China White and nodded out at the wheel
And he doesn’t remember a thing
They shot that old lady ’cause they thought she was a witness to
A crime she didn’t even see
Whose home is the home of the brave
By the Statue of Bigotry, hey

You better hold on
Something’s happening here
You better hold on
Meet you in Tompkins Square

You got a black .38 and a gravity knife
You still have to ride the train
There’s the smelly essence of N.Y. down there
But you ain’t no Bernard Goetz, ah
There’s no Mafia lawyer to fight in your corner
For that 15 minutes of fame
The have and the have nots are bleeding in the tub
That’s New York’s future not mine, oh

You better hold on
Something’s happening here
You better hold on
You better, something’s happening here
Hold on, ooohhh, babe

Hold On

Why Holden Caulfield Thinks Social Media Jobs are Phony

Portent is a content generation tool that helps creators come up with unique ideas. While it is not a good idea for a writer to plagiarize the work of others, as the writer’s reputation can easily become sullied by that kind of dishonesty, using the Portent Generator site can occasionally light a brilliant idea. This specific title was devised with the help of Portent.

The story I’m telling is is true, that the girl I befriended handwrote a Salinger quotation in her second or third letter to me. I thought I was lucky to get such a nice letter, because in the Y2K era, the 2000s, snail mail was already rare.

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.

J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye

Perhaps Holden Caulfield in Chapter 3, in the wake of deceiving, might have a little like me.

    When I was in my early twenties, I paid a return visit to Kingston, Ontario, where I noticed one cold winter evening a girl dressed like a punk rocker, sitting on the sidewalk, asking pedestrians coming near to spare their change.  She was pretty, if I do say so myself, her hair dyed bright blue the way a girl raving might wear her way, the colour that matching the fishnets tights not doing a whole lot to keep her legs warm in the winter night, a petite little thing, and completely on her own.

    I thought I would say hi to her.  Kingston is a college town, and there are bright young girls everywhere.  I think this particular girl was a singer in a band, or would be soon.

    We began to chat, we watched the street, we had some laughs.  I would have liked to get off the street, but where were we going to go?  I’d just met her and I didn’t know her style.

    It took every ounce of confidence I had to keep passing off charm, given the circumstances, but not too demanding on my part.  It became a sort of a nice time.

    By morning I got from her an address, for her mom, in Scarborough, from where she had run away from, and I think it was probably the second one from her to me where she inked the above quotation from The Catcher in the Rye.  Almost everybody lies.

    Since The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield has become a symbol for insubordination, and tension, and now has become identified among the most significant characters of twentieth-century American writing, The Catcher in the Rye a powerhouse of a book.  The excellent TV character Jughead, in the Archie comics’ adaptation Riverdale, gives the line in Season 4, Episode 8 The Catcher in the Rye, to Mrs. Burble.  Jughead hasn’t applied to any schools, and when he stops by Riverdale High to get his transcript, he gets a meeting with Mrs. Burble, regardless of what he tell her is his “Holden Caulfield stance on phony small talk.”

The CW Network

    I wonder how Holden would feel about Facebook if The Catcher in the Rye were set in the year 2020.  Well, actually, I guess I know–he would hate it.

    Millennials are an astute lot, and they’ve been on the internet since right back when they were youngsters.  Would Holden hate the specific act of asking a girl about the suffering that young girls go through when they run away, for an economic system necessitating young girls to go on the run, for the fact of a college town such as Kingston even existing… given that the tools of education are extensively available?

     It didn’t appear to get her down.  She had good karma.

    I believe being a runaway was what she needed to be.  I finally cried when I returned home the following day.  Nothing was wrong, though.

    I’d had a comforter in my backpack.  When I noticed the cold, I let her wrap it around her shoulders.

    We went into a Burger King fast food joint.  There were muddy tracks on it from the slush on the floor when we left.  Those mud stains came out in the wash.

    In the nineteen-nineties, we didn’t have Facebook.  However, I wish I’d learned more when I got around to signing in my last time in a study hall.  It took me years beyond the nineties to cross that finish line, by the way.

    Years later, while it was appalling that the confidence everybody had, to flex on Facebook and evaluate business page metrics, kind of ended with what happened between the White House and Cambridge Analytica, I think the popularity of Facebook will remain a victor. The David Fincher film The Social Network is one of my favourite films.  The Wall Street Journal ran an idiosyncratic feature for its tech segment the third week of March, 2020.

Joanna Stern

    Here an American journalist is trying to rekindle the enjoyment we had getting on Facebook before the Trump administration in the White House made it seem so senseless.  Personally, I am a modest Canadian.

One Christmas Eve during the Trump administration

The family business where I’ve been working has a Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited

#lifelesson A Monkey on Your Back

I’m looking forward to the weekend, as Sunday is the Ides of March, a day I’ve before celebrated, and to get serenity I needed to utilize a little ingenuity. Many individuals like this season. Of course, this year is upsetting for reasons I am sure that you know, from the news, but my father pointed out something to me, and coming to an understanding about this, I found myself wanting to add the idea.

I tuned in to what he said, two or three weeks prior, in his truck as we drove up the road, and I had a morning doughnut. In the next few days, I thought to compose this essay. This is how I would represent his idea–it isn’t all that much work. You’re welcome to make of it what you will.

My dad Peter is typically a calm man. The nature of our business is a cemetery, which we’ve operated together for eight or nine years. My dad managed a municipal cemetery for many years before he retired from there.

He decided he loved Maple Lawn when he learned its board of trustees no longer desired to maintain it. A week and a half ago, Dad unexpectedly gave me a life lesson, something that had moved him during his career with the city. He said a business speaker ignited a connection for him, a long time previously, something I didn’t think about him.

The speaker discussed a monkey, an issue, which I deduced implied a method for dealing with stress.

The speaker had said that another individual might bring you a monkey on the back. That person already has his or her monkey on the back, and sharing that load with you is reduced in intensity for the person being unburdened, but the problem remains, now shared with you. Now there are troubles for you, for you to bear yourself.

My dad said the message stayed with him. The story reminded me of the late Wayne Dyer, the writer of numerous books about otherworldly thinking, spiritual issues, that is, like negativity, to which I am occasionally subject. My father was venturing to propose I compose this essay, which I figured I could do, keeping in mind Dad’s convictions.

The disbanded church at our cemetery

Dad cautioned me not to let the burden, of letting a monkey take hold on my back, ruin what I have, for myself, in my life. I felt for an instant pity wash, like bathwater, all through me, and I needed to take a quick glance out the window not to surrender to tears. I feel like that when I take a gander at myself in a light that I will never again find sensible.

It’s March now, and spring will break in about seven days. My birthday is on the Ides of March. This year it follows two days after Friday the 13th, today’s date, seldom real lucky in anyone’s book.

I will check whether I can slip this on. I unquestionably want to.

When my Uncle Rick’s brother, the artist, was alive, he hung a toy monkey on a store mannequin. The man who thought of that was a craftsman, and dress store administrator. My grip doesn’t quite coordinate the same energy.

Craig’s mannequin, with a monkey on its back

Be that as it may, I discovered his craft intriguing, after his passing. My father said I should refer to the non-literal monkey. I tried to value the proposal.

Don’t let a monkey hang off of your back. I am a flawed human being, but I believe that you need to take care of yourself before you can do much for anyone else.

http://maplelawncemeteryorg.ipage.com/oldchurchcemetery/24701.html

https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited

How Not Knowing Where to See the 2021 Ball Drop Makes You a Rookie

Sometimes, to write a blog post, I turn to a random generator to help develop an idea. I am steadfast of the belief that “everything is a remix” and go from there.

    Several years ago, when my godmother was visiting, she observed that “it’s all been done.”

    Her mom, my grandma, a long time back, each year, on New Year’s Eve, would keep an eye on us while my folks were celebrating the New Year.  As I am the oldest, I enjoyed the privilege of staying up with my grandmother and watching the ball drop at Times Square.

    We would have a cup of tea together.  It’s been over twenty years since she passed on.

    I was reading a blog Monday night, by an NYC blogger, Beauty Beyond Bones, who reflects on everything Jesus does for her.

    The Beauty Beyond Bones blog goes live three times a week, I believe, both Monday and Thursday evenings, which are her regular event, and Wednesdays, her recipe-sharing.  Good eating is one serving of Beauty Beyond Bones’ expertise.  I doubt she would have it any other way.

    Monday, the Beauty Beyond Bones blog pointed out that while, characteristically, astrology and the Law of Attraction tend to pull in people who are searching for answers, that may not be The Way, to put a Taoist label on that kind of struggle.

    Beauty Beyond Bones put up a link Monday to an awesome webcast where she typifies her biography.  You may see her blog for yourself:

https://beautybeyondbones.com/

Photographer:
Burst

    It did occur to me that, if anybody noticed how I was handling myself, there was a good chance that I would not know that person much longer.  I presume, regardless of how much development I appreciate, I will consistently have that sense to want to be a crypt keeper.

    When I was a boy and had a different sense of the theatrical, I liked to be the Dungeon Master.  There is no shortage of folk interested in games like D & D.  The game’s monsters, the undead, and Medusa.

    Whether I can accommodate various aspects of my mental self-portrait with what is most critical, presently, is something I think about. I am trying to put this in more simple terms than is easy, in pursuit of something intangible.  It’s not an idea that comes easy.

    If you blog and you’re on WordPress, that’s wonderful!

    Get your spot for the ball drop.

Photographer:
Tommy Jepsen

You’re free to like, follow, or potentially remark.  See you soon!

Mermaid’s November 2018 WordPress Tea Party

“Tea parties” have been at the forefront of The Little Mermaid blog the last five months.  These are blogging challenges that span the entirety of each month.  These are free and encourage participants to blog on a specific theme along with the rest of those joining in.

This month The Little Mermaid has asked her participants for their thoughts on travel.  Where have you traveled? the Little Mermaid asks.  What’s the best part?

What’s the worst part?  What tips might you offer up to someone grappling with wanderlust?

The furthest-reaching of my travel experience was done in my life in the nineteen nineties.  I have traveled to the United States, to the United Kingdom, to France, and to Belgium.  These are the countries where I have gone, done in my adolescence and later in my early twenties.

The best part was the excitement of going to locations completely new.  For example, when I was going to the United States, passing through Detroit, seeing Walt Disney World in Orlando (and cheating a touch by going through Universal Studios, too).   Spending a little time in Chicago, staying with family in Nashville, visiting a friend in Portland, Maine, lodging in a traveler’s stop in Memphis, visiting New Orleans, visiting New York, all this was great.  I was seeing a little more of the world.

One of the happiest times in my life was my twenty-first birthday, an important birthday if you are an American, in Memphis, Tennessee.

I would say I was taking a “walkabout” on that birthday, and it made for several nice weeks.  My father’s brother-in-law thought of the label for what I’d done.  He mentioned it to me at the wedding of one of my cousins, at the reception.  The gentleman, my godfather, mentioned to me what he said was spoke about by aboriginals in Australia, a country I’ve never seen.

Years earlier, spending days at Walt Disney World in 1991 was a fine time. The members of my particularly as my immediate family went aboard “Star Tours,” an interactive cinematic ride like being in a Star Wars spaceship.

It was very exciting as come 1987 I’d got to VCR-record a tenth-anniversary television presentation of Star Wars on Fox. At that age, ten, Star Wars was my favorite film.

The worst part of travel, I’d offer to say, is the end of the “moment” when the time for travel ends, as it generally does, and it becomes time to return to more ordinary things wherever you are spending your life.  For me, I live life in the gritty small town of St. Catharines, in the Canadian province of Ontario.

What I know at my age, which is something like an unfulfilled forty, is that if you are in the midst of wanderlust, you should listen to the word itself and observe what is the best part of life in most circumstances–the people you meet and how they take to you.  I know I have not had the luckiest of experiences in my travels.  I felt unprepared for Nashville, my handsome friend in Portland eventually killed himself, I believe, despite his promise and ambition as a musician, the lodge in Memphis finally burned to the ground, where I’d left friends behind, my idea to hustle in New York led to me being escorted out of a nightclub where I had thought to pose as an NYC resident.

These weren’t great times, especially when I returned to St. Catharines from New York and my girlfriend was angry with me when I told her how it had gone.

When I saw London, England, though, in 1999, when Y2K was only months away, it was exciting, but even with my experiences in America under my belt, I felt quite the novice with only a little money in my pocket and quite clearly to locals a foreigner.  My embarrassment deepened in Paris, the City of Lights, when I realized I was in my youth and seeing the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile.  I knew it would never come again, and I’d been learning French since the third grade and could barely communicate in it–it was as if my aspirations were quickly coming to naught, and I was overwhelmed by the absurdity.

Photographer: Bruce Mars

I didn’t spend much time in Belgium, but I liked it a little better than France, enjoying chocolate and also seeing grim war trenches from World War I when Belgium soldiers defended their nation from Germany.

Eventually, my younger sister married a Belgium gentleman.  That was a nice occasion.  Here is a photo I took at the wedding ceremony.

My sister’s wedding

The photo of myself I am showing is of a time in 2003 in a hotel in St. Catharines. I was meeting up with the friend who had introduced me to MySpace (before it blew up to become entropy) and speaking, as intended, of American writer Charles Bukowski, the beauty of whose work she wanted to impress upon me.

She and her boyfriend were gracious visitors.  It was, again, a “moment.”

Image: Julie Rippl

I am grateful to The Little Mermaid for thinking of these tea party posts that are interesting for me and for other bloggers on WordPress to organize new blog posts.  If you are a touch keen on this, feel free to “like,” to follow, and/or to comment.  I wish you well if you travel yourself, and, what’s more, I wish you luck if you have a blog.

All the best.