Sloth, Maybe?

It is odd that, after years of training as an artist and a painter, I find more satifaction out of creating art by feeding some keywords into an AI art program called MidJourney.  I was rewarded with fantastic images like the one you see above. Sometimes I feel like a cheat and a fraud.  Other times, I feel nothing but love for the compostition I created with nothing more than "punch card" information. Do I think AI will surpass the artists who draw on millennia of history and years of experience?  No, I do not.  Will art such as the one I "composed" above appear in a gallery or a museum?  The scales tip towards "doubtful." I love this work just the same. - JJB  

All I did was enter the title above into the MidJourney site and this was the end result. What I actually wrote was "Inanna Arrives at the Emerald City."  I wanted to combine the Sumerian goddess' adventure with Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. What I got was an image of Inanna's silhouette from behind.  She pauses on a half overgrown strip of two lane blacktop.  Her objective is in the distance. Why does she want to go to the Amethyst City?  Is it her ultimate goal?  Does she wish to make a new home at this oasis in the wasteland of an abandoned interstate civilization?  Is it just a way station on an ongoing or even infinite quest?  Is she pausing to admire the city from a distance?  Is she simply walking past it?  What if the Amethyst City is just a ruin among many artifacts of the old world?  Perhaps in contrast it is a thriving metropolis? The technique of MidJourney wavers between the fantasy artist Roger Dean and the much deplored i...

Yeah, well... - JJB UP NEXT - Change of topic:  More good news about my Mom.  

  Americans love their junk.  It's not the junk that bothers me, it's the love. - George Santayana As a teenager, I prided myself on not buying every fashionable knickknack that appeared on the shelf at a clothing store.  I didn't blow away $60 for a pair of sneakers that would be threadbare in six months.  I purchased a brand of jeans (Levis) passable enough to not be mocked by my fashion conscious classmates.  Sure I was insulted and mocked for not being a proper materialistic drone, but I brushed it off.  I was not a victim of that pernicious bug known as (dreadful pipe organ hit in minor key) CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION. The closest I got to being a conspicuous consumer was as a collector of comic books-- oops, GRAPHIC NOVELS, sorry.  I was a slave to titles such as Grendel; Concrete, the Living Monolith; Area 88... it was an eclectic mix of various genres.  I was immersed in these beautiful pocket universes where I could get away from mundanity....

On my last entry for Fate / Grand Order , I said I was 75% of the way through.   Having completed the series, I must say it is a bizarre fusion of Avengers Infinity War , Avengers Endgame , The Return of the King , and any pie throwing fight you’ve seen in a Three Stooges short. To start off, Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash Kyrielight are led by Ishtar in a journey to the Underworld.   Their twofold mission is to liberate the fallen Gilgamesh from the bonds of death and to recruit Ishtar’s estranged sister, Ereshkigal, in their battle against the primordial goddess Tiamat. Meanwhile, Tiamat and her son Kingu unleash a horde of fearsome creatures with talons for legs and grotesque grins where a head should be.   They are meant to be the successors of the human race and they literally tear through cities and their inhabitants on the way to the great city stronghold of Uruk.   There, Gilgamesh, Fujimaru, Mash, Ishtar and a host of champions will make their final stand before...

I came across Fate / Grand Order in the most roundabout way.   A few months back, I was on Amazon looking for T-shirts bearing the Star of Ishtar as a symbol for my wardrobe.   A pesky algorithm directed me to an action figure of Ishtar bearing an oversized bow and arrow array.   My perception immediately recognized Ishtar’s face as the kind you’d find in an anime series.   As an otaku and amateur mythographer, I tracked down the series in which Ishtar is featured in the TV & Movies section. When Christmas drew close, Susan and I gave each other gifts we knew we’d enjoy.   I gave Susan the DVD of Cop Rock , which I will discuss in the next entry.   Presently, I will discuss her gift to me on BluRay:   Fate / Grand Order - Absolute Demon Front Babylonia (Vols. I and II). You’ll notice that the title of this anime series runs longer than Cop Rock .   I believe that’s because the Japanese still have better long term memories than we do.   F...