Sloth, Maybe?

  A pal of mine, let's call him Ollie T, knows of my fascination with Sumerian mythology and my previous employment with a renowned law enforcement department.  On a whim, he made the following inquiry with Chat GPT: OLLIE T. My query to ChatGPT: How is working for the NYPD similar to being a writer of ancient Sumerian mythology? CHAT GPT   Working for the NYPD and being a writer of ancient Sumerian mythology are very different activities, and it may be challenging to find many similarities between the two. However, here are a few possible comparisons: Both involve storytelling: Working for the NYPD often involves communicating important information through written reports and other forms of documentation, while writing ancient Sumerian mythology involves creating stories that were passed down through oral tradition. Both activities involve the use of language and storytelling to convey meaning and information. Both involve conveying a sense of order: Working for the NYPD...

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...

I dreamt that I was at a mid-sized theater in early August at an amusement park named Rye Playland.   The theater seats were soon filled with a sizable crowd.   Some of the audience members were shaking my hand and patting me on the back.   Then it occurred to me the production was a musical I wrote:   The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi. The curtain draws back.  It reveals King Dumuzi of the kingdom of Uruk seated at a canted desk with a wet clay tablet.   Queen Inanna stands next to him and teases him.   Dumuzi notices his clay tablet is drying.   Inanna and Dumuzi fuss with the tablet to keep it wet.   The pour water on the clay and their regal attire gets soaked.   Soon they begin to flirt in increasingly graphic ways.   I shrank in my seat, hoping that my mother is not present. Finally, Inanna and Dumuzi confess their love for one another.   Dumuzi follows the trope of picking up the very tall Inanna and carrying off to a f...

While running through Fate / Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia a second time, I kicked back to contemplate the best fight I've ever seen in anime ever.  I'd argue it even put the battle between Tetsuo and Kaneda in Akira to shame. Titled "Ushiwakamaru vs. Tiamat," it was nominated for Best Fight Scene in the 2020 Crunchyroll Anime Awards. To give the uninitiated some background, King Gilgamesh of Uruk summoned servants from various times and places to fight at his side against the Three Goddess Alliance.  Among them are King Leonidas of Sparta, the gender-swapped samurai general Ushiwakamaru and the disgraced ronin Benkei. When Tiamat, the most powerful of the Three Goddess Alliance makes her advance on the fortress city of Uruk, Ushiwakamaru leads the offensive against the serpentine deity.  She deftly hacks off the heads of one giant serpent after the other and confuses her enemy further by multiplying herself into seven "clones" that ride the ...

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...

This began as a post-it sketch I made outdoors in Thomas Paine Park on April 1, 2004.  It was unusually balmy for that time of year and I was in a peaceful state of mind. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am an aficionado of the Sumerian goddess Inanna.  I have collected every book I could find involving her, most prominently Inanna - Queen of Heaven and Earth by  Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. In one chapter of Wolkstein and Kramer's book, Inanna is described as traveling through the sky in the "Boat of Heaven."  Some people (whose names I can't remember off the top of my head) have inferred that the Boat of Heaven signifies Inanna's vulva.  Others (whose names I can't recall immediately) say that this Boat of Heaven is no different than Helios' Sun Chariot or Anubis' boat which travels through the Underworld.  Others say the Boat of Heaven is the conveyance of the planet Venus, who in Sumerian mythology was embodied by Inanna.  There i...