I found this seashell in the grating of the radiator (seen behind). I know the previous tenant must have accidentally knocked it in but my first thought was that the heat was an ancient seabed.

My white hand holding a classically scalloped seashell with dark red coloring in front of a baseboard radiator.

Another entry in the AI Novel covers series. Here’s the generating prompt:

Generate an image of a fake novel cover called “Illegal Touching by Jillian St. Basketball”. It is a sports romance novel.

An AI generated novel cover. It shows two attractive young people embracing on a basketball court. On the left is a dark skinned man with slicked back hair. On the right is a white woman, leg up, with flowing hair, as if in a breeze. The man grits his teeth strangely, and the woman's expression is skeletal somehow. The man holds a basketball over the womans butt, but the angle is all wrong. Two hoops are in the background, and they seem to melt, and are too close to each other. People with melty faces sit on the court. The book is called "Illegal Touching" by Jjlliain st Basketball

What is going on with that basketball? And why is the guy’s teeth like that? Melty hoops I understand.

A desk caddy corner in a bare walled room. The desk has two levels, one for the monitor, and another for the keyboard. It is light, processed wood. On the left is a mic arm and audio deck on the lower level, and headphones and canned air on the upper level. In the middle is a 26 inch acer monitor on the upper level, and an old magic keyboard and even older wired mouse on the lower level. The lower level also sports an abstract, colorful star patterned mouse mat. On the right is a mac book pro sitting on top of a laptop stand, clamshell closed. There are various dumb stickers all over it. A mug of coffee and a water thermos sit on the far right on the lower level.

I put my desk together yesterday. It’s missing a support beam underneath (I must have accidentally thrown it out in the frantic move), so the lower level wobbles, but I figure I can replace it with a two by four. In the mean time, I have a dedicated desk and large monitor for the first time in nine months!

Snow is sticking in New York for the first time time this year.

A three story brown stone building seen from a window on the third floor of the opposite building. A light dusting of snow coats everything. It’s especially visible on the fire escape. The sky is steel grey.

Susuru Ramen in Astoria is absolutely incredible. I had the garlic oil Kuro. Great broth, noodles cooked just right.

A bowl of ramen with garlic oil on the side, pork slices, a soy sauce egg, chives.
The tri-boro bridge during the day, shot through a glass elevator shaft.

Finally, I’m using AI for its intended purpose.

An AI generated colorful image in the style of 1960s pop art. It features singer Wayne Newton dressed as Batman, hands on hips, grinning. An old TV with possibly Wayne Newton on it sits to the side.

My sister and I maybe thirteen years ago. I really chose all that.

Two young white peope standing awkwardly next to each other. The woman on the left, my sister, has long red hair and smiles somewhat uneasily. In the right, is me. I have a red shirt that doesn’t quite fit, khaki pants, a grey blazer, and on my head is a floppy, misshapen dark green fedora. I have a thin, untrustworthy beard. Unkept curls sprout from under the hat. My expression is haunted. We are in a kitchen.

I’m making friends at my new apartment.

A cat stretched out on my lap, toes flared, head dug into my side. She looks at me with one eye. Her expression looks extremely happy.

Seen on the storefront of a local medical center.

A tv screen outside a building with text reading “syntax error. Incorrect command. Syntax error. Failure reading sector and then a memory address. Press any key to continue “

Happy new year, from lasers with love.

New York City skyline through a full screen window, the reflection of a red line in it seeming to shoot from a water tower in silhouette

Media diet - December 2023

It’s the last day of December, and this is my last opportunity to ramble about what I’ve been watching, reading, and listening to. You ready? I’m not. Let’s go.

📺 TV

I watched a bit of SNL, some Peppa Pig, old Seinfeld reruns, and a solid amount of contemporary commercials while visiting Houston.

The SNL episode I caught some of was the one with Adam Driver as host. A lot of the sketches had kind of weak premises, but Adam’s stone-faced commitment saved it.

As for the other shows, I’m too old to have an opinion on Peppa Pig, and reviewing Seinfeld in 2023 is like reviewing sedimentary rock—who cares?

🎵 Music

I listened to a lot of the same records as I did last month, so refer back to that if you’re interested. However, I did branch out a bit, even if it was largely revisiting familiar territory. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been listening to.

STRUGGLER by Genesis Owusu

I first heard the opening track, Leaving the Light, from Matthew Perpetua’s flux blog back in June, and loved it, but only got around to buying the full album this month.

I’m finding it a really compelling debut. Genesis weaves lots of genres together—Twitchy Hip-Hop, Psychedelic Soul, Cinematic R&B, Uneasy Devo-ish electronic—finding something new in the melting point between them, instead of a simple collection of disparate parts. I found it most successful in the higher energy, dance-adjacent tracks, although some of the mood-pieces are intriguing.

Owusu repeats lots of confrontational cockroach imagery, in service of explaining the harshness of the life he lives. He also has some wonderfully evocative lines, like Better run, there’s a God, and he’s coming for me..

I think the first track, Leaving the Light, is the strongest track by a good margin, but that isn’t to disparage the rest of the album. I’m excited to hear what Owusu does next.

Aja by Steely Dan

aja album cover. a black field, with the title in red in the upper left. a sliver of a traditional geisha's face and gown slice through the darkness.

It seems like when white men reach a certain age, they are obligated to enjoy the smooth jazz-pop of Steely Dan. I never thought I’d be one of those white men, but I must somberly admit defeat.

While I was in Houston, my friend Andy took me to see a great Steely Dan cover band, and I had a blast. There’s something about seeing a great band live to make you a believer.

I’ve actually been listening to several Dan albums, but I picked this one to feature because it’s widely regarded as their masterpiece, and because the it’s maybe the only Steely Dan cover isn’t hot garbage.

Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age

This is one I was pretty into in my youth, but haven’t revisited in years. I have had opening track You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire regularly stuck in my head for the past 15 years, though.

Does it hold up? Eh, it’s pretty uneven, and too long, especially in the back half, and sometimes I really don’t want to hear anything Josh Homme touches for whatever reason, but there’s some fun stuff here. When the opening track kicks in though, and again with the false ending…that’s what keeps me coming back.

Jaime by Brittney Howard

Revisited this gem from 2019 for the first time since it’s release. There’s so much experimentation here, so much exploration, but all in service of the song and the groove. Don’t miss it (or get on it if you did).

Powerage by AC/DC

Powerage album cover. Angus Young, a shaggy haired white male rocker in a school boy uniform, stands with mouth wide, eyes rolled back, as if in pain. electrical wires trail from his sleeves instead of hands.

Yet another youth revisit. This is one I had in heavy rotation in my 5-CD/tape/radio/speaker combo. The AC/DC album for the heads.

Outlaw by Mammoth

Mammoth album cover. A pastel painting of a mammoth skull against a rocky desert.

I haven’t highlighted a single song here, but I’m breaking my own (questionable) rule. I listened to this song a lot. Not just this month, but since the summer. It’s a modern garage rock tune, with a few space noises thrown in. It does nothing new. It’s such a derivative, sweaty throwback, that every time you listen to it your life expectancy decreases.

I love it.

You can listen on Soundcloud.

Random Access Memories by Daft Punk

Random access memories album cover. The robot heads of both members of Daft punk, combined, split equally down the middle.

Masterpiece.

📚 Books

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexican gothic book cover. A brown skinned, mexican woman in a formal red dress cluches yellow flowers, arms taught and down. The frame cuts off her eyes.

I wrote about this one last month, as I’d read about half of it. There’s a twist that took me by surprise, and I’m not sure it was fully earned. The tone certainly took a turn, and the narrative had to spend an awkward middle period in an exposition dump, which contrasted sharply with the restrained unease of the first part. Still, I think the novel recovered well, and while the style of the post-reveal was less appealing to me that the before times, I still enjoyed it.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Cradle book cover. Cartoon of hands making a cats cradle, next to a sun with a face, next to an atomic bomb blast.

Andy had this in the guest room he and Meg set up for me, and I’d never read it. I started reading it before bed, having been on a bit of a Vonnegut kick, and thinking I could finish it inside the one and half week span of my stay. Turns out I could not; I got about half way through. Thankfully, I was able to borrow it on Libby, so crisis averted.

The book is great, kind of the Ur Nuclear/Human Nature Nihilism tale, that manages to refrain from the saccharine or the self pity (and it’s funny!). I also wanted to read it because it mirror’s my improv team’s name.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

Old Man's War book cover. An alien planet with futaristic star fighters zooming towards it.

I bought the John Scalzi Humble Bundle this month, and dove into the series that launched his career. It was super fun! Starship Troopers riff, quippy, ironic one-liners, and plenty of action, all wrapped around a core adult love story. And I do mean adult, these characters are in their 70s, and believably so. I’m currently reading the sequel, so I’m all in.

🍿 Movies

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life

Defending my life poster. Albert Brook's head, a white man with a curly afro, circa 1975, a young man. He stares implacably into camera. Various smaller images of him throughout his career adorn the bottom of the frame.

A fun doc about Albert Brooks having a conversation with Rob Reiner about his career. It mostly just made me want to watch his movies.

Dream Scenario

Dream Scenario poster. Nicholas Cage, a middle aged white hollywood actor. He is made up to be bald and chunky. He's wearing chinos and a polo, raking leaves, small in the frame, look fearful and confused.

Weird movie, and I liked it. Glad to see Nicholas Cage once again play a frumpy putz. It’s dark, surreal, milking awkward situations to their breaking point, and it has something to say about attention, and men, and social media. I’m not sure it all comes together in the end, and the ending specifically felt a bit shrug-worthy, as I stopped caring about the characters at that point. However, it does have, objectively, the funniest fart scene I’ve seen in a long time.

Sleepless in Seattle

Sleepless in Seattle poster. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, a young white man and white woman, respectively, stand separated in the frame, looking towards each other but not meeting each other's gaze. Their backgrounds are different. Hanks is against a outside day, clouds in the sky, while Ryan is against the night, sunsetting low over the city.

I’d never seen it, and it felt like a fill-in-the-cultural-blanks type time. Wild thought, it’s good. It was also nothing like what I thought it was going to be.

Sure, I knew it was a romantic comedy, so I had some idea of the overall nature, but I literally knew nothing about the plot, so had just been going off a (wrong) assumption about the title. I figured, okay, sleepless in Seattle—it’s about two Emerald City insomniacs who find love blinking over a pot of coffee.

Also, it’s funny that they made future rom com star Bill Pullman the dewy dweeb to be dumped.

Joe Dirt

Joe Dirt poster. Dave Spade, a white man, wears a long blond mullet, and holds a mop heroically. A golden retriever stands between his legs. A young white blond woman is wrapped around his leg.

This sucked. I know the film has at least one noble defender, who, on her, by my count, 95th rewatch, said, i need him (joe dirt) in a way that is concerning to feminism. And I get it.

Wait, no I don’t. I’m always getting those confused. Yet, there were a few fun moments.

However, man, is this dumb and unfunny. There is also so much homophobic nonsense here, it makes the rest of the ‘90 look tame.

I did watch the whole thing though, but I also ate an entire off hummus sandwich once.

Die Hard

Die Hard poster. A building is on fire, a red explosion at the top contrasting with the greys and blacks elsewhere. Half obscured by the building is Bruce Willis face, a white man, in black and white. He is beat up. He looks fearful but determined, his one visible eye looking toward the building.

I watched this not once, not three times, but twice this month. The first time was at a Houston Die Hard-themed watch party, where I may have gotten too drunk and talked loudly with someone the entire movie then played the Djembe during a jam session featuring made-up songs also about Die Hard. The second time was on Christmas with a few friends who had never seen it, and I wasn’t drunk and paid attention. Both have their charms.

Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man and the Pool

The Old Man & The Pool poster. Mike Birbiglia, a middle aged white man, swims in a pool in a suit.

Birbiglia is always funny, always thoughtful, and his shows always comes together so beautifully. This is no exception.

The Holdovers

The Holdovers poster. A quasi-photorealistic drawing, featuring three people standing in a row behind an oversized smashed christmas ornament. In front is Paul Giamatti, a middle aged white man, to his left is Dominic Sessa, a shaggy young white man, and to his right is Da'vine Joy Randolf, a middle aged black woman.

What a great little bottle drama. Or is it a comedy? No, it’s not a dramedy, those suck at both comedy and drama. When The Holdovers wants to be moving, it is, and when it wants to be funny, it is, and it never sells out the characters in either mode. Just a charming, well executed film about real people getting squeezed in their lives, and trying to connect (or avoid it). Set in the 70s, and shot like it was the 70s. Give everyone an Oscar, including the film grain.

Dial Code Santa Claus

Dial code santa claus poster. Hyper stylized, we see a young white child, maybe 12 years old, dressed as Rambo. Behind him are explosions, christmas decorations, a teddy bear, lightning effects, squares, the whole nine.

Also known as Game Over, Deadly Games, or my favorite, Hide and Freak. This 1989 French movie is Home Alone as madcap horror. It’s executed well, with familiar moves, but belies convention. It’s unsettling because you can’t guess what’s going to happen next (or you can, but you’re wrong). And it’s shot gorgeously! Got to see this in the theater at Alamo in a 35mm print with friends. Get on it.

Bullitt

Bullitt poster. Steve McQueen, a rugged white man, looking determined, leaning against an unseen wall. He is wearing a turtle neck and a gun holster. Superimposed in front are two sleek cars in a high speed chase. Both McQueen and the chase are rendered in pointalism black and white.

Effortlessly cool gets thrown around a lot, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better fit than Steve McQueen in this one. Judging by the release date, I’d guess it set the template for gritty crime dramas of the 70s and 80s. I couldn’t always follow the twisty plot, but I never once cared.

Poor Things

Poor Things poster. Extreme close up of Emma Stone's face, a white woman. She stares into camera, a maybe perplexed, maybe disturbed, maybe placid expression on her face. Superimpsed are in strong blue, purple, and red, are smears of lipstick color run jagged over lips and above her eyes.

For my money, this is Yorgos Lanthimos’s best movie, and I should know, I’ve seen 26% of them. I also think it’s Emma Stone’s best performance, and if that wasn’t enough, we get sleaze-bag Mark Ruffalo and mouth fart Willem Dafoe!

Feminism, freedom, and comedy gold by way of dream-scape Frankenstein. Don’t miss it.

Bob and Don: A Love Story

A framed photo of Don Rickles and Bob Newhart, two older white men, standing back to back.

A touching, twenty-minute doc on the life long friendship between comedians Don Rickles and Bob Newhart. If you’re into comedy, give it a shot. Streams for free from the New Yorker’s website.

Josie and the Pussycats

Josie and the pussycats poster. Josie, a spunky young white woman, wears a guitar and a smirk. Melody, a blond white woman, stands behind her to her left. Valerie, a young black woman, stands to her right, a fierce teeth baring expression on her face, holding up her bass guitar and making a cat claw with her other hand.

I remember the marketing for this one leading up to its release in 2001, and had vague ambitious to see it, but never got the chance. Learning that it was an infamous bomb, I understand my time to have seen it in theaters was short. I hadn’t thought at all about the movie until this month, when John Scalzi blogged about it. His retrospective review convinced me to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did.

It’s frothy, funny, has a stellar cast, and has the most ham fisted music industry satire I’ve ever seen. But joyously so! That kind of stuff can go left quick, and Josie holds it down. Also, the tunes are bangers.

Wrap it up

That’s about it! Happy New Year everyone, and I’ll see y’all in 2024.

Took a hike up in Garrison NY with friends.

Three smiling white people, two men one women, in winter clothes with their backs to a sunset summit. The shadow of a man overlooking a golden summit, bare trees around the top, Hudson River laid out below. A dilapidated brick structure with bare trees and vines growing over it. Indescribable graffiti adorns the wall.

🕹️🎨 What Are Paper Computer Games?

A drawing of a retro sci-fi computer screen with a cheery clown on a stick displayed. The clown's spikey hair is green, and is a robot.

When I was a kid I came up with something called Paper Computer Games, which are role-playing, puzzle solving games drawn on paper that emulated point-and-click adventure games. They are meant to be played with a single other person, and were usually tailor made for that player.

Paper Computer Games, or PCGs for short, also established a rich in-game universe that friends freely added to in their games. Over the years @Xaq kept PCGs alive, and fostered a supportive international community on Youtube, which continues to this day.

A colorful drawing of space, a glowing green planet taking up most of the frame. A purple space ship with kind of looks a bit like the Batman symbol streaks towards the planet.

The games encourage creativity, intellectual collectivism, improvisation, and a certain giddy embrace of sloppiness to get it done and played by your friends. Many games are created in five minutes before they’re played!

It’s a small, weird niche, and it’s a lot of fun.

I recently finished a game I had been working on and playing with Xaq for 3 years. I drew all these “screens” (pages) on an iPad, instead of paper, and most sessions were held online instead of in person, but otherwise the concept is the same.

Every PCG maker’s style is different, both in art and story. Here’s a taste of my visual style, taken from some of my favorite images I made for this last game.

There's a lot going on here. Let's start with that it's a drawing of a bedroom. Over the bed a scared looking head is suspended in a green liquid, which in turn hangs from a chain. On the other side of the room, a scowling skeleton smokes a pipe. A window shows a suburban neighborhood, with someone lounging on a deck chair under an umbella across the street. A green ooze creeps across the room towards the skeleton and the bed. A colorful drawing of an anthropomorphic pizza slice and a alien mosquito-looking thing. The word 'v.s.' hangs in the air between the two. A macadam street, that starts out normal, then twists and swirls impossibly. Speeding down the 'normal' section towards the swirls are two cars, one beeing driven by a scared-looking white man with shaggy black hair, and the other being driven by a happy dog. A two-headed scaly blue alien with big teeth and laser guns meneces from a small flying-saucer in front of the two cars. Further in the background, twisted in the road swirls, is a mad scientist using a machine to crank out henchmen. A drawing of a disembodied blue head with a long purple beard and a swirling hat and a mean expression. This is The Wizard Sluiceface, and he is zapping a white man (Xaq) with his nose. Xaq's shaggy black hair stands on end, his teeth bared. A comic-style diagram shows that Xaq is being turned into a snail. A drawing in a spattered, watercolor style. Xaq, a white man with shaggy black hair, is planted flat on a round green surface, sky all around him. He looks worriedly at a grinning pink man with blue hair and two laser guns and jet boots who flies in the air ahead. Antennas bristle with electrical energy beyond both Xaq and the man with jet boots. A drawing of earth from orbit, the planet taking up the lower frame. A robot made up of one large square for the body, and smaller squares for each limb, gasps with terror into camera.

Bought some year end reading material with some of Lullabot’s generous education budget.

5 book apart books stacked on each other. Sustainable web design by Tom greenwood. The new css layout by Rachel Andrew. You deserve a tech union by Ethan marcotte. Responsive design patterns and principles by Ethan marcotte. Flexible typesetting by Tim brown.

Toms of main is over their skis.

Toms of main brand toothpaste. Their printed motto is “wake up. Brush teeth. Make change. “

Folks wanted to create an AI generated book cover for a Harry Potter fan-fiction. ChatGPT doesn’t allow copyrighted prompts, so I had to get “creative”.

Generate an image for a fake novel cover called Larry Porter and the Unexpected Pregnancy by Syrum Hawke, in which Larry Porter, a wizard boy wearing glasses, becomes pregnant and falls in love with Dracon Malfiz, a handsome pop star.

There’s too much to unpack here, but at least in this version the pregnaany was exxepdected.

Three hunky white young men grace the cover, two of which are harry potter. The first one stares bug eyed, the second one smolders. The third man, clearly Draco, has another smoldering look, and wears a floppy hat. Everyone wears a combination of boarding school suits and wizard robes. There are stars and birds and fantasy-looking glas bottles in the background, with two open books at each lower corner. The title reads 'Lary Porter and the Exxepdected Pregnaany, a Novline P NP E Stol Skyruim Hawke'

Another AI generated novel cover. The prompt:

Generate a fake image of a young adult fantasy novel from 2002 by Veronica Hammerschmidt called A Crow Wand in a Caldron

The cover shows a smiling crown standing on a wand, which comes straight out of a cauldron. Everything is mystical and sparkly, but dark. It's in a forest at night. There are stars and white flowers. The title reads 'A Crow Wandd in a Calron by Veronica Hammerschmidt'

It looks like Bed Bath & Beyond went Wicca.

What series of AI generated novel covers would be complete without a 70s pulp fantasy?

Generate a fake image of a fantasy novel from the 1970s called A Curse of Moonlight and Mayhem by E.E.E. Clarke

An AI generated novel cover. The cover depicts a mystical, moonlit landscape with an eeri cloaked figure, a ball of magical energy in their hand. The title reads, "A curse of Moonllight Mayhem, by E.E.E. Clarke

Pretty cool! Those distressed edges—very nice. The AI always gets the spelling just wrong.

Another in the AI generated novel cover series, this time, a romance. The prompt was:

Generate an image of a fake romance novel cover from the 1990s by Rose Croissant called A Duchess One Day

The cover features an opulent palace garden in the background, with lush flowers and vibrant bushes. Two white people, a man on the left and a woman on the right, embrance, their noses touching. They are dressed in luxurious victorian clothes. The man stares down, and the woman stares bug eyed at the man's cheek. At the top, in fancy lettering, is the author name, 'Rose Croassorit'. Below, the title is 'A Duchhess One Day'

It captures the spirit of the assignment, but wow their eye lines are weird.

I started generating novel covers for imagined books through ChatGPT4 with my friend Ania. I think the results have been hilarious.

Here’s the prompt for the first one.

Generate an image for a fake mystery novel by Rake McMaster called The Pine Tree Assault

AI generated book cover. The title reads "The Pine Trre Assalt: A Mystery" by Rake McMaster. There is a quote at the top that looks real, but when looking closer is unintelligible in any language, and might not even be real letters. The image is tall, bare pine trees in shadow with a path running down the middle, and forboding shadowy figures standing in the background. The palette is black and a light green.

This is the start of a series.

Look at this fucking shit.

A tiny room with a urinal at the end. A large photo of a women with a beehive hairdo drinking a beer and staring directly at you hangs above at eye level

A friend unearthed an old computer with an even older photo of me on it. I must have been 16 or 17. I’ve got horror movie eyes and shampoo commercial hair.

A old company tower computer with a Sony crt monitor showing an ancient version of windows. A photo of yours truly, a white man, is on display. I’m about 17 years old, clean shaven, with long flowing brown hair. I’m spreading my arms with wide eyes staring into camera.

I was made aware of the Clearly Impossible Puzzle today. Every piece is clear, they’re all reversible, and there’s false edge pieces. This is maybe the most hardcore thing.

A photo of a completed 200 piece puzzle, about 8 inches by 10 inches. All pieces are transparent. There is masking tape on the back to hold everything together. It lies on a patterned table cloth.

Storms rolling in out in Houston.

Cloudy sky over sparse trees and a wooden fence