Beloved and I had just enjoyed a south-of-the-border repast, paid our bill, and were caught up short when attempting to actually...you know...LEAVE the establishment.
Being unsure whether to trust American Express or Pepsi, this post has been uploaded from a small Mexican restaurant in Lakeville, Minnesota.
"Hey, Siri, what is Rolling Stone's 372nd greatest song of all time?"
"'Marquee Moon,' by Television."
"How high on the Billboard charts did it go?"
"'Marquee Moon,' by Television, was never released as a single and was never listed on any airplay or sales chart."
"Did Rolling Stone give any reason for why they put it on the Greatest Songs list?"
"Not at all. Here's the blurb they connected to it: "Marquee Moon" is Television's guitar epic, stretching out for ten minutes of urban paranoia. "I would play until something happened," Verlaine said."
As if "urban paranoia" wasn't enough to keep me from even listening to this, the first line of the oft-repeated chorus puts a kink in my colon:
Life in the hive puckered up my night
The nicest thought this brings to mind is that a bee accidentally sucked up lemonade instead of honey.
Ewww...
The television series Castle, though firmly set in New York City, was filmed in Los Angeles.
The Archies (a cartoon musical group created for a television show) had a huge hit with the song "Sugar Sugar," which was originally offered to The Monkees (a human musical group created for a television show).
From my GPS while driving in Las Vegas: "At the light, turn right on Mel Torme Way and then turn left onto Sammy Davis Junior Avenue."
Somehow, the word horrified ought to have something to do with prostitutes.
The hashtag symbol (#) is called an octothorpe.
The King of Hearts is the only king in the deck without a mustache.
A single strand of spaghetti is called a spaghetto.
Crows hold funerals and gather together to mourn the passing of dead crows. Kind of ironic, considering that a group of crows is called a murder.
Reindeer eyes turn blue in winter for better low-light vision.
Marco SansPolo (MSP), the relatively tiny, rat-like creature that passes for a dog in the Roth Haus, got uncharacteristically active the other day. He went all "My Ancestors Were Wolves!" on a pair of baby bunnies in our back yard.
One bunny was rendered bloody, immobile, and breathing in shallow gasps, leaving me the inglorious task of putting him out of his misery. The second seemed not so much injured as just frozen in fear.
When I bent down to give Bunny Number Two a closer look, she scampered away and, perhaps thinking it was a tunnel to a land devoid of giant bloggers, ran into an empty flower pot that was resting on its side. It was a small flower pot, but the rabbit kept working her legs as if still running away, even though her head was firmly pressed against the bottom of the flower pot.
That's when the single egg that hadn't been found by the grandkids on Easter popped out of the pot.
Beloved and I tried to be sad for the plight of the bunnies, but we couldn't stop laughing for a good two minutes.
Sam Cooke fiddled with the lyrics of the Herb Alpert/Lou Adler song, "Wonderful World," and created a huge hit.
He also admitted to being far from the sharpest pencil in the box:
I mean...instead of "Wonderful World," shouldn't it be titled "Imma Dunce"?
And having admitted all this ignorance, why would a young woman believe he has the insight and forethought to be able to say:
Then again, according to Rolling Stone, "Before it came out, Cooke liked to sing it for women he met, telling them he'd made it up on the spot just for them."
Maybe he's not as stupid as he's making himself out to be.
Real Headlines. Fake News.
U.S.Unexpectedly Loses 92,000 Jobs
In a press release, a spokesperson for the Labor Department said, "I put them right here and only turned my head away for a second!"
Millions Across Western Cuba Wake Up Without Power
Secretary of the Interior, Manuel Jose Hernandez: "¡Estoy tan cansado! ¡No tengo energía!"
Big Ten's Loaded Heavyweight Division Tests Gophers' Hopke
Minnesota freshman, Koy Hopke: "It will take everything I've got, but I'm gonna annihilate those fat drunks."
Massive Boom Heard from Ohio to Kentucky
Wow. That far, eh?
Maduro Asks Judge to Toss Drug Case
"Just throw it into the van there."
Man Accused of Killing Florida Woman with Hammer Faces Deportation
And yet, M.C. Hammer is still at large.
US and Iran Exchange Fire in Strait of Hormuz, Endangering Ceasefire
Um . . . pretty sure that firing at each other does more than just endanger the ceasefire, doesn't it? (Unless the fire they exchanged was sharing a match to light their cigars)
Bus and Pickup Truck Turn into House in South Minneapolis
A nearby man, dressed in a black suit with a cape and a tophat, is quoted as saying, "Presto Chango!"
Bill to Make Grooming a Crime Heading to Minnesota Senate Floor
Apparently, the state has had QUITE enough of all this hair-cutting and nail-trimming going on.
All it would take is a single typo to completely change some of the greatest musical acts of all time.
Would anybody pay money to hear:
"Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" was written and performed by Chuck Berry, and never made the charts. But it was apparently well-known enough to inspire cover versions by both Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings.
According to Rolling Stone, "Berry was inspired to write this song while he was touring through heavily black and Latino areas of California. As Berry put it, 'I didn't see too many blue eyes.' He did see a good-looking Chicano nabbed for loitering until 'some woman came up shouting for the policeman to let him go'."
I wonder how the song would have gone had he seen me in my natural habitat...
Resting on his haunches while "working from home"
He was sitting in front of a fan
Then his wife called down from the kitchen upstairs
"Are you busy, green-eyed writer man?
I need a favor from my green-eyed writer man."
Flying upstairs like a bat outta heck
Hoping romance was part of the plan
She just couldn't reach something on a top shelf
Like that green-eyed writer man
He's so much taller, yeah, that green-eyed writer man.
Drinking Dr Pepper, eating CornNuts,
Enjoying as much as he can
There's never ever been any ifs, ands, or buts
From that green-eyed writer man,
It's a lot of quirks with that green-eyed writer man.
Beautiful music from the 70s and back
Lyrics like the back of his hand.
Not much else swirling 'round in the mind
Of that green-eyed writer man
He's full of earworms, he's a green-eyed writer man.
Of course, you know there's a serious side
He loves Jesus and the Gospel plan
And the joy in his heart can't help but spill out
Of this green-eyed writer man
Humor is healthcare for this green-eyed writer man.
Princess Leia returned from her learning pod only to find Almira Vader attempting to abscond with her favorite droid, R2-Toto2.
Almira Vader: I want to see you and your wife right away about Leia.
Uncle Owen: Leia? Well, what has Leia done?
Almira Vader: What's she done? I'm all but lame from the zap on my leg!
Uncle Owen: You mean she zapped you?
Almira Vader: No, her droid!
Uncle Owen: Oh, she zapped her droid, eh?
During Leia's attempt to run away from the whole situation, she was swept into a black hole, along with several chickens, wamp rats, and Miss Vader herself.
Upon gaining consciousness in a bright, Technicolor land of Ewoks and talking apple trees, Princess Leia soon made friends with a ragtag trio of misfits: Luke Scarecrowalker, Tin-3PO, and Chewbacca the Cowardly Wookie.
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[Updated Update! Now The Truth Can Be Told: I started this post just so I could publish the picture of Miss Gulch on a Star Wars speeder, then I got interested in how A.I. would present the foursome. I like the Leia/C3PO/Chewie in the top pic, but prefer the bottom Luke/Scarecrow and simply HAD to show you the Emerald City with the Death Star and TIE fighters.]
Sitting at my keyboard, typing
Tired of hearing others griping
Wanting to knock them off a shelf
Deciding I'll just gripe myself:
The sign says "Exit," clear as day
"You Must Enter Other Way"
And yet, they enter like it's a race
Makes me want to smash their face
"Those sandwiches should be on sale.
You charged full price. I'm gonna wail!"
The sale's not for the ones you chose.
The sign says these, but you bought those.
"I didn't use this wash code, bold
In 30 days like I was told
Hyuck-hyuck; silly old me
Can I have one more for free?"
Do you have our rewards card?
"No way! I protect my privacy hard!
I don't want your bosses to sell me
But if there's a coupon, would you please tell me?"
"How are you doing?" they ask me all day
Not ever pausing to hear what I say
Not that I care if they care how I am
Let's just not play out this little scam
And phones! Good night! Put your phone down!
You're talking to everyone standing around
How will I know if you want a receipt
If you don't hear me ask and I have to repeat?
And then, there are those who just stand and stare
Forgetting that payment's expected and fair
Who flinch to awareness and see where they are
Then say, "I have to go out to my car."
But still, I show up for each of my shifts
Through rain that pours and snow that drifts
Sun that blazes and clouds that billow
Then calmly go home and pummel my pillow.
Word has it that Pink Floyd member, Roger Waters, didn't write "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" just as part of their concept album The Wall. It was meant as an actual critique of his elementary school teachers.
From Songfacts.com:
He hated his grammar school teachers and felt they were more interested in keeping the kids quiet than in teaching them. The wall refers to the emotional barrier Waters built around himself because he wasn't in touch with reality. The bricks in the wall are the events in his life that propelled him to build this proverbial wall around himself - his school teacher was just another brick in the wall.
What a different tale would have been told had it been written about my elementary education in a rural school, just wanting to get through the day . . .
Hey, teacher, throw them kids a bone
When you're tall, you'll get to go and shop at the mall
You'd never know I had a crush on my 2nd-grade teacher, Mrs. Hunter.
Clarence Odbody, the angel who saves George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, appears on screen for only 15 minutes.
It irritates me when people on medical shows say things like “You have to save my child! Please save my child!” As if the medical staff wasn’t going to do anything until the parent told them to.
The voice of Betty Rubble, Bea Benaderet, was also Kate Bradley, the owner of The Shady Rest, on Petticoat Junction.
Two spoons of Swiss Miss plus one spoon of Tang makes for a tasty, orangey mug of hot chocolate.
Ice is not slippery. The tiny bit of water (i.e., melted ice) between your boot and the ice is what's slippery.
The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling was only 5'4" tall...if tall is the right word to use in this instance.
The founder of Hormel Foods, maker of Spam® and other fine delicacies, was George A. Hormel, who pronounced his name HORmel, not HorMEL.
It's not the lavender flower that smells so good; it's the leaf.
Mary Tyler Moore was only 24 when she started playing Laura Petrie, wife of the 35‑year‑old Dick Van Dyke, on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
♫♪ Hey Pink Panther
We love Pink Panther Flakes
They’re pink and sweet and they’re new
We love your 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 different vitamins
Just as much as we love you
From Post!
They say curiosity killed the cat, so I really should have known better than to conduct this little experiment, but hey...I have never been accused of being significantly wiser than a cat.
For no reason in particular, I got to wondering what the major artificial intelligence entities "knew" about me. So I got to asking them.
I started with the algorithm that seems to have started the whole A.I. trend, ChatGPT:
It seems I have chatted with ChatGPT almost exclusively about my other blog, Truth Is..., and my personal blog (where book reviews have happened), DewDrops. That's fair enough, and this is a kind enough overview of what happens in those spaces.
Then I turned to the A.I. engine I use the most, CoPilot:
Very straightforward and factual. Little to no editorializing or sucking up. Well-played, CoPilot.
Finally, I went to X's A.I. entity, Grok:
Grok certainly did more research to provide its answer, but what a self-serving twit. "Your primary online presence is on X," my foot! With over 14-hundred friends on Facebook and fewer than 200 followers on X?
This isn't so much facts about me that Grok is reporting. It's more about what Grok thinks of itself and wants me to believe. (Oops. Did I just get political?)
It's always interesting when one of Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" is something I've never heard of.
It either means the magazine doesn't know what the definition of the word great is, or I am hopelessly out of touch with any music produced after the 1980s.
I'll give you a few facts about Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees," then let you form your own conclusion.
My lack of enthusiasm for this song knows no limits.
According to Punny Pete, "The past tense of William Shakespeare is Wouldiwas Shookspeared."
Putting aside my strong opinion that the past tense of Will should be Did, not Would, this has set my mind to wandering...
...and wondering if you intelligent readers out there can understand who the following are passed tents renditions of...
1. Tom Hanked
2. Robbedin Didiwass
3. Wasy Granted
4. Did Rogered
5. Divorced-Keaten Olsen*
6. Didiwas Told
_______
* Yes, I kind of cheated on this one.
Experimentation with the image-generating properties of different artificial intelligence entities has been running rampant like an escaped velociraptor in a convenience store.
The most recent example is the flood of Facebook posts from people who asked ChatGPT to create a caricature of themselves.
And of course, I hopped on that bandwagon.
Let's begin with the results from AI-bots who dealt only with my verbal request for "a caricature of a bald man with a closely-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard wearing dark-rimmed glasses seated in front of a bookshelf typing a blog. Feature images of Jesus, grandkids, music of Rich Mullins, and Dr Pepper."
Canva certainly got the Dr Pepper and Jesus right, but that's not Rich Mullins and the whole thing looks too academic. Where's the fun aspect implied by asking for a caricature?
Freepik looks like they were peeking over Canva's shoulder but didn't want to bother with Dr Pepper, Rich Mullins, or grandkids. What a lazy pile of algorithms.
DeepAI really cranked up my age beyond what was necessary, if you ask me. And they seem to have done away with the English language.
I like what NoteGPT/NanoBanana did with my overall look and including the auxiliary images, but doesn't it look like I'm squatting over my chair instead of actually sitting in it? Also, it's a little creepy that the computer is talking along with me; not sure which of us is talking and which is echoing.
MOVING ON to the lucky entities which were given the following picture...
...and these instructions: Here's my portrait. Can you turn it into a caricature featuring some of my favorite things: lions, the music of Rich Mullins, Jesus, my grandkids, Dr. Pepper, blogging?
This mini-trend started with ChatGPT, and I must say I like the jolly feeling in the result, though it's obvious the AI-bot has no idea what Rich Mullins or my grandkids look like: comforting news in the case of my grandkids, but slightly disappointing when it comes to Rich Mullins. (Additional whine: That's a decent drawing of me, not a caricature.)
CoPilot is what I do most of my AI-ing with, and it certainly ticked the boxes here in a very literal fashion, except for turning the picture of Jesus over my left shoulder into a skull...eww.
I think Gemini takes first place. I even like that one of my grandkids now has the tail of a lion. Genetics be darned!
I can't express how happy I am that we have come to this point in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and here's why:
That right there is finger-lickin' good.
Somebody, somewhere, needs to splice together every instance of Laura Petrie saying "Oh, Rob" into one big, beautiful supercut.
Only about a third of Gilligan’s Island episodes are about trying to get off the island.
Billy Joel wrote "We Didn't Start the Fire" as a response to a friend of Sean Lennon having said that Joel's life had been easy because he grew up in the 50s and everybody knows that nothing happened in the 50s.
The actor who was Alfalfa in the original Little Rascals/Spanky and Our Gang comedies, Carl Switzer, turned the key that opened the gym floor in It's a Wonderful Life and was the Haynes sisters' brother, "freckle-faced Haynes, the dog-faced boy," in White Christmas.
Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun
Ray Charles shilling for Diet Pepsi:
I know it shouldn't bother me, but it does: My high school and college-aged co-workers at FastStop do not know who John Wayne is.
The square root of 6,561 is 81.
During the year that Tom Hanks was losing weight to film the 2nd half of Cast Away, Robert Zemeckis and the whole crew filmed the jeepy-creepy What Lies Beneath.
The term "gaslighting" (a form of psychological manipulation where someone makes another person doubt their own reality, memories, or sanity) sprang from the 1944 film, Gaslight, though that film was based on a 1938 play of the same name.
Real Headlines. Fake News.
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"Pride (In the Name of Love)," was U2's first Top 40 hit. It only reached 33 on the Billboard charts, but went all the way to Number 378 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
It's a fine stadium rock anthem with the numerously-repeated subtitle easily sung along with.
According to songfacts.com, the song was inspired by a visit to the 1983 Martin Luther King, Jr. exhibit at the Chicago Peace Museum and calls to mind singular men who lived their lives in a way they could be proud of...lives dedicated to love for all of humanity:
The words, "Early morning, April 4, shot rings out in the Memphis sky. Free at last, they took your life. They could not take your pride" allude to Martin Luther King, Jr. (even though he was actually shot around 6 PM. No matter, Bono has since apologized for the historical inaccuracy.)
When he sings "One man come in the name of love" and "One man betrayed with a kiss," we are meant to think of Jesus and how Judas identified him to the arresting officers.
And then there's "One man caught on a barbed wire fence," which obviously is a tribute to Captain Virgil "The Cooler King" Hilts; the character in The Great Escape played by Steve McQueen.
Well, maybe not.
To get caught up, you may want to go to the earlier post, "My Graphic Rabbit Hole," to get the origin story of these flights of fancy, wherein Microsoft's A.I. engine, CoPilot, reimagines a portrait of me as...
a friend of Calvin & Hobbes
a member of the Family Circus
an anime character
drawn by Charles Schulz
or, best for last (as always), part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
Real Headlines. Fake News.
Russia Continues Attacks Amid Talks
Suspicions were confirmed when Soviet missiles hit the site of the peace talks a mere 30 seconds after the Russian representative was seen running from the building, screaming into his phone, "Now! I said fire now!"
Judge Denies Trump Bid to Toss Guantanamo Suit
"I doubt he has the upper-body strength to toss a salad, let alone a jacket, vest, and pants."
Staffer's Spending Among Highest
U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad would have had no problem with his chief of staff emptying the petty cash fund if he just hadn't done it while surrounded by his marijuana-infused friends.
Official Contradicts U.S. on Abrego Garcia
...while Señor Garcia screams, "Get off of me, por favor!"
Marco Rubio Tells Senators Venezuela Transition Won't Be Fast or Easy
"I mean, they've got to go through all the hormone treatments and counseling before you can even start thinking about surgery."
Super Bowl 60: Teddy Swims to Headline Tailgate Concert
Odd choice of transportation and pretty amazing, considering Levi's Stadium is around 35 miles from the coast.
My personal history with R.E.M.'s "Radio Free Europe" begins with my seeing that it is number 379 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Having never heard it, nor heard OF it, I go to YouTube and watch the music video they created for it. I can only understand 3 or 4 words in the whole song, and the video is giving me zero clues about its meaning: There's a guy, then two, and finally three guys wandering around a field and an overgrown lawn-and-garden outlet. Oh! And there's a guy sitting at a Bob Cratchit-style desk. Maybe he's writing about the guys in the field and overgrown lawn-and-garden outlet?
So I head over to azlyrics.com and read the words to the song.
This may or may not come as a shock to you, but I still have 100% no idea what the song is about.
So...it's off to songfacts.com. And it is here that I learn what I had been kind of suspecting all along:
There was a good reason for Michael Stipe's infamously indecipherable lyrics on this song: He hadn't finished them by the time they recorded it. In a 1988 NME interview, Stipe described the lyrical content as "complete babbling."
I feel SO justified!
This is the kind of thing that could have been strung out over a multitude of #TuesdayTrivia entries on the Almost the Truth™ Publishing Facebook page, but (to almost quote Back to the Future's Doc Brown) then I figured, what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks?
Patti Wack was recently hired at a local bank as a loan officer and was having trouble deciding whether to lend money to a particular applicant.
The first red flag for Ms Wack was that the potential customer wasn't human. He wasn't even a mammal. The "person" applying for a loan was a frog.
A frog!
How was she supposed to deal with a googly-eyed, web-footed, amphibious creature who wanted the bank to entrust him with cash? He had no job other than sitting around in a swamp.
"How deep is this swamp you sit in, sir?"
"Knee deep. Knee deep."
"Be that as it may, I see no reliable source of income from which to repay this loan you're asking for. Do you have anything you could put up as collateral?"
The frog handed Patti a ceramic figurine of a red-winged blackbird.
"Excuse me, sir, let me consult with my manager."
Patti took the figurine to her manager and, after explaining the whole situation, said, "What am I supposed to do? I mean, I don't even know what this thing he's calling collateral even is."
The loan manager looked her in the eyes and, in a condescending tone, said, "It's a knick-knack, Patti Wack, give the frog a loan."
