The Wonderful Wizard of Darth

 

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.

[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.]

The Convenience Store Blues

 

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.

All in All, Just Another Day Trying Not to Nap: The 375th Greatest Song of All Time

 

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 . . .

We don't need no tours of bakeries

Time ill-spent away from home

No dark rooms to yawn through filmstrips

Teacher, throw them kids a bone

Hey, teacher, throw them kids a bone

All in all it's just like sitting out in the hall

Try to crawl to just another grade in the fall

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.

Stuph That Has No Reason Being in My Head, Vol. IX

 

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.

I'd be terminal, too, if I had an arrow through my head.

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!

So THIS Is What A.I. Thinks of Me

 

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?)

The Sound of My Expectations Lowering: The 376th Greatest Song of All Time

 

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.

• Released in March of 1995, the song spent four weeks on the charts, reaching only as high as Number 65.
• Thom Yorke said the song began as "A very nice melody which I had no idea what to do with; then you wake up and find your head singing some words to it."
• Thom Yorke apparently has no idea what constitutes "a very nice melody."
• An acoustic version was featured in the 1995 film Clueless: Cher (Alicia Silverstone) criticizes her stepbrother's taste in music when she overhears him listening to the tune, calling it "crybaby music."
• The video for the song is so boring that several members of the cast and crew went comatose during its filming.

My lack of enthusiasm for this song knows no limits.

People Was Peedpulled

 

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.

What Happens When AI Meets My Face? Buckle Up.

 

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!

Talkin' Smack to Jack: The 377th Greatest Song of All Time

 

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:

• It's Ray Charles, man!
• The female lines were sung by one of Ray's backup singers, who was told to hit the road a couple of years after this song went to No. 1. (Irony is king.)
• It gives me the opportunity to introduce you to Mr. Charles doing this parody version for a KFC commercial.

https://youtu.be/ctqPgE-sPhA?si=lFPHay-pdhtnIJgT

That right there is finger-lickin' good.

Stuph That Has No Reason Being in My Head, Vol. VIII

 

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:

https://youtu.be/J8RPtMBsM5M?si=wMGhSjZ6EWjVpUGM

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.

Almost The News XXXIV

 

Real Headlines. Fake News.

Ghislaine Maxwell Pleads the Fifth During Her Deposition
"I'm sorry, I just drank 750 milliliters of whiskey and cannot answer coherently."

China Critic Jimmy Lai Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison
That'll teach him to badmouth our best dinnerware.

Minneapolis Council Member Suggests Moving Millions to Help Businesses
"I mean, I know that much money would certainly help MY business!"

Trump Threatens to Block Opening of New U.S.-Canada Bridge
...and all it will take is for him to lie down like a beached whale

House Votes to Slap Back Trump's Tariffs on Canada

https://youtu.be/7jySjwzktns?si=ApDosOy6MshrCYHN

The Most Unexpected Cameo in Rock History (Hint: Barbed Wire Is Involved)

 

"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.

Drawing on My Imagination...Well, CoPilot's

 

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!

Almost the News XXXIII

 

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.

It's Not My Fault: The 379th Greatest Song

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!

#ReplaceMovieTitlesWithSynonyms

 

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?

• The Diety Male Parent
• The Lightless Templar
• A Dozen Furious Fellows
• The Nobleman of the Finger Circlets
• Lurid Unreal Narrative

• The Excellent, the Awful, and the Unattractive
• Altercation League
• One Swooped Above and Past the Fool's Structure of Twigs, Grass, and Mud
• It's a Marvelous Animate Existence
• The Noiselessness of the Young Sheep

Stupid Stories™: Ms Wack, Loan Officer

 

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."

Goodbye, Penelope Rose: The 380th Greatest Song

 

It is no secret that when Elton John sings, people don't understand the words.

Sometimes, it's because Bernie Taupin's lyrics are weird and only representational of coherent trains of thought. But mostly, it's because Sir Elton has trouble enunciating important sounds...like consonants.

A prime example is the song "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." It's a fine melody and attempts to express a longing for a simpler life, but when you replace what Bernie wrote with what people hear Elton singing, things quickly go awry.

When are you gonna come down?
When are you gonna calm down?

When are you going to land?
When are you going to learn?

I should have stayed on the farm
I shoved that stake in my arm

I should have listened to my old man
Shoveled glitter into my can

You know you can't hold me forever
You know your cap told me more better

I didn't sign up with you
I giggle hiccup with you

I'm not a present for your friends to open
I'm not a pheasant for your hands to hold on

This boy's too young to be singing the blues
"Da boing do yada," me's singing the blues

So goodbye yellow brick road
So goodbye, Penelope Rose

Where the dogs of society howl
Where the dogs are, though I can't see how

You can't plant me in your penthouse
Your cat locked me in your penthouse, or
You can't have me as your pen pal

I'm going back to my plough
I'm going back to my cow

Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Back to just howlin' around in the world, or
Back to the hidey-hole out in the woods

Hunting the horny-back toad
Punt with a horny, old sow

Oh, I've finally decided my future lies
Oh, I find that my eyes, all putrified

Beyond the yellow brick road
Belong to hollow brick role

BESIDES...

Shouldn't the whole thing have been more about The Wizard of Oz?

When the wind's done spinnin' 'round

When am I going to land?

I should have stayed on the ground

I should have listened to Auntie Em

Ahh...a lost opportunity indeed.