I do use AI tools for making art. Look at the elf above. You can see how my arthritis and poor eyesight have affected my work. The eyes no longer line up like they did in the pencil copy. And the nose lost some of its cartoon charm as arthritic hands left the rough draft line and wandered into the bad art swamps of mediocrity. The elf below has those two things corrected by using an AI overlay tool called AI Mirror. Yes, it makes minor changes that I don’t want, but they are easily corrected in a simple Microsoft Paint file, or a more extensive edit in Picsart AI Photo Shop Editor.
Some artists bristle at me for using AI at all, but I want to point out that I am using it to work on my own artworks, not asking it to create something by giving it a word prompt and expecting it to go steal images from other artists. I use it much the same way I used digital art apps for drawing on computer screens, then modifying the picture with the many erasures and smooth replacement lines that digital art tools allow. The pictures I make, even the AI-assisted ones, are pictures made by me.
I fully agree that AI programs who make prompted art from stolen artwork are morally wrong. And nobody ever asked me about training their AI artificial artists on my work, though from WordPress and Facebook, and Instagram, they probably already have.
I will continue to experiment in using AI tools for making art projects. But I will also try to do it the right way.
No, that is not a typo. I only meant “gifts” in pun form. Sometimes you don’t feel much like talking and, after all, the “picture can be worth a thousand words”, especially if the picture moves.
As you can see, I am spending the day with the Ghost of Christmases Past. Have a wonderful holiday, however you may celebrate it. I will offer more goofy stuff by Mickey after the Ghost of Christmases Future gets done with me.
Today my sister and I put up a Christmas tree. For me, it is the first one in thirty years. Not since 1994, the last time before I married into the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion. They famously don’t celebrate that allegedly pagan holiday. But now the fact that I am living in a separate state from my wife, at least until she decides to retire… in maybe four years, means that as a Christian Existentialist, I can take part in the pagan holiday once again. As I did both as a schoolboy and a youth.
Some other religions believe I am going to Hell when I die… for being a Witness since 1998. The Witnesses think God will turn his back on me now that I no longer knock on doors with the Good News… Scooby Doo says that means “Cookies!” I like to think that it’s something of a miracle. And God doesn’t really mind what doctrines I follow and songs I can sing. And if I am wrong about that, does it really matter anyway?
Lucretia is a gifted undead child who lives in Monster Mansion. She is a precocious twelve-year-old, nearly one year since she was brought out of the grave by magical means. Her companion is a talking crow who is not only garrulous but also acerbic in humor.
As a paper doll, she was created with two different articles of clothing attached by paper tabs. She is naked underneath, wearing only a spider web and a spider.
I have now embarked on my seventieth year of life. I have had a thirty-one-year career as a public school teacher. I have been married for thirty years. I have three grown children. I wrote and published 25 books. You would think that as my life nears completion, I would have answers to some of the big questions. I do not. I do, however, know enough to ask them.
Is mankind and his (or her) civilization going to survive?
Will AI computer programs destroy us rather than help us?
Will aliens a board 3I Atlas destroy us rather than help us?
Will the massive caldera under Yellowstone Park explode as a super volcano and wipe out life in North America?
Why are so many of the big questions about destruction and dying?
Why is the Pumpkinhead President not dead or in prison yet?
Why is art important, and why is my art a defining part of me?
What comes next if the world does end?
Why does any of this matter?
So, let me take a stab at some answers…
Probably not. Humanity’s civilizations have broken apart or been destroyed before.
AI programs are still fairly stupid, though smarter than certain American voter groups. If they kill us, it will be a side effect, not a goal.
The alien things are almost too massive to be mere hoaxes. Science fiction movies suggest it will not end well.
Skip this one for fear of not enough relevant details.
Because old people think a lot about dying. No passes possible on this one.
You’ve seen the smug smirk on his orange clown face. He’s too big of a criminal to get caught in the act.
Art comes from the soul, and it makes it possible to shape your entire life and its meanings.
A Vogon Insterstellar Bypass will be built.
It probably doesn’t matter, and my answers are all wrong anyway.
Well, I have a thing for collecting old books. This one is 100 years old. It is a modern edition, though, re-published in 2003.
Here’s my Goodreads review;
This book is an ancient treasure in many ways, being now more than 100 years old. The illustrations by John O’Neill, too, have a very antique charm. The book is a little short on plot. Dorothy wanders off from the Kansas farm, meets the hobo Shaggy Man, and Button Bright, one of the stupidest little boys in literature. They meet old friends along the way; Jack Pumpkinhead, H.M. Wogglebug T.E., the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, Tik Tok the mechanical man, Billina the Talking Yellow Chicken, and the living Sawhorse. And they all end the story at Princess Ozma”s birthday party where Santa Claus is the favorite guest. This is a potboiler novel for Baum, obviously written only because the readers all begged for it, and it has a lot in it to be enjoyed by true fans of Oz, but not much in the way of suspense or excitement. It can easily be summed up in the words of Button Bright, “I don’t know,” which he says in answer to every question.
I find the illustrations more compelling than the story itself, but I have to admit that the story itself is incredibly visual.
I love this book, even though I don’t respect it much as a storyteller myself. But it is the fourth Oz book I have read since childhood. And it isn’t because of the story. Frank L. Baum is a genius at creating loveable and memorable characters. And these illustrations are wonderful. The Shaggy Man with the head of a donkey? Absolutely fabulous! You can’t beat that. (Well, you can. But whether he’s a donkey or a man, it’s still a crime. )
The only advice I am actually qualified to give here is… don’t take any blogging advice from me as worth more than diddly-squoot.
Life is like moose bowling because… In order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose.
That being said, my blog views are going up amazingly this year. I am followed by readers all over the world, and some of them actually read my blog regularly, rather than just looking at the pictures and occasionally hitting the like button.
I have not yet, however, learned to throw the moose. I started this blog in order to promote my published writing. I now have twenty-five published books available on Amazon. I made $45.00 in royalties during 2025 so far. So, as a marketing ploy, it has been a relative failure.
But as a tool in my writing life, here are some things I definitely count as benefits;
Writing a blog post every day makes the ideas flow more easily and does away with any threat of writer’s block. I have also developed a backlog of good posts that I can repost to new viewers and readers.
Writing every day is practice and it makes me a better writer.
I have learned how to engage with an actual audience.
I am able to try out various writing ideas without worrying about success or failure.
So, all of these things add value and keep me at this blogging thing, which didn’t exist in my early life when I was planning to become a writer as I left teaching.
If you are tempted to make the huge mistake of following my advice and emulating me, I would warn you, I do not make a living as a writer, and I never will. I am a writer in the same way I am a diabetic. I can’t help it. I wouldn’t change it even if it were possible. I have a body of work that I intend to continue to build up until I am no more. The creation of it is a necessity of my existence. And I certainly don’t regret a single syllable, though what happens to it when I am gone is not important to me in any way that matters. I hope my children will keep it as a legacy, but I only do it because it shapes the story of my life.
And so, I continue to throw meese (or mooses… or moosi… or whatever the hell the funniest plural of “moose” is) and continue not knocking down any pins.
I started drawing with crayons and pencils sometime before I was five. I started telling stories around age seven and thoroughly scared my sisters and girl cousins. I became an exiled alien living in secret on Earth in second grade. I won an art contest in my fourth-grade class during fire-prevention week. That got me interviewed on television by Channel 3, KGLO TV from Mason City. From a very early age, I was a sponge, soaking up colors and shapes and weird connections, beautiful things, scary things, and taxidermied jackalopes that cost twenty-five cents to look at. And it filled me up to overflowing and spilled out on drawing paper and took up most of the pages of the spiral notebooks I was supposed to be using for school.
What came out of me was art.
I can’t claim to be a professional artist. I have to admit that most of the money I have made in life was earned by being a school teacher, babysitting in the monkey house and taming other people’s house apes for over three decades. I may have sold a hundred books as an author, but less than two hundred. I have never made a dime just for drawing or painting and making visual art pictures. Any art published in media by me has been for nothing more than exposure to the publication’s audience. So, can I truly claim to be an artist?
My entire life has been lived for art. I became one of the world’s all-time worst poets. I became one of the’ best story-tellers that nobody ever reads. And I enthralled over two thousand kiddoes as a teacher who told stories and intentionally made kiddoes laugh in class and try to tell stories themselves.
Why am I full of art? That’s what I WAS BORN TO BE.
Catch a Falling Star 