Day one of Sober October: I couldn't get anyone onboard. Everyone I told about it said to fuck off. I am now considered to be the town's Temperance League.
"Temperance has always been a bad idea. It gave us Joe Kennedy," said a conservative retired judge I tried to recruit.
The pretty woman who walks her two big dogs in my mother's neighborhood just started laughing and said, "Oh, no."
And so. . . I went it alone. It was surprisingly easy. I didn't get the shakes or the bends, not the jitters nor the jags. Instead of having a Negroni for Happy Hour, I drank an Athletic non-alcoholic beer. Fine. Then, per usual, I prepared dinner. I prepared dinner absolutely sober. It was the worst dinner I have made in years. Even my mother, who doesn't throw any food away, agreed that I should just chuck it all.
I may not be a sober cook. Or, perhaps, drinking makes the food more palatable.
I am not fully committed to a dry October. I went in with the idea it might be damp. I don't want to be ideological about it. But man. . . I DO need to slow down. It has become my anesthesia while caring for my mother. I'd be better off with ether.
That said. . . who wants to give up the romance of. . . well, that picture at the top of the page. . . you know?
That is from a photo I took long ago. Of a sudden, I have the feeling I have shown that here before, for I was about to speak of the incredibly beautiful colors in the frame. Some memory of that drifts about the periphery of my consciousness. Whatever. It is pretty enough to show again.
O.K. I'll give you one I know I haven't shown before.
Two, actually. I couldn't make up my mind. Similar colors--Hopper colors--with a smoother brush stroke and less atmosphere. Obviously, these didn't come from any photos I took. They came from my attempt to make a series which turned into the video "The Giant Woman's Audition" which I posted here awhile ago. Hopper-esque, but kind of "Lonesomeville," too. It reflects something we all know. They are "statements." The Male Gaze and more.
Reality is bad, we all know. The government shutdown will have a ripple effect this Christmas, I believe, or should I say "this holiday season." Money will be tight. Trump's idea of giving fewer gifts will come to fruition. He didn't mention food, but I think that, too. A NYT poll shows that a large majority of Americans think the political divide in this country is too large to fix. They don't believe that ideologies can be reconciled. If they are right. . . well, I loved living in old America. It sure was fun.
To escape, people aren't turning to art, of course. Art is bad. Rather, they make fake videos of themselves and their friends.
Sora, released by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, is a social app where every second of audio and video is generated by artificial intelligence. Users can create fake clips that depict themselves or their friends in just about any scenario imaginable, with consistently high realism and a compelling soundtrack complete with voices. OpenAI said the app is initially available only in the United States and Canada, but that access will expand.
Have you used it? One of my pals was showing me clips he made at dinner with his buddies one night. He asked Sora to have his homophobe friends holding hands and kissing in the restaurant where they were eating. Real time. I was speechless.
But, as with all new things, someone has to put on the brakes.
The company also has added extra guardrails to the app when real people are featured in videos meant to block nudity and graphic violence.
And I'm like, "WTF? Nudity???"
Calvinism lives!
I must say, many of my lesbian friends have The Male Gaze, so I'm not sure the term is all encompassing.
I wish I had a camera that would make photos like that image at the top of the post.
I had other things to say, I'm sure, but now it is time to get my mother's meds together, run to the drugstore to get more, then beat it over to my house to meet the carpenter. I should be up for it all. . . being sober and all.
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