Some weeks drag. Some weeks zip. The one was of the latter sort. I swear I was just sighing with mild disappointment that all the pleasures of the weekend were done, and it was naught but Monday ahead - Monday, mind you, with obligatory pineapple-teriyaki meatballs for lunch, which really crimped my enthusiasm for the future. I had to have them. Wife bought about 80 at Costco. She also bought some sausages for breakfast, knowing that I like that, but they were raw, and required cooking. That takes TIME. I prefer the nukeable sort, no skins, coarse. These are as smooth as a cat’s brain and have intestinal casings, although what creature gave up their guts, I don’t know. Possibly a cat.
So I made cooked half the package at once on Sunday, and set them aside for subsequent reanimation. They’re not very good. You pour the hot sauce, it runs right off. So I knew I was looking at a week of substandard breakfasts and pineapple-afflicted lunches.
Oh sorry dropped one looks like Birch will have to eat it
By the middle of the week we were both giving him a sausage for breakfast, just to get through this thing together.
By the way, I bought some small containers of wet dog food, Target, on sale, Bog knows what abattoir scrapings it’s made of. But for his late night snack, I thought half a container would be nice. When I got it out of the drawer he was instantly alert. I’d probably given him these before. Years ago. He had not forgotten. This was important.
Despite all this, the week was fast and good. I accomplished Minimum Plus, which is the baseline plus future websites plus ancillary big project. I did a Diner, I worked out every day, I had reasonably decent parking downtown - although that’s getting more difficult. A year ago, I parked on a certain block. Now it’s full in the morn. Six months ago, I could find space a block away. Now it too is full. I suppose this is a good sign, but Our Mayor recently made an appeal to come downtown and work, because otherwise you’d stay at home with your “nasty cat blanket” and you would be a “loser.” It was a joke, but the response was illustrative. All the Reddit types hate him anyway because he’s a liberal but not sufficiently progressive, and he vetoed the City Council’s terribly important Gaza ceasefire resolution, and they all want to stay at home with their cats and mint-condition OP Boba Fett dolls - oh, and also, we need vibrant dense cities, and the police suck so curbing downtown disorder is racist, and so on, and so on. Same on Twitter. I read a thread about the Mayor’s remarks that was 91% nightmare assertions about the certain death one faces going downtown - or going to Minneapolis at all, for that matter.
It’s odd. I’m there every day. Walking around. In the core, on the periphery, in the skyways. It’s completely normal.
I was standing in the atrium today, and thought: this is what you miss if you just work from home. BIG PLACES. Large spaces with strangers, snatches of conversation, the scent of the Greek restaurant, the friends with whom you exchange a nod as you pass, the hail-fellow-well-met with the guy who stocks all the restroom supplies, and so on. A city.
And then the same Redditors and Twitterers post a map of the old streetcar system and get het up about CAR BRAIN and how great it was and I think dude, you wouldn’t have taken the streetcars anywhere. You don’t want to leave the house.
I was talking my dog to a park where they could run free. It really wasn’t an outdoor wooded park at all, but an old subterranean complex that seemed to be part subway and part civic entertainment area, like something from New York long ago. He was off the leash when we were descending the stairs, bolted ahead, and even though I knew this was part of this excitement, I was worried. I tried to find him, and could not.
This led to a long exploration of the park, looking for him. It wasn’t Scout or Birch or any other dog I knew; he was a whippet of sorts wearing a green dickey. At one point I entered a part of the complex that was deep underground, accessible by old tunnels and stairs, and here I was accompanied by Sara. The complex was a well-preserved example of 30s architecture, with terra cotta paneled walls and elegant reliefs in the delicate Roman / Etruscan style, or least how we interpret the Roman interpretation of Etruscan design.
Prompt: whippet in a green sweater running through catacombs with Etruscan design
I met with a fellow who ran the place, and he was kind but couldn’t help. I suggested that I could write a very nice piece about his operation here for the paper, but all he could do was express his sympathy.
Sara went topside to search, and I stayed in the catacombs, kicking myself for not putting that AirTag on the dog like I’d meant to do. I came across a very deep and claustrophobic tunnel that was accessible by an odd contraption, a platform that moved up and down on a ladder. I got a few levels down before I decided this was not the best use of my energy, and went to the surface.
Up here there were lots of dogs, and I envied their owners. I passed a supermodel who was heading for the pool, and it appeared she was either wearing fine lace stockings or had had them tattooed on her legs. The latter seemed unwise. I turned and was confronted by a television screen that had a video playing; a 90s rock singer, complete with soul patch and earring, was about to sing, and I thought he’d aged, but not overly so. The words QUESO KILLED AFTERPLAY came on the screen, and the band began to sing. A logo for a fast-food Mexican chain appeared, and I realized that the song was about how no one cuddled after sex anymore because they ran to the restaurant for melted queso.
Prompt: small TV in an art deco catacomb showing a 90s band singing about melted cheese
I woke with that slogan hanging in my head, looked over at the dog bed, and was relieved to see Birch.
Another example from the prompt:
Den the tine an Melten Cheese
And now, a related feature that will provide some Friday amusements:
The prompt was just Renaissance painting with cupds, and yea, it did deliver.
If I had this kind of infestation, I'd consider glue strips. Easier than running around with a tennis racket.
The scene is obviously a church, all the details implied.
I should note that I did a small color-correct, because the AI put a yellowish aged-shellac tint over everything.
It completely bobbled the head of the figure on the right.
Here it confuses the paintings on the ceiling or cupola with something that spills out into the archtectural space.
It certainly looks like religious art, but it means nothing.
It knows not the divine, only the cliches of human yearning for it.
We're going to run out soon. You know that, don't you. I think we're already on the second go-round.
Then again, do you remember the answer to all of them? This one you might get right away, but do you know if it's a repeat or it was a repeated idea when it ran?
And that's it for Fridays! Ha ha kidding, of course it's not.
Last year I cut out the tunes, but heck, why not bring them back. We'll be counting down the bottom 50 songs as listed by Whitburn. It'll be fun! Stuff you've never heard. A grab-bag of styles.
Mind you, we're working up from the bottom.
How do you follow up to the coolest song ever written? Why, you do it again, but not as good.
Now we're done. Thanks for your visit, and I'll see you Monday.
Guess what's back? No, not the donate button, I'm still trying to rejigger the code on that damned thing. BUT: a return to an old favorite. Just to remind you, it's a scholarly approach to advertising art, looking at it like a future art historian attempting to reconstruct a civilization whose specifics are not quite clear.
