It’s a Me

On my most recent May Flowers post, I commented with AI-assisted illustrations for the entries.  The last m’flower was a poem written in first person, that included a section wherein I blast on some creepy bugs with guns.  So my illustration was chosen from a set of midj images like these…

And how did I make these greatamericansatanesque clowns emerge from an AI mo’ chine?  By feeding it this terrible screen capture from my rap debut video (at right).  Like many artists, I find the image of myself – or the idea of the image – to be intellectually interesting.  It makes me feel some kinda way, like who is this creature that is I?

The way it works is called “image prompting.”  Your prompt in an AI art program is the words you use to tell the AI what you want.  When it is just words, it’s referencing the tagging system of the program.  When it’s an image, well, I don’t really know what it’s doing.  AI art is the work of a “denoising algorithm” that uses statistical probability to place pixels, with those odds altered by the prompt.  There’s an explanation out there for how image prompting works that I ain’t bothered to dig up because I don’t care that much.  I figure it’s one of two things:  Genuinely using the image to nudge probabilities, or just reverse engineering the image into a verbal prompt and using the undisplayed verbal prompt to control the AI.

So welcome to my jungle.  I gots fun and games.  Wherein the fun is masturbatory omphaloskepsis and the games is art that nobody asked for.  I’d lead in with the cliche of “you asked for it” but you very much did not.  I hope you get a chuckle or divertingly creepy vibe from the display.  Proceeding thus,

This first set was just putting my image as the prompt and running my “pretty girl” style filter over it.  I’ve posted these girls in comments somewhere, I kinda love ’em.  But are they mees from another mother?  Would this love be a thought crime against nature?

Another time I mashed my selfie up with the “glitchcore” AI art from that one post, and again, I did note them in the comments.  It’s like dollar-store replicant daryl hannahs.  Getting a little less transgenda lookin’, which is a shame, from my point of view.  I think passing is a scam meant to drive trans suicide rates, like dieting is for… everybody at this point.  Whatever.

This one was mixing my selfie with an image derived from a crappy old version of stable diffusion, 2022-style.  You can see that image on my bloge in a Spooktober post.  Closed eyes are the sensuousness, when equipped with horse eyelashes.  Gothique.

The next set is the least passing trans gals in human history, courtesy of mashing myself up with a random pretty-ass 19th century painting lady.  Think she was a nymph or something, don’t care enough to dig up the original pic.  Again, I love ’em.

What’s the most obvious lady pic in human history to mash oneself up with?  The Mona Lisa.  This produced a character that looks very much like NaNoWriMo dot org’s most imperious mod of yore, so I viking hatted her ass, and it was a wild success.

Remember that part in Blue Velvet where Dean Stockwell lipsyncs to Roy Orbison’s In Dreams?  Fucking epic.  This was mashing my selfie up with him.  Kinda reminds me of Phil Hartman, aww.

Here is where things got really interesting for me.  I used a strange painting of Salome in a Babylonian throne room.  The style might be called expressionist or symbolist, I think, and had a fuzzy and drippy effect almost like you were seeing the scene through rain – despite the golden glow.  Cool piece, again, I forget whodunit, but I was very intrigued to see the AI interpret that as motion-blurred degraded VHS!  This is me as tour guide at a desanctified cathedral or castle…

I took that set and mashed it up with an image of a demon from a funky grimoire, and a cool pic of the dudes from The Damned, resulting in these fucked up Marilyn Manson hillbillies.  Very amusing.

Leaving out the cathedral set to only have my selfie mixed with the demon, we get… wigbeard!  Amazing.  I love it.  This is also a good example of the strange things that happen when you mix a photo and a drawing in AI art.

The first image below on the left is actually from artbreeder, which is kind of a fun website.  I added some human “DNA” to an image of a cute puppy, creating an abominable bog mummy standup comedian.  On the right you can see what comes of that mixed with my selfie – some kind of queer grunge bassist who wasn’t cool enough to OD.

Mixing my selfie with a beautiful AI pic yielded these VC Andrews -styled queer cuties, who I mixed with some other stuff to get the characters from this other one.  Anyway, by my affectionate words you may be starting to get an idea of which ones I find genuinely appealing.  Ignoring the fingers, of course.

The one on the left below was mashing myself up with the edgy angel from the cover of the Kult TTPRG, and to my great amusement, it became some kind of hair metal groupie from the late eighties.  Mashing her up with another image full of homunculi yielded this bumper crop of selfcestuous cultist little people.

Those lil’ gals became bigger and gayer and sleepier in subsequent iterations.

it’s a good time, but has this narcotic quality about it… soporific… think im gonna fall asleep now… gnite.

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250 Words on the Topic of Hugs

Got some gentle sympathies in donation message, but again, barely anyone has been suggesting topics to write about.  Makes me wonder if I should be running a different incentive scheme.  Anyhow, Hugs.

When is a hug appropriate?  The USA is one of the more physically removed countries in the anglosphere.  Broadly speaking, people here don’t hug anyone they don’t know outside of full-on emergencies, like consoling a person whose baby got blown up in a car accident.

And the people who are allowed to hug?  Women.  It’s gendered.  (Queerness definitely complicates the picture, but bear with me.)  Men can’t express physical affection for each other outside of Arnold Schwarzenegger / Carl Weathers arm-wrassles.  One can get unused to physical contact.  That was me, for a long time.

If I’m not expecting to be touched, I jump.  If that happened to me when I was a kid, it was going to be violence.  As an adult, it’s my boyfriend being affectionate, not noticing that I wasn’t noticing his approach.  Then he feels bad about it, and I’m like, aww no boo, it ain’t you.

So I got to where the only way I wanna be seen, when I can control the circumstances, is lady-presenting.  I don’t do it at a grocery store or the office, but I do it at remote meetings, the FtB Poddish Sortacast, and my pics around the internet.  This being what people see of me, I find some people are treating me the way they might treat a lady, which is kinda cool, but also can make me jump when I don’t expect it.

Pay it no nevermind.  Hug on.  Especially cyber-hugs.  Why should I balk at that?

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Another Bad Creation

Look upon my works ye donors and despair, for reaching the stretch goal on this fundraiser was rather like losing a bet…


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EDIT to add:  The lyrics so you can sing along, or see where I fucked up, or see where I used the word you paid for:

I’m not even trans so ~ Don’t genocide me bro
Ever since it was the ’80s ~ I wanted to be one of those rap ladies
Roxanne Shante, The Lady of Rage ~ Or Igloo Australia up on my white page
I need an umbilical Hernia sewed up ~ Time to get lyrical, My people showed up
I offered to rhyme one Word per donation ~ But some don’t care for My rap oration
Cutty Snark and Monkat Offered well wishes ~ Which implies my rap Can sleep with the fishes
Meanwhile Trixie Gave in her quiet way ~ And left not a single word For me to rhymesay
At least other donors gave Words to make use of ~ So now I commence against English abusove
I’m not even trans so ~ Don’t genocide me bro
Ever since it was the ’80s ~ I wanted to be one of those rap ladies
Rhyming like this re-Quires some strategy ~ You can play it safe and Avoid a tragedy
But then my bro asked for Salpingooophrectomy ~ That son of a bltch thinks That shlt will get to me
Someone asked me To make a rhyme for orange ~ This they tasked me To make it oh so cringe
Shlt could make my Brains tapioca ~ Ricky my Martins ’til This vida goes loca
I rap so wack I Say whoopsadaisy ~ So I’ll just slack then Be ghost like Swayze
Peace

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TDoV Fundraiser, White Rap, Cringe On

GOAL ACHIEVED – FUNDRAISER CLOSED
This post will remain for historical purposes.

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HEY!  I had a telework meeting earlier this week and since I wouldn’t get harassed on the bus by doing so, I dressed like a lady.  Little did I know I was two days early for the Trans Day of Visibility.  I’m visible, babes.  Be the fat middle-aged white lady you want to see in the world.  I’m lovin’ it.  But still..

image of your blogger great american satan

Like many trans folk today I come to you with cup in hand.  I’ve had medical issues burning up my leave at work, and for some abdominal surgery in late April I’m going to use at least a week of leave without pay.  To make my bills less ouch, I’d like to fundraise.  Here is the incentive:  Donate at all, and you can choose a word I will rhyme in a rap.  If five people choose orange, I’ll try to come up with five shitty sorta-rhymes for orange.

This will be strictly words on digital paper, maybe starting below and then compiled in a blogpost, unless we reach goals.  At $500, I will do an audio performance of the rap.  At $600, I will do a video.  These productions, if they happen, will be lo-fi as all hell, because I just don’t have the time for big effort.

I will run this through midnight April 21st, so I have time to make the audio or video if necessary.  If you like my terrible styles and enjoy cringy embarrassment, please give me a ko-fi, as it were.  And if you like donating to FtBloggers, throw our recently unemployed mans Brinkman a bone too.

link to my ko-fi

 

 

On Genital Preference

My conquest of the categories of FtB articles continues apace, with this rip-roaring number about Feminism Gender and Sexuality.  I don’t know if I’ve posted my thoughts about genital preference before, so I’ll lay out the main points.

It’s OK to have a genital preference, when it comes to doing the sex.  When it comes to casual conversation, less so, but it’s a situational thing.  I’d say a good rule of thumb is this – express your love for the genitals you want to get with, never express disgust for the genitals that you’d prefer to avoid.  Somebody has those genitals, and doesn’t deserve to have to feel disgusting, right?

There are a lot of ramifications of this.  Don’t equate your genital preference with your orientation, even if it makes intuitive sense.  “I love vag because I’m a lesbian.”  There are lesbians that don’t love vag for any number of reasons, there are lesbians who don’t have vag and don’t deserve to think of themselves as undesirable to lesbians for that reason – even tho it’s valid for that to be true in your case.  Does that make sense?  It’s complicated.

I find a very, very useful way to think of this is like fatphobia.  It’s OK for you to not find fat people attractive.  You can’t control what your instincts tell you, and they’ve been warped by simmering in global fatphobia your whole life.  You shouldn’t have to force yourself to be with a person you can’t physically love, and much more importantly, no fat person deserves to be stuck with somebody who cannot physically love them.

But wearing a “no fatties” t-shirt or dropping that preference in anything but the most hushed and apologetic tones is a fucking vile thing to do.  Likewise, unless a transbian makes a pass at ye, vag-requiring lesbian, don’t feel the need to bring it up.  It just isn’t necessary, until it is, which is sure to be an extremely rare occurrence.  (Ditto in reverse gay dudes in cis/trans situations.)

This is one way terfs ruin shit for everyone.  Lesbians should be able to yell about how much they love muff as much as gay men yell about dick.  It’s still an option, of course, but thanks to terfs identifying AFAB parts with their hate movement by way of their internet handles and slogans, any lesbian reveling in their genital preference may result in a nearby trans person of any stripe feeling unsafe or unsettled.  Is this person going to try to harm me?  Don’t know.  Non-nazi dykes don’t deserve to have to think about that every time they put on the “I Love Pussy” hat.

I could be wrong about any of this in any way; I am not up on the current discourse, and have never had a meaningful conversation with genital dysphoria-having person about the subject.
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A Trans Wrath Minute

Content Warnings: Transphobia, Violence, Suicide, Cussin’.  I cuss.

I’m not usually a poet but I woke up with a few lines coming to mind,
and had to spend some time fleshing out the whole thing.
It’s open mic night, babes.  Drink up ~~~

Grab your “Down with Cis” t-shirts and get on the bus

It’s time to bash back before the fucks get to us.

Every fascist from Kremlin to Pittsburgh PA

Has decided that trans is worse now than gay.

Transition’s irreversible so you better not try

Make yourself cishet or make yourself die

And god forbid nature make your gender ambiguous

Carve up your babies, so you can pass off as cis.

Black transphobes think this some “white people shit?”

Marsha was out while you were sucking hind tit

Prob’ly killed by a black guy ashamed of sucking her dick.

So many black queer folk I won’t sully their names

Bringing them down to my white level and rage.

Sick of hearing about queers? Then get our names out your mouths

We can’t be like Bill Tipton and keep our lips zipped when

Your friends in the senate order genital inspections

“I didn’t write those laws, they just reflect my positions.

It’s so many words, can’t do no one wrong.”

Mein Kampf has a death toll ten million strong.

This time’ll be different, you nazi fucks learned your lesson

There’s no need for mass graves when you can just disappear us

Use disgust powered media to make Joe Public fear us.

Pricky Gervais I’mma rip off your face.

Just Kidding Rowling will likewise be howling.

Fuckass Mulaney in such fucking pain he

Won’t know what the hell’s left of David Chappelle.

You think I give a shit about your fucking celebrity?

I’ll slap the whole fucking Oscars but why limit my enmity?

Fuck this whole goddamn world that won’t save a trans girl

And suck my motherfucking dick.

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No More Harry P Shit

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating:  If you represent Harry P fandom by so little an act as having your “house” in your bio, you’re giving money to transphobia and fascism by advertising the works of an author who puts her royalties to those exact ends.  Don’t take my word for it.  Here are some people who actually liked Harry P at one point in time – indeed, may hold some fondness for that community and those experiences even now:

I was cutting people with Hogwad houses in their bios some slack, but that’s over now.  It has indeed become a new criteria for me in blocking and blacklisting – any mention of Harry P shit that isn’t cancellation or ripping on it.  If you’re promoting her IP, you’re giving her money, whether you pay her directly or not.  No more quarter.  Even if I wasn’t a flavor of trans, even if I didn’t personally know trans people, transphobia is the current wedge issue / hobbyhorse of every nazi piece of shit from Zimbabwe to Kazakhstan, from DC to the Kremlin.

Trans rights have become the line we all need to defend, for the sake of trans people yes, but now for the sake of every decent person in the world – very much like gay rights in 2004.  Let this cancellation be complete.  Let any enjoyment you have of those stories remain private.  Don’t let the Queen Terf claim you as one of her own.  Say no to Harry P shit.

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Got No Memes

I want to do something for International Down With Cis Day, but ideas fail me.  Every year since I started at FtB has gotten materially worse for trans rights and the well-being and safety of trans lives.  I hold the shitbird governor of Texas as especially emblematic of the whole situation – blatantly using open bigotry to score political points, bible bashing while using rhetoric generously provided by terfs, pushing for the worst anti-LGBT policies this side of China or Iran.

So I think, meme his ass.  Political cartoon like this was 1922.  But nothing comes to mind except depictions of him on the receiving end of terrible violence – you know, madame guillotine putting in an appearance, somebody setting him on fire and kicking him off a cliff, etc.  Not funny, not a good look.

Hm…

https://www.google.com/search?q=respect+existence+or+expect+resistance+trans

Not bad, but still feels wildly inadequate to the struggle right now.  We’ll see what we’ll see.

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Coattail Rydaz

By now you all know Dave Chappelle needed more money so he did some calculations and decided to ride the coattails of terfs, profit off the pain of a highly visible minority.  It’s incredibly transparent.  While transphobic actions make him a transphobe in effect, one wonders if he even has transphobia in his heart.  Are you really bothered by trans people, or is it just an obvious cash grab?  I don’t really care, just annoyed to see these irrelevant has-been comedian fucks throwing in with the worst people in the world.  A waste of whatever shreds remain of their original talents.

This is not especially relevant to me and my life.  I cancelled Dave Chappelle when he defended Trump’s misogyny and cancelled Netflix when they promoted eating disorders and suicidal ideas through their original programming, haven’t been tempted since.  But there is one way in which this is relevant and it’s as hilarious as it is pathetic.

PZ has called our attention to Nu Atheism’s shining light in Richard Dawkins, and what he’s been up to lately.  Want to guess what venal calculations he has cribbed from the fascist pundits and has-been comedians of the world?  Within weeks of Chappelle’s shit, our own former anti-pope came out on stage with a straw hat and cane to huck some shit of his own.

I’m reminded in part of the social cowards who orbited the true bullies back in junior high.  Para-bullies?  They wouldn’t initiate much on their own, just sidle up to the instigators once they start going in on a kid, and make sneering or laughing or wall-eyed faces of sadistic ecstasy.  Nu Atheism (TM) used to be at the vanguard of hate movements (islamophobia and misogyny), now our boys are coattail rydaz.  Fucking  pitiful, bro.

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EDIT TO ADD:  These people will always have a profit motive for hate speech.  See how much money Richard Carrier was able to drum up just from people who hate progressive atheism – a pitifully small pool of donors.  But before the dollars run out, they might be dissuaded from hate speech by the worm turning on its popularity.  Some day our activism will pay off and mainstream people will look on the transphobia of this historic moment with absolute disgust.  On that day, easy money cowards like these two will try to backpedal and make excuses for how they were.  I will live to see this, and it gives me some comfort.

Skeptisuck – Harriet Hall Time

HJ doesn’t do comments at his blog, but his recent article about Harriet Hall – concluded with a simply told bit of news that makes the more well-loved end of the skeptisphere a lot less lovable – cries out for comment.  If you wanna rip on Harriet Hall, or her pals Steven Novella and David Gorski, or whatever, I invite you to make the comments on this post into your mosh pit.

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