And another begins. They are all the same. A year is simply an arbitrary measure of time invented by our species. There are no years.

There are no good years or bad years. What's with this recent trend of saying the year sucked? There are no bad or good years. Life sucks sometimes, but that's not synchronized with our perception of time.

In the distant future where I come from the calendar has been abolished and we have no years. And things still suck.

Stop saying it was a bad year, it attracts more bad stuff.

The next year will be awesome.

Happy New Year to all of you, semi-filthy animals!

( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

When electricity was first harnessed, there was not much practical use for it. Early scientific experiments involved applying current to the legs of dead frogs to make them move and twitch. But eventually, electricity became the most influential discovery since fire. Today we can’t think of one aspect of human life that doesn’t involve some electronic or electrically powered device.

A.I.-generated “art” is the equivalent of those twitching frog legs. A parlor trick use for a technology that’s in its infancy stage, but will eventually become ubiquitous. In the next decades, you will witness some variant of A.I. (under different names) transform every possible aspect of human life and culture. I don’t know if it will make our lives better or worse, probably a complex mix of both at different levels.

People are now freaking out over the “art” part, but what’s coming is so much bigger, the present debate will sound silly in hindsight.

"A.I. art" is only the first drops of water appearing on the wall of a damn about to burst.

It seems the lack of artistic energy and erosion of communication is a general thing of these times, not just my particular ailment. So anyone looking to procrastinate together instead of individually is invited to my tiny Discord server.

We mostly talk about science fiction, my l̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶o̶f̶ art, and sometimes food. Mostly SFW thought adult art is not forbidden, some simple rules are posted.

https://discord.gg/GfncBv2

I haven't updated my comic or posted any art in a very long time. It's not that I'm out of inspiration, but that I'm out of motivation. I have ideas in my head, but I don't have the willpower to sit down and draw them. I have been sketching a lot, but nothing that advances the stories of my two comic series.

I have done a few drawings I'm happy with, but they have nothing anthro in them, so I haven't posted anything on my furry platforms.

I have been hit by a debilitating mix of laziness and depression lately. I'm working long shifts and I get out too tired to do much more than sleep until the next day. Then during the weekend, when I should work on my comics, I just play video games. When the weekend is over, I feel guilty for not drawing and promise myself I will draw the next weekend, then the cycle repeats.

I need to end this dry spell somehow.

( > (oo) < )

Not a big deal since I have a few to spare. It's hereditary, my grandmother had double rows of teeth, upper and lower jaw. But I digress...

I had a bad tooth for a few years. It started with a little cavity, then an infection, and finally it cracked and one half of it felt loose. It developed an abscess and I was in constant agony.

I had previous bad experiences with dentistry. A long time ago I had one pulled by an unlicensed dentist who operated a clandestine joint in his house's garage. As you can imagine, that wasn't very sanitary, but it's what I could afford at the moment.

But now, I got dental insurance from my job, it even comes with an app that finds you a dentist in your zip code. I found one who speaks English on the third try.

So yesterday I got over my paralyzing phobia and walked into a dentist's office and told them to pull that thing off my jaw.

It wasn't half as bad as I expected. The girl was very good at it and pulled out every fragment of the cracked tooth (she even showed it to me) It was nasty. The infection had carved a hole in the bone of my yaw and it needed a graft. I'm not sure what they grafted there, but I have stitches over the hole. When I put my tongue there it feels like there is a piece of string. It feels kind of weird to find a space between teeth there.

I'm in recovery now. No solid food until that thing heals enough. I bought a bunch of 99-cent soup cans to eat in the meanwhile. It hurts a little, but it's nothing compared to the old rotten tooth that turned into a pus volcano when I pressed the gums under it. It's out! I feel so relieved.

The whole thing was over $2000 but my copayment was only $300. I'm going to have a tight week, but getting rid of that old pain is totally worth it.

I can't wait to be able to munch on crunchy or chewy foods again. I miss tostones and beef jerky.
( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

Here is the answer to everything that’s going on. I’m sure every one of you has recently paused and wondered what the fuck is wrong with the world today? Some much weird shit going on, sometimes it feels like this planet has become a parody of its former self.

Because that is exactly what has happened.

Do you know when a TV show starts losing ratings and they try to salvage, so the next season the general tone of the show has been changed to make it sillier, more comedic, and full of pointless stunts? That’s called “Jumping the shark” because of that famous scene I don’t need to explain.

That’s what has happened. Our universe has jumped the shark. We live in a fictional universe. The same as we draw and read comic books, there is an upper level of the lasagna of reality where beings with many more dimensions than us look down on our lives for entertainment. We are as fictional to them as cartoons or video games are to us.

I know you all are going to make fun of me for believing the so-called “simulation” theory but think of this. The fact the Wachowskis never came out with any fiction worth shit proves the first Matrix movie was actually a documentary! Then changed a few details.

We are part of some kind of fictional series these hyper-dimensional beings consume. Recently it seems their interest in our storyline has decreased and the creators are compensating by making our stories sillier, inserting implausible situations, and populating the top cast of protagonists with ridiculous caricatures of their predecessors. You and I remain the same because we are the equivalent of NPCs.

Just look at the news. Turn on any news source right now and tell me it doesn’t make perfect sense.

I guess we were too boring so they are making us clown around and have added some extra drama here and there.

So, if you are tired of all the weird shit going on recently, like pandemics and A.I. generated porn, and fist fights at the Oscars, think that at least that will keep us running for another season.

The problem is that those things usually only keep the show running for so long. One of these days our universe is going to simply turn off and we would find our show was canceled.
¯\_( •́ (oo) •̀ )_/¯

P.S. If you need proof our universe is fictional, the proof is all over the history of Art. When you look at how humans have depicted themselves and their surroundings across the ages, you can see early stages of our universe were less graphically detailed than this one we live in now. For example, Ancient Egyptian art clearly depicts the world as a side-scroller. We probably didn’t become full 3D until the time of the Greeks. There is probably a texture update every century or so.

Some time ago I posted a journal about cheating in art and all of the comments agreed that using digital tools was not cheating. And what is A.I. if not another tool?

I have been playing with a few A.I. apps recently and I have gotten a lot of interesting results. A.I. is not doing the art for me. But I have used A.I.-generated elements in my art.

I’m fascinated by the passionate way many people are reacting to the emergency of A.I. generated “art”. And it kind of surprises me that many people I assume to be enthusiastic embracers of new technology are reacting to it so negatively.

The main complaint I often see is “It is not art!!!”

How many times has something similar been said in history? You are all probably too young to remember a time when music teachers would angrily state “Rock and Roll is NOT music”, but I had one of those in High School ( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

Let me tell you a little story. Back in the 1980s, I was working at a magazine when something historical happened. The first computer with a graphic design program appeared. It was very primitive compared with what we have today, but it blew everyone’s mind because of the implications.

Before that, the design of the magazine was done by manually pasting the photos, art, and sections of typed text on a board. That board was later taken to a place where it was photographed by a machine and that image was transferred to a metal sheet that was used to print the pages of the magazine.

With the computer, you didn’t need to cut and paste actual pieces of paper and photographs, it was all done digitally. It saved a lot of work, errors could be fixed fast and there was no mess.

But there was a person who didn’t understand the advantage and no matter how many ways I tried to explain it he said that was would never substitute real hand-glued pages. Of course, he was a guy who worked making the metal sheets.

I understand his feelings. But the world moved on and all design is done in computers nowadays.

A.I. was an inevitability, we all knew it was coming. Science fiction has been warning us for decades. Now it's here. There is no way back. It won't go away. Machines are learning to do many things that until now were the exclusive domain of our species. Get used to it This is only the first step. There is a lot more coming.

Should we be scared by the emergency of A.I. "art"? Oh yeah, absolutely. We should be as scared as a horse breeder the day the first Model-T rolled down Ford’s assembly line.

But panicking is the worst possible way of dealing with it. We have to learn to live with it.

This is just a new tool.
It can be used or it can be misused.
At the end of the end, it’s still down to how WE humans deal with it.

# A.I. generated “art” is nothing. Brace up for what’s coming next. The shitstorm around A.I.-generated porn is YUGE! I’m stockpiling popcorn.

These last few days have been crazy.
They finally put the fumigation tarp on the building and I had to go to a hotel with my family and the cats for three days. The hotel itself was very nice and I would have enjoyed my stay if it wasn't for the added hassle of my wife's mother, who requires constant attention and is very uncooperative due to her mental state.

The cats behaved pretty well, they hated being stuck in pet carriers, but the trip was short. My car is having issues, but at least it didn't die while transporting a bunch of cats and a crazy old lady.

Unfortunately, my wife's cousin (the other crazy cat lady in the family) who lives in the same building was not so lucky. One of her cats could not be found at the last moment. We looked all over, but she is a hoarder and her apartment is so full of junk it's impossible to walk across it. She assumed the missing cat was outside and would return and she went to her own hotel accommodation.

When she returned, she found the cat dead inside the apartment.
( ╯(oo)╰, )

It looks like he had been hiding somewhere in all that junk all the time. These are cats she picks up in the neighborhood and some are half-feral, probably his instinct was to hide when he saw strange people looking around. When the building was filled with gas to kill the termites the poor cat died trapped in there. It made me so sad. I took care of disposing of the body so my wife did not see it, she is very sensitive.

This ordeal made me miss three days of work. I was so preoccupied with all the necessities of my wife and her mother that I forgot to prepare my own stuff, I threw a clothes change and a laptop in a backpack and forgot my drawing supplies, so I didn't even work on my comic. And then I screwed something with the laptop and could not use it either.

Oh, well, at least it's over...

Not really, the car died again.

( x (oo) x )

Isn't there something about cats and luck?

( ･ั (oo) ･ั )

I managed to fix the car. It's running fine so far and it has not overheated again.
At least that means I can keep going to work.
( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

As if things weren't bad enough, now my car broke. No transportation means no job, even when the covid goes away. I have walked a few miles today under the Florida sun looking for some parts, but I haven't been able to fix the car. I don't even know if it can be fixed. It's like all, the engine may be toast.

Yesterday I went to buy stuff and the power steering got hard. I turned around and returned home, but by the time I was there the engine's temperature was all the way up. The belt has snapped and without the belt, the water pump doesn't work.

There is a possibility that the car is not totally screwed, but I won't know until I install the belt back. I have been trying all day but I failed. A mechanic probably can do it in 20 minutes, but I'm not mechanic.
( ᗒ (oo) ᗕ ) I have been trying for hours and all I have accomplished has been to smash a knuckle.

I hate making journals like this, but I need to vent somehow.

Walking back from the auto parts store, thinking about how miserable my life has become recently, I saw a man with no legs riding a wheelchair. Maybe that's the lesson the universe is trying to teach me, there is always someone who is in a worse situation. Count your blessings, my friends. Be thankful for whatever you have, even if it doesn't look like much.

I'm sorry for rambling. I love you all!
( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

The test results are out and I got the covid for the second time.
By law, I have to take a week's leave from work. I'm told the laws have changed and unlike the last time when I got paid, now it's unpaid leave.

I was already struggling as it was, losing a whole week of work hits me really hard.

To make things worse, next month they are going to put the termite tarp on the building and we need to stay in a hotel for three days. I have 6 cats and the only hotel that allows pets charges me $800. I was slowly saving that amount by stashing some cash every paycheck, but with I will have to use what little I had saved to survive this week. It's like all the crap lands on you at the same time.

I'm a person of little needs. When I lived alone I could survive on almost nothing, sometimes doing dumpster diving and selling my blood plasma. But presently, I live with my wife who is disabled, and her mother who has dementia. It's two people who need my help. It makes everything so much more complicated.

So I'm feeling like shit both physically and mentally here

( > (oo) < )

I was fine yesterday, then all of the sudden I got a horrible sore throat and other flu symptoms. I'm vaccinated and I already had covid once, but some people have gotten it twice. Let's hope not, I have enough shit in my life already.
( ᗒ (oo) ᗕ )

I scheduled a test for tomorrow, maybe it's just the regular flu.
( ᐢ (oo) ᐢ )

A new episode is up...

https://futurepig.com/fut097.html

Some time ago I was pissed off over some dumb shit and I stopped coming here.

What happened doesn't matter. I wasn't even involved. It was something that happened between other people, but I took it personally because it's a matter of principle for me. So I deleted my journals here and stopped posting here except for special occasions.

But now after some time, I stop to consider, what did I achieve? The people I was pissed with are not affected in any way by my absence. And on the other hand, the people who enjoy my online presence for whatever mysterious reason are being unfairly deprived of it. I'm punishing myself.

It's not like I ragequitted and now changed my mind. I kind of sadquitted. Ok, I was pissed and I'm still pissed at many things. Changing is not in my nature

If anyone thinks I'm an asshole, they will continue to do so no matter what I do. And they are going to be right too, I'm kind of an asshole. But what of the people who like me despite being an asshole? (or because I am!) I should cherish those and abandoning this site separates me from them.

And it's not like this is the only place with assholes, It's like the crew of the Spaceball One everywhere on Earth. I endure the presence of assholes in all other places, so why not here?

I'm getting old and the scary part is not that it's finally happening, but how fast it's happening. It makes you redistribute the various amounts of fucks you used to give over certain things. It also makes you nostalgic as fuck. It makes you miss things like this.

So, should I start posting here again?

Well, I guess if you are reading this, I already did.

I have noticed that despite having stopped posting here for a while, people keep following me and liking my stuff on this site.

I'm mostly active on Discord nowadays. If anyone wants to join my humble server, here is the invitation https://discord.gg/hhAhCT3