Alan LeStourgeon - Art, Photography, Life, Philosophy and Things I Overthink

The Paradigm Shift That Will Change Your Life

Sometimes making a major change in life requires more than just making a few adjustments here and there. Sometimes it requires an entirely new way of thinking. If you want to rebrand your business, or other “things” in your life because they aren’t working like you want them to, maybe YOU are the thing that needs to be rebranded.

If you have come to a point in your life where things are just not working, and you find your days are filled with frustration about your situation, maybe it’s your job, your relationships, your business, whatever it is you face, it could be a good time to just stop everything and go have a talk with that person in the mirror.

Throughout our lives we adopt different ways of thinking that range from the rather naive when we are young, because we don’t have the life experience to know how many situations turn out to be less than ideal, to the rather cynical and gruff when we get older. As we age we begin to learn how to read people from past experiences and it becomes easier to read their true intentions with less and less interaction.

We recognize familiar patterns and behaviors from the get go. We say to ourselves, “Yep, I’ve seen that before and I know exactly where things are going with this one.” And we choose to stay away from that situation or person.

That same thing can be found in business as well. Most of the time, business people want to interact with us because they see us as a prospect, like on Linkedin, rather than just a person to get to know. There are a few people on the net that I am friends with, but I don’t really know them. However, they message me a few times a year and act as if we are best friends. They are way too familiar with me for someone I don’t even really know and I’ve never had any in person interaction with.

I don’t like that unearned familiarity. It feels creepy to me. I don’t want, like, or appreciate people being buddy, buddy with me that I am just an acquaintance with online. Sometimes, it just takes life experience to be able to recognize those things where people try to take advantage of us because they want the benefit. And sometimes, to our detriment unfortunately, we choose to ignore what we see and experience, for various reasons.

This is the marketing game people play. One of the things that what I call, perpetual marketers do, is they write training program after program and get you buying into the next big thing that is supposedly going to change your life. It’s some kind of webinar, Zoom call, business club for women, ebook whatever and they have you convinced the only way you are going to succeed is by buying their product or service.

They get you in on the free ebook or cheat sheet, then they get you to sign up for the $60 a month business club, then the next thing you know, you’re signing up for their $3,000 coaching program that is supposedly going to produce the magic you are lacking in your life and or business.

And there is a certain demographic of people who sign up for these perpetual rah, rah, rah, business classes and spend an absolute ton of money for the next big thing that’s going to bring them untold success in life. I had a cousin who must have spent close to $100,000 on programs that were going to make her successful. Now, my cousin had already been a successful businesswoman who owned a multimillion dollar travel incentive planning company and she traveled all over the world setting up fabulous trips for her clients.

That business eventually died down due to former employees striking out on their own and stealing her clients, so she got fully introduced to the perpetual seminar world of building a coaching business. And she proceeded to spend tens of thousands of dollars on traveling around the country, and sometimes overseas, going to endless and expensive seminars to learn how to be a business coach.

I have also done the endless seminars thing being in a couple of different mlm businesses. While I did gain some good business insight and met some interesting people at these seminars, they never stopped, and the major ones once or twice a year were expensive to attend. By the time you bought tickets and flew or drove to some far away destination, paid for a hotel, and bought all your meals out, you could easily spend $500 to $1,000 for a weekend. Those seminars were twenty years ago or more, so I’m sure the cost has more than doubled to attend many of these events now.

Eventually, what I began to realize was, almost all the information that was being doled out was all the same, it was just being said differently. At one level the motivation was certainly good, but I began to think, do I really need to keep attending these things? What if I just did the work? And that’s when it all began to change for me. And I’ll get to more of that in a minute.

I also attended a lot of training sessions or webinars online. And I began to see that in an hour long webinar, the first 20 minutes or so were all motivational nonsense. For the first one third of this hour I was spending learning about some new thing, it was all, “freedom, spend time with the family, be your own boss, travel the beaches of the world, blah, blah, blah.” I got to where I could hardly stand to be on these webinars because I would be yelling at the computer saying, “Just get to the point! How do I make the money? What’s the upshot? I want the meat and potatoes! Let’s get to it.”

I finally got to the point where I refused to attend yet another webinar. I flatly refused to schedule a time to set aside another hour of my life to be wasted when I only received 20 to 30 minutes, if even that, of usable information, while the rest of the time was spent introducing the speakers and getting us pumped up with rah, rah, rah motivation. I had had enough.

"Congratulations for having a va jay jay, you go girl!"

And a lot of times many of the calls or online meetings I attended were of little benefit to me. And I can imagine what some of the women’s business club Zoom meetings are like. It goes something like this, they sit around and ask silly questions and pat each other on the back simply because they all have vaginas. Congratulations, you have a coochie, you go girl! Guys do this too.

The problem is, nothing of substance gets done.

You get kudos because you read a book, or got a head shot and other business photos taken, or changed your wardrobe, or got a haircut. Yeah! Okay great, all those things need to be done, but what actual work did you do?

Oof!

That’s when it hit me. That was the paradigm shift! And that’s when things began to change. Not all the training sessions and products I bought were a waste of time. Sometimes you really do need to learn to do something you have no clue about, but, the bottom line is this: Light a fire under your ass and do some real, productive work already! Write the articles. Make the video. Edit the video. Make more content. Do it every day! Make the memes for Instagram. Build your Instagram audience. Start a Threads account and stick with it! Make yourself a Facebook page and build your audience. Fix the email links on your damn website so they actually work and don’t go to error pages. Use your Facebook or other ad account and fail, fail, fail, and spend $1,000 until you figure it out and it starts to work.

And when you finally find something that works, you have to chase it with the ferocity of a warrior as if nothing else matters. You have to stop posting the, “I read a book” content and start posting content your audience interacts with, and you have to post that kind of content every single day, multiple times a day. It must be a regular part of your workflow. Nope, posting 2 to 3 reels a week about going on a hike with your boyfriend or girlfriend, doesn’t count. No one wants to see that nonsense on your account that’s supposed to be about your business anyway.

At the absolute height of my content production and money making days I was writing 5 articles a day, plus producing 6 memes for each of my 3 Facebook pages, meaning 18 memes and 5 articles a day total. And I kept up that amount of content production for almost 2 years. It slowed down a little over the next 4 years, but it was still right up there in a work all day range. Some might say that is too much work, was it worth it? Well, ask yourself if doing that much work to make enough money in 6 years to live debt free for the rest of your life is worth it? Yes, it was most certainly worth it.

It was worth it because I got to the point that after years and years of attending endless webinars and buying endless how to make money online ebooks, I wasn’t learning anything new and was tired of the overhyped “change your life” stories to get you to buy the latest product. I knew what I needed to know and I made up my mind that I was going to end the loop of being in the continuous learning mode, and graduate to the continuous working mode.

It’s the work, dummy! And it’s nothing else. Yes, you do have to learn how to do things, but endlessly learning, ultimately doesn’t produce a damn thing. Work and only work produces results.

Stop being addicted to getting pats on the back for reading a dumb book and attending a webinar. Belonging to a club with like minded individuals may feel good, but it doesn’t buy groceries. Once you start actually doing the work, and the money starts coming in, you finally get addicted to the work, and not the buying of more nonsense.

Yes, you have to find the right thing to do that is going to result in a positive cash flow, but once you find it, work like you are a crazy person on that one thing. If it is working, put everything else that doesn’t make you money aside, and get to work on the thing that works, so to speak.

Get off the feel good, pat me on the back for doing nothing, addiction, and get out there and do the damn work!

The Deeper Psychological Meaning of $1.01 Lemons

The never ending rise in prices is an inevitable fact of life. We seem to especially notice this at the grocery store because unlike fancy new clothes and stuff we don’t need from Amazon, we need to eat every day. We need food. If you are like me, I probably go to the store twice a week, so when that box of 6 energy bars goes from $5.69 to $8.99 in less than 2 years, that’s something we tend to notice.

And usually grocery stores do a pretty good job of at least trying to fool us and make us feel better about spending $9 for 6 energy bars because they psychologically price them at $8.99 instead of just a flat $9. That makes us feel like we really aren’t spending $9, we’re thinking it’s more like $8. Well, things have taken a turn and there are indications grocers aren’t playing that game anymore.

To set the stage, there was a time in the not too distant past where a local latino produce market in Palm Bay, Florida had the best prices, by far, for produce anywhere in town. You could get 15 limes or 10 lemons for just $1. Today, you can’t even buy 2 limes for a dollar or even a single lemon for under a dollar. And to make a marketing statement, the local Publix has priced lemons at $1.01 each. Nope, they aren’t 99 cents each, they are 1 dollar and 1 cent each.

What the heck is going on here? Why the abandonment of the psychological trick that makes me think I’m spending less than a dollar for a lemon? I could really care less about that penny I’m getting back in change. At 99 cents each I just feel better that it’s not 1 dollar yet, but yep, it’s really a dollar.

Everything changes when the grocery store prices that lemon at 1 dollar and 1 cent. They have abandoned one psychological trick for just straight up saying, “Fuck you, we’re going to price things where we want and you’d better get used to it, sucker.” Food prices have just gotten so ridiculously high lately that grocers are now trying to make us feel comfortable with prices in a range that we have no idea where they are going.

Oh, they still do play tricks though. There is the half gallon of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice that used to be $2 for a half gallon, that is now $5, and the carton is really 52 ounces now, not 64 ounces. And then there’s the frozen, chocolate covered bananas introduced to me by a dear friend, that made me feel good because they haven’t raised their prices in over a year, but then I discovered there are now only 4 bananas in the box, and not 5.

I went through an entire box and a half of those banana treats before I realized there were only 4 in the package instead of 5. I was at the local Publix and saw them, started reading the box and said, wait, what, there used to be 5 per pack, what the hell is this 4 stuff? And when I got home and looked in the freezer, sure enough, I had previously purchased 2 boxes of 4 treats each, thinking it was 5, and didn’t even realize it.

The bottom line is, food is so expensive now and going up so fast, grocers are psychologically conditioning us to just throw up our hands in exasperation and say, “Okay, I have to eat, I’ll pay the price.” Well, sometimes I don’t pay the price. There are some things I’m just not going to buy. I refuse to buy strawberries over $4.99. I’ve gone to the Publix generic brand of spinach, in the flimsy cellophane packaging, for my smoothies instead of the name brands that are now at $7.99 for 10 ounces. Yes, I know, it’s really $8 for 10 ounces. Beyond that, I can see one day just eating rice and beans 5 days a week and PB and J the other 2 days.

Somehow though, I have to keep finding a way to finance my chocolate chip habit. Even though a 10 ounce bag of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips have gone from $2, 3 years ago, to $4.49 today, I still need my fix and will for a long time. I will pay that price.

Since a half gallon is now 52 ounces, and today’s special deal is to pay the price for 5 chocolate covered bananas, and get 4, and lemons are $1.01 a piece, we now have 2 options: grow your own food, or just deal with it.

Make a choice and live with it.

Well, I guess another option is, you could shop at Walmart. Ugh.

Describing What You Want, What Can AI Systems Teach Us?

Can you describe what you want? That seems to be a pretty simple question, doesn’t it? When we communicate with others we have to be able to describe to them what it is we want from life, what our intentions are, what our dreams and goals are, what we want from the relationships we are in, what we need from businesses we frequent, the kinds of services we need from them and the list goes on.

This is the basic connection we have with people. We have to be able to communicate clearly. And even though clear communication is a must between various parties in life, sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes we don’t hear correctly. Sometimes those speaking don’t communicate clearly. Sometimes we don’t really say what we want to say and sometimes we overstep our bounds and are too pushy with our communications.

So, what if we could learn to communicate better? This may come as a surprise to you, but I think the entire buzz around chatGPT, Midjourney and all the other AI chat and art generators are going to make us, actually force us to do just that, communicate better. Because of these new AI systems so prevalent today, we will be forced to figure out how to ask them for exactly what we want.

A lot of communication between people is frivolous. We have all been at a party or gathering where there’s that one individual who won’t stop talking. They manage to talk about every subject under the sun and it is all you can do to just avoid them for the rest of the evening. And maybe we have all done this too, just possibly said too much and watched as someone’s eyes glass over because our talking is just too intense.

In the world of AI and telling these systems what we want from them, you have to be precise and not over do it. We cannot be that person at the party who talks too much. We have to learn how these systems go about understanding communications and we are then forced to tell them what we want without all the frivolous nonsense. And what it really takes from us, is realizing, “What do I actually want?”

I was working with my friend Christine Smith over at Christine’s Philosophy On Tourism the other day and we were trying to come up with a photo in Midjourney for an article she was working on related to fragrance free accommodations related to short term rentals. And the challenge we were having was in trying to describe to this AI art program what exactly it was we wanted. And some of the challenge was in Midjourney not understanding what we wanted, due to its own limitations.

This understanding on Midjourney’s part will eventually get better as it learns how humans communicate and as its programmers continue to modify and update its code. However, the challenge is still there for us humans as we start to interface with machines like we have never done so before.

We will begin to see for ourselves just what kind of communicators we really are. AI programs will, and already do, take what we say extremely literally. And that will make us start to think, since this machine is taking everything I say literally, then what do I actually mean? What am I really trying to communicate? What do I really want from it?

So what is the bottom line here? While some people are freaking out about the rise of intelligent machines, and there is certainly room for concern, I think as we get used to communicating with these programs, it will make us better communicators with each other. And isn’t that the challenge in so much of what we do? How much better would our friendships and business interactions and relationships be if we could just tell our friends, business associates and romantic partners what we really mean and what we really want?

As we train AI systems to better understand us, they in turn are training us to be more precise about how we communicate with them. And overall, that is a good thing. Crucial conversations are what makes a difference in the world and if we as humans can learn how to do that better, no telling of the true impact on society.

Don’t freak out about AI, not just yet. As we learn to communicate with machines and come to terms with how all of this works, we may just learn some things about ourselves.

A New Creative Revolution Is Upon Us: AI Art, Content, and the Future

AI art created by and prompt engineered by Alan LeStourgeon

There is a revolution upon us. For all content creators, meaning digital artists, videographers, vloggers, bloggers, writers of all kinds, journalists, seo experts, meme makers and the like in all forms of the creation of media, we are about to see a seismic shift in the way we work. And many who have delved into this burgeoning new technology, are already experiencing the essence of what this shift is going to be like.

With AI art programs such as Adobe Firefly, Midjourney, Dalle-2 and AI chatbots such as chatGPT, AI generated art and content is here to stay. It is the future of art and everything written, and just like the horse and buggy was replaced by the automobile, art, and the entire way content is created, is about to change radically, forever.

While traditional art such as drawing, pastels, painting and sculpting will always have its place and customers eager to buy, anything that is digitally produced is about to change drastically. We will have gone from creating the art ourselves, to a position of learning how to engineer prompts to be able to describe what we want with detail. There is still a lot of knowledge for a creative person to have to possess. If you don’t know about art movements, and materials and cameras, and lighting, and more advanced photographic techniques, and how Photoshop and 3D programs work, and other digital art techniques, you will not be able to engineer the right prompts to get what you want. Yes, you will be able to create something, but if you cannot describe what you want, the output you get will not be what you want.

Fractal AI flower prompt engineered by Alan LeStourgeon

There is a lot of AI art being displayed online and a lot of it is mediocre, just as a lot of stuff at art festivals is mediocre. What I think Is going to happen is that art will be taken to an extraordinary level of creativity, turning our minds into being more in tune with being able to describe deeper esoteric concepts.

It will be the same way with other content creation such as writing. We will have to know the great writers, great books, writing styles, political commentators, philosophical movements and the like to be able to describe to a chatbot what it is we want from it.

When everyone has the same tools, then the game changes and the people who are the best and produce the best work with the available tools, will be the ones making the most creative and beautiful art and writing the best content. They will be the ones in demand in this new creative landscape.

You either have to buy into this, or like a steamroller it will mow you down. The blacksmiths making horseshoes and iron parts for horse drawn carriages right at the time automobiles were being mass produced either had to come up with a way to make car parts, or their businesses dried up and they could no longer compete. The people working in the horse and carriage industry were forced by advancement to change. They had to do so or face the consequences.

This isn’t going to change. This is where art and content creation is going and we don’t have any say in the bigger picture. Advances in technology and mass movements towards new things sometimes take on a life of their own. And that is what is happening with AI art and content creation. It cannot be stopped, there is no way out of this and no telling where this will eventually go.

And yes, there are most certainly dangers with the use of ever increasingly intelligent AI systems. While there are those such as Elon Musk and many other important industry leaders who are urging a pause in AI development, all the big tech companies are in a mad competition to outdo each other.

What major corporation working on this is ready to suspend their role and step back to assess what the problems are while other companies race to get ahead of them? Not a single one would be willing to do this. So, short of the government stepping in and literally cutting off the power to Google and other tech and social media companies, the race will continue to its inevitable end, wherever that may be

There is no stopping this. It is already happening and some day soon, maybe in the next 3 to 5 years, some company will have a rogue AI bot that can modify itself when detected and will impossible to stop. There are already AI bots and versions of chatGPT you can train on your desktop that can and will escape any kind of government intervention, so some kind of dangerous scenario like this will happen in the next 2 or 3 years, if not sooner.

So this is the dilemma. Where do we go from here? For the first time in human history we are at the cusp of creating something we may not be able to control. And I honestly think we are at the point where we cannot control it because no one is willing to step back and assess things because the competition is on and these tools are just too valuable for big companies that stand to make billions to just set aside.

Pandora’s box has been opened and it cannot be closed again.

The only solution I can see is to use the tools available right now and understand fully what you are getting into because it is here and we have to get creative with it before it takes over. Get used to it. You have no choice.

The 10 Different Kinds of Pedestrians You Encounter On A Bike Path

Spring break is just around the corner for colleges all over the nation, and we here on the Emerald Coast of the Florida panhandle get our share of the crowd. They do bring in a lot of revenue for Walton county, but we also have our share of these partygoers who apparently have no idea of bike path etiquette.

There are certainly people all year round who extend absolutely no courtesy to anyone else on the bike path along 30A, but when the population of South Walton County swells to 20 times its normal population, it becomes almost hazardous to use said bike path. And not everyone reacts quite the same when you are on your bike trying to pass a group of pedestrians.

So, here are the 10 different kinds of pedestrians you encounter on a bike path:

The Scaredy Cat – As soon as this person hears your bicycle bell or horn, they run right out of the way as if a freight train is coming. I like that they get the message, they just don’t need to be quite so dramatic about it.

The Looker – This person doesn’t move out of the way at all. They just stand right where they are on the far left side of their group as you are coming up behind them and they turn around to look at you as you holler, “On your left!” They then just stand there, wondering what all the fuss is about, as you have to pull off into the grass to get around them.

The Starer – This is a person you are riding towards and they look at you as they are walking towards you on the left side of the trail, you even make eye contact with them, but they wait till the last second to get out of your way, while you nearly run them over.

The Angry – This person doesn’t care about anything else, they’re just mad that you are on the bike path and they have to get out of your way. I don’t see very many of these people, fortunately.

The One That Refuses to Move – These are the people who you would need scientific instruments to figure out if they moved over any distance at all to let you by. They’re walking 3 or 4 abreast with their friends taking up the entire width of the bike path, they see you coming towards them, and just will not get out of the way. Sometimes I try to hit these people in the elbow with my mirror.

The Beachgoer – These people park on the side of the bike path and unload an SUV full of beach gear, coolers, chairs, towels, floaties, and kids right in the middle of the path. As you try an maneuver around their pile of debris, they tell you in a sheepish voice, “sorry” and then do it again 3 hours later when they leave the beach. I’ve even seen people block traffic at an intersection with a 4 way stop sign just to unload their gear.

The Blind Street Crosser – Those are the folks who look both ways for cars while crossing the road, and then look at you and walk right into your line on the bike path. They look right, They look left. They even look at you and they walk right onto your path as if you aren’t even there.

The Bike Path Hog – They walk 4 abreast down the path as you ride up behind them. The two on the left get out of the way when you ding your bell at them, then they move right back in the way for the other 4 bikes behind you. And they never learn because they do this every time. And if you see them when you’re coming back the other way an hour later, they do it again. Of course they do it again, they’ve been doing it for an entire hour at this point.

The Left Side Walker Looking At Their Phone – You guessed it. There are those who walk down the left side of the path, on a busy day, right into oncoming bike traffic, and look down at their phone for 15 to 30 seconds while walking right at you. Even though you’re wearing out your bicycle bell, they don’t see you until you nearly hit them.

The Drifter – This is an interesting one. You see this person a half mile ahead of you walking on the right side like a good pedestrian, and as soon as you get near them, like a magnet, they start drifting directly into your path. I’ve seen this a hundred times. What is it that makes a person walk straight for 2 miles, then drift into your path when you are 20 yards behind them? Scientists need to study these people because it makes me say, “What the hell?” every time it happens.

I’m sure there are others who have their own unique style on how to block the flow of traffic on a bike path, but most people fit into one of these 10 categories. And there sort of is an 11th category. These people always thank you for ringing your bell when you pass them. This is my crowd. I like these people.

Thinking Outside The Box and The Zeitgeist Of The Day

You hear the phrase all the time that goes something such as, “We need outside the box thinking on this problem.” But how far out of the box can one really think, and how much are we just trapped in our own societal thinking? And how many truly original thoughts are there? Are we forever doomed in our own lifetimes to be sealed within the cultural zeitgeist of where we presently live in the timeline of history?

Let’s take a deep dive into that…

On December 13, 1799, Our first president, George Washington was feeling quite under the weather one evening. He rode around his ranch and finished his typical management chores for that cold and wet winter day. Not typical at all for the proudly punctual Washington, he came in late for dinner that evening and did not change out of his damp clothes. Early the next morning he could hardly breathe and his wife Martha wanted to ride out into the cold, damp night to summon doctors for her seriously ill husband. Concerned for Martha’s safety, one of Washington’s aides instead rode off and brought back his personal physician, Dr. James Craik. Attending to our nation’s Founding Father at that time were his personal doctor of 40 years, other physicians and 2 other medically trained aides.

You might tend to think Washington, considered one of the most important persons in the founding of our nation, would have access to the best medical care and doctors available in the United States at the time. As Washington lay on his deathbed on December 14th of 1799, he had what were thought to be the nation’s top physicians and medical assistants assembled by his bedside and within his residence. They worked tirelessly to try to save the first president of this new nation.

Unfortunately, every single treatment these learned medical experts used on Washington made his condition worse. Had they done absolutely nothing, he probably would have lived a few days to weeks longer.

The latest theory as to exactly what killed George Washington is acute bacterial epiglottitis. The epiglottis is the flap of skin at the base of the tongue which covers the windpipe during swallowing. In layman’s terms, Washington had a severely infected sore throat. There have been several theories to go around on what the specific ailment that Washington had, but he was most certainly weakened considerably by the fact that doctors and blood letting “experts” had drained as much as 40 percent of Washington’s blood in a 21 hour period. As the infection ravaged his body, Washington simply did not have the necessary white blood count, or enough blood, period, to let his immune system do the job it was designed for.

Thus was the state of medical knowledge at the time of the founding of our nation some 245 years ago. The supposedly most knowledgeable medical experts at the time, working on one of the most important persons in America at the end of the 18th century, simply had no idea what they were doing. All their attempts to save an aging American hero were completely and utterly in vain. In fact, had Washington’s kind of medical treatment, bloodletting of up to 5 pints, still been in use today, it would bring enough malpractice suits to easily bankrupt an entire hospital.

Though these medical experts had little understanding of the function and importance of the proper amount of blood the human body needs, terrible things can happen when individuals go along with the collective thinking of the day. And unfortunately, no one at the time understood just how bad the practice of bloodletting was, despite the collective medical thinking it was an acceptable practice.

Even though we are well into the scientific age complete with very advanced technology, you would think we have become immune from such backward thinking. However, no one at the time would have considered the practice of bloodletting a backward treatment. After all, it was a treatment which had been used for some 3,000 years, how could there possibly be something wrong with it?

Maybe it is because even in this day of far superior technology, much of our educational systems from grade school to college have been designed to indoctrinate students with ideals instead of teaching the processes of critical thinking and discernment. We teach the student what to think instead of how to approach the problems and mechanisms of thinking. This is not a modern day issue, as humanity has experienced some kind of a collective mindthink throughout most of our recorded existence.

History is replete with example after example of a unified way of thinking from age to age leading to numerous instances of war, famine, ethnic cleansing, political upheaval, scientific fraud, religious persecution, grotesque medical mistakes and human abuses from isolated incidents to monumental history changing movements. The Zeitgeist or “spirit of the age” is present in all epochs, in all cultures, and in all locations around the globe. While we are somewhat trapped in our present day thinking, this has been the story of human history for millennia.

Doctors used to think smoking cigarettes would help clear up the lungs and ease irritation of the nose and throat. And they could not have been further from the truth. Doctors started recommending cigarettes in the 1930s and earlier in the late 1920s cigarettes were marketed to women during women’s rights rallies as “Torches of freedom” or “Freedom sticks.” These 2 marketing techniques, and the resulting false narratives surrounding cigarettes as something of a positive thing, moved smoking into the mainstream and the rest is history.

It was also once thought that the Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy that existed, until spiral nebulae were discovered, which later were named “island universes” and then their name later changed to galaxies, when it was discovered they were just as the Milky Way was. It is now known that the largest galaxy yet discovered, known as IC 1101, contains 100 trillion stars, one thousand times the number of stars in our own galaxy. This was absolutely inconceivable to astronomers before the 1920s.

All this makes one think, what could we be thinking and living through today that nearly everyone believes is just fine, but has no idea it is actually harmful? What will society historians from 100 or 200 years from now look back on and think, “Wow, those people from the 2020s sure were backwards”?

With many examples throughout history of what was once considered mainstream thinking, turning out to be wrong, or even dangerous, what does it really mean to be able to think outside of the box? Or, how far out of the box are we really even able to think? And how much of what we believe have we been lead to believe? Cigarettes were never good for people to smoke. Their popularity was strictly a marketing campaign via the tobacco companies paying doctors to be in ads or write articles about their benefits, or they simply were marketed to women by Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations, as a way to express their freedom.

This article could go on forever about the times society has been manipulated to believe something that was completely manufactured, or how we, just by default, have believed things that simply are not true. Hopefully, at least the examples here might make you take stock of what you really think. And instead of pointing one’s finger backwards into the annals of history at the dummies that lived, “back in the olden days,” maybe let’s just examine each of our own ways of thinking and ask if what we unquestionably believe, is actually true.

There Is No Enlightenment At The Bottom of A Patron Bottle

You all know how this goes. You’ve had a hard week. You stepped on a pop top and blew out your flip flop, work was a pain, the boss was a jerk, one of the kids got in trouble at school, and your next door neighbor’s dog keeps wanting to fence fight your new puppy. You most definitely need a drink after all that, so you hit happy hour on Friday after work, or get home and whip up a double batch of margaritas to ease the stress.

That will do it, right? Those margaritas, or shots of tequila will make everything better. And as you sip down margarita one, two and three, you keep thinking the next, even slightest taste of tequila will transport you off unto a remote mountain top where you can become one with the wonderfully melodic sounds of a sitar while you bathe in the fragrance of your favorite patchouli and lemon grass incense. And then, surely then, you will have insight into all the world’s problems and everything will be better.

And Saturday morning rolls around with the dog licking your face because he needs to be walked, and you have a hangover and really want to stay in bed. Sadly, your empty margarita glass and freshly opened bottle of Patron did not bring the enlightenment you were hoping for.

It never does.

I feel good when I go to the liquor store and buy a new bottle of tequila. And chatting with whoever is minding the store is usually a bit more entertaining than talking with the cashiers on the grocery side of Publix. Maybe you have noticed that it’s an entirely different vibe talking with the liquor store clerk. The reason it feels like you’re talking with your local bartender in that situation is because many who work in liquor stores used to be bartenders. It makes a lot more sense for liquor stores to hire former bartenders instead of just the 21 year old kid down the street who orders Fireball shots and Jack and Coke and their local hot spot.

So, I’m already on a bit of a high when I leave the liquor store with my newly acquired bottle of Patron. I’ve had a good convo with the clerk, and I can’t wait to get my bottle home and cut through the plastic, peel that shiny green label off, pop the cork, and start mixing my evening elixir.

And as the evening drinking routine starts, I’m thinking surely this time I will have it all figured out and achieve some kind of understanding of the cosmic meaning of all this chaos we’re supposed to live through. I secretly know nothing will change, but just like buying Mega Millions lottery tickets, I keep hoping that one in 300 million chance chance of winning the big one, just like reaching enlightenment, will one day shine favorably on me, and maybe these two or three margs will do the trick.

And once again, they don’t.

No matter how many times I go through this, there is no enlightenment at the bottom of a Patron bottle, or a bottle of Crown Black, or Grey Goose, or Johnnie Walker Blue Label, or Brugal 1888 rum.

Even that beautiful $2,500 bottle of Patrón X won’t bring enlightenment, because it’s really just the same basic liquid wearing nice makeup and a sexy dress.

How Can Tito’s Vodka Be Taken Seriously With That Lame Ass Font?

Let’s talk about the alcoholic elephant in the room, or rather at the bar. No one takes Tito’s vodka seriously because Lucinda calligraphy is a ridiculously lame font. There, I said it.

I worked in graphic design for 7 years in an office and did freelance work for an addition 2 to 3 years and I can honestly say, I can’t remember a single project I worked on where Lucinda Calligraphy was ever used. Not one. No one ever asked for that font. No lawyers, doctors, plumbers, garage door installers, dentists, and on, and on ever requested it. No one ever said, “You know, I’d like my ad designed with Lucinda Calligraphy, because it’s such a cool font.”

If you are a graphic designer and you drink Tito’s vodka, you are a disgrace to your profession. I mean that with all the love, and satire, I can muster.

So how did Tito’s vodka come up with the idea to use that font to plaster it on the label of their, perceived to be premium, adult beverage product? I don’t really have a clue to the actual answer to that question, but it was either designed by some Tito’s executive’s grandchild, or it was an elementary school design project, because you know, 2nd grade kids design labels for alcohol brands all the time, right?

My theory is that some executive at Tito’s bought their grandchild their first computer in 1992, and they put together a product label in Microsoft Paint. And grandpa was so impressed with his Jr graphic designer, he brought the cheesy label into a design meeting and insisted everyone on the board approve the crummy design.

When I was in my teens, my dad owned an advertising business and used to pay me $2 a piece for sketches of logos he assured me he was showing to his clients. When I absolutely never saw one of my designs make it onto anything he sold, I finally began to realize he was just encouraging my budding art career. In reality, he probably just didn’t have the heart to tell me my designs sucked.

Part of the allure of drinking is that the bottling of the product is sophisticated and sexy. I mean, if you’re going to drink poison, it’s a little more palatable if it’s sexy. There is nothing about Tito’s bottle or label design that says sexy. Patron tequila is sexy. The design of Tito’s vodka has all the sexiness of being served in a paper bag, while you’re living in a tent, on a sidewalk. And as a bonus on their seriously lame ass font, this vodka comes in a screw top bottle. A corked bottle says sip me, while a screw top bottle says, you guessed it, chug me.

Somehow, Tito’s has become synonymous with being a premium vodka brand, but in reality, it isn’t. Go into a bar and ask for Tito’s in your martini and you will get a $2 to $3 up-charge for a “top shelf” liquor. And then go to the liquor store and see that it sells for $17 for a 750ml size and $30 for a handle. Nothing says premium liquor more than paying $30 for a bottle that has a handle, so you can carry it like a mop bucket.

I would probably drink Tito’s if they had the decency to use a premium font, while they’re pretending to be a premium vodka. I mean, it is a fairly decent, cheap vodka, even if they couldn’t afford to pay a real graphic designer.

Photorealistic Drawing of The Colorado River In Glen Canyon

This is a photorealistic pencil drawing I did of the Colorado River in Glen Canyon Arizona. The drawing is based on a photograph I took in 2011 when I went on a big 5 week long adventure from Palm Bay, Florida throughout the southwest.

This drawing took a total of 325 hours to complete. It measures 17 x 11 inches and was drawn on Strathmore Bristol paper. The work represents 2.5 months of continuous drawing, 5 hours a day 7 days a week. I did take a 10 day break over the Christmas holidays when I was working on it from November of 2o21, to February of 2022.

The reason I undertook such a challenging project is that I wanted to see what I was made of as an artist. I wanted to do something so difficult for me that I would either finish it, or go crazy in the process.

And there were many challenges along the way. One of them was just being able to focus for several hours at time when sometimes it would take 3 to 4 hours to only complete 4 or 5 square inches of the drawing. Another challenge, and probably the biggest one was that once I completed drawing the sky and mountains, I figured out that I had no idea how to draw the water.

I had never really drawn water like you see in this picture and had to spend 2 weeks doing studies just to figure out how to get that water texture right and to my satisfaction.

The original drawing is for sale at Fine Art America and comes already framed. The price is $4,750 for the original and there are also prints available as well. You can contact me via Fine Art America if you are interested in the original. If you would like prints on anything from fine art paper, to canvas, to aluminum, you can just order through that website.

Ride Your Bike With A Bicycle Basket On The Road, Straight To Jail

It was a nice day the other day in Santa Rosa Beach, FL, even in the midst of a January winter, so as usual I was out on my electric bike and I think I saw a UFO. It startled me at first because it was a rather unusual sight.

I was of course, observing proper bike path etiquette, and notice a strange object in my peripheral vision to the left, moving with traffic in the right lane. At first I could not identify it because it was such an anomaly. Then, I became aware that it was a bicycle, but it wasn’t just a normal road bike you see with the rider all decked out in the usual, “Yes I’m making a statement,” bike fashion, it was a single speed, rental bike. And, as if that wasn’t the worst of it, it was sporting a wicker basket attached to the handlebars. I know, I can hear the gasps!

On any normal day, the right side of the right lane of the road is reserved for road bikes, who like to hog as much of the road as they can as they slow down traffic from 35mph to a 15 to 20mph funeral procession pace. They are at least honest in their arrogance as they bogart the road. But then there was this guy playing Lance Armstrong minus the steroids, on his rental bike with a basket nonetheless.

I don’t get it. What is the bike path for? Why choose to ride your slow-to-a-crawl bike in traffic when there’s a bike path? Thankfully, Walton County Florida has used some of our tax money to put a bike path on 30A, but Mr Armstrong With A Basket decides to ride in traffic instead.

Was he proud of his basket? Does he think bike paths are for sissies? Did his vacation mojo just get the best of him? Did he have too much to drink at the pool this afternoon?

Mid January in Santa Rosa Beach is pretty low key. There aren’t a lot of tourists around, so the bike path is not filled with people meandering aimlessly with no regard for anyone but themselves, while they block the flow of traffic to take vacay Instagram selfies. Being that there was a perfectly good, nearly empty, well maintained and safe bike path just 50 feet across the road, why plod down the road at probably a 10 mph pace right out in traffic?

I would be less animated about all this if it weren’t for one tiny thing. The dude had a bicycle basket and he was playing Tour De 30A like a champ. I mean, not even the annual Halloween 30A Witches Ride does this. Even with all the double, double, toil and trouble the witches could cause, they at least adhere to the safety of the bike path.

I’m glad I’m not a dictator of an underdeveloped nation who likes to play soldier and wear a military uniform all decorated with The Franklin Mint style medals. Because if you rode your bike with a bicycle basket, on the road in my country when there was an entirely legit bike path (something you would rarely see in under developed central or south American lands, but work with me here), you would go straight to jail, even if you never undercook or overcook fish.

I just want to know what people who do such a thing are thinking? And when they’re walking, do they also like to wander in traffic, while the rest of us prefer the safety of a sidewalk?