Real Estate Lawyer
Friday, August 4th, 2023 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio
So, this is the final image I went with for the song, Shelley.
You can call this style, "Picassime," I guess.
I used an Anime AI engine, but in the prompts, always put the word, "Picasso," at the end. I originally wanted to go with anime-cubism, or anime-art-deco, but the AI did not recognize those terms.
Either way, this is the look of the Wig City album now...
This one for, $8.00 Heart is probably the best incarnation of picassime.
And I did enjoy how letting another, "artist" do the illustrations kinda freed up the meaning and feel of the songs from the constraints of my own vision.
Here, the song, Rendezvous regains it's proper, romantic context. The song can be heard as innocent or very racy, but this picture is nicely unbiased.
Still, I could not for the life of me get the AI to understand what meteors were.
This is for the song, Aurora, which always used to be just a photo of my downtown, but this image makes it more universal and captures the mood of the song better.
But the city pictured here is about the right size. Not a huge city, just a mid sized town... run down, as Aurora was back in the 1990s, when the song was written.
In the mailbox, as I left for work today was a big thick envelope from BMO that I thought was for me... but it was addressed to my parents.
However, it said, "loss mitigation," right on the envelope... meaning they're likely in the early stages of foreclosure.
Now, I emailed all the documents to BMO on July 18th... over two weeks ago now... death certificates and deed documents proving I'm the successor in interest for the property.
So... it's kind of an insult that, not only have they yet to even confirm reciept of my email, but they're still addressing loss mitigation bullshit to Mom & Dad, who they must know by now, are both dead!
So, from work, I called a local real estate lawyer... explained my situation... and now have an appointment to see him on Thursday at 2PM.
It's a lucky thing I took next Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off!
I need to have two full time paychecks back under my belt before I go to a bank to talk about getting a loan against the house.
That takes a month. And by coincidence, that date coincides with my one-year mark with GeoStaff!
We're talking September 18th... as the earliest I can talk to a bank about a mortgage or a home equity loan.
So the point of the lawyer is to buy me that time... by forcing BMO to admit that Mom & Dad are actually dead, and that they need to deal with me, about this goddam balloon payment bullshit.
The new PenFed card has a 9K limit, so... I'm guessing that will be well more than enough to cover this lawyer's fees.
I then sent an email to the same address as I sent the documents two weeks ago, saying that I had not heard back, and that I was retaining a lawyer to represent me in the matter.
And yes, I did finally get my new driver's license in the mail yesterday.
So... the matter is under control... and those motherfuckers are not getting this house!
Okay, let's get back to the AI art generator, shall we?...
I had said yesterday that I paid for 5,000 credits, but that was in error. My $40.00 only paid for 1,000 credits.
And to finally generate ten decent images, I used almost 500 of those credits.
Part of it is just tweaking the text prompt to get the AI in the ballpark.
A guide online said to use the structure of: (subject),(action/scene),(mood),(artist).
And, artist, there, is the name of a famous artist, such as picasso, to influence the style.
So, it takes about four or five tweaks to the text to get the AI in the ballpark, but then it can take up to 20 more executions of that same prompt to get it to generate one that's to your liking.
As I said yesterday, the AI is fickle... on some executions it just ignores parts of the prompt completely... or in many cases it just does not understand certain concepts.
I said above that I could not get it to figure out what meteors, or shooting stars were.
But I also had huge problems with the concept of tripping... like in the song, Tripping, where the first line is, "I'm practically tripping over you now."
This was typical of what it was putting out.
I tried changing the language to, "bumping into each other," and, "running into each other," but it didn't help. I stuck with, "tripping over each other and dropping books," and just kept hitting the create button over and over...
This was one of the few that was even close to what I wanted.
And this is the one I finally went with!.. because after over twenty tries, it was clear, this was as good as it was gonna get!
Swimming, was another concept it just did NOT understand!
But what I found most telling... was that the AI would not depict a man crying!
I have two songs; Shelley and Cry Baby, where the men should be flat out bawling with tears rolling down their faces... because that's what artsy type men do when they get rejected by the women their in love with!
They get drunk, and whine and cry about how unfair life is!
But the concept of a man crying was so alien to the AI that, when the prompt was, "man with tears on his cheeks," it assumed I meant, "tear," as in... a rip!... like to tear fabric, or tear paper.
It gladly gave me an image of a man with literal tears in the skin on his face!.. cuz that's something a man might logically have after a fight!
It also had a very difficult time depicting men simply being sad!
I have a couple other songs where the guy is quite sad... also because he's heartbroken, right?.. cuz that's your whole world at a certain age.
But the AI was very biased toward depicting the guy as being angry, rather than sad.
It really just lays bare the explanation for our huge problem in America with incell mass shooters!
When the only negative emotion you're allowed to have is anger... because simple sadness, or, god forbid, crying, are off the table... well, rage it is!
And what man worth his salt would simply be enraged?.. he has to avenge himself!
The AI is a window into that, because while it might be trained on a fairly wide body of historical imagery... it gets most of it's validation from the popular imagery... especially on a platform like NightCafe, where it's interacting with the... mostly young, population... every day.
People sit and stand. Rarely do they walk. If they do walk, they do not trip!.. and they certainly never swim!
The sky has either clouds or stars, sun or moon, but what is a meteor?
And men are never sad, and do not cry! That is what women do! Men are either in perfect control... or angry!
So, yeah!.. the AI has it's problems drawing hands and stuff... but a lot of it's other shortcomings are our own shortcomings as a society!
We have lost a lot of the humanity we used to have... and it's not the fault of technology.
It's the fault of the times we live in.
And with that... I'm gonna get back to adding lyrics to, Wig City, tonight.
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