Spouse came back from his immigration thing in a good mood. I could tell as soon as he walked in the door.

"How'd it go?"

"We struck out. We didn't get a single one of our guys," he said.

"Oh noooooooo. What a bummer."

"No one would come out of their homes," he said with an exaggerated shrug. "We think maybe they got tipped off. There's a lot of coordination. Someone might have given them a head's up." (Spouse would not have done this - he colors in the lines, for better or worse - but he sure wasn't unhappy about it.)

"So all day, you sat in a car in front of someone's house, eating snacks and hoping they'd stay inside?"

"Yeah, basically."

He said some things implying that the people he was supposed to get did have some kind of criminal charge, but he considered it far beneath the level of coordinating a bunch of federal agents to pick them up. It is EXPENSIVE, all that planning and time, just to ruin the lives of people who have jobs and homes and contribute to the community. This is costing all us taxpayers so much money. These are not marauding rapist-murder-drug dealers that are supposedly out there in the tens of thousands causing chaos. And now spouse has less time to spend on real threats. He has to turn down real cases with real victims under a certain dollar amount because it's not worth the agency's time to pursue, and yet here we are burning wads of cash to chase people who are not actively doing harm, while ignoring those who knowingly give them the jobs that they are "stealing".

It's like spending $$$$ to get rid of an ant infestation while ignoring the pile of sugar dumped on the kitchen floor. At some point, in a sane world, you have to realize it's not the fault of the ants for going where the resource is, and start going after which roommate is dumping the sugar. Also, the ants are quietly washing and putting away the dishes at night in return, like good guests, and you completely take this for granted and will be double outraged when you realize you have to do your own dishes again.

What a dumb clown show and waste. How shameful this is for our country.

--

I am, I swear, almost done with this first collage. The last tweaks are really sucking up time and my poor old laptop is having a tough time handling the file. I think it has around 160 different pieces of info - 160 layers. When I start turning on the drop shadow effects, the little hamster has to run extra super duper fast. The week 1 collage is less dense at about 100 layers and it's much easier to work with. I think the other weeks will be about the same. This first one is just dense.

So all the last tweaks take an inordinate amount of time and it is a slog. This is about time where I start thinking the whole project is clearly a hot pile of garbage and I second guess everything about it. I have been looking at it too long. I will probably run it by chatgpt and let it tell me how amazing it is, ha ha. The morale boost is real, even if the compliments are synthetic.

I have been trying to dial in a rubber stamp effect for a few hours now. Like, I want to "stamp" in symbols to add more visual interest and make it look more like a crazy person's conspiracy bulletin board (aesthetic! artsy! fair use!) and less like a bunch of cut 'n paste screenshots (copyright infringement! rouse the lawyers!). To be fair it was chatgpt's idea, not mine, when I ran the first collage by it and asked it for improvement suggestions. And it does sound like a good idea, but god damn has it been a pain to find (raid from the internet yar har har) the right symbol icons and figure out a really good stamp effect. Chatgpt tried to make me some relevant stamp icons and a couple are good but mostly not. Like it really wants to try but it's not nearly as good as translating into visual images as it presents itself to be, and I only get a few images a day so I can't make it do a bunch of revisions. (Pretty sure chatgpt would also be worthless for telling me how to create a stamp effect - it offers, but so far my experience is that it is good for brainstorming and big picture ideas and shite at nitty gritty working details. Also, discovering how to create just the right effect is the fun part - why would I want to outsource that??)

Which is a problem that is eventually going to rear its head, assuming we survive long enough - by relying on AI, you lose the opportunity for the "happy accident" effect, where you stumble into a more creative, better solution by noodling around and sometimes fucking up. Sometimes being max efficient isn't ideal. Try explaining that to your boss's boss, though.

I have a bizarre stack of layers for texture that I cut 'n paste into the collage, and then I set the layer mode on burn and I play with the focus blur tool, which is my absolute favorite thing about gimp so far. I haven't used a recent copy of photoshop so I don't know if it's a photoshop tool ripoff (probably), but it is so fun and cool for inky watercolor like effects. That, as far as I've figured out, is the secret to a good rubber stamp effect. Plus messing around with different swatches of color to figure out what looks best under burn mode. But the end result is a bright transparent red with inky texture and a slightly smeared edge. It's giving obsession, it's giving angry basement crackpot. Perfect.

--

When learning a new software, there is a point when you figure out if it has an auto save feature. If you are smart you check this before you get chest deep in something and the computer barfs. If you are not smart ...

Gimp does not auto save, as far as I can tell. I know this now. I know this because I lost several hours of work.

I am still not done with the collage yet. I do now have a small library of stamp symbols to choose from.

Look at my stamps,

aren't they neat?

wouldn't you think my collection's complete?

wouldn't you think I'm the choom

the choom who has everything?

Look at this file, icons compiled

So many riot stamps in an anarchist style!

Look in the hard drive you'd think

Sure, she's got everything

I've got vaccines and handcuffs aplenty

I've got justice and dollar signs galore

You want protests? I've got twenty

But who cares

No big deal

I want more ...

See, I don't need chatgpt to write dumb parodies. I do it myself.