uncanny_valley raze now you can have a nuanced conversation with a neural network. you can hear how frank sinatra might have sung a pixies song, or how tim buckley would have crooned an early billy_joel deep cut. you're only a keystroke away from bringing any still image or animated scene you can invent to life. but something is always just a little bit off. maybe moss from a tree becomes part of someone's arm. or a man seated at an upright piano ends up saddled with the face of a woodland creature. not that he's complaining. the background and foreground keep shifting in strange, subtle ways. so it is with the architecture of dreams. and most of us have been asleep for a very long time. ai is capable of some disquieting and fascinating things. i don't know if i should fear it or embrace it as an occasional ally in questionable clothing. maybe both. 240529 ... ovenbird I hear an eldritch whine behind the music of the day: while waiting at a crosswalk I catch sight of a man with dusky caves where his eyes should be. My brain registers this fact, that can not be a fact, and a spike of adrenaline gives me the swift feet of a startled hare. My dog and I meet a woman and her perky pomeranian, whose name (I am told) is Minnie. Minnie suffers from alopecia. Her face is a round puff of adoration, her rear end is almost hairless. Once my dog gets an unusually unimpeded sniff we set out along the gravel path that follows the bank of the Fraser. I nearly step on a snail sliming its way to a lunch of clover and after that every step precipitates an explosion of calcium carbonate and a trail of ooze and nacre. Near home a man ahead of me coughs up a hairball and struggles to walk in a straight line. I feel my face find the contours of disgust just as he turns and impales me with a deranged grin. The morning wears a fox pelt with cabochon eyes too bright to pass for real. When I poke at the heap of fur with a stick it falls away, revealing maggots and the maudlin reek of memory. 250628 what's it to you? who go blather from