Philip, Prince of Whales Club Swag (members only)
Dermatitis journal, entry #0004
Alakazam!
It is rare that a private diary of one’s medical condition creates a demand for merch. But, dear diary, that is exactly what has happened. My previous anguish-filled entry has sparked a deluge of requests for print-ready color graphics with which other sufferers (of not only dermatitis, but also of general smelliness, and especially of terminal boredom with the Cetaphil logo) may contrive to adorn their own containers of that blessed, soothing substance.
I would like to offer stickers for easy application to your Cetaphil containers, but I have yet to learn how to produce such things, and how to offer them at low cost in an online merch store. Someday, perhaps. But for now, please feel free to use the following graphics in any way you like.
When I proposed the new cartoon representative for Cetaphil (Philip, Prince of Whales), I of course knew that my crude pencil sketch was not suitable for use in the real world. I thought I made it clear in the tightly-reasoned narrative that I was workshopping ideas and images with Cetaphil corporate—admittedly in a one-sided manner with little or no—okay, exactly no—feedback from Big Cetaphil. They were probably too busy arguing over subtle shades of blue and green for next year’s bottle redesign. The upshot is that they never took my conceptual design to the next stage of development.
Never fear! Armed with the power of DALL-E, we no longer have to depend on high-priced design professionals. We can do it ourselves a whole lot better, and quickly. Let us begin.
I began by propping my conceptual design of Philip, Prince of Whales before me. While gazing at him, I let my fingers engage in “automatic writing” to produce a textual description of the Prince in the DALL-E input area. The first drawing was quite nice:
It’s nice, but it’s missing some things I clearly asked for. Also I did not ask for a baboon. Nevertheless, this result does bring up—GAAAAH!!! Holy crap!
Sorry. I recently started using one of those soap dishes that adheres to the tile wall with a large suction cup. It is prone to falling off, making a noise like unto a small airplane crashing into the house, and it just did it again. I’m OK.
Where was I? Darned if I know. The Soapdish Incident has wiped my near-term memory.
Moving right along, I asked DALL-E to keep it just like that, but to please add the crucial missing elements: diamond nipple rings (it had somehow substituted bling necklaces worthy of Mister T), armpit hair, and royal trumpeters. This yielded Round 2:
I’m not seeing a single armpit hair (not that one would suffice; I envision a thicket) The yoga pants are morphing into a rather provocative panty formation more suited to a bipedal creature than to a tubular cetacean. I specified courtiers in uniform blowing long ceremonial trumpets; instead, I got the Merman Tabernacle Torso Brass Band. I notice that anytime I ask DALL-E to include adoring fans or fawning courtiers, it makes them semi-nude. Don’t go blaming me for that. DALL-E seems resistant to depicting nipple rings, but I see that it toned down the bling proportions and it did allow two of the diamond pendants to land strategically where nipples would be, if Philip was a dude. Not anatomically correct, but it’s what I was going for. I the undersigned do hereby accept these pendants as fulfilling my request for nipple rings.
It wonder: when you start using suction-cup based bathroom technology (rag hooks, soap dishes), is it incumbent upon you to pull them off and reapply them on some schedule to prevent them falling off and startling you half out of your wits? Was it naive of me to expect the thing to adhere for all eternity, or even for a month?
I was happy with Philip qua Philip, but not with the Chippendales orchestra. I asked for a more discreet depiction of appropriately garbed trumpeters, and not so many of them. I just wanted a row of about a dozen with golden trumpets a-gleaming.
Better. At least the trumpet guys are more nearly clothed. DALL-E seems to ignore specifics such as “one dozen trumpeters”. I’m glad there’s no more baboon. The elephant to the right would be nice if it weren’t apparently standing (or floating) in extremely deep water. But that’s just being picky, I know.
More legitimate is my complaint about how DALL-E deals with text. I asked it to feature tattooes on Philip, just like the fin tattooes in my original drawing. As I have learned in other art journeys, though, DALL-E will not give you the exact text you ask for. It garbles it or even makes up a whole new language. I suppose this is to render the program unsuitable for generating propaganda with embedded messages. You can, of course, supply captions or else use other tools to edit the image. But darn it, I sure would like to be able to get the text I want right there in the original image. It is hard to make a suitable corporate and/or club logo without the all-important textual message.
And, not to blame DALL-E for every misstep, all along I forgot to request the banner with Philip’s name! Talk about not ready for club swag! I also wasn’t entirely happy with the previous image, wherein Philip appears to be visiting Venice. It is not entirely clear that he is the monarch in his own realm. It’s the Flipper Effect. Remember Flipper, the crime-fighting dolphin? Brace yourself: that show ran for more episodes than the original Star Trek program!
While I willingly suspend disbelief when watching films or TV shows, even as a child I found Flipper intensely unsatisfying because I knew that bad guys could take Flipper out of the equation simply by committing their crimes away from the ocean. Also, even if the action was in or under the sea, if the humans were in boats then Flipper always looked subordinate, peering up at them from below.
I cannot have Philip, Prince of Whales appearing subordinate to the throngs of supposed subjects on shore. How, from his lowly floating and bobbing position, can he project authority? He needs to be in an environment wherein he can be dominant.
I asked for the banner, a more clearly in-charge underwater Philip, and, one more time, armpit hair:
DALL-E giveth, DALL-E taketh away. This is very nearly exactly what I was striving for. Look at Philip under that magnificent banner, centrally located with all eyes on him, and his yoga pants restored to a more seemly length.
Sadly, the Naked Torso Squad is back, mostly sans trumpets. The dolphin (gulp…Flipper?) with a trumpet emerging from its belly is horrific—I would take the baboon over that any day. And my row of royal trumpeters consists only of that one Professor Harold Hill guy in the lower left with his confusing assemblage of trombone parts (I’m not counting the nearly-naked dudes as trumpeters, since they have nary a trumpet).
I turned over a new leaf a while ago and began cleaning my bathroom every week—or every two weeks, max—whether it needs it nor not. Perhaps it would be wise to reattach all suction-cup-based devices on that same schedule.
I could keep trying to achieve the perfect image, but knowing what I know about DALL-E, I don’t think it’s going to get any better. I hope the club members can work with these images, perhaps crop out the disturbing bits and send them off to a reputable sticker manufacturer to create appliqués suitable for use in the bathroom (hopefully your Cetaphil bottles are secured on a shelf that does not rely on suction cups to maintain its place on the wall).
And that would be that, except that I have another update for you.
Remember Mr. Bubble, he of the false promise that he would “bubble you clean”? In my previous journal entry, I showed that he’s still around, but without that fraudulent promise. Well, it turns out that the “new” Mr. Bubble in stores is in fact a completely different personage (if that is the word) than the old Mr. Bubble. I know this because I happened upon the 1960’s Mr. Bubble, apparently living in squalor on the streets.
He’s still out there, making that same promise. I am shocked that my parents used to let me climb into a bathtub with that guy. It was a different time, that’s for gosh-darn sure!
Keeping a safe distance so that he could not belatedly attempt to bubble me in any way, I asked Mr. Bubble how he had fallen on such hard times. He spoke of a trial and a guilty verdict back in 1973, which was depicted in somewhat sanitized (ironically) fashion in a made-for-TV movie, Guilty—and Lovin’ It!! The Bubbles McGee Story:
Mr. Bubble told me that Hollywood, as Hollywood will do, had turned a real-life tragedy into a comedy about a happy-go-lucky con-bubble. He shared this image from the actual courtroom, at the moment when he was found guilty:
He alleged that it was a show trial. As proof, he pointed to the headlines announcing the verdict, displayed on the wall even before the “secret” jury deliberations had concluded. He also alleged Big Lanolin had used payola to set him up as the fall guy to obscure the fact that it was that vile additive—which, brace yourself, is made from the pus in sheep zits—that had caused the dirt to adhere to young children like myself. He crawled toward me, vowing to prove that he could in fact bubble me clean.
Visions of carefree, rag-free bathing once again swam before my eyes, but upon feeling his bubbly grip on my ankles and looking down at the pathetic creature he had become, I ran swiftly from the scene. As enticing as it was, I could not entubulate myself with that…that thing.
In my earlier journal entry I reviled Mr. Bubble for luring me into what turned out to be a club built on an enormous falsehood. I forgive you, Mr. Bubble, and I hope that someday, perhaps in the next world, we will all be reconciled into one big happy club where we can enjoy the blessings of our kind benefactor. I can almost see it now…
Nope.
I say, I say: I can almost see it now, but with Philip, Prince of Whales more prominently featured, and with you, Mr. Bubble in your prison garb, resembling your pink bubbly self and not—I repeat not—the Jesus-like figure you somehow became. Perhaps instead of a man shape, you should become one with Everything. Your pinkness and your bubbletude should pervade all things. It is something we all devoutly wish for ourselves, and you, my bubbly friend, deserve it.
To be clear, though, you deserve it in the Great Beyond. Here and now, we’re sticking with Philip, Prince of Whales-themed Cetaphil because a) it works; and b) we’ve invested a lot of time and effort in the merch.
Boing!