TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Mocha and Mascarpone by TET 2026 Original Acrylic Painting on Canvas (40 x 50cm). Prints Available here . (RedBubble Store) M ocha and Mascarpone are so named because naming them 'Coffee and Cream' seemed a little on the nose, no matter how nice that sounds. The theme is friendship between two, somewhat exotic cats, Mocha, clearly Siamese, while Mascarpone says she is Siberian. Are they an item? I guess it’s all in the interpretation of the look these two are exchanging in the warm, evening light, the eyes, the negative space… that sharp blue glance from Mocha versus Mascarpone’s half-closed, content grin In these new cat paintings I’m attempting to create more story and interaction between my cats within each new painting. This artwork being inspired by two of my earlier cat paintings, Shakira , and Rose’s Tale . Initially it was going to be those two cats but my recent cats are more stylised, making these two feel like completely new characters. The warm pink-orange backgroun...

Books Available from Lulu (Recommended) or Amazon , Stickers, Coasters, Mugs Visit the Resident Dragon Art Time Store . E victed from his cave, so the city can build a new freeway, aspiring actor and fire dragon, Red, temporarily moves into the suburban home of his friend, and former short film director, TET, and his two pets, Cool Froyd the Cat and Grrr Dog. Resident Dragon Book 1 A Dragon's Gotta Live Somewhere. This is the premise that starts my thirteen book series of joke a day gag cartoons, of which the first three are now available for you to own and share with your dragon, cat, dog, or human white male (business suit wearing) loving friends! Intended as an alternative coffee table book, the humor is family friendly and relatable to anyone who's ever lived in a shared house with pets (and possibly a dragon), while the art is bright and bold enough to simply be enjoyed by younger readers even though these are not intended to be children's books. These three premium, ...

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

O ver the weekend my state, South Australia, went to the polls to elect our government for the next four years. Going in it was considered a pretty safe bet the current Labor government, with Peter Malinauskas as Premier, would be returned. The real drama would be how the numbers looked for every other 'headline party' (those the mainstream media actually report upon) in the mix. The election didn't disappoint. Labor won with a record breaking landslide victory. The Liberal Party took a major hit with a record breaking swing against it in almost every seat, while One Nation had it's best result in any election since 1998, and even picked up its first ever lower house seat in an election outside of Queensland. Interestingly that seat was at the expense of Labor's former member for Light (my electorate) who decided to challenge himself by trying for the seat of neighboring electorate, Ngadjuri. Had he stayed with Light he would've been fine, as we remain a Labor s...

W hen I first saw the trailer to Caught Stealing  I was immediately interested in seeing the film. It looked like it was going to be something of dark, edgy, gangster, comedy film, with twists and turns, very much in the vein of Guy Richie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels  (1998) movie, which I really enjoyed. Obviously, I didn't see this in theatres, and am reviewing it now because I've finally caught up with it on Amazon Prime. (As a side note, my local cinema closed down so seeing things in cinemas is a little more of a luxury these days). I was also interested to see Austin Butler in a staring role post Elvis (2022) because I think he's definitely an actor to watch after that performance. In Caught Stealing, former rising star baseball player, Hank Thompson (Butler) is unknowingly drawn into a world of late 1990s gangsters, when he, under protest, agrees to look after his dubious punk rocker neighbor, Russ' (Matt Smith) cat, while he rushes off to attend ...

Moya - Life like Humanoid Robot by Droid Up. T oday's post title is a paraphrase from the reboot series of Battlestar Galactica , " The Cylons look like us now. " and, while it's not actually true that todays robots look like us, we're getting awfully close with a new Chinese robot named Moya by tech company Droid Up. The video below by YouTube channel Pro Robots tells you everything you need to know about Moya and then goes on a skeptical and cynical rant about how Moya is unlikely capable of everything Droid Up claims while comparing it to other robots in the market. This AI Robot Has Warm Skin and Synthetic Muscles I certainly get where their skepticism is coming from when the only information you have is flashy promotional material provided by the company and no substantial live demonstration. However we're not that far off from this type of humanoid robot which is likely being designed for customer service type roles rather than industrial manual labor (...

M odern Australia is not a country that starts wars. We're more than ready to help finish a war but we don't start them. We should not allow ourselves to become involved in unnecessary wars, such as the one Israel, with the assistance of the USA, just started with Iran. Ideally, all wars are unnecessary, but in reality sometimes countries do need to defend themselves from unnecessary attacks born from the poor leadership of opposing countries. Country leaders, that believe they can solve a problem by starting a war, should do so with their own resources. Answer to their own citizens. Don't drag allies into your weak minded drama.  However bad Iran's leadership is (or was, since reports of the death of Iran's Supreme leader are confirmed) starting a war to forcibly remove their leadership is never going to result in smiles all around. Especially in a region of the world that subscribes to 'an eye for an eye' politics (looking at you Israel). It will almost ce...

Cat Amongst the Pigeons by TET 2026-02-22 Original Acrylic Painting on Canvas (15.5" x 12"). I n my previous post, Painting Whimsical Cats (and probably other stuff) Again After Almost a Decade Away From Traditional Art , I, obviously, mentioned I'm painting cats again. It wasn't an empty promise. As you can see I've created my first official, new cat painting - since the previous one was actually a test piece - titled Cat Amongst the Pigeons . This painting features two firsts; the first time I've painted a cat with pigeons, and the first time I've broken the edge of my white border with the image. (In case I'm not explaining that well, the cat's ears extend into the white border that is usually masked off with tape during painting). I just didn't want to clip the cat's ears! WIP Collage of Cat Amongst the Pigeons painting. Images from sketch to finished art. What Does It Mean? While this can mean anything you want it to mean, I was think...

F or those of you that aren't adverse to your superhero content being a little more character driven and a lot less big action set pieces then Marvel's TV series, under the 'Marvel Spotlight' banner, Wonder Man , is a real underrated gem. Wanna-be actor, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a suspected superhero in hiding who believes, he was born to play the title role in a new superhero movie, Wonder Man. A chance meeting with fallen actor, Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), formerly known as 'The Mandarin', at an audition, puts them both on a path to success but, everything isn't quite as it seems. While you will certainly relate very quickly to Trevor if you know his past from the movie Iron Man III , or, to a lesser extent, Shang-Chi , neither are essential viewing. You get all you need to know about Trevor as the series unfolds. That said, Ben Kingsley must have jumped at the chance to play Trevor a little less as the comic relief, and a little more ...

This kind of ad may speak to One Nation's existing supporters but it does nothing to  convince me that their policies hold up. Image: One Nation Website . T he proposed new hate speech laws in Australia have been very divisive. They may have passed by now but regardless, that's not the focus of this post. The laws were so divisive they caused the Liberal/National party coalition to split (again), as the National party leadership felt their position wasn't being heard by the Liberal leadership. That's fair enough. I agree with National's Federal Leader, David Littleproud, that the Nationals shouldn't just vote in line with whatever the Liberal party's position is at the time. The problem is, the two parties need each other to successfully challenge the Labor party on election day. (As of writing the two parties appear to be together again). So, of course, with Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party currently recruiting high profile politicians like Barnaby Jo...

D espite being in the middle of Summer, and experiencing some record temperatures across the state, we got a perfect day for the South Aussie leg of Jimmy Barnes' Working Class Man 40th Aniversay Tour. Lightly overcast. Almost no chance of rain. The cloud cover taking all the edge out of the sun, which was still quite fierce during the brief moments when it did break through the clouds for a little while. Guest artists supporting the show included, Jon Rooney, Kate Ceberano, Ian Moss, and Ice House.  Unfortunately, while my partner and I had every intention of being at the concert  when the show actually started, so did quite a lot of people. We didn't quite anticipate the traffic getting into the venue, Peter Lehmann Wines, Barossa Valley, and we certainly didn't expect the 5-10 minute hike from the carpark to the concert area itself. Kate Ceberano By the time we found our seats, Kate Ceberano was already part way through her set. Prior to this concert, I certainly knew w...

Blue Sky, Butterfly, and JAC by TET Acrylic on Canvas. WIP of a New Whimsical Cat Painting by TET. O ver the Christmas and New Year holidays I spent a lot of my time reflecting on where I'm at as an artist and content creator, torn between the need to at least make some kind of regular income, and the need to just create art. Possibly controversially, while I am an early adopter of generative image and video AI creations, and would say they are an art form, they're not a very fulfilling art form for myself. A useful tool, yes, but even when used with my own art, they're more interesting than anything I would stand by and say 'that was a satisfying creative journey' I just made. Creating with generative AI is more like being a director of a film, where all the actual art is being done by everyone else, but you get a say in the direction and output. It's still a creative endeavor but it's a very hands off, upper management form of creativity (making a somewh...

T he relatively new relationship term ' dry begging ' is one I came across recently in a random article, What is 'dry begging'? Potentially Problematic Relationship Term Explained , served up to me in Microsoft Bing's mobile app. Gaining in popularity on TikTok and YouTube where the term has been analyzed to death by content psychologists because... Of course it has. It's content. Dry begging is a new term for an age-old concept of your partner indirectly asking for something without actually asking, and even potentially manipulating you into giving them what they want. It's this aspect that has likely given rise to, what I think is, very passive aggressive terminology, identifying it as a bad or negative behaviour. For example, say you make plans to go out and meet up with some friends for drinks, and your partner doesn't want you to go. They might sigh and say something like "I'll just stay here by myself then." in an attempt to guilt tr...

J ames Cameron's Avatar movies are one of the few I'll pay to watch in a cinema without knowing anything about the story. Largely because I know they'll at least be visually interesting and worthy of seeing on a big screen.  That was the case for the third installment,  Avatar: Fire and Ash . I may have seen a trailer at some point in the lead up to its release but I'm not sure? All I could definitely tell you is, in the second movie we were introduced to water tribes, and in this movie we were going to be introduced to fire tribes. Which is really all you need to know in hindsight. The movie does get you up to speed with the key throughlines from Avatar: The Way of Water pretty quickly (well quickly for a three hour Avatar movie). You may even be able to watch this without seeing the first two because it's not entirely necessary to know the history of the characters for this installment. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family are still being pursued by Colon...

President Maduro in US Custody. O n the same day the US Administration decided to kidnap Venezuela's President and his wife, I happened to catch a 20 minute video overview on the history of Venezuela from about the time President Maduro came into power to days before his 'capture'. The 20 minute video by Australian ABC News called, What's Going on in Venezuela? , may sway your thought process on Maduro's kidnapping - if you're highly opposed to that action - because it give the impression President Trump might actually be the lessor of two rogue idiots when it comes to running a country. I highly recommend you give it a watch if the link still works, and you want to get up to speed fast on events in Venezuela. President Maduro has run Venezuela so far into the ground it can't afford the supplies it needs to export its major income stream, oil  (though his predecessor, President Chávez, should get much of the credit). So bad that their currency is devalued t...