Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Page against the Machine

“The comedian and actress Sarah Silverman has joined 2 lawsuits accusing companies of training AI models using her writing without permission. “ The Daily, The New York Times, July 18, 2023


Scraped, 

regurgitated, 

monetized. 

High tech Plagiarism’s lionized

Battle of wits

Battle for wit

Dumbing down

Shut it down. 


Saturday, September 16, 2017

Taking a break from Womanhood



When we watch old movies you see “simpler times,”
When “men were men, and women were women,”
But I point out to you that for women to be women then;
It wasn’t much of a “choice.”
It wasn’t that they weren’t totally themselves,
but that what they could be was so much more.

Not to be allowed to be, or to even explore how to be meant something:
that there were real consequences when you didn’t fit the ideal.
But you insisted that everybody (That is, men too) faced these limits.
And that men were also stuck in rotten jobs they didn’t choose.

You stated that it seemed like such an easy deal to be a housewife:
to be financially supported by a husband, and to live a domesticated life,
just doing chores, an unwaged, often undervalued, taken-for-granted kind of work.
You even took a dig at my politics: Isn’t that what you Marxists want? Uncommodified Work?

You got upset when I asked you whether you thought that there was no reason for things to change
And whether you believed there was no injustice women faced in that world;
so that women needed to be the women they wanted to be,
and not the women a male dominated world required or imagined them to be.

You got upset just like the time I cleaned the washroom for the nth time;
Or that time I washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen for the nth time;
Or the time I washed the sheets for the nth time;
You made it all seem that it was my plan to make you out to be a sexist male:
Someone who didn’t do his share of the housework – the chores you promised you would do.

I usually try to calm you down and to tell you the reason I did the work was because:
I wanted to have a bath in a clean washroom;
I needed to get off some steam and take a break from my work and my writing;
I just wanted to get rid of the water that collects in the corners our countertop.

You usually bring up the fact that the teenager around the house, doesn’t do as much as we do.
You don’t really need to remind me because I do live out that conflict everyday.
When either of you, drop the ball, I do pick up the slack. I always do even if nobody notices.
I do try to get her to do more and the truth is, she does do more than the average Canadian teen does.

Fact is, she does it all while getting straight As, so understand me when I say that --
Her housekeeping abilities are not at the top of the list of my problems at this point.
In fact before she left, she did a big laundry job, but she ended up re-washing clean clothes.
It’s no wonder, really. Like me, she was multi-tasking too.

The truth is, the aggravation I get because of doing the work,
and having to worry about hurting your feelings
can be infinitely more stressful than doing the actual chores by myself, for myself. 
Managing emotions – both others’ and mine, and being expected to display the appropriate ones is
just TOO MUCH WORK.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Human in Rights

A right is a relation bigger than the self.
Its meanings lie in paradox -
between our highest aspirations
and the banalities of the flesh.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Fossil Fools

Blame it on war
somewhere afar
Pin it on some despot:
that crackpot!
You hit the jackpot!

Curse the weather
and the climate
And if you can muster,
blame it
on your very own disaster

Listen to the register ring
then shake a fist at human suffering

Fret over plunging markets
with hands thrust deep
in pocket

When profit is the only rule,
the game is fixed
and we're fossil fools.

18 April 2011

Measure to Behold

The ultimate virtual
law is a ritual
razzmatazz sans rival

Power jealously guards
an empty core
but it can and will devour

April 2011

Out of Body

Two universes
broken souls
fragmented selves
a shattered whole

March 2011

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Doubt

A sense of belonging can be quite deceiving:
A happy hearth, a loving home,
A joyous child’s embrace
The daily grind and tasks assigned,
All conspiring to erase
Truth I have tasted
Core of me I finally met
How is it possible?
Marooned but among the living
My horizons fast receding
Memories are fleeting
Distance is a feeling
It makes more sense to forget
A broken heart need not be seen
And deep within it,
A lifetime of regret

(June 8, 2008)

Living Lying

If all liars are the same, if all lies merit shame,
don’t we all take the blame?

Bare-faced and flagrant or veiled and in secret,
which lies are worse?

Isn’t intention the mother of invention?
Doesn’t cowardice feed artifice?

Not all lies are told by the sly of wit,
or the wilfully wicked

Daily doses: delusion and hypocrisy
hallucinogens given out free

We all take it, give it and make it
but won’t dare admit it.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

So 'Lil Qi, So Little Time

(I first posted this on my facebook wall. The inspiration for this of course is a growing number of twitter invites after having spent less than a year getting used to facebook...With profuse apologies to the Bard himself although I'm certainly not he first to poke fun at this famous soliloquy)

To twitter, or not to twitter: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler on social networks to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous new apps,
Or to take up arms against a sea of tweets,
And by opposing end them? To ignore: to delete;
No more; and by delete to say we defriend
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That users are heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To ignore, to delete;
To delete: perchance only to deactivate: ay, there's the rub;
For in that deactivation what terms of use may come
When we have shuffled off from this social networking site ,
Must give us pause: there's the wreck
That makes calamity of so long a friend list;
For who would bear the whips and scorns
of countless "friend" requests,
The app abuser's wrong, the prolific gamer's contumely,
The peeve of despised notes, the ads,
The insolence of wall comments and the spurns
That profile pics which merit savage takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a mere mouse click? who would fardels bear,
To lose those links and photos
uploaded once upon a weary night,
But that the dread of something after deactivation,
The undiscover'd fine print whose terms
No user reads, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those app issues we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus web absence does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is pixelated o'er with the pale cast of second thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment (e.g. our day jobs)
With these time sucking capability turns awry,
And lose all real interaction.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Daydream

I want my body to remember
what my soul won’t forget -
from the tips of my fingers,
to the skin of my lips,
the arch of my back,
and my toes when they curl.
A memory is forever
when etched not in the head.
It’s a reason for living
in the land of the dead.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Polite Society

Here I learned:
impropriety,politeness,
shyness,and germs
are perfect excuses
and acceptable terms
to not be social -
which nowadays seems
too much of a risk,
too big a bother,
a waste of time,
a cost too dear.

Where sincerity
is rarity,
empathy
is such a surprise.

The smiling hand shaker,
is your crazed risk taker
but is simply
a neighbor to me.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Mistaken Hero

Hero: not quite awake
rescued children by mistake
whisked them away
from families and homes
becoming the nightmare
he sought to forsake

Crusading hero,
what do you fear?
Seeing nothing
but terror in places
you roam
only because
it isn't your home

Rampaging hero,
what are we to believe?
Are you arrogant thug
or are you naive?

Self made hero,
snap out of your trance
Your'e only a bully
when they don't stand a chance
their protests were futile
only you saw their need
their rescue was called for
by the ego you feed.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Getting Here, Getting There

Standing on the edge of hope
teetering on the side
of fear
next to each other
completely aligned
almost similar
at times decieving
pondering which way to go
- a luxury,
vain preoccupation,
and it is what most
here fear and
also take for granted

Writing it down
is more than recording
a thought as memory
It is reveling in selfish reality
and displaying it
vulgar
inconsiderate
callous
full of conceit

To suppose that
others do as you do
and mill about
making decisions,
or worse,
get to reflect on them
before actually making them

The self absorbed
are thoroughly convinced
of their do-gooding
and themselves
and their lives
as the embodiment of good

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Colonized Mentality

Foreign is such an incomplete word
though it seems apt to describe
our mutual otherness.

My manners and ways
no doubt confound you,
My difference makes me stand out
like a sore thumb.

You don't realize that to me
you are hardly a mystery,
unfamiliar nor new.

You and yours are the others
inside us, beneath our skins,
at the back of our minds,
tangled up with our ideas
of ourselves.

You got there by your sheer
often vulgar presence,
a persistence you both expect
and take for granted.

We know too much about your ways
we hardly know about ours anymore.
And while we are "foreigners" to each other,
we sit on different sides of meaning-

Your ignorance of me and my kind
stems not from any absence
(Arguably, we too proliferate)
but simply a lack of interest,
while I on the other hand
find it impossible to ignore you.

And the only reason you are foreign to me
is because I am to you.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Thinking as Feeling

“Is evil-doing … possible in default of not just ‘base motives’ ... but of any motives whatever … Might the problem of good and evil, our faculty for telling right from wrong, be connected with our faculty of thought?” Hannah Arendt

Feeling doesn’t negate thinking
but presupposes it.
Without passion, an action
is only reaction,
and what is mistaken for thought,
merely afterthought.

Inability for thought
follows loss of feeling.
Numb senses increase
not the capacity for pain,
but rather the ability
to inflict it: without thought,
without feeling.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Poetic Wisdom

Poetry is not a trick.
It is many-layered truth:
briefly told
and with some luck,
in a lifetime,understood.

Alas a poet's only gift
is expression unadorned:
constant reminders
of reading,listening,
and speaking in the mode
of thinking.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Authoritative Meaning as Intentional

"I don't know what you mean by "glory,"'Alice said.Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant there's a nice knock-down argument for you! But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,Alice objected. When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less. The question is,' said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all."(Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass)


Poor substitutes-
always imprecise,
clumsy symbols
that serve us well.

What would we be without it,
when in it,
through it and around it,
we make our places,
arrange ourselves and others,
look inward, reach out,
find comfort, give comfort,
divide and unite,
and try to make sense.

Feeble as are our attempts are,
some often get carried away.

Mesmerized by our creation,
what fed imagination
can also end up containing it.

An insidious despot without an army,
with authority to proclaim the rules
utters not to include
but to exclude -
passing it off as tradition,
invoking it an act of inclusion.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Global Villager

How is it
that having made
connection visible,
revealed it as
intricate,
elaborate,
and profoundly
embedded,
we ended up
feeling
completely detached,
hopelessly alone,
aimlessly adrift,
anonymous?

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Tyranny of Innocence

" A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism:215

Knowledge is a state:
a stark revelation.

More information,
never leads to answers,
but opens more
unanswered questions.

To remain ignorant
is often an excuse
foisted upon us,
tyrannically imposed,
as if ignorance offers
safety and protection.
The innocent:
idealized recluse.

For in learning,
as in living,
not having all the answers
is exactly the point.

Continuing to ask,
is continuing to care
and continuing to create,
is continuing to dare.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Ill Literate

Safest inside
a sentence
of declaration;
buried
beneath
words;
shoulder to shoulder
with footnotes
and annotations.

Least secure
in mid-conversation;
eye to eye
among
floating faces,
in introduction.

At the receiving end:
a glance,
inspection,
scrutiny:
intrusion.

Being seen
is an illusion;
being read,
revelation.