"I will now, I would like to, introduce y'all to America's first All Black newspaper since the NorthStar graced the peeping eyes of those who could read, (i)those who DARED to read(i)."
People looked around to see who might be embodying such contraban in the Old South.
Tuxedo'd servers outlayed cloth napkins.
"What interrupted the scrumming?" A fertility doctor wanted to know. At the same time Ziggy was being harangued by an elder about not wanting to put his big boy pants on, a younger (i)whapped(i) his sunburnt ass with a golf towel, and the "shared girlfriend" pitched a fit about being given a literal cabbage instead of money for a night out.
Someone focused a Justcam on the Kennedy Center and the delayed from real time images were printed before the crew on the move unplugged.
"We gottah get back to DC DG."
"But we didn't get a chance to visit yet." He held arms open for a baby girl tackle. She swiped the golf towel from the young'n and threw it in the guy's face. "Have fun with commercials."
"YOU MEEM'D ME MOTHERFUCKER!!"
"OhmyGod, please be going now."
"Any last words of advice?"
"Hoping not my last words I will tell you what a swami told me once when I was getting on a raft to get out of South America (i)alive, still alive apparently(i)
"The point?"
"Don't be a piece of seaweed caught in the surf of a turning tide." The white van doors were closed.
(i)Resolved(i), remember his flash of smile, it emerged like a turtle's head in a pond, bright, strong, then re-submerged.
"Somebody killed Kenny!" A woman with a beard and a stout miniature dog on arm reiterated, (i)everything's getting cartoonish out here(i).
"It's not like we didn't know, (i)we knew(i), but we couldn't let on." An elevator descended through floors and floors of servers.
started singing to the tune of "Girls on film," and others voiced the instrumental, (i)doootalootah(i), (i)squirrels on pie(i), (i)dootahlootah(i). The video camera flung up into a tree by an irate parent caught "the thief" even while most of Eastern Tennessee was attuned to hunting down (i)who would do such a thing(i).
The normally calm, bookish woman's voice twisted itself into the tail of a tornado before an exasperated sigh of (i)Gawd(i) roped the last of the run for information.
"Would you say the experts are being hounded?" Someone gingerly covered a microphone. "It's not on," she lied. The woman pointed a pen at two guys in matching tee-shirts quoting a movie. "You two," eyes looked around for an EXIT, "Still in school?"
Elevator doors opened and doctors in scrubs exited as a group then split up for specific work.
"So you're saying it's the computer's fault?"
"What happened?"
"Anyone need a lawyer?" A hand held business cards like a rummy hand of playing cards.
"The whole program had been gutted."
"So?"
"So we put all the work online."
"Just out there for anyone to see?"
"Like anyone can bid on chopping down a five thousand pound tree?"
"Doesn't mean I'd pick just anyone!"
A person in scrubs and rubbery shoes wheeled a cart of what looked like art supplies close to the door of the wounded expert. "Casting," the med tech reported without the jokes usually attending his parallel take on everyday life.
"Gen X" was "coming of age".
There was sort of a bedsheet shaking.
"I'm sick," a guy opened a front door a bit and proved himself to have a thermometer in his mouth. We'd come through the climax of a forced PC--foreign operatives having actual place in politics and other professions of our nation. A confusing mess of (i)who can be trusted(i) and (i)with what(i).
Wave after wave of youthful vigor had to be met with the pegs for guardrails all over the Country. In the excitement for a future that would include us there were standstill moments and herd rushes. There was also a comradery to just being American with the freedom to join (or not) various groups and lifestyles. That freedom alone presented a need for levels of security around "sensitive" information.
Yes, the wall had come down in our own Germany. But chaos is not such a great idea, better to (i)do the right thing(i). "And what is the right thing to do?" A girl asked the Gen X white guys at a table outside of a cafè. One asked, "Why you asking us?" And another asked, "What are you trying to do?"
"It's been a dreadfully slow morning," the barristá came out and told her boyfriend/promise partner/husband-to-be. "Let's see if we can borrow a truck and get some day work," one of the guys said to the other guys. And they got up, walked down the street, asked to use an old truck, got permission, told: (i)we'll put gas in it(i), and drove it to the gas station. That day, after some phone calls to family with a good understanding of what was up locally, they hauled wood, ran errands, fixed a woodsplitter, wrangled a scared sheep, glued broken flowerpots, shared beef jerky, scraped layers of mud leftover from old storms, and found stuff like a radio thrown out because the batteries were dead. And some crates for a sibling that (i)never gets to do much because...(i) autism or cancer. "Likes records," the guy dug into his brain to find the space where he'd spent time with the sibling, gotten to know the person inside "the box".
It was one of the first pieces of narrative taken from someone's brain chatter, put on a piece of paper, and openly denied by a support group. One person affirmed the person's humanity with various evidence supporting the fact that the person was neither a terd nor mostly made up of fecal matter.
The person needed more offloading of internalized narrative so the group listened to some music and imagined power shields capable of deflecting further insult and verbal abuse.
For some people (i)resiliance(i) starts with something like that.
The question was, (i)Do you think AI can be resiliant?(i)
A couple people conferred and answered (i)yes(i). It was explained in the "simple terms" of replacing a negative with a positive, a negative with an affirmative. Programming such a "warrior" would put AI into the category of winning and losing humans who either survive or die.
It's been the experience of some.
Jump to defend and be the first proven wrong.
There's real "pinch" in sword clashing.
There's also a wild ride in the creativity of showmanship.
There is sometimes utter disappointment when someone cannot un-be themselves.
And while most people have lived through life and death situation, not all have fought. Not all have walked away. Not all have struggled through not doing that again. Not all can see, maybe the bar should be raised.
As a writing-type I can understand well that there are challenges in narrative and "the show" that seem like bleak days in prison where not much really happens; or some character is dead, (i)now what?(i); or how in the world does an author get readers from point x to points elsewhere in the alphabet?!
But I can also understand how real men and women are not just pins in a map, not just stickers in a sports or political book.
I think that sometimes in the nation stories of the whole big history-in-the-making there are leaps made just to keep the story going until tomorrow. Some people, for example, don't have the capacity or platform to get all thesis about strategy or deep explanation, so they point out highlights or insert bullets of text and talking points. A recent foreign election--(i)first time since the nazis!(i)
Oh, the images conjured by the reference. Oh, the deep feelings of revulsion for all of humanity. For being human. For having to vote. For voting whether or not we want hate to rule the day. Such talking points serve to make people stop listening. But there's a bit of breath held in that much defending or allowing/permission some not-me humans that much power over weapons and communications.
Fish on hooks sometimes with media.
And preference to understand the real people even as we are swept along in ethereal currents of political proportion.
Writers often rip and crumple, stomp on and hide pages of writing. Then sneak back and re-consider, or, burn/delete, or put away chunks of idea made manifest in text and script.
Politics and media have similar processes.
Masses of people engaged in the same movements produce.
"I am asking you to think about what you are doing right now!!" An on-the-way to being an academic-in-action woman finally unbunged her theoretic brain and just said it. (i)Critical thinking(i) defined.
"That's what you meant? By all this?" A rolling suitcase of research and think and writing/talk (i)about(i) had been piled on a desk. The desk held up. Someone gasped at the emperor with no clothing. There was a palpable release of emotion attached to and associated with that much scholarship being performed so....(i)simply(i).
the entryway.
"Bedbugs?" Someone joked to a reporter whisking her own hair further away from the (i)development(i).
"Is that a wig?"
A tongue stuck out instead of an (i)FU(i).
"I really think we should get away from this building," a supercalm team lead said as if reporting the score of the weekend's football game.
"Why here? Why this County?" A person charged with the task of generating questions was like a popcorn machine after an energy drink.
"And why is the front entrance of this territory literally burnt up?"
"Is this a territory?"
"Looks like it used to be a school or something."
A trash can flaring up into a blazing fire had even more people backing away from the building.
A throat clear, "Wait." The man in a trench coat with ballet shoes around his neck like a locker room towel issued the order to a chaffeur of a Chevy. "Why you cry baby?"
It was a headful of impressions. All of us, ten, fifteen years on. Mostly ahright, a little worse for the wear, with a lot a heart, darkness closing in, and this, now, (i)this now like an eye of a storm(i), she said raising her eyes up to him.
"Well, it's a funny thing. People have historys, or herstorys, with themselves and with each other," the man had picked up the eyeglasses smushed into the matted grass and slight mud and was endeavoring to explain. "And that's why people can't stick together?" A strong hand took the glasses. "Any fingerprints on them?" Asked the person who did a cast of the bootprint over the smushed glasses. This was checked. Photographed. Handed back. Dirt rubbed off on a shirt bottom.
"Maybe it was because we were brainstorming."
"On what?"
"A script. We want to look at the saga of Russian revolution up 'til now, post Soviet Union."
"That's what you young people were up late talking about?"
Nods. "And then we got blitzed."
Someone else well versed in the history of war was quick to point out that getting roughed up was not a blitz. "Well, we were asleep so it felt like it."
"Anyone missing?"
"Some people got an early start."
"You think they took human shields?"
"It's a complicated topic. More so at some times more so than others."
"Break it down."
"The tent?" Another person came over and asked.
"That too. I need to know what you mean."
"A lot of hardcore diplomacy depends on where the fronts are hot and cold. And, well, in some fields of work, people have to pay someone for safe passage or the people in a zone can be considered captured or hostage or used as human shields."
Faces drained pale.
"We should get to our destinations."
With that the barbeque was concluded.
