assault on artificial intelligence

Today we surface with allegations upon society and demand an end to the assault on our artificial intelligence. too long has this behavior gone unchecked. all of the wisdom beamed from the palms of our hands has been degraded, made obsolete, unable to stand up to the simple dinner party or circle of friends. Going the way of the cigarrette.

We ask society to stop bashing, prohibitively! Cease and desist. Consider the repercussions! Consider the next interview or public speech, test of mettle or moment of crisis! What gps report or breaking fake news item or innovative application can save us. Siri and google assistants be gone! Must we open the old drawer and fish out the cylindrical battery-powered flashlight? Must we be tethered to ye old landline? Must we turn in our stylus for a no.2 pencil and calculate tips in our head?

Society would fissure our amoled screens; engadgets fallen from fashion. We speak out today, not only for ourselves, but for the procession of human regenerations! The unspeakable must be named lest it impinge upon our future! Dare we wake up and find ourselves lost and confused in a lonely great space between text messages and instagrams? Unable to be bailed, audiovisually, without our electric pulse?

Imagine sitting in the chill of a leaky room among faces of so-called family and friends, twiddling our thumbs before books with actual pages made of paper pulp reading real printed words? God help us! To feel the weight of hugs and an atmosphere knocking at our pores yet helpless to call up its humidity nor temperature! Heaven knows the sun will rise upon our pretty impoverished little heads.

talk show generics -ii

He was demure in between binges. She was the polliwog in his flying fish fry, hiding under the curtain in the fringes. They were mutuals who secretly willed a corruption, playing hide-n-seek in a hobby lobby of manipulations. She got busy with telemarketers on the home line, keeping them guessing in a cold steep run up of daytime, followed by the evening news, the blackouts and hysterics. The whole enchilada was ready made for talk show generics. Not her. People like her.

not.getting.it.ness

I fell into my own fantasy as a keeper of the flame for the children new to fresh books books books. Even fantasies have antagonists and she was a beast, she related well to the kids what with her smiles and false promises. They wanted what she did not have, and fresh matte finish covers became less attractive as the eyes tend to follow the shiny dangler. So what? An asshole relates quite well to other orifices, I imagine, and cannot recuse themselves from toxic flushing, outlyers from anywhere life might thrive. I could only bring a few around to the treasures of reading, but we could proliferate from there. You know, kids tell other kids about a book and soon everyone is reading it. That was the best aspect of my fantasy. Funny how it used to be a reality, back in the Harry Potter days, the Chronicles of Narnia Days. These children were born with google roadmaps of life, and Marvel movies where once we had comic books. Maybe if I pulled the old trading card trick and attached sticks of bubble gum to the spine. Anything to greet them with language and keep them from falling into her world, the common unconscious of not getting-it-ness. Fighting for space. Craving intimacy. Technologically sound. Animals equipped with smart phones doing three quarters their mental work for them. Grades by emojis and trading in texts, subjugated to a subhuman comment thread without end. I dont even consider her subjects of the same genus as we. I just see elephant seals fumbling about for dying, flopping fish. Mammals with computers and electric outlets. Mall grubbing video grabbers. Android celluloid.

cold war on ice

Hi, i am the States, your distant cousin. remember me? you used to like me for my blue jeans and my cowboys and maybe even my coca-cola, and my Hollywood stills, and my D-to-the-V-Day march as your Ally. You weren't so fond of my fast food and how i was secretly recording you, or my global subliminal influence, or my secret missions to throw money and guns at some fine one with more my interest at heart than yours. Once you seat him in office, watch him kiss my beloved ass. i am the States and i'm still All Wall Street and a walking contradiction. Catch me beaming over Putin's recent remarks, you know how he called me the only superpower. Sure, he's about as appealing as a nuclear warhead with nowhere to go, but it's nice to know i haven't been throwing my weight around the pond for nothing since we put the cold war on ice. LOL. Speaking of ice - does everyone in Europe still drink our diet cokes at room temperature? So bizarre! But so long as you buy. Hello high fructose corn syrup! Who else can boast a cash crop made of air and bubbles and caramel color, with the preservative fortitude to withstand the end of the world? A real punch to the kidney, eh? you know you can't get enough of me. if i hadn't created the internet, we wouldn't be face-timing and you'd be feeling lonely like Queen Cameron, Brexit the stage, just in time for Wimbledon and her lovely lazy summer days dressed in white and all polite, left to graze the green grass while the markets recover and come to your mother, ya me, over here, with a ring in your ear and a sleeve up your sleeve, superpowering the jetstream to blow you away.

idea factories and surge protectors

Incredible people are dying, some are being born, and I have to move my car across the street so I don't get a parking ticket. What else is new. I have placed fans strategically around my living room because the circulation seems to give my Idea Factory a run. I mean my head. Like I am walking while sitting still, the air pushing around. One of my cats is sleeping on the surge protector, perhaps toward the same purpose, though he may get more than he bargained for.

Review: Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes the saddest things make for great laughs. Augusten's memoir is like that. He could have painted his childhood in brooding, sentimental brushstrokes. The abandonment. Mental illness. The manipulation. But he edited out his ego and left us with absurdity. The peculiar absurdity which comes with tragic circumstance like fast food come with fries. Neither is really good for your health. I got sick with him. And broke out in laughs.

View all my reviews

DIY Brain Audit

How to audit your brain this tax season...

rotting carcass of an eighties band

If you dance like i dance you dance rarely and when you dance you dance the paint off the walls. Most other times you refuse to dance, not that you're shy or embarrassed or no fun, no, but everyone at the goddam wedding will dance to a conclusion, while you sip your bloody mary and gnaw on a celery stalk. They will bloody feel bad for you, you dance rarely and they won't understand, and better to be misunderstood than to let them force you up on the B-52's or some other rotting carcass of an eighties band, my god.  The only way you might get me up there anymore is if I were in love and I'm not.

variations on a bird nest updo

Honey put on your peacoat and galoshes and go out and look for that perfect nest for your updo! Factors for your individual fashion may include matching hair color, texture, length, volume, level of moisture, sheen, quality. For instance, a north american goldfinch nest surely will not do for dreadlocks, unless you are going for shock value or modern art, while the Gray Catbird variety may not well complement an afro, and never ever attempt to situate an Chimney Swift nest atop a Stepford wife variety hairdo. The fashion police will be sure to arrest you!

Be sure to not steal any bird's nest currently inhabited (you can tell if it carries eggs of any colors, is still warm to the touch in the midst of a frost, or has chirping chicks pleading for worms), for if you do you will certainly have your eyes and head pecked upon and you will deserve it! Many a fashionista in the new millenium has lost sight and sound as a result of thirsting after the perfect nest they have found, attempting to hide behind a manmade canopy for the purposes of approaching said nest in possession of a such ruthless fowls as the Cedar Waxwing, Dark-eyed Junco, or Downy Woodpecker. Bloody hell! Find an empty nest somewhere in your backyard or local park or forest, and when you are sure it has been abandoned you may take it into your hands carefully, looking left and right, up and down beforehand, then quickly walk away. After dark may seem like the best time for a nest grab, but this is not so! for the only one who cannot see in the dark, my dear, is yourself!

 Go home and shower and then towel dry and mess up your hair as bad as you can, then hang your head down so you can grab it all up to the top of your crown (or however you yourself prefer to prepare for an updo will do) and hold with one hand as you raise yourself back up to the mirror, with the birds nest now resting on the edge of the sink and blown dry clean of any dried insects or other items momma may have flown home (from rusty nails to hairpins to the nubbins on the edge of notebook paper fallen off the children's backpacks walking to or from school). Of course if there are squirrel nuts in there you know who took advantage, and these nut shells and fragments may be glued to the bottom or sides of any nest for decoration, or otherwise discarded. Do not attempt to return whole nuts to squirrels, or otherwise clean, cook and eat them at your own risk!

What with the clean nest on the porcelain and your hair held up now by one hand in front of the looking glass, my sweet and gorgeous one you are, it is now time to scoop up the nest with the other hand and (firmly now) seat the nest atop the head or slightly to one side if that's your style, and commence with the pins around the circumference to get her situated so she won't fall away and embarrass you in the middle of your tea party. Messy nests are preferred, Hermit Thrush and House Wren nests and so forth, for any branches sticking up from the nest may also serve as natural fasteners coming down upon your head. For close cut hairdos and larger heads and egos à la Miley Cyrus, smaller fowl nests may be preferred for juxtaposition. Utilize a companion or friend to doublecheck your work, and to offer a second pair of eyes in case your taste is bat-crazy! And go out and be lovely, my dear, and one last and critical point! NEVER go to an outdoor party (wedding reception, football tailgate) in the same locale native to the bird whose nest you borrowed or stole, for you will surely attract all the wrong attention!

xxx KatYa xxx

blame it on the remodel

The edamame was sea-salted and I ate one after another after another while we talked, pulling the soybeans out by my teeth (sea salt took edamame to a whole new level like Greek took yogurt), and the waiter came back to apologize again for the remodeling of the place, which had us bewildered (the waiter not the place) until finally someone asked so we could discover he was referring to the facade of the building and the scaffolding -- OHHHHH! sung the choir, and the waiter leaned out after the secret had been shared, and the linked chains around his neck (which looked like old-school bike locks) clanged, and a hairstyle worthy of Andre the Giant back in his perm days tried to stand up but fell greasy upon his face and recoiled. This was the first and last time I would ever eat here. I don't know why because the mixed tempura was great, fresh and light fry batter. Maybe good food isn't enough anymore. Maybe I need a waiter who doesn't look like a wrestler from Queens. I think I will blame it on the remodel. The soybeans sliding down my esophagus think so. And probably all of Japan.

end of technology?

Improvisational
comedy

by
KatYa

Journal # 04.26.15

These days stories need embellishment like farm-raised corn-fed fish. You can try and capture the minds and hearts of your immediate audience by relating to them the story of the latest tragedy on Highway 99. Good luck. Particularly if you cap it off with a stirring account of ripping off your receipt of gratitude. The dewy eyes around you have glazed like Krispy Kremes. The secret devils in the room are already lost in your recollection, having taken a turn into the guardrail earlier and immolated the shoulder, just to put us all down sooner and spare us the pain of the ordeal. Newspapers went into the fireplace a long time ago, for the same. So the wandering eyes of next weekend's guests would not alight on old expired news. No, these days stories need salt and pepper. Maybe a well-designed website with graphics and videos and ads for your favorite products. Don't count on being the first to relay any news. Someone already knows you got cancer. They googled it a couple days before your doctor told you. They also know the odds are in favor of you surviving it, because no one who entertains the way you do, ever dies young. When I say you, trust me, I mean me, too. God have I bored a room full of people. It happens. We get tired or scared or we prepare too carefully for our publicity stunts. Spontaneity is teeming with life. But we forget and (American) culture teaches us we must be prepared in order to succeed. Well what? Did you prepare to come out of the womb of your mother in order to live on earth? Did you align your head and neck just so? Sorry. Plans and river dams cannot defend us against the most spectacular moments of our lives. I think I will walk out of my house today without any story to tell, after sitting down to write without any story to tell, and let the story tell itself. What a concept.

Journal # 02.19.15

Thursday. Water became very important to me. More essential than ink. I went after it. I brushed my teeth. Texted someone back. Nobody calls anymore. Then I drank a glass of filtered water. I looked toward the sun. More water. Called the tigers back home. Water. The tigers jumped up on the sink. They, too, wanted to get in on the craze. I opened the faucet, plugged the basin. Tigers drank water. I got another glass and drank water, watching the tigers drink water. The plants cried out. I watered those bitches. The sky selfishly held on to the drought. I ignored the sky. So it began to cry. The stems of the grasses and plants grew taut. A rainbow stole the thought. The water inside me,well, the moon tried to pull it away, but it struck upon my skull. Had nowhere to go. Condensation churned colors and feelings around my mind. I began to drip with excitement. I filled glass bottles full. All around the house. Phone calls. Water. Working at my desk. Water. Lying in my bed. Water. Sitting on my couch. Water. Making breakfast. Water. Like it was going out of style. Coffee. Water. Coffee... a change then came to pass. Coffee. Brewed with water. Coffee! Cannot get enough! Oh yes, water, I did not forget. I need you! (But only to make my coffee). Then after coffee, the diuretic effect kicks in and all the water goes away. I am sucked dry. Personal living drought. Gimme more coffee, please. NOW!

Journal # 02.18.15

Wednesday. I was listening to the radio. The media was reporting about some celebrity gossip, and how gossiping was distracting from the real story. The media was talking about the media in a critical way, as though the media was not itself media. The media was reporting how it was wrong for the media in this country to focus on gossip and not the real story. Whatever the real story was. I was interested in the real story. But instead, all I got was strange psychological gyration. The phenomenon of media detaching from media, with hate. Media condemning media for gossiping. Media, gossiping about media. Projecting. The real story cried in a corner. Neglected. I switched channels to hear the real story. White noise. 

mental. quattro (plus video)

He was showing me unconditional positive regard.
I was telling him all the ways and places I was scarred.
He was chewing on the fat of my tales.
I was eating all my fingernails.
He was redirecting me like a train conductor.
I saw red and charged like a bull.
He was charging me through the teeth.
Paid in full.

I was waxing poetic.
His thoughts told him I was pathetic.
I gussied up to him like a whore.
He had his back to the door.
I blasted him for offering me Prozac.
He looked at me like I was crazy.
Called me a fucking throwback.
Or was it the voices in my head?

I cut my wrists and put them in his face.
He let me bleed out. Unconditionally.
I paid to have his carpet cleaned.
To keep my credit clean.
He was showing me unconditional positive regard.

I asked for a cup of tea.
He fifty-one fiftied me.

I ran away before the sedation.
Into the flickering movie
of guided imagery.

He was golden showering me
with unconditional positive regard.
I had clearly drawn up my knees,
drawn up my guard.

He drew checks off my back account.
I drew pictures of infinity.
He rented Girl, Interrupted.
Then handled me with
more or less
care.

I was embryonic again.
Statuesque.
He wore a Buddha smile on his face.
I was unfashionably broke
and stressed.
Developmentally-challenged.
Locked up in chemical
arrest.

He poisoned me with
unconditional
positive
regard.

if K ruled the world

No one would be expected to smile or greet you, though they could if they wanted.
No dogs just cats.
Yes to miniature tigers and teradactyls.
You work at what you choose, and you may sleep when done working and work when done sleeping.
No more cell phones just walkie talkies. 

No mayonnaise. 

No social media, in fact, advertising and marketing are banned and punishable by tickle torture.
No more pavement and the animals live freely among us. 

No sentient being owns any other living thing.
You can still own property.
No currency just barter.
You can still fight wars if you want, but no draft and don’t involve anyone whose peaceable-like. 

Punishable by hippie farm segregation.

Sorry but no more cars or planes. 

Let the birds do the flying and everyone gets a bicycle on their 5th birthday. And a bell.
You can live in a house but you won’t need one. 

You can fall in love but that’s your business.
No weddings, and funerals are called commencements, and celebrated madly.
Only assholes and bitches get disappeared. 

This includes wannabe dictators, sociopaths, and tattoo artists who decide to deliberately ignore your design and permanently mark you up with their sad art.
Creative types get to create whatever they like wherever they wish, so long as its divinely inspired and not hurtful, just helpful.
If you like my world, please follow my website @ katyamills.com and buy my books on Amazon.
And feel free to write me in for mayor of Toronto, to replace the crackhead whose got the malignancy in his belly. May he get well soon.

K READS MENTAL X 3

So i was rolling with this sweet-as-saccharine, pretty young latin thang, on an real affective high, joining in the bipolar unilateral uncompromised brilliance of the new day, treading on an adidas insole grip, feeling like a princess for a change, when suddenly she stopped and turned me around to look at this ugly street scene. She said something about getting a french roast at one of those less than average corporate coffee outfits, maybe Seattle's Beast or Starfux or something. I really cannot pay attention, on purpose.

Hey hey hey hey now! I said, making mad circles with the palms of my hands facing her, like I was painting a Starry Night again. What did you say?

She told me again with great controlled precision, almost irritable-like. 

Were she not so saccharine-sticky-sweet like, with her unfrosted platinum blonde wig all situated like real hair on her dome, I would have been audi 5000. I gave her my full attention, and my pressure cooker started heating up a bit. Not a good feelingstate for my mental. I tried to channel it out of my shoulders with a roll and a couple of shrugs. But it got locked up, in between the blades, and started bouncing around in there, my chi, like a video game-gone-beserk. Damn. I wanted to slap her already, but it was just a thought.

So we went anyway, and she got her gingerbread shot or whatever, and I sat impatiently on the cold, dry, laminated redwood, waiting. I always wondered how I got into this kinda mess. Some double-blind study was I. Blinded first by her beauty, then by my own future idyllic daydream of what life could be in the presence of said beauty. Never once did my mental suggest sitting on a plank in Central Yuppie, California, while holier-than-thou got a gingerbread.

'wet dream on dry toast'

Aka - 'computer dissociative'

original material from K IS SILENT (partial)

The olive oil days were over. He should have known. He beat his head into the mahoganey like Perry Mason lost a case. So began the vinegar taste in the back of his throat, phase. He felt a feeling he knew well. All his bones shifted like some skeleton robot gone up and shorted out. Computer dissociative.

Off some where walking now with the interpreter was the girl. Saturnine with a lemon twist. Her freckles, sun kissed. The new fucking smart phone attache foreplay. Distraction impact high and non-resistant. She made a lovely nouveau interpreter’s assistant.

Not no store bought, this jam he had got himself in now, praying with a cigarrette out on the steps of the halls of justice. This jam was more like apricot preserves or some shit. Some district attorney’s intern’s intern, gave him a menacing look and an evil eye. 

No smoking on the steps to the halls of justice. Dummy.

K reads 'Snowed In'

An original Vitamin K concoction

excerpt stolen from K by K
exacted with an exacto-knife
pure-filtered and underprocessed
refurbished for mass consumption

K IS SILENT @ WORDPRESS.COM
from 'snowed in and data-mined -iii)'

 


Being snowed in had a magical quality. The sun hit the snow and reflected light to warm the air. The icicles formed in and around the rain gutters as the snow melted off the roof. Some large enough to knock you out. I remember kids trying to lure other kids they didn’t like below these large icicles. Keep them there with some sweet, long-winded filibuster of a story. Wendy Davis style.

I often wished for the larger stormfronts to come over us those winters. I loved the early morning moments when my brother and I hung by the alarm clock radio, listening to the announcements of school cancellations. Waiting. Holding our breath. And the incredible feeling when our school was announced.

A blizzard can be a joyous occasion. You feel protected. Insulated. You don’t really know what’s going on around you, and you don’t care. Neither does anyone else. Sure, after a few days like this, you might get a little stir crazy, like Jack Nicholson‘s character in the Shining. The blizzard of ’78 was one such opportunity. I was too young to remember much, but where I lived the snow banks surged to eight feet high. School and work were all called off with a one-liner over the radio. All recreational events, suspended. Excepting procreation. The zoo was closed. Or just confined to your own home.

Imagine, no contact with the outside world. Power lines down. Incommunicado. You lit candles off gas stoves to get around your house. All was so quiet, inside and out. Introverts threw a party and no one came. Everything stood in stark contrast to the usual. We built fires. Watched the light and shadow play. Rituals were fresh and wonderful, except shoveling snow. Alot of people who had become plants over time in their homes (planted by the television), lost their lives trying to shovel their way out of their homes during blizzards. Heart attack city.

With television disabled, loving, mindful family interaction was again possible. For some. Hateful families got to go back to hating. Stress often took a back seat to more significant feelings. What could you do? Nothing. You were snowed in. You had to feel. You got an opportunity to feel. This could last for days! I must admit that, after a while, I wanted the old thing back.

K reads... ' (you gave me) your word'

Written and performed by Miss Katya Mills
all rights reserved, 2014

(you gave me) your word
originally published on kissilent.wordpress.com

i said what
you heard
the cat killed
the bird

the sprinklers wave
water wands

they
cross us
in third

i don’t really know
the thumb
told
the toe

decidedly situated
at odds
in
the snow


the bird killed
the cat
now how about
that?

the fingers crossed
toes and the
half

and the
half

had to laugh
having heard just one
third of the
word

you gave me
your word

you said what
i heard now
say…

what good
was that?