(no subject)
sorry this is so long, but i promised murray i'd post it, and honestly, i need some feedback. just finished reading the wasteland for the first time in a long time. i'll be frank with you, when i was younger, the words went in one ear and out the other. now it sticks to my brain like it has anchors.
It began in the summer
It began very small
Only the bottom feeders,
(the lower middle class)
those who invested
because they dreamed of the climb
only they were affected
at first.
Their money dried up:
Like creek beds in some family back holler
When the mountain spring
Suddenly has
No more to give.
These people blamed themselves
For their ignorance
Of the system
Of the shape money takes
When it leaves their hands.
They blamed fate
Or that ice-queen, Lady Luck.
Then people higher up on the ladder,
People who owned Landrovers
Instead of Hondas
Whose pools were in the ground,
Not on it,
Began to lose money.
These were men and women who had
Hired human calculators
To do the dirty work for them:
The adding, the subtracting,
the statistics,
the listening at board room doors for inside scoops.
Their investments were bigger
The rotting rung
On which they clung
Was further up and fading fast.
So when it snapped
and when they fell,
They raised a little hell.
Well-paid lawyers
Teamed (teemed) with
Liberals who bled
Searching in the wreckage
Of the dead
Accounts
For evidence of foul play
They pointed at the high
Muckity mucks
Fingers and voices stabbed
Out a “guilty” tattoo
A raging drum beat
A cacophony of voices
Inking a big red G
G is for glutton
G is for the gall to steal
From the working class
(this was the Liberal’s cry, and with it, a digression:
by “working class”
the Lib’s spoke not of those who
lived hand to mouth
to hand to mouth
nose to grindstone
people squeaking and eeking by
not a spare penny
anywhere
to throw
into the gaping and
hungry mouth of
the Stock Market
{that hussy, that trollopy
bitch
who ate on all her plate
and regurgitated into the mouths
of the already stuffed
assholes
who courted her
money-colored cunt}
no, not people who worked for a living,
but people who went to air-conditioned
offices, sitting on their asses, drinking
sugary cups of coffee, willing
the clock to tick, fucking
in the 3rd stall from
right of the bathroom door,
who said hello at roll-call
in exchange for a pay-check.
And went home to fat soccer-wives
Who asked how “work” was.
“Well, today honey, some fat cat
fatter than you or I,
though we are quite rotund,
the two of us,
took all our money...
the excess anyway,
we still will eat,
and continue to be sheltered,
but these are petty concerns.
What About Our Legacy!?!?!”
The “working” class.)
G is for the gall to steal from the
Working class
G is for the gumption
For the gorgon
Who waits with baits
And breath
To catch the unwitting eye.
G is for the gallows
For the guillotine
That hackneyed
Old work horse of the poor
When their panties get in a bunch
About the rich
So some fall guys,
Tall guys in suits
Sitting in tall buildings
The tops of tall buildings
The pent houses
The club houses
The 40 room houses.
Yanked rudely from their brandy snifters
By manly grifters
Manhandled into nooses
Tossed from great heights
That all might see them fall
(at last, at last!!)
and hear the necks a-snapping.
After the cheering died down
The jeering and the leering
At corpses made human
By death
(For one man weighs as much as
The next
When laid out
give or take a stone or ten)
After the excitement of
Murderous justice
It was noticed
(and here there was lamentation)
That the money continued to fall
To disappear.
The numbers on the
Computers
Continued their spiral
down to zero.
“But who!?”
They cried,
“We have killed the bad guys
Wrenched the kings
Of opulence from their
Thrones.
Wrung their necks
‘Til we heard the
satisfying crack.”
Have you ever seen The Terminator? In it, humans create machines with Artificial Intelligence. The machines begin to lust for power, for control. There is a downward spiral, an all-out war, some nuclear bombs are dropped, and Linda Hamilton gets a little bit pregnant.
What I’ve never understood is how the machines learned to lust for power. I know it’s a cautionary tale about man going too far, relying too much on progress and technology. But in the end, when does a machine have an understanding of the concept of power? It’s an abstract idea which can only live with a constant fuel of corruption. Machines know only what they are programmed to know. Which, when simplified down to the very bottom of their language, is yes and no.
A machine understands numbers. Positive ones and negatives ones. Speaking of ones, it knows ones and zeros. Maybe one’s are yes and zero’s are no. It knows money, which equals one, which equals yes.
And it knows no money.
Lets say the machines,
The ones programmed to
Award money
With more money
Good credit with better credit
A yes with a
Plethora of yes’s
Suddenly wanted all the yes’s
For themselves?
I know that
The yes’s
Equal money
And what good is money to a machine?
What if they want it,
Not to spend
But perhaps
Due to it’s
More basic meaning,
To affirm?
Yes.
It began in the summer
It began very small
Only the bottom feeders,
(the lower middle class)
those who invested
because they dreamed of the climb
only they were affected
at first.
Their money dried up:
Like creek beds in some family back holler
When the mountain spring
Suddenly has
No more to give.
These people blamed themselves
For their ignorance
Of the system
Of the shape money takes
When it leaves their hands.
They blamed fate
Or that ice-queen, Lady Luck.
Then people higher up on the ladder,
People who owned Landrovers
Instead of Hondas
Whose pools were in the ground,
Not on it,
Began to lose money.
These were men and women who had
Hired human calculators
To do the dirty work for them:
The adding, the subtracting,
the statistics,
the listening at board room doors for inside scoops.
Their investments were bigger
The rotting rung
On which they clung
Was further up and fading fast.
So when it snapped
and when they fell,
They raised a little hell.
Well-paid lawyers
Teamed (teemed) with
Liberals who bled
Searching in the wreckage
Of the dead
Accounts
For evidence of foul play
They pointed at the high
Muckity mucks
Fingers and voices stabbed
Out a “guilty” tattoo
A raging drum beat
A cacophony of voices
Inking a big red G
G is for glutton
G is for the gall to steal
From the working class
(this was the Liberal’s cry, and with it, a digression:
by “working class”
the Lib’s spoke not of those who
lived hand to mouth
to hand to mouth
nose to grindstone
people squeaking and eeking by
not a spare penny
anywhere
to throw
into the gaping and
hungry mouth of
the Stock Market
{that hussy, that trollopy
bitch
who ate on all her plate
and regurgitated into the mouths
of the already stuffed
assholes
who courted her
money-colored cunt}
no, not people who worked for a living,
but people who went to air-conditioned
offices, sitting on their asses, drinking
sugary cups of coffee, willing
the clock to tick, fucking
in the 3rd stall from
right of the bathroom door,
who said hello at roll-call
in exchange for a pay-check.
And went home to fat soccer-wives
Who asked how “work” was.
“Well, today honey, some fat cat
fatter than you or I,
though we are quite rotund,
the two of us,
took all our money...
the excess anyway,
we still will eat,
and continue to be sheltered,
but these are petty concerns.
What About Our Legacy!?!?!”
The “working” class.)
G is for the gall to steal from the
Working class
G is for the gumption
For the gorgon
Who waits with baits
And breath
To catch the unwitting eye.
G is for the gallows
For the guillotine
That hackneyed
Old work horse of the poor
When their panties get in a bunch
About the rich
So some fall guys,
Tall guys in suits
Sitting in tall buildings
The tops of tall buildings
The pent houses
The club houses
The 40 room houses.
Yanked rudely from their brandy snifters
By manly grifters
Manhandled into nooses
Tossed from great heights
That all might see them fall
(at last, at last!!)
and hear the necks a-snapping.
After the cheering died down
The jeering and the leering
At corpses made human
By death
(For one man weighs as much as
The next
When laid out
give or take a stone or ten)
After the excitement of
Murderous justice
It was noticed
(and here there was lamentation)
That the money continued to fall
To disappear.
The numbers on the
Computers
Continued their spiral
down to zero.
“But who!?”
They cried,
“We have killed the bad guys
Wrenched the kings
Of opulence from their
Thrones.
Wrung their necks
‘Til we heard the
satisfying crack.”
Have you ever seen The Terminator? In it, humans create machines with Artificial Intelligence. The machines begin to lust for power, for control. There is a downward spiral, an all-out war, some nuclear bombs are dropped, and Linda Hamilton gets a little bit pregnant.
What I’ve never understood is how the machines learned to lust for power. I know it’s a cautionary tale about man going too far, relying too much on progress and technology. But in the end, when does a machine have an understanding of the concept of power? It’s an abstract idea which can only live with a constant fuel of corruption. Machines know only what they are programmed to know. Which, when simplified down to the very bottom of their language, is yes and no.
A machine understands numbers. Positive ones and negatives ones. Speaking of ones, it knows ones and zeros. Maybe one’s are yes and zero’s are no. It knows money, which equals one, which equals yes.
And it knows no money.
Lets say the machines,
The ones programmed to
Award money
With more money
Good credit with better credit
A yes with a
Plethora of yes’s
Suddenly wanted all the yes’s
For themselves?
I know that
The yes’s
Equal money
And what good is money to a machine?
What if they want it,
Not to spend
But perhaps
Due to it’s
More basic meaning,
To affirm?
Yes.