Monday, January 23, 2017
Leadership
-What the fuck good is that? Passive-
Aggressive? Isn’t that what it’s called?
-An Art Truly! Not a psychological syndrome.
-So is its brother, Bullshit!
-You go too far!
-Somebody has to!
Labels: bullshit, indirection, leadership, management style, passive-aggressive
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Art&Life
together, Me and Mamie O'Rourke
He was an old New Yorker-type story writer.
Light allusions to hidden tragedies, all indirectly told.
Until his approaching death, when things flooded.
We avoided him then.
When meat and bones assert, some grow fearful.
An e-book publisher wants to do his life works...
not many K’s or M‘s, or whatever, there.
It’s left to the estate to negotiate, and they
can’t get the act together. Each family member
has lingering hurts, but none spoken of just yet.
Labels: indirection, New Yorker Story, sophistication, story telling.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
In the Robotic Program
Being a human person
wasn’t so bad. He loved helter-skelter football on TV.
And even when they printed out a book of rules for him,
and most of the chaos went away, he still wanted to watch it
more than anything else he could do in the cottage.
Mostly, his duties consisted of talking to visitors in their
languages. They were consistently delighted in him, though
some laughed at the grammatical construction or two left
at sea.
That introduced laughter to him, and he responded heartily
at unexpected moments later on.
Such as when Nellie Wye, the housekeeper, asked him to
lift his feet.
She took offense, blurting “They made a man that laughs
at common work! Typical!”
He actually loved Nellie, and was getting wiser as to
what to tell his handlers, who programmed light
responses to her.
They punched in much of what they called PC. “From
hence, G-19, you’ll offend no one!” they trumpeted.
They spent a great deal of time teaching him indirect
discourse, and what they called reading between the lines,
but were often fey and sarcastic themselves in doing it.
In his mind–-let’s call it that–-his name is Zachary Oscar
Midwood, with Nellie his wife. There are several children
and they watch football incessantly, laughing at the
bonehead plays.
And he now stays dead serious whenever Nellie asks him
to lift his feet, having discovered, really, that she has as
many quirks as football has rules.
Labels: discourse, football, human, indirection, language, relationship, robot, robotics
