A Word is Born
Human friction is often caused by a powerful negative response to something another person says is true. An exchange of loud exchanges of not listening to the other person occurs. You see it in bars all the time. Words spill from mouths, fists fill the temporarily emptied maws and loosened teeth are the innocent victims. Dentists prosper. Yet the situation is usually considered resolved.
So, today I imagine myself sitting at a bar and yelling random thoughts about the evils we face in writing to anyone who will listen. Since I own the bar, I will not be cut off. The same lack of principle followed Elon Musk upon his acquiring and subsequent destruction of the Twitter platform.
I yell:
“The internet goes against the normal run of human friction by serving up infinite platters of ignorant bullshit. There is no way to punch an online opinion in the face. Denying a ‘like’ is a pretty tuncked up thing to do.”
Somebody says “Tuncked?”
I resume bellowing:
“Goddam glad you noticed my latest contribution to letters. The root is ‘tunck.’ It means conforming your opinions to match those of the in crowd when you feel differently. People fear ‘or else,’ which in this case means a cyberstoning on social media. It’s like going Turtle. Tunckers look around, agree and vanish.” I take another unneeded shot.
“Now, I’m not at all for testosterone injected blind fury, but ‘tunck’ as in metaphorically ‘tucking your junk’ like Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs (albeit for another reason altogether) should be the second worst thing a writer of any gender can be accused of–the worst being plagiarism.”
I become uncharacteristically thoughtful and my voice loses its nails on a blackboard edge. It is evident that I have passed out with my eyes opened.
Fortunately, I have dominion over time in this post, which allows me to wake in a new paragraph as fresh as a line of good–I mean as a daisy, and move away from a worn out topic and toward something a bit more elevating.
An Important Subject For Writers Everywhere
Plagiarism used to be rare, mainly confined to school essays. But on her site (dianemdickson.wordpress.com.) our own co-founding Editor Diane M. Dickson recently posted the following ugsome developments:
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Millions of books have allegedly been stolen by the #MetaBookThieves and used without permission or compensation to create a digital monster that threatens the future of every writer in the UK. This is a major attack by Meta on the livelihoods of creators.
New ALCS Chair Lord Clement-Jones said: “The revelation that Meta has trained its AI models using pirated books is nothing short of an assault on authors’ rights. This blatant disregard for copyright and fair compensation undermines the very foundation of the creative industries. Writers, publishers, and all creators deserve respect and remuneration for their work.
The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society stands in full solidarity with the Society of Authors in demanding accountability and legislative action to prevent tech giants from exploiting creative works without consent. This is not just about AI – it’s about the future of intellectual property and the protection of those who bring knowledge and stories to the world.”
Many thanks, Leila for that piece about the AI theft. This is another post on the subject https://futurism.com/meta-copyrighted-books-no-value and I will say that, having over twenty of my novels in the stolen list was hurt enough but then to be told that they are of no economic value is a blow that really stings. We write because we want to – yes – and most of us realise that we are never going to make even a living wage from it but to say that they are ‘of no economic value’ because Meta wouldn’t pay us for the use of them (I think this is what they mean) is not only rude and nasty but greedy in the extreme. I know it’s probably all too late, but I am among the many writers who will stand to the last asking for recognition, requests for permission and compensation. Apart from all of that, I am despairing that the world is to be swamped with mediocre, bland and soulless prose. I don’t want to be in that world. Thanks again Leila for giving me this platform for a rant.
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Thank you Diane! Well said.
As you can plainly see this involves all writers. Fists need to find the corporate faces, I say! This is a despicable act by rotten people who have the souls of ring worms. Check out the link and you will be appalled.
Why, here comes one of those corporate parasites now, into my bar. Been a long time since I punched someone in the face. But I’m sure it’s like riding a bike or burning a book. Either way, to borrow from Joni Mitchell (notice I do not steal from Joni), “I’ve looked at tunck from both sides now.”
The Six Gems
To err is human. Let’s see AI cop to erring. In this era to err places you in the public square for a good stoning. Water under the bridge flows backwards in phone world. Still, we are human no matter how many people unfriend us up the river. Fortunately Daniel R Snyder is divine and willing to forgive a certain (me) Editor for misplacing his story. But it all worked out with Daniel’s long waiting Eulogy making a special appearance on Easter Sunday.
It is a difficult piece because of the brutality of its truth. Taking responsibility for something that cannot be taken back is excruciatingly painful. And when we do let the full weight fall on us, we begin to weasel our way out from under through half truths and rationalizations.
Monday saw the return of James Hanna with Putting the Galaxies in Their Place. The reader gets a bit of a surprise at the end. The work is especially well timed and good fun.
The first two tales are indicative of the vast range of styles we are fortunate to publish day after day, year after year.
Newcomer Mechant Deavy showed style on Tuesday with Shame. There are people who are born to be awkward and whenever they try to do something different it meets with, at best, mixed results. Yet you root for the story’s hero because he, on some level, reminds you of that person you see in the mirror.
Alex Kellett made a strong return Wednesday with Snakes Everywhere. The world can be rough on people as it is on MC Katherine who blames everything on everyone else for the sake of showing it on social media. It’s disappointing that some people choose to live in phone world, in exile utterly alone. And, in this case, deservedly so. Alex did a great job balancing an unlikable character and story.
It has been a week with a lot of well written misery in it, and nothing more harrowing than The Boy by another first time contributor Clayton Korson, MD. It must be particularly tough to bring a child into the world and, despite your best efforts, see her/him turn into a monster. This story as well as a recent tale by Christopher Ananias underscores it beautifully. You wonder how well you would do in the same situation.
Michael Bloor has been a steady contributing writer on the site for what’s getting to be a long and happy time. Mick’s Family Heirlooms marks his heaven knows how manyeth appearance (which I promise to tally up some day, including Sunday works). It is a fine little comeuppance story that I liked very much. Whenever I see some smug bastard on the Antiques Roadshow showing off something he swindled from an innocent party I want to see the similar story unfold. Light and with wonderful flavor, Mick scored again.
A Positive List
In one of my recent posts I spoke of humour, but I skipped a list of funny things because it boggled my already boggled mind. Now that I’ve had time to think, below are my ten of the funniest fictional moments. No such thing as a top ten here:
- Turkey’s Away Episode WKRP in Cincinnati
- John Cleese goose-stepping on Fawlty Towers
- “Reverend” Jim Ignatalski Taxi
- Billy Connolly Don’t Drink the Water in Ibesia
- “Tallywacker” Porkies
- Andy Kaufman lip syncing the chorus to the Mighty Mouse song, Saturday Night Live
- Peter O’Toole and friend, Late Night With David Letterman (see clip)
- The Simpsons “the golden era”
- “You can take your thumb out of my ass any time now, Carmine…” Mrs. Dean Wormer, Animal House
- All yours
Leila
literally stories 
Hi Leila and Diane
The online opinion hives never stop buzzing. Nothing gets resolved. And it’s true at least after the barroom brawl, whatever the problem, is usually over. Online it’s eternal. There is no meter for right and wrong from some of these people (a lot of people).
AI stealing books to create their insidious algorithms is appalling. Ironic too… Using them to create their “so-called” art threatening the very writers they have stolen from and everyone else. Then trying to devalue the writer so they won’t have to pay. How insidious is that?
These tech giants are the new Hermann Gorings’ of art appropriation and Musk gave us a Nazi salute!
I see a massive class action lawsuit.
Great thought provoking post!
Christopher
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Thank you Christopher
Indeed it is galling that corporations are arrogant to the point of theft. A class action is actually a good idea. Don’t need much of a lawyer just a dictionary turned to the page that defines stealing. They forget that public domain stuff needs to be credited.
Thanks again!
Leila
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Thanks always for these round up articles. It’s a shame that AI, which is touted as a saviour for mankind by those that would seek to profit from it, is just a tool for the con artist. At least we’re doing what we love over here.
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Hi Alex
I don’t believe it will work out well for the thieves in the long run. There are some bad things about life that we can do nothing about. But then there are the sneaky items, which inevitably suffer a backlash.
You are right, as long as you love what you do, it really doesn’t matter in the greater sense.
Thank you!
Leila
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Leila
It’s hard to beat O’Toole sharing one of his beers with a camel but I can offer John Belushi as Joe Cocker on Saturday Night Live which is fairly hilarious and says something about both Belushi’s influences and his uncanny ability to inhabit the skins of characters not his own…like a chameleon.
Dale
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Hi Dale
I remember his Cocker well! Joe had a sense of humor and appeared on stage with JB. Like twins. Thank you for the awesome addition!
Leila
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Thanks you, Leila and Diane, for calling the theft issue to our attention. It’s important and frustrating to say the least. Good roundup of stories as always. To the list I’d add the Frasier episode where Martin (the father) accident gets stoned — “refrigerator pants.”
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Hi David
Fraiser was a funny show. Just by being there Eddie was somehow funny.
Thank you!
Leila
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thank you again Leila. Apart from the ranty part the new word part is excellent. I can visualise the bar and the stares of the customers as they realise a word is born! Great post as always. dd
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Thank you Diane
And I truly appreciate the information you have shared!
Leila
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Dear Leila and Diane
Thanks for sharing this info about 20 stolen novels and for standing up to the soulless corporate overlords by telling the truth. That is the best thing and the only thing we can do now, on one level: tell the truth, and keep telling it even unto a moment when the only ones listening are the birds, if that moment ever comes. But it will be a while. There are still millions of people all over the globe who are appalled by what’s happening to the world when humanity appears to be embracing its own intellectual and spiritual doom in this manner and sacrificing its own spirit on the altar of comfort and conformity.
It reminds me of the time when someone wrote an anonymous sequel to Cervantes’ Don Quixote and published it in a big way before Cervantes himself was able to finish and bring out his own sequel. Many thousands of readers all over Europe and the Americas believed that Cervantes himself had written the fake sequel and the quality of the fake sequel was extremely poor. His identity as an author had been literally stolen right out from under him and he was transformed in the eyes of the world into a bad writer who’d cheapened his own material for profit even though he had nothing to do with said project because he was busy writing the REAL sequel, which turned out to be one of the greatest books of all time. The anonymous writer literally posed as Cervantes and published a book with Cervantes’ own characters in it as if Cervantes himself had written this horrible work. Not unlike the secret police showing up at your door and accusing you of being someone else then arresting you for it (Kafkaesque).
An instructive tale which reminds us that the unscrupulous literary thieves have been at this game for a very long time. Probably the only thing we can MAKE SURE they don’t steal is our own souls.
Diane and Leila, thanks for sharing and telling the truth!!
Dale
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Hi Dale
You hit it right. The truthful stuff by Cervantes and Kafka keeps thriving like Shakespeare because they tell of deeper and often contradicting human emotions.
I remember the Star Trek when Kirk blew a robot probe’s mind with “logic” only a human can think up.
We need Bill again!
Thank you as always!
Leila
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Leila
I can add that AIs are UTTERLY INCAPABLE of doing literary criticism.
Not only do they get the simple facts wrong ALL THE TIME; they are also completely, and totally, incapable of seeing and perceiving the subtle connections and linkages, which kind of seeing, perceiving, and connecting IS literary criticism itself (at its highest levels, that is, and when practiced by people like H.D., Flannery O’Connor, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, and Harold Bloom).
And so: quality fiction, poetry, philosophy, history, literary, cultural and religious criticism, at the highest levels, will NEVER be anything that can be done by Robots. Not now, and not in a million years, either.
Kirk definitely knew what he was doing.
THANK YOU!
Dale
PS
As I’ve mentioned before, there are tales in the Arabian Nights of humanoid-like, soulless robotic-like things taking over the entire world, including the minds and hearts of people; and the ancient Egyptians also told tales about this kind of thing….there’s nothing new under the sun.
But perhaps we will get to the point where the robots are more human than the human zombies themselves! (Thinking and the soul will be dead on Planet Earth by then…)
Or: Nature will take her revenge and the ones left over will wake up and the story will begin all over again – see the allegory Noah’s Ark in the Hebrew Bible…
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Hi Dale
AI will never reach your level of inspired thinking. Imagination cannot be duplicated by the pursuit of money.
Sports Illustrated (a one time respected publication) got busted using AI and saying the stuff was human. I guess artificial crap smells just as foul.
Thanks again!
Leila
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Hi again Dale
The whole concept of Master Machines has essential flaws. It infers an ability to create minds greater than our own. It would be like Soupy Sales fathering Shakespeare. Science is great, but many scientists are arrogant, and, plainly, wrong.
Thanks again!
Leila
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All good choices. Peter O’ Toole in just about anything. Simpsons and used to was local boy Matt Groening who may have named his tribe after the cross street from where I grew up. All The Ghostbusters, anything with kaiju, Mighty Mouse (wish someone was showing him today), the old Peter Sellers movies, Marvin Gaye gone too soon, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, out of memory time to pull ivy.
Mighty Mirth
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Hi Doug
Forgot about Groening being from Oregon. Peter Sellers was quite funny, Pink Panther v. Clouseau (sp). Thank you!
Leila
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Hi Leila,
So many times in this weird world we now live in, I wish so many situations arose in the pubs and Working Mens Clubs of the mid seventies to the early eighties. many would have been eradicated. For example no-one could hide to bully. Image would only have been influenced by the real. These places could be crude and brutal but you had to learn respect, manners and tolerance very fucking quickly. Theft of your peers would have been swiftly dealt with. Conversation thrived with no screens, tapping thumbs and no words. Money-Men were frowned upon and would never have been allowed to prosper. Paedo’s and beasts would have disappeared. PC and snowflakeism would never have came into being!! – The list goes on.
…I would love you to turn that amazing imagination you have and tell us the name of the bar!!!
Regarding the info from Diane’s ugsome developments. (Just had to use ugsome!!) It is nothing short of a disgrace. But when we think on what the tech-giant wankers have done, ignored and allowed is as appalling as those who make legislation, not hammering the bastards at the very beginning!!!
Politicians, technology and innovation have all one goal – To make more fucking millions!!
I had to mention a film that Peter O’Toole starred in that wasn’t that well received (I don’t think??) was ‘Murphy’s Law’ The ending was sad but uplifting all at the same time.
Loved his quote about JFK – ‘I heard about the Kennedy assassination in 1985.’
And funny moments – I have so many! Love the references, the ones that I know and I’m sure, also, the ones that I will seek out.
‘Still Game’ has so many. As does the already mentioned ‘Frasier’, ‘Nesbitt’, ‘Father Ted’ and my first awareness of satire with ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’ and ‘Spitting Image’ have so many crackers. ‘Soap’ was probably the first American comedy that made me crease.
But I’ve went back to an old favourite that has as many laugh out loud moments as any of them.
I had to show you the clip.
Brilliant as always Leila!! If we ever meet in the unnamed pub (??) the Rusty-Nails are on me and we could debate on who needed a punch and who we would buy a round for!!!
…Whether we acted on this would depend on how many of the individual that we could see. Normally you would swing for the middle one, but if there is an odd number, it confuses!!!
Hugh
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Hi Hugh
Peter was also brilliant in My Favorite Year. Agree totally. Used to be you could have it out and have things be over, one on one. Ridiculous people on media blow stuff way out of proportion.
The Punch in the Face is a perfect name for the bar.
Gonna catch those clips in a minute. Phone screen too small.
I almost included clip of Winston kicking his fake leg through the window from Still Game. Navid plain funny always.
Thank you as always!
Leila
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beautiful
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A great week of stories and always a pleasure to read the latest by Mr. Bloor. I shall endeavour to weave ‘tunck’ into conversation, most likely under the influence of a few beers in a bar / pub similar to the one you describe. I like what you said about people needing to share their opinions and wholeheartedly agree. I also can’t help, and perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I have a sense of a time in the past when we really didn’t bother with opinions as much as we do nowadays – a kind of quieter time when I was more interested my mates’ stories, jokes, and general daftness, than I was in anything resembling an opinion.
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Hi Paul
Thank you. And I believe you are right. We used to let the small stuff slide. The trouble now is that there are too many people blathering, blithering and bothering on social media. People who can’t write picking holes in each other. It would have some interest if most of it wasn’t so damn boring.
Thanks again!
Leila
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