This virtual paper is my void and I shall speak being into it, for all good stories start off, "In the beginning there was nothing." This blank white nothing is my void and so I shall scream into it!

I will shout shout let it all out because these are the things I can do without! I will scream for every abused, molested, and forgotten child and malnourished animal. I will scream at the piss ants who decry the action of the Nazi Party only to don their glittering, tinfoil chapeaus and blame the Jews for every conspiracy real and imagined just like the Nazis did.

I will scream at the abusive, alcoholic husband, and the contemptuous shrew wives. I will scream at every Pastor that's eloquently fleeced his flock as he served himself rather than God. A great cry shall go up from my throat that I am more sinner than Saint.

I will scream at every hypocrite and charlatan, every evil bastard that drains life from others. I look towards the chasm created by the circus we call politics and scream something I know will fall on deaf ears: An eagle needs both wings to fly!

I will always scream at Adam, Eve, and their malcontent vagabond of a son Cane for wrecking Earth to start with. I scream at my own body for feeling like a ran own prison I can't ever escape from.

And I will scream because of the five years I spent languishing in a purgatory caught between a bickering married couple that I once called Mom and Dad. Scream that I felt trapped and that no one not even God Himself gave to craps and that I almost extinguished the life I felt added up to a less tha Zero sum. I will scream at the baggage that long five years left me with.

I've screamed until my spiritual throat is raw, it's blood splashed upon this digital paper. Now I conclude my act not with a shout but a minute whisper....

So I was taking the bus home from school today. There was a homeless man on the bus, seated across from where I was standing. He was pale and had brown hair and a beard. He was 31, according to what he said. The bus had maybe forty people in it. Not crowded but not empty either.

This homeless man, he was speaking out loud. Not to anyone in particular. He was just speaking out loud, in a volume that was just a little bit loud, so that a decent amount of people could hear but no one would be bothered.

He talked about how the federal government was not doing enough to combat climate change and protect the environment. He talked about how climate change was getting worse and the government wasn’t doing enough to stop it because they cared about the fossil fuel industry more than peoples’ lives. He mentioned how scary it was that there still wasn’t snow in November.

He also voiced that public transit (buses, LRT, etc) should be free. Because that would help the environment and because it would give homeless people a space to stay out of the cold. Also because it would help poor people get to where they needed to go without becoming broke. He expressed that it gets really cold in the winter. And especially recently, since climate change is causing the Arctic vortex to get looser so all the cold winds from the Arctic are coming into the south. And if homeless people had somewhere warmer to go in the winter, like a bus for example, that would really help a lot of people.

He discussed how most homeless people don’t act rowdy or unruly on the bus, and how a lot of middle class people do act rowdy and unruly on the bus. Which tracks well with what I’ve seen, the only rowdy people I’ve seen have all been middle class, and I’ve ridden the bus a whole lot. And he discussed how homeless people have a human right to be somewhere warm.

He talked about anti homeless architecture on the buses. The new seats on the buses, the plastic seats, they make it harder for people to lie down and sleep. (There are three places on each bus that each have three seats in a row together and one place that has five seats.) He explained how if there are enough seats for everyone, which there often is, then homeless people sleeping on the bus aren’t bothering or hurting anyone.

He also explained that homeless people deserve to be able to sleep on the bus, because they deserve somewhere to sleep that isn’t cold. See the thing is, and most people in my city don’t know this, the homeless shelters are overflowing and they don’t have enough space for everyone. Anyways, as the homeless man was explaining, a lot of homeless people have no choice but to sleep outside. And when you sleep outside on a day or night when it’s really cold (which is happening more frequently due to the polar vortex becoming looser and coming south due to climate change), you may not wake up at all. Or you will wake up with frost bite and lose body parts. This really disturbed me, the reality of people going to sleep in the horrific cold and not waking up at all.

He discussed the inflation that is happening recently due to corporate price gouging. How food is more expensive, and homeless people can’t afford to buy the food they need. He discussed how it’s hard for homeless people to buy food to begin with since they can’t cook anything due to not having kitchens.

And he expressed how so many of the people he met on the streets were the kindest people ever. How they had so much kindness for him. How they gave up what little they had in order to help him out. How they were so generous, how they helped him and each other even at great personal sacrifice. He talked about how someone even gave him their shoes once.

I told him that I was listening to what he was saying, that I agreed and that I was glad he was saying this. He shook my hand, and then we sat down to talk together. He told me that he wasn’t lazy, that he had to walk around all day. I told him that that must be exhausting. And truly it is very exhausting having to walk around all day, I know that from personal experience. And homeless people do have to do that because if they stay in one place then the cops come to beat them and steal their possessions. He talked about how he made sure to properly put out his cigarettes so that he didn’t cause fires, and about how he didn’t litter.

I told him that I wished I had something I could give him. (At the time I didn’t have any money or food on me and I didn’t even have a hat on me.) He said it was okay since he had some raw chicken hot dogs and some wonder bread and some cheap ketchup. I had to get off the bus at that point because it was my stop. But I believe that it’s very important that his story is told and shared.

My previous post, Questions, was inspired by the posts of a rising star on this site—a star whose literary "creations" are being celebrated as par excellence. Their posts are also, almost certainly, all or mostly generated by AI. Many of their comments and replies to comments are also from AI.

Questions was generated by ChatGPT and posted unedited, except for the title, which I added. I'll let you all discover the rising star for yourselves, assuming you're interested. Just look for posts that have a similar structure and style as Questions: enchanting, magical, verbose, and a little too sweet. Other telltale signs include liberal use of the word 'whisper' and overly optimistic endings. Think of Questions as your benchmark.

Some of you have been gushing over this rising star's posts so much I thought I was gonna barf on my laptop. I couldn't fucking take any more. Don't get me wrong; I think AI is great. I've worked with it as a developer and in real life. And FWIW, I get that y'all want to be artists and not think about AI. Don't be left behind. AI holds many benefits to you if you learn to use it. But don't be duped by some shithead's AI-generated posts.

10/24/2024

Reading is a compelling passion for a portion of the globe. When you flip open a novel and peer at the small feeble font sprawled across the pages in preceise positions, your life pauses. Your background blurs. It mutes any noise from your surroundings and allows you to focus on the intricate characters, exquisite vocabulary, and carefully placed details.

The Google definition defines reading as “a cognitive process that involves decoding symbols to arrive at meaning and receiving information.” While that is their interpretation of the favored verb, I would define it much differently. I would comment that reading is like jumping into another individual's life and going through their life beside them. You experience the same emotions as the characters in the delicate tale.

When a reader scans the thin smooth pages and notices the lovely aroma of the novel, they can instantly appreciate the time and dedication it took for the author to construct such a favored masterpiece. The author attempts to display every sentence in a certain way to impact any readers.

George RR. Martin accurately produces a wonderful quote about this fascinating verb: “A man who reads lives a thousand lives, but a man who never reads only lives one.”

I pine after a fictional, sword wielding redhead clad in two piece armor that shows of her Heavenly cleavage and toned body. I scream for the loss of innocence of children I witness daily.

Yet how can I possibly take a stand for something I've lost myself. I pine after the woman in revealing armor. What I wouldn't give for those pre adolescent years when I was so innocent I'd turn away from the lifeguard trying to help me because she was clad in a bikini.