Tag Archives: technology

Metallica

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For NaPoWriMo Day 7, the prompt is to choose a news headline as the topic for a poem. Here is the news report I chose to write about: “Researchers Discover Faraway Planet Where the Rain is Made of Iron.” I guess you might call this an ironic poem?

Metallica

Use your cook pots for umbrellas, ‘cuz it’s raining iron rain.
I don’t mind heavy metal, but as weather? It’s insane.
The drumming is excessive, and if you can’t take the pain,
you don’t want to be caught out singing in the rain.

If you plan on going wading, I’d have another think,
for the puddles that you’re ogling seem to be full of zinc.
When it snows, most of the snowflakes have crystals made of lead—
not a pleasing prospect when they’re falling on your head.

Oceans full of copper, bronze and steel and tin
may be the place you have to die for to be in.
Silver hills and valleys, rivers made of gold
are all that’s left now that our nature’s all been sold.

Does tungsten please your taste buds? Can you eat the golden calf?
With no leather, those bronze slippers aren’t as comfortable by half.
Aluminum for cooking, some folks think can’t be beat,
but what you use for cooking you cannot also eat!

Now they’ve fracked away our water and melted polar ice,
Mother Nature thinks a world of metal would be nice.
So put away your appetites, for food will be passé
once the plants and animals have all been put away.

Say thank you to our rulers. Say thank you very much
for their self-serving decisions and their Midas touch.
Some of us saw this coming but the others did not see
They were too busy getting their news from Fox TV!!!

Oh dear. I said I wasn’t going to write another political poem. Well, the prompts made me do it. Once again.

Equal to the Challenge?

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Equal to the Challenge?

Whereas  the stage of life for folks my age is likely terminal,
the young are at a stage that is best described as germinal.

They boomerang through life, it seems, from one thing to another—
from party girl to partner, to wife and then to mother.

Their progress through this life is one that we have laid the ground for.
Where we have already been is likely where they’re bound for.

Those obstacles that soured us are ones we hope they’ll solve.
I guess that is the means by which humans must evolve.

War, disease and famine, global warming through pollution—
 we set up each problem. Will they create the solution?

Prompt words today are boomerang, terminal, young, sour and progress.

Once by Ice and Once by Fire

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Once by Ice and Once by Fire

Once by ice and now by fire, erasing her mistakes,
Mother Earth must wonder how many times it takes
to finally get the world planned right, for once the lot is cast,
how can she watch sufficiently  a planet that’s so vast?

Her hope is that but rarely she must resort to extinction
to control a species risen to such great distinction
that it uses up more resources than it can provide.
How many times must she restore a planet that has died?

She casts a might yawn and then breathes fire once again—
cancelling out excesses that they can’t see as sin.
Caught in a clinch as they resist all means of education,
perhaps the only answer is mankind’s eradication.

 

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Prompt words today are extinct, rarely, clinch, vast and hope.

And Make it Zippy!!!

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An Open Letter to Panasonic, Apple and Ziplock

Since it is true, I must report–
my phone cord’s always two feet short
of reaching from the wall connection
towards my office desk’s direction.
And Apple power cords, for heaven’s sake.
Could they make one that doesn’t break?

Why don’t Ziplocks really zip?
Why can’t I ever find the lip
to pull the damn thing easily closed?
Nothing’s as simple as supposed.
So to the fellows who design,
please listen to these words of mine:

This customer is getting miffed.
Please don’t hold her in short shrift.
Assure me that the fault’s not mine
by bettering your weak design.
Just make your flipping phone cords longer!
Ziplocks zippier, Mac cords stronger!

In the interim, I’ll use
tape and rubber bands and glues.
My power cord’s life they will assure
and keep my plastic bags secure.
I’ll shove my desk over on my own
to try to reach the blooming phone.

But finally I’m sure I’ll snap
and cease to buy your ill-formed crap.
So get my drift and make some changes.
A thing like this is what deranges
and drives us to cell phones, PC’s,
and covered bowls to store our cheese!!!!

For the Ragtag prompt: Zip

Techaffection

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Techaffection

All types of loving have their seasons
wherein we love for different reasons.
When we are young lads and misses,
loving mainly starts with kisses,
whereas loyalty and pleasure
later count in equal measure.
But as we age, love changes, too,
as some things get harder to do.
And as our brains grow more ecliptic,
screens get smaller, apps more cryptic.

So simple tasks–perhaps to clone
old data to a new iPhone
become more difficult to do
until in time you have no clue
and thus it is you call a tech
to get your puzzlement in check
and in an hour or two he solves
your problems and your fears absolves.
You thumb your phone to make a call
and find it’s not so hard at all.

You have your contacts here with you.
Your photos, and your camera, too.
Calendar, iTunes and maps––
all the necessary apps.
Appreciation starts to grow
for that young techie who helped you so––
a type of loving, in its fashion,
not so much a thing of passion
as a Luddite’s fond affection
for a techie’s apt detection
of that complicated mess
that I fear I must confess
I never would have solved alone.
You won my heart, Chad, via phone!!!

This young Apple Tech worked with me for an hour and a half, then, when I had to leave for an appointment,  called me back a few hours later and worked for another half hour to wrestle two computers, an old nearly dead iPhone and a “new” used iPhone into sync.  I promised in appreciation that I’d write him a poem, so Chad, I hope you see this.  If you do, leave a comment.  Apple techies rock!!

Outsmarting My Smart TV

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My TV is Smarter Than I Am

My TV is smarter than I am, springing to life on a whim.
When my  Jack-of-all-trades comes to work here, I think she is flirting with him.
She flicks on and then off in a second, just like she has given a wink.
Or perhaps registers disapproval by shutting us off with a blink.

I know she has much to complain of since I purchased her two years ago.
I’ve never connected to cable or dish, so she doesn’t have too much to show.
Although she connects to computers, my Apple igores that she’s here.
That I haven’t read the instructions? I know it’s exceedingly queer.

She’s equipped to show movies in 3D, but my housekeeper threw out the glasses.
So if I want movies to jump out at me, I must go view them out with the masses
and not in the privacy of my own home with my cat or myself or my friends.
I haven’t checked out buying more on the Web, and for this I must soon make amends.

My computer is usually my viewer of choice when my friend sends me movies by Skype.
The films that he sends are amazing. He knows the best subjects and type
of videos that I like viewing. They are smart and they’re funny and Indie.
He doesn’t send action/adventure or slapstick or horror or Hindi.

 But I never watch them on my Smart screen, preferring my laptop to it.
I set it right there at my poolside and watch as I try to get fit
doing my pool aerobics for an hour and a half, maybe two.
My workouts just seem to last longer whenever I’ve something to view.

 My TV can see out the window that I’m faithful to screens that are small
and I’m sure that I’ve given a complex to my big gal I don’t watch at all.
So I started a “Last Sunday” film night where I can share films that I savor
We eat and we drink and we talk and we laugh as we all view the movies I favor.

For one night a month, my TV springs to life when I plug in the little thumb drive.
Her face flushes up in an enormous blush, for she sees that I know she’s alive.
The eyes of all eight of us fix upon her. She’s the center of all our attention.
We laugh at her jokes and cry at her pathos. Respond to her mysteries with tension.

But the rest of the month her expression is blank, sitting alone in her corner
looking so sad and so lacking in life that I feel that perhaps I should mourn her.
The first time she lit up when I entered the room to say she didn’t recognize me,
I realized with shock for the very first time that my TV could both talk and see!

I hadn’t quite realized the extent of her powers when I bought her at Costco that day.
My old TV weighed in at five hundred pounds—more than a TV should weigh.
I’d inherited it from my mom when she died so I had a personal attachment,
but to move it alone, one risked heart attack or at least a vertebral detachment.

And so I gave in to cajoling by friends that it was time to buy another.
and I gave away the monster TV that I had acquired from my mother.
But guilt has suffused me ever after that day, for I really don’t need a TV,
and this smart girl is lacking in challenges, just wasting her talents on me.

She’s recently started to turn herself on (something that girls alone do)
and talking to me when I enter the room and enter her angle of view.
Finally I just unplugged her—an act of most selfish defiance.
I haven’t the time in my life just to chat—especially to an appliance!

 

Hate to admit this poem is an edited version of one written over three years ago and I still flounder around trying to work this TV. The world has evolved beyond me.  I should be the one blushing! The prompt today is blush.

Cosmos: Flower of the Day, Sept 16, 2017

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In September and October, the fields on the way to the mountain town of Tapalpa, a few hours from my home,  fill with millions of flowers, including acres and acres of cosmos.  These photos were taken ten years ago and Oscar, the little boy in this photo, is now 12 years old. Perhaps it is time to take his little sister up into the fields this year!

 

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Cee’s posting of her cosmos flowers today prompted me to echo her post.

For Cee’s Flower Prompt. 

Waiting for Mom

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As usual, waiting for mom to feed us, to throw the ball, to finish her blog, to give us pats.

Click on first photo to enlarge all.

First there was Frida, then Diego

The prompt word was waiting: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/waiting-2017/

Jammin’ with Siri

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I was just jamming with Siri, the personal assistant on my iPhone.  When I started to get personal, this was her answer:

Me: How old are you, Siri?

Siri:  “I am as old as the east wind and as young as a newborn caterpillar.”

When I asked her again, this is what she said:

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I swear.  This happened.  Wish I’d thought to photograph her more poetic first response.