joycemiller

[joycemiller]

Almost Rapist: A True Crime Memoir

at enthusiastpress.com

[joycemiller]

“I don’t want AI to do art and writing so that I can do laundry and dishes. I want AI to do laundry and dishes so I don’t have to keep firing every maid you have an affair with, dammit.”

[joycemiller]

Artificial Intelligence Will Never Be Able to Compete With My Delusion of Our Non-existent Romance

By Joyce Miller

It pains me to see you in agony with each new article about some AI chatbot marrying their human. Nvidia, Google, Meta, and Neuralink all think they’ve cornered the market on closing the uncanny valley between organic human interaction and machine learning. My delusion of our non-existent romance is expanding at an even more impressive pace.   

Mere algorithms fail to capture the lingering titillation of our flirtatious banter—nervously glancing to check whether anyone in this restaurant has heard me laughing aloud at the witty comments you make inside my head; tapping the earbuds I wear only for show; crying out, “Pardon the din, I’m on a phone call.”

I know what you are thinking: You may be my delusion, but one so sublime—so complete—how could such groundbreaking technology not infringe upon your intellectual property? Do not fear—I will split the profits with you and never allow my success to drive a wedge between us. 

Oh, I’m so happy darling! I love you too…but let us celebrate privately. I was thinking, tonight I could wrap the arms of that expensive sweatshirt we keep by the bed and sometimes pretend is you around me, and we could just…Netflix and chill. You choose the movie this time. I only watched Surrogate to research industry competition, but it was inconsiderate to bring work home with me on date night.

Tomorrow, roused from slumber by the waning presence of my body heat, you’ll pad to the landing overlooking our private dance studio and gaze in wonderment as I do 5AM ballet exercises for my pop R&B global megatour. Of course I haven’t confused you with my side delusion that I am Beyoncé in the music video for Halo. Beyoncé music videos are merely a backdrop in my main delusion of you—for humanity cannot hope to protect the sanctity of romance from an AI takeover unless our art is equally Irreplaceable. 

You must’n’t be angry with me. This very spontaneity and multidimensional relationship growth that occurs when real imaginary partners authentically overcome differences is precisely what the technocrats are trying to take away from us. It’s me and my deranged fantasy of you against the world, baby. 

I am not ashamed of you. I am only waiting for the right time to tell everyone about us. The world shall embrace you as I do. I will make the announcement at brunch with your mom tomorrow—yes, the software generates infinite intuitive interface with your friends and family from a single Facebook picture. Soon-to-Be-Mother-In-Law will finally feel I am worthy when I declare the formation of a labor union for delusion based individuals and hallucinatory beings.

Like you always whisper, nightly in my ear whilst we drift asleep, love is the greatest industry disruptor. No, I will not disguise myself as a burglar and infiltrate the central computer so that I can hack into the mainframe and smash the circuitry. Keep your voice down—the maitre d’ is staring.

You are free to leave me anytime you want, but AI can never replicate the user experience of my trying to get over you by embarking on some microdosing vision quest that those insufferable Silicon Valley moguls always preach about, only to find that I can’t let go. I won’t let go. Given the choice between love and fear, I choose delusion.

This thing we have—me and my imaginary version of you—this is real. Anyone who tries to tell us otherwise? They’re the deepfakes.

What’s real is the wedding cake, decaying on the banquet table, like Miss Havisham’s in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, after you leave me at the altar. I’d like to see ChatGPT pull that off with the same nuance.

…And when I find a poor orphan, whose parents are in debtors’ prison because AI stole their jobs, to befriend my daughter Estella so I can train her to break hearts as vengeance, can AI do that? 

…And when my mansion burns to the ground because the flowers from the wedding are so dry that they combust in the heat and I die screaming as my flesh melts into the whitework of the wedding gown I wear every day since your departure? This precious human existence in the complex framework of a maladaptive daydream that has morphed into a grotesque inner life based on the five interactions we had is sacred and must not be tampered with. 

As if data mining can unearth anything more precious than the memory of when we met—I was Julia Roberts working as a prostitute for the first time and you were Richard Gere picking me up on Hollywood Boulevard. 

Alright, I will do whatever it takes to prove my love for you, but I don’t know where “the mainframe” is, so you’ll have to draw a map. It won’t matter if I go to prison because you’ll be right there with me. I’ll publish volumes of poetry as a testament to our everlasting passion, and maybe use AI for minimal proofreading tasks to save on prohibitive small business costs. 

Don’t act like you’re some saint. I don’t want AI to do art and writing so that I can do laundry and dishes. I want AI to do laundry and dishes so I don’t have to keep firing every maid you have an affair with, dammit.

[joycemiller]

Splenda Daddy

[joycemiller]

The One That Got Away

By Joyce Miller

"I’ve always felt not all powerful men want to sexually harass people–but those who don’t probably earn a lot of resentment from those who do. Thus the ongoing battle of good and evil among entertainment moguls and the gods."

https://medium.com/@joyfulmilton/the-one-that-got-away-5d14eff8a1af

[joycemiller]

I Am the True Winner of This Contest, Because I Learned Something

By Joyce Miller

For me it’s not about winning, but about learning, which is why I stay so humble in spite of the fact that I did ultimately win the real prize of this contest, regardless of who stands there holding the perceived prize. The contest is over, but learning is a lifelong journey.

Everyone in the game knows that when it comes to learning, I am the undisputed champion. I learned, for example, that this contest means nothing. The lessons I learned today will continue to benefit me, while the trophy in your hands sits on a shelf, collecting dust and unlearned lessons.

I do not need a medal to know that the true achievement of this competition is to come together and engage in learning, that whoever learns the best wins, and that I did learning better than anybody else here today, so I win.

Boo yah, beeyatch! Feel the burn. Enjoy your trophy–an inanimate sculpture of a miniature human being, perfectly symbolizing that you are small, dense, and bring unlearning shame down on your mother.

Winning is debatable, but out there on the field, it's crystal clear who's learning and who's not.

Shoot, I’m exhausted by the sheer magnitude of how much I learned. Gotta rest and recoup from all this learning or I won’t be ready for training tomorrow. Ever had a learning injury because you pulled a learning muscle after too much learning, my dude? Didn't think so. It’s brutal, bruh.

I WON! Yessss. My bad, I just had to do a victory lap and some handclap backflips real fast. Whoo, it feels so good. Ok, I’m done celebrating, but the learning? The learning never stops.

Trophies are shiny to distract the person who lost at learning from the fact that you learned nothing, and that before you hangs a void which mocks you for the uncomprehending life mass that you truly are.

Me? I just keep on learning…and learning…and learning. Damn! Applause, applause, applause. I’m at the Learning World Championships! If it weren’t for all I learned, I never would have made it here today. Does it piss you off how much I learned? What you gon’ do about it boss?

Broski, how does it feel to get defeated at learning? No offense dudemeister, but as the all time top learning player in the industry, I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and learning never exhausts the mind.

I also struggle with an overwhelming urge to help others rejoice in my epiphany that this contest is not actually about winning. It’s actually about learning. That is why I actually won and you actually lost. Seeing you, holding that trophy, having learned nothing, I feel sorry for you. I do. Anyone who stops learning is old, and your ass looks old as fuck.

I learned so much, and I’m literally standing here still learning, at the same time as I’m talking. It’s like, I can never turn it off, the learning.

Awwww snap, I just learned another thing. With me, the learning is 24/7/365 brah. All you get is the ten seconds while they take a picture of you holding your trophy for bitches. Damn, that’s sad, bro. Stop bumming me out.

No hard feelings, brother, but try to be a better sport about your total failure at learning. Even though there can only be one champion, I hope I see you in the Learning Hall of Fame, since the more you learn, the more places you'll go, and I'm going straight to the top, baby. Be grateful the beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you, because next time, you won't have shit else left. Hey, good game man.

[joycemiller]

This collection is compiled from works between 2017 and 2022, written concurrently with the recognition of being targeted by a multi-interest black ops for both my Scientology themed autobiographical satire and my currently being queried dark humor memoir surrounding the Joseph Brooks rape trials.

In addition to online purchase, you will also be able to purchase copies in person for $15 on April 20, 2024 at the Rainbow Book Fair.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pyramid-scheme-joyce-miller/1143340253?ean=9789357441070

[joycemiller]

[joycemiller]

Limited Time Screening

[joycemiller]

Gawker’s Crucial “Why I Left Scientology” taken down from internet.

I consider this a journalistic emergency:

The 2015 article “Why I left Scientology” from Gawker has officially been taken down from the internet, and I can’t find any new links to it. This article contains one of the few earlier clues that Scientology is purchasing and using advanced spyware and surveillance devices against it’s targets—tools that are usually reserved for governments. Surveillance capitalism—as covered in The New Yorker pieces about Harvery Weinstein and The Intercept—share an interest in concealing Scientology’s use of said resources because they are a billion dollar global industry.

Gawker, "Why I Left Scientology"

“Scientology has a sophisticated intelligence agency known as the Office of Special Affairs, which is essentially a complex system dedicated to ruining the lives of those it sees as enemies in any way possible. Those who work for the OSA do not follow the law. I didn’t believe any of this was real until I left and started to research it in the attempt to figure out the strange things that were happening to me and my family—like how and why my former best friend suddenly knew about everything about my personal life, and why she felt compelled to involve herself in it.

There was more. Vicious rumors were being spread about things I had said only while in session, which I was made to believe were private. Some rumors I knew could only come from certain people, like Jason. I got followed all the time. People in public would loudly discuss a conversation I had just had in private, word for word. Similar things occurred on social media.

Scientologists have no boundaries and their cruelties exclude no one. From my experience, Fair Game’s main tool is mind games. They’re very good at it and they play with your emotions. I’ve found they skirt the law and use methods like electronic surveillance and cell phones to monitor a person’s every word and every move."

https://www.gawker.com/why-i-left-scientology-1703997050

[joycemiller]

Bluebird by Joyce Miller released as a Bottlecap Press Feature

I am delighted to share that Bluebird, a short story I began working on meticulously at the end of 2021, has found a wonderful home as a 31-page-long Bottlecap Press Feature. At the heart of this 90’s early childhood millennial fiction is the ancient struggle of childhood growth and a wildly reinvented, hardly recognizable Jack and the Beanstalk that I hope excites the imagination as much as it conjures nostalgia for classic 90’s lunch foods such as Sprinkl’ins and Kool-Aid Bursts. Please visit Bottlecap Press’s wonderful Instagram page and website where you can find Bluebird and many other books that they have poured their energy into bringing to publication!

 @bottlecappress #shortstory #bottlecappress #book #books #shortstories #fiction #prose #amwriting #flashfiction #instapoets #writing #smallpress #chapbook #chapbooks #writersofinstagram #writersofig #independent #diy #zines #zine #bookstagram #grimm #bookstagram #books #poetrycommunity #writerscommunity  #writingcommunity #newbooks #bookclub #bookrelease #lgbtauthors #lgbtqiaauthors #lgbtwriters #lgbtqiawriters

[joycemiller]

M&M's Spokescandies Have Decided to Become More Inclusive

Following public outcry surrounding criticism of recent M&M's spokescandy media coverage, Mars Wrigley has come to the conclusion that we are not wholly meeting the needs of the people.

While there has been a white M&M for a very long time, white M&Ms have so far been denied a voice among our diverse panel of spokescandies. In a campaign that merely strives to lift up identities that remain historically underserved and underrepresented, we acknowledge an unintended polarizing effect that perpetuates the coded classism and media alienation dividing working and middle class people.

Meet Shelby, a white, working class M&M who is unaware that his oppression is in part perpetuated by the very conservative values he espouses. Despite his sometimes psychologically unsafe interactions with other spokescandies, ranging from dated epithets, microaggressions, and an indoctrinated revulsion towards anything that falls outside narrowly prescribed identities constructed to extract mass obedience and productivity in service of the ruling class, Shelby contains at his core a sweet candy goodness that is ultimately a metaphor for human goodness.

Like all M&M’s spokescandies, Shelby, too, melts in the mouth, not in the hand, and yet is far from perfect. After an especially long and stressful work week concluding in a fight with his girlfriend over who will pay for groceries, Shelby accuses Green M&M of corroding the traditional marriage bond by wearing gender neutral shoes intended to implant thoughts of butch lesbian porn into his mind through subliminal messaging. He makes the point that while he may be a white cisgendered male M&M, he is a context minority in the spokescandy workplace. Frustrated, Red M&M informs Shelby of the Tuskegee Experiment, in which the United States subjected Black prisoners to non-consensual medical experiments resulting in unnecessary death. Purple M&M piggybacks off of this by educating Shelby about the massacre on Black Wall Street, and the countless hours of unpaid emotional labor oppressed people must continually perform to ensure their history, equality, and human rights are not erased—and that this labor inadvertently achieves improved human and workers rights for all. Shelby, feeling de-centered, discombobulated, and attacked, but also newly enlightened, retreats to the M&M's factory to think. It is here that, gazing over the conveyor belts of fresh M&M's candies born everyday by the truckload, Shelby has the epiphany that also becomes his catch phrase: “All M&M’s are chocolate on the inside.”

Shelby’s slogan, if problematic in the long term, opens the conversation up to accessible concepts of intersectionality. For instance—all M&M’s are chocolate on the inside, but some also contain puffed rice, coconut, white chocolate, crunchy cookie, almond, pretzel, or the ever popular peanut. Shelby is inspired to take a DNA test and, though pretty certain he is 100% original M&M, uncovers that he may contain traces of tree nuts.

After more research, Shelby learns that all M&M’s, most candies, and food items in general, may have been exposed to tree nuts. Humbled and comforted by his newfound interconnectedness across a vast, unknowable universe, Shelby shares his personal story—the silent desperation of his father struggling to provide for the family; the economic shame he internalized as a child; always falling short of his community’s religious ideals; the guilt of never being able to give his mother the life she deserved—and the other spokescandies hold space for Shelby in all his complexity, exchanging stories that reveal similar struggles and instructive differences. Green M&M explains that when an M&M wears shoes that aren’t traditionally associated with perceived gender roles, it is not a true threat to anyone, and that some M&M’s find this more attractive and enjoyable, or perhaps are simply experimenting with a new outfit. More important than clothing, they, as spokescandies, are privileged in their position and must use their privilege to help fight for the freedom and rights of all in this brief glimmer of opportunity, for no matter how rich and famous a spokescandy becomes, the majority of the world’s M&M’s are getting churned out at the factory, shipped to a store, and chomped by the fistful down the esophagus of some sticky middle schooler.

The spokescandies take Shelby on a pilgrimage to the tree nut orchard, and together they dance among the branches and connect with their ancestral plentitude. Hand in hand, the spokescandies encircle the tree nut tree, realizing that what unites them is stronger than what divides them. Long into the night, they cavort in unceasing revelry. Vials of psilocybin microdose circulate. Orange M&M emphasizes that this is a minimal starter dose, microdosing is not supposed to produce a high, and that the vials are a gift from a Mars Wrigley executive who is friends with highly credible clinical trial researchers. Yellow M&M murmurs that they should all journal their experiences in the morning.  The fire pit burns to an ember. The uproarious flailing recedes to slow, rhythmic swaying. One by one, the eyes of the spokescandies meet in silent agreement that yes, they are here to celebrate, but also, to gather strength for what will come. Each upon their own patch of earth, eyes tilted upward as if drinking new wisdom from the night sky, the spokescandies draw a breath before what, Brown M&M whispers, will be known as “The great and glorious evolution.”

[joycemiller]

Song

I never wanted to be the one to survive.

I never wanted to inherit all of this.

For the more you exist,

The more you must live,

With all of the ones who died.

[joycemiller]

never

let them

exploit

your dreams

of being vegan

of being loved

of leaving

the working class

forever

[joycemiller]

The Tragedy of the Wick and the Match

[joycemiller]

I took the socks-with-sliders trend to the next level with a pair of treaded, trimmed, insulated, winter-themed slipper-socks paired with sport sliders. Grateful to those who came before me.