Retarded cockatiels and bunnies? Read on…

     What’s the first sign that our robot overlords are almost here?
     I’m not so sure, either, but “Amazing Amanda” is definitely a contender for first official “Sign of the Impending Robot Apocolypse.”

     With servomotors under her rubber skin and behind her dead plastic eyes, she can produce caricatures of human facial expressions and emotions, like a big human-infant shaped furby.

     Using RFID chips and an integrated sensor, she recognizes her toys when they are presented to her and will voice her preference for specific toys–even though she is effectively a quadrapalegic and can’t actually play with the toys you subsequently taunt her with.

     Beyond that whole toy-proximity-identification thing, this doll uses an integrated microphone and some basic speech recognition to try to understand what your child says and respond in some semblance of a conversation. I’d judge the quality of the resulting conversation to be somewhere between arguments with a retarded cockatiel and sessions with the ancient and venerable ELIZA program.

     But here’s where it gets rediculous. In the television commercial for this unholy thing a child tells her simulacra playmate, “I love you, Amanda!”
     How would you program Amanda to respond to such confessions of idollatry?

     Honestly, would you expect the response to be:

I love you more than bunnies! (?!?)

     When I stopped laughing and coughing, and got an ice-pack for my head which had received a sharp knock from the coffee table on my way to the floor, I realized I had just received an experience which shall become part of my identity from that day forth.
     How can I ever forget the sight of a disturbing robotic toddler telling a young girl that, in defiance of all logic and evidence to the contrary, it loves her “more than bunnies?
     I mean, does a robot pre-schooler even like bunnies? How can you equate love for one specific human child to the love you might feel for a broad catagory of lagomorphs?

     Other possible responses Amanda’s unholy trainers passed over in favor of this insane statement must surely include,
     ”I love you, too.”
     ”I love you lots!”
     or even the old cliche stand-by,
     ”I love you this much!”

     But no! Amanda intends to teach your child that he or she is merely loved more than a carrot-munching rodent.
     Hell, I love complete strangers more than bunnies!
     I think I might like bowel movements more than bunnies, especially if they are mine and have been a long time coming.
     If it weren’t for the fact that Amanda is not free of charge, I would already have obtained one and decapitated it. I long for the day when I can hold her wee little disembodied droid head in my hand.

     SafeT:  ”Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well.”
     Amanda: “I love you more than BUNNIES!”

• I doodled whilst watching television.
• If you click on the doodle, you’ll get a bigger picture of the doodle, turned the right-way around, too.
• Any questions?

     The victim, an unidentified 25 year old airliner, was found murdered today along with it’s traveling companions: a king, a queen and a princess. (king and queen can be seen on the fuselage while the princess’s body was found on the left wing)
     There were no marks on the bodies, although the wildly flaming contrails would imply a fatal form of indigestion.
     Robbery is not likely to be a motivation in this crime due to the fact that the assailant left the crowns on the bodies of the slain nobility.
     If you or anyone you know recognize the unfortunate aircraft and/or his royal companions, or if you have any information regarding their murder, we will be setting up a tip hotline where you can make an anonymous report.

Call 800-4-WOW NOW with any such tips.

This is the second short, evocative piano sketch I’ve done. Sortof a piano haiku kinda thing.
Its only 24 seconds, so it isn’t a big deal to give a listen.
This one is called Bare Branch.

The last one was Idle Hands.

Hope you like it.

     I react to people as I see them. If I don’t know someone, I automatically assume my interaction will be pleasant until proven otherwise.

     That I’ve been proven wrong so many times doesn’t cast doubt on my system, because my system doesn’t keep score.

     And when I find a person acting irrational or mean-spirited towards me or someone nearby, I do my best to use empathy as a weapon. I can’t count the number of times I’ve defused an attitude bomb by asking, “Are you OK? You seem a little down today,” or “is there anything I can do to help you with this?” I then follow that up by earnestly listening to their response and offering them sympathetic feedback.
     Even though they seemed more petty than depressed, I figure most people are mean-spirited or petty BECAUSE they are unhappy. I know that’s a bit Socratic, but I happen to believe it is generally true.
     This is why I usually get my way, by-and-by.
     Partially because my way is usually a reasonable road to travel with no unrealistic expectations or demands, and partially because I try to make people understand that, if the roles were reversed, I would be helping them go down their path, too.

     I was helping my mom clean out the florida room for my parent’s old home.
     We found no less than five claw hammers of various ages and colors.
     Mom has now admitted that my step-father seems to have had a low-level addiction to hammers.
     She said he also has had a problem with tape-measures for years.

This is something my family Just Doesn’t Talk About.

Yep, there’s a new comedy scene on the scene blog. Check it out, let me know what you liked or didn’t like, and I swear I’ll censor it!

My Neighbor, FCC

     ”Buckle in, sweetheart,” I called over my shoulder to my three foot progeny, “Daddy’s going in for another run.”
     Sam looked up from her Barbie picture book and let loose one of her dazzling smiles. “O.K, Daddy. Can I operate the targeting system this time?”
     I hate to deprive my little girl the joys of precision bombing, but she was still a bit young to keep her eyes lined up with the heads-up display of the targeting system. I apologetically declined, saying,
     ”Sam, I know I let you do the carpet bombing earlier, but-”
     ”Its Mommy’s turn now,” Heather interrupted, saving me the bother of trying to tell Sam ‘no’ in a pleasant way, “Maybe in a few years you can use the laser-sight, OK?” I didn’t look back, but I could almost feel the pouting commence. No matter, we were almost at optimal release altitude.
     A quick glance toward my lovely wife told me that she was concentrating on the sight-graph suspended over the dash-board of our 2005 Ford Escape, her hands working through the contents of the glove compartment furiously. I took one hand off the steering wheel and set it upon her left thigh, giving it a gentle and encouraging squeeze.
     ”Um…” I began, the altimeter beginning to blink green, “aren’t we going to let loose-”
     ”Joe, just…shut it. I know what I’m doing.” Thus shushed, I hunched my shoulders resentfully and concentrated on the rapidly approaching target zone.
     ”Mommy, daddy said…”
     Irritated and distracted, Heather snapped, “Sam, if you want to go play in the park after this, you had better just be quiet and let me concentrate, ok?”
     Feeling the need to be paternal, I let loose my most cliche daddy-ism, “Listen to your mother.” Then one…two seconds go by. I reach hesitantly toward the emergency brake….if Heather didn’t do this soon, we…
     With the muted “ding” of the door ajar alert, I realized Heather had finally loosed our little dog of war upon the target zone. I went with the relieved sigh as my chosen reaction and reduced the white-knuckled grip I had on the steering wheel to a gray-knuckled grip. It looked like Heather’s targeting had been spot-on as my instruments showed the missile arrowing straight toward the target. Another few seconds go by and a hand touched my shoulder.
     ”Joe, we can pull out any time now..,” came my concerned beloved’s voice.
     ”Oh! Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
     ”Right. What else is new? Pull. Up.”
     I concentrate on driving, shifting back up to fourth, and then fifth gear, finally turning on the overdrive and taking my foot off the clutch entirely. Cruise control set, I call to the back seat, “Well, was that some fun or what?”
     Sam, who was now craning her neck to watch the mushroom cloud blooming through the back window of our miniature SUV, answered dismissively, “I wanna go to the park.”

• This is, of course, completely fictional. My Ford Escape has a 4 cylinder engine, which makes it completely incapable of flight–but it get 30 miles per gallon on the freeway, which almost makes up for it.

I use a free service called “SiteMeter” to track visitors to this, my blog.

It tracks how many of you have visited here, your ip address, time zone, language, browser choice, blood type, shoe size, probable bacterial population levels, and even a simple binary “true/false” reading of your likely answer to the question, “do you like Vichyssoise?”

Crap, spilled diet Faygo Twist (the drink formerly known as Frosh) all over my shorts.*
I’m more upset by the fact that I have so much less drink to drink than I am at having moist, lemon-lime scented thighs.

When Bob Dillan dropped cue cards in time with the lyrics written there-in, it was quite cool. When the pubescent girl in the Kellogg’s Corn Puffs commercial does it whilst a fake hip-hop artist raps out the various virtues of the aforementioned sugar-coated confection, it is NOT cool.

Stuey(sp) is matricidal, Peter is drunk, and I realize I’m no longer so anamored of this program. Non-sequiters be damned, there is a limit to the amusement it is possible to garner from random out-of-context celebrity appearances.

Something else amused me. SiteMeter tells me that an alarming number of people found my site by searching MSN and/or Google for

• it is the oscar meijer weiner mobile
• safe porn sits
• kitty cat “skull harness”
• mushrooms that stink
• J.Lo getting Fucked
• code inspector states far to many violations
• extreme home make over
• Jesus scenes
• and even WNIC
  • (a local Detroit radio station)

By “alarming number,” I mean exactly one person per search.**

* If I left the comma out of this sentance it would assume that an anthropomorphic turd were involved.1
** Except for wnic and weiner mobile. For some reason, lots-o-people find me that way. You’d think ‘kitty cat skull-cap,’ but that only proves what a freak you are. Stop thinking that way.
1 Your skatalogical reference of the day!

What’s Right? What’s Left?
A six-minute-plus improv meandering noise pollution sample. Not as good as Week 2, but OK, I guess.

Its been awhile since I posted to the music blog, so here it is!