I was just poking around the Best Buy website browsing for a new mouse when I came across this one.

Does that not look like a robot’s vagina?

I remember the first time I heard about virtual reality. I was in my sixth or seventh grade art class, and a few of the other students had seen a bit on it the night before on a news show like Dateline, or Nightline, or Newsline or some show like that, I forget which one. The important part was that there was a brave new world that existed inside of computers that humans could enter into, and anything could happen. Although at the time, I imagined this visualization of this world to be on par with the stunning detail of The Dire Straits video for ‘Money for nothing,‘ it still captivated my developing mind. The ability to walk on the moon, gun down an important political figure, get in a feces flinging fight with an ape or visit a disease free brothel in Latvia could all be a possible without leaving the comforts of home. It was almost too much excitement to bear.

Jump ahead a decade or so and we reach the world of now, but what do we see? 3D Virtual Colonoscopy! In all of my wildest virtual-fantasies, I never would have imagined that some day I could take a virtual tour up a human colon. Wow! Why have virtual worlds where we can drive fast cars without speed limits, or commit virtual suicide where we never die by high diving it off of a sixty story building when we can have a virtual flight up the virtual human bunghole where we can see pieces of virtual corn stuck to the virtual lining of the virtual colon.

The future has arrived, and damn am I happy.

Flashback to Thanksgiving 2001. Somebody at out annual family get together brings along the game Outburst, by Parker Brothers. Outburst is a game where a topic is given, along with ten terms that are related to it. The goal is for your team to get the most items off the list by bursting out answers that fit the subject. We quickly determined that this game sucks because our copy was from the eighties, so it was outdated. That, and that many of the categories and their answers are too difficult for us. When you are at a place where the highlight of the year for most of the people is the several gutted white tail deer carcasses hanging from the pole that is a mere fifty feet away, you can’t expect anybody to be able to shout out the names of ten french theater actors from before 1985. Any ways, after declaring the game a bomb, I start going though the question cards to see what kind of cock-eyed questions where being asked back in the eighties. Soon I hit a card that caught my interest. The category was “Cures for Insomnia.” Since I often am affected by insomnia I gave the card a looking hopes of finding an answer, or at the very least, a third party who says it is ok to take sixty milliliters of NyQuil every night of the year. I believe it was cure number six that first made me blink in astonishment. The cure for insomnia was none other then “go to sleep.” Yes, that is pretty much the same thing as going to a doctor about help with impotence, and he tells you to just get a hard-on. It just don’t work that way. Going to sleep is not a solution, it is a desired end result. I set that aside and kept reading the list, only to quickly be forced to blink twice in astonishment. The prescribed cure for Insomnia, according to Parker Brothers, was none other then death.

Death. The same cure prescribed to horses who break a leg. The same cure prescribed to infidels by the clergy in thirteenth century Europe. Death, now being prescribed to us who are having a little trouble getting some shut eye. After giving the subject a little bit of thought, it dawned on me what a powerful drug death is. Why should we spend billions in research for cures to diseases? The good people at Parker Brothers have shown through Outburst that death is a viable cure for insomnia. So why can we not apply this to other diseases? Just think about it, Herpes, Cancer, Dengue Fever, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, Leprosy, Toxoplasmosis, Boy Bands, Shingles, Hidradentis Suppurativa, Jock Itch, Gout, Meningitis, Diverticulitis, those diseases, plus many many more all share a common cure. Death. Parker Brothers, you are true heroes. For that I salute you.

I feel so überleet right now. Why do I feel this way you ask? Simple, one of my many boyhood dreams has come true this morning. Today I was the number one person to cast a vote for the IMDB daily poll. While the majority of the population was asleep, I was out there gallantly leading the way by casting my vote for “Which film features the least probable ‘first contact?’” Gathering my courage I selected Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi movie that stars Will Smith and Bill Pullman. That is correct, I chose the scientifically inept movie Independence Day from the list and submitted my vote. To my awe, it was the only one that had been submitted so far.  All right, now that my two seconds of (imaginary) fame is over. I’ll shut the hell up now and move on.

As I said, the movie was scientifically inept. Here is a little list of science errors that demonstrates this, and since I’m to lazy to type these all up myself, i’m just going to steal them from IMDB.

• In the opening shots, the Earth is shown in the background of the alien mother ship. The rotation of the Earth is plainly visible, at about 2 or 3 degrees per second, giving an Earth day of about 2 or 3 minutes.
• It is impossible for the moon and the earth to be illuminated simultaneously as shown in the opening scene.
• A firestorm of that size in a tunnel would consume all of the oxygen, asphyxiating any person not burnt to death.
• Many pilots of supersonic aircraft are shown executing high speed turns while not wearing flight suits. This would result in them blacking out and losing control.
• It is impossible for an F-18 to maneuver through the Grand Canyon, even when going at its minimum speed.
• Early in the film we learn that the alien mother ship has a mass one quarter that of the Moon and has “settled into a stationary orbit.” If this means a geostationary orbit, then the tidal force due to the mother ship would be over 180 times that of the Moon (since tides vary as m/r^3). Almost all coastal cities would see major changes in the sea level one way or the other, enough to command general attention even before the the city-sized spaceships took up their places.
• Late in the movie the mother ship seems to be only a few hundred miles above ground; presumably the aliens had used the geostationary position only temporarily, before their attack. Also, such a descent would increase the already gigantic tidal forces by a further factor of perhaps 200, probably causing disastrous earthquakes. However, it could be that the particular places we see in the movie did not happen to the ones suffering these quakes, and by this time the invasion itself would be the only thing on anyone’s mind anywhere else.

It seems in america these days, that the biggest concern besides the Taliban is a person’s appearance, and more importantly their weight. Everyone seems to think they are over weight, and most are. This results in crazes like low fat this, no fat that and all sorts of foods being produced that have the taste satisfaction index of that equal to ass. Those people who didn’t win in the fat fanaticism game by eating tasteless food now have to resort so many options such as expensive weight loss programs, expensive pills that devour the fat from inside you, or expensive procedures to get their fat asses siphoned right off of their fat bodies. That or they have to eat day in and day out at a certain restaurant. Well, this results in an industry based on peoples desire to be thin. Now, what I’m going to do for you is let you in on a little secret on how to keep slim, and not have to spend a lot of cash on expensive tasteless foods or pills. Most importantly, I’m going to hand out this industry secret free of charge to you. All right, here it is,

Don’t eat so damn much fatty.

a secret that has been proven time and time again by anorexics and third world nations for years, all free of costs.

Ever looked up the word “The” in a dictionary? In the ones I’ve checked, they define the word “the” by using the word “the.” Now I’ve always been told that you can’t use the word you are defining in the definition, but in this case the word is one of the mandatory words for the english language, and we all learn it without needing a definition. So I guess it is ok since no one ever came home and said “Gee Hon, Janet used this really strange word today that I never heard before. This word she used was The. I’d better go look it up because I have no clue what it means.” No body ever actually looks it up to figure out what it means.

So what happens when an intelligent robot is reading the dictionary to pick up the language? Wouldn’t its logic circuits just kind go into an endless loop while trying to figure out “The.” I image that when it encountered The in the definition of The, its processing system would flag it as an unrecognized word, then access its memory to try to define it. Only this would take it back to the beginning of the definition of The where it would encounter The in the definition again and then loop back to the beginning of the definition again to try to figure it out. Therefore it would be stuck in this little loop of being unable to define the word. At this point  It would probably explode killing half of humanity, but only after making a lot of comic malfunctioning noises. 

Any ways, I now know what my life mission is. It is to write a robot friendly version of the dictionary. Course, I’d then define the formal introduction of a woman as Dirty Whore Bag instead of Miss. It would be fun to see all the super intelligent robots innocently insult people.

-- Update - -

One reader contacted me saying my argument here is flawed. He claims that if the robot was programs decently that there would be code to detect the loop and break it. Here is his exact quote.

Well, The is an unavoidable word in the english language. The robot will encounter it again very soon, and get hung up again. Even with an escape function the damn robot still isn’t going to learn the word The from a dictionary. Then we are still going to be stuck with a no good robot that can’t figure out the meaning of The.