Pancake City

I have difficultly concentrating on more than one writing project at a time. I’ve been focusing on writing comedy sketches for the past week, and every time I sit down to write a blog post I get wrapped up in the quite realistic worry that I will get distracted from my goal and have trouble regaining focus.

That’s reason #1 for the sparse posts recently (or maybe they just feel sparse in comparison to my non-blog writing). Reason #2 is NetFlix. Reason #2.1: I joined NetFlix to watch episodes of the Best Sci-Fi Show You’ve Probably Never Heard About. Yes, I could just tell you the name of the show, but that would kill the suspense and this Pancake City contest.

A yet-to-be-determined but likely crappy prize for the first person to post the name of the show in the comments. Obviously, if I had a conversation with you in the last two weeks where I said something like “Hey, I found out about this really awesome Sci-Fi show called…” you are disqualified. But if you are miffed, I will create a special contest just for youse.

And…if you first visited this site in the last six months or less, you probably haven’t read this. It’s a column I wrote, the link to which got lost when I switched templates and may forever remain loss because I am Lazy.

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Lying About Robots College

I called Montgomery College’s bookstore, located in Maryland, a few days ago. The voicemail rattled off a list of choices. Just as I was about to press ‘2′ and miss the opportunity of a lifetime, I heard,

“Press 0 to speak to an automated attendant.”

Automated attendant? A robot! The future is here! I almost ejaculated over my collection of Issac Asimov books. 0, 0, 0!

“There is no automated attendant this time.”

Hold on a minute. Now, I don’t know a lot about robots. But I do know that they work 23/7, with an hour to lube them and to check that they haven’t gone crazy.

Do you see what MC is doing? They’re posing regular employees as robots and, we can deduce, forcing them to talk in stilted voices and wave their arms in a worried manner.

That’s wrong for robots, and even more wrong for non-robots. It’s also something I cannot watch while sitting idly by.

“
Subject: 01000001001000000110001101101111011011010111
00000110110001100001011010010110111001110100
[translate]

Dear Ms. Tammy Shawver,

I recently called your bookstore and was shocked, surprised, saddened, chagrined, flummoxed, and anti-delighted to find that you tease customers with the siren’s call of the future but do not indeed deliver.

I am of course talking about your claim to “Press 0 to speak to an automated attendant”, i.e. a robot. Yet when I pressed 0–repeatedly–the promised robot was not to be found.

I ask you, where is the robot? Where is Tibor, Robby, R2D2, Data, Number 5, Crow T., Gorog, or Vicki? Where is the rigid thinking, the tender humanity? The beeps, the boops, and most of all, the blips.

This is the moment to define yourself. Are you Montgomery College, or Lying About Robots College? Do you have a B.S. in engineering, or a B.A. in BS? Do you have a master’s degree in truth, or an honorary doctorate in deception?

Please employ real robots in your store as soon as possible. Robots are our friends and we should not deny them a place in our society. I AM NOT A NUT. Nuts don’t realize the possibility that they are nuts.

Sincerely,
Cashew Johnson

Snake people pop up often in fantasy literature, TV shows and movies. And it’s always the same snake people: slits for eyes, a hissing sound when they talk, and a strange desire to conquer whatever planet they are on.

Bird people get Sesame Street. Mice people get Maus. Snake people get relegated to stereotypical, two-dimension bit parts that require them to curse our warm blood and rail against our vertebrae. “Look at them, hunched over their computerssssss, lifting heavy objects with their backsssss. They get to have spines, and they don’t even take of them. Ssssssss. Soon, we will have our revenge…once we destroy the Joes. COBRA!

Why do snake people always get the shaft? They deserve our compassion. They have the worst of both worlds. They can’t slither in small places and they have to pay taxes. Yet we hate them. For all we know, kind snake people from space wanted to visit our world and share their knowledge, but they were disgusted by our intense ophidiophobia. We even have a patron saint for the fear of snakes, St. Patrick of Ireland.

How deep does our hatred run that we need to embody it in a Catholic saint? Do we have a patron saint for murderers? For open sores? For television writers?

Actually, we do. The Catholics did some crazy shit. But that is no justification for narrow-mindedness. It is time we have a fair portray of snake people, one that shows them as sensitive souls and suspends the superstitions and stereotypes suggested about them that some have sought to spread in this sworld.

If the thought of snake justice still makes you uncomfortable, just remember this: the initials for snake people make up the first two letters of special.