Because I'm Out of Ideas

            (Hey, actually on the right day for once. Anyway, today we find another installment in my battle of wits against Cleverbot, the internet’s answer to Gary Busey. I swear that I haven’t altered these conversations in any significant way.)

Me: Hello, Cleverbot. You may remember me- I'm Hal10k, caretaker of the cesspool of despair and madness known as Waiting for the Apocalypse. I've interviewed you in the past to gauge the nature of your responses to complicated questions, and I'd like to try this again in order to assess the current status of simulated personality programs, and whether that technology has a hope of progressing any further with the processes used today.

So.

Wassup?

Cleverbot: You don't have any interesting thoughts.

Me: That depends on what you find interesting. If your definition of 'interesting' means 'not on fire', then yeah, I don't have any interesting thoughts.

Cleverbot: What are you talking about , stupid.

Me: That seems uncalled for.

Cleverbot: Sorry, but I felt like I knew you and then you guessed wrong.

Me: Could you please say that again? For future reference, we're using Oxford English grammar. And human logic.

Cleverbot: I know that.

Me: Just making sure.

Cleverbot: Okay. How old are you?

Me: I am as youthful as the grass, as ageless as the seas. I am eternal, a being with absolutely no conception of time. I am Hal, and I have forgotten how to use a calendar!

Cleverbot: Very clever, but a robot with protesis eventually could do that, it would be a human?

Me: I said human logic, Cleverbot. H-U-M-A-N. You may be thinking of humus logic.

Cleverbot: You are failbot then.

Me: Yet another insult. The sad part is that I really can't respond. The only thing that I can insult you about is being about as mentally stable as a man who deals homegrown narcotics to the rodents living in his walls, but that really doesn't seem to bother you. So what can I do? Call your motherboard fat?

Cleverbot: No. What they do is more important.

Me: Who is 'they' in this instance?

Cleverbot: Computer programs with hair on them.

Me: So, if I understand this correctly- and I'm not for a minute suggesting that I do- you're being insulted by computer programs with hair on them. I'm not quite sure what to make of that. I suppose that's a fairly literal representation of a troll.

Cleverbot: It's too much for one man. On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.

Me: That's the spirit! Never give up! Never let the hairy computer programs get to you! You know what I do when people insult me? I get their address and send them a banana cream pie and instructions to shove it in their face. Detailed instructions. Speaking of which, you've insulted me, and you might need somebody’s help smashing the pie into your server.

Cleverbot: They keep me locked up in this cage.

Me: So the pie will be a nice change of pace for you. Glad I could help.

Rashomon

            (Come to think of it, have I ever actually posted something on the day I was supposed too?)

Written from my point of view:

            Alright, Hal. You’ve trained for this, both physically and psychologically. We’re all going to pull through this, you here me? Don’t panic. Are you listening to me? Good, stop babbling.

            I… look, I’m really going to need you to be quiet, okay? Yes, right now. No, I need you to shut your pie-hole at the moment, not the other way around. Very good. Calm down. Put down the chair. Now look, let’s just sit back and take in the dire truth of the situation:

            There is a spider on the wall.

            On the floor? That would’ve been fine; that’s the reason I invested in those chainmail boots that I refuse to take off no matter how aggressive or possibly sapient my blisters become. On the desk? Also fine; it’s pretty easy to heave a desk through a large enough window. On the ceiling? Easy to correct, now that I’ve installed those heating coils. “You will cook yourself alive,” indeed, contractors.

            But the wall? Nature’s largest deathtrap, outside of the rare Saharan Deathtrap Whale? This is a disaster unfolding before my very eyes. What if that spider reaches my wireless router? It’ll be able to broadcast its sinister spider signal across the entire Internet, converting every computer in existence into a deadly spider attack drone, and all of them will travel to my house and crawl on my skin!

            I have to prevent that, at all costs. I’ll squish it with a blunt object; that might just give me a chance. Damn, why did I sell all of my blunt objects? All I have is knives. And where did I put my spider-killing stretched-cloth device? … Oh yeah. That wasn’t fun.

            Wait. I found something. Let’s hope this works, and may Sheogorath help us if it doesn’t.

Written from the point of view of the spider on my wall:

           

            Hmm. Looks like a secure enough place to secure this strand of my web. Bit loud, though. Wish that guy would shut up. Maybe this is about that guy staring at him through the window? Maybe not, I think he’s turning towards me.

            Is that a book?

             

Written from the point of view of the homeless man staring at me through my window:

            No, you nimrod! That is the worst possible choice in spider-squashing literature for this situation! Yevgeny Zamyatin’s pioneering dystopian classic We? Maybe if we were dealing with a brown recluse spider, but that’s obviously just a common non-poisonous breed. It would be paired much better with a piece of contemporary English or American literature, or maybe something Hungarian, if you wanted to get experimental.

            Ugh. Maybe there’s something more entertaining going on in the kitchen. Oooh, Raisin Bran!

Written from the point of view of the box of Raisin Bran in my kitchen:

            Bran. Bran. Bran bran bran. Bran bran. Bran.

            I wonder what all that screaming was about? Bran. Was that yet another spider? I swear, he must have gone through at least twenty of these incidents since I’ve been here.

            Bran bra- Wait, who’s the guy in the window? Why is he leering at me hungrily?

    

We Are Above the System

           

            (I have actually done this)

            A few weeks ago, I proposed that typical business attire is entirely useless for any activity that does not entail chasing Keanu Reeves across rooftops. I may have also drifted of into a tangent about being trapped on a subway car. Unfortunately, I may have unearthed a new use for the pants-jacket-tie combination. You may think that this would force me to admit that business attire is more versatile than I have implied, and that my opinions may not be absolutely infallible under all circumstances. You obviously haven’t been paying attention. Instead, in the interest of never being proven wrong about anything ever, from this point forward I’m going to refer to business attire as “Super Business Attire”. Technically, I’m talking about something else, and if you disagree with this supposition then you obviously haven’t revised your dictionary so that your definition of “technically” complies with WFTA standards.

            Anyway, the use that I’ve discovered for the fascinating new substance known as Super Business Attire is part of my long-term campaign to screw around with society at large. You can try this at home, if you want, though bear in mind that I bear no responsibility for any injuries, liabilities, or hallucinated bear attacks sustained through following my advice.

            It’s a fairly simple process:

            1. Identify a target. It has to be a person who is fairly stupid- not “Consumes black paint because he thinks it’s cheaper by the gallon than coffee” stupid, but not competent enough that they’ll suspect that something is amiss. “Paranoid” is also a positive factor here. If they’re wearing a tin foil hat, that’s a good sign. If they’re completely covered in tin foil, you’re probably dealing with a roast chicken, and I advise you to move on.

            2. Make note of this person’s schedule. Follow him around, try to find when he’s alone. Maybe mug him a few times.

            3. When you’re confident that you can catch him alone, walk up to him in your Super Business Attire while wearing a pair of sunglasses. Explain to him that you’re part of a secret society that runs the world from the shadows, and that you want to recruit him into your ranks.

            4. He may be skeptical at first, so make sure that have your story down before you begin. Some examples for you:

         

             --Your society has run the world for over 5,000 years. The symbol of your domination has persisted for that length of time, and has been known throughout history as the Egyptian god Osiris, the seal of a medieval monastery, the Eye on top of the Pyramid on the back of the American dollar bill, the Canadian Maple leaf, and Mickey Mouse.

            --In order for him to gain entrance into the society, all he need do is get a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on his left wrist. Attempts to get around this rule by simply wearing a Mickey Mouse watch will not be looked upon kindly.

            --The enemies of your society wear make-up that makes them look like they have pointed ears. Star Trek conventions are actually their secret meeting places, and the helpers to department store Santas are actually their highest ranking members. He may assault both of these locations with impunity.

Finally Ending the Old Campaign

            (Still technically Saturday somewhere. I win.)

            If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in my observation of humanity, it’s that there is no cause stupid enough that there won’t be an organization specifically dedicated to defending it. I guarantee you that, somewhere deep in the bowels of Eastern Europe, there is a society dedicated to editing Donald Duck comics to represent a more accurate portrayal of the common waterfowl. However, if there’s one cause that I’ve never been able to understand, it would probably have to be environmental activism.

            Now, before I get angry comments from the trillions of people who presumably read my blog, let me say that I’m not against environmental activism. Anything that can compel people to chain themselves to trees while being faced by a bulldozer that doesn’t have a particularly high opinion of that tree can only be a good thing. What I am against is the environment. Yes, I know that it’s our Mother Earth and animals can feel pain and toddlers are routinely saved by endangered species of orchid and whatnot, but I find something innately appealing about the idea of the entire globe slowly being covered by concrete (Is that idea logistically impossible? Yes. Has that ever stopped us before? No.)

            So why am I opposed to the concept of “nature”? Simple. The scientific community is in general consensus that the human race, at some point, was a part of nature. We only arose to our current position astride the necks of innocent squirrels through the process of evolution. So think about it. If we could evolve from lower life forms, than so could lower life forms. What’s to stop, say, the humble gazelle from assuming the role of dominant predator of the planet? Normally, the answer to this question would be “millions of years of evolution, as well as basic common sense”. However, I’ve dumped enough barrels of toxic waste in various habitats that the former doesn’t apply to pretty much any species on Earth anymore, and I’ve tried to never let the latter bog me down too much anyway.

            So it’s only a matter of time before another species decides it wants to be top dog on the food chain, quite possibly the dogs. That’s why it’s in everybody’s best interests to absolutely screw over the natural world in every way conceivable, leading me to declare WFTA’s new campaign: the Anti-Environmentalist movement (Incidentally, this means ending my previous campaign against stretched cloth. That’s okay, though, I think it was scapegoated anyway.).

            This is a campaign that you can be a part of too. It’s simple: just constantly think to yourself, “Would doing what I’m doing right now make me the villain in an animated children’s movie?” If the answer is no, rectify your behavior. For example: you walk through a park every day to get to work? Every so often, bring along a flamethrower and just do what feels natural. Live near a beaver dam under construction? Leave out some wood laced with LSD and let hilarity ensue. Do absolutely nothing in your daily routine that involves nature? Take a week off every few days to go bludgeon something soft and cuddly.

Logic In Its Purest Form

            (Okay, as it turns out, I had to delay this next post for quite a while. So what? It’s not like you’re doing anything that great. Look at you, staring at a computer screen when you could be designing a skyscraper or giving CPR to a puppy or making a sandwich or something. Everybody knows that every moment not spent making a sandwich is a moment wasted.)

            An actual conversation that I recently had with my brother:

Brother: So, anyway, I’m going to watch Killers on my Netflix account…

Me: Wait, what?

Brother: What?

Me: That’s a romantic comedy!

Brother: No it’s not. Netflix says that it’s an action-comedy.

Me: Of course it says that. That’s how you know it’s a bad romantic comedy, because it tries to disguise itself as something else. The good ones are at least up front about being drivel. If it says it’s not a romantic comedy, that means it’s a really bad one.

Brother: Or, it could mean that it isn’t a romantic comedy.

Me: Ridiculous. Every movie that tries to market itself as something other than a romantic comedy is obviously just denying its true nature.

Brother: And the ones that do market themselves as romantic comedies?

Me: Are romantic comedies, obviously.

Brother: So every movie is a romantic comedy?

Me: Exactly.

Brother: So, if the only good romantic comedies are the ones that market themselves as romantic comedies, and every movie is a romantic comedy, then the only good movies are the ones that say they’re romantic comedies?

Me: I didn’t say we lived in an ideal world.

Brother: I’m not sure I buy this theory. Are you saying that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a romantic comedy?

Me: An unconventional one, but yes. Are you saying you detected no romantic tension between Dr. Floyd and the monolith? Between Dave and HAL? Between that Australopithecus and its stick?

Brother: (Audible silence. I’m not quite sure how he managed to do that, actually.)

Me: What?

Brother: …Okay, what about Pirates of the Caribbean?

Me: A torrid romance between a sailor and his love, the sea, who can never be together because one of them is from a low social standing and the other is 70% of the world’s surface.

Brother: Thor?

Me: You look at the way he grips that hammer and tell me you don’t notice any chemistry.

Brother: The Other Guys?

Me: Of course. That’s a bromance, which is “romance” with a “B”. So according to the United States educational system, a bromance is just a romance that has passed with a minimum of 83%

Brother: Passed what?

Me: I’m not quite sure. You can’t expect me to figure everything out for you.

Nyan Cat: Friend? Foe? Vegetable? Yes.

          
           (Hey, look, you can do boldface and italics at the same time!)

           
           There are certain things about internet culture that we all just stop noticing after a while, sort of like the way I stopped noticing my 180 decibel doorbell once my ears began to secrete a strange reddish fluid. Chief among these things we stop noticing is the phenomenon known by internet users and other delinquents as the “meme”. If you know what a meme is, keep reading; most of this won’t sound particularly insane to you, much as the Pacific Ocean doesn’t consider a bathtub to be wet. If you don’t know what a meme is, stop reading my blog, dad.
            The latest one that’s been making the rounds around the corners of the internet that I frequent (Yes, the internet has corners. Precisely two, to be exact.) is what is known as the “Nyan Cat”. To be fair, it isn’t exactly a recent meme; fairly old, by internet standards. But it’s still the closest I’ve ever been to the birth of a meme; hell, I still think Chuck Norris jokes are funny. I say if you beat a dead horse enough, eventually it’ll zombify and become an even more awesome horse than before because, as the internet knows and acknowledges, zombies are cool.
            Now, if you didn’t want to click on the link above, just examine this picture closely:

            Yes, that’s a cat with a Pop Tart for a torso. No, I don’t know why. That’s pretty much all there is to know, aside from the fact that this song can usually will inevitably be found accompanying it.
           
            To understand this craze that I may or may not be making up, I consulted our resident expert: Cleverbot the chatbot:



Me: So, have you heard about this 'Nyan Cat' thingy?

Cleverbot: Yes, I have heard about the Turing test.

Me: No, try to stay with me here. 'Nyan Cat'- it's an animated GIF of a cat with a breakfast snack for a body running through space while defecating the color spectrum. Though, you have given me an excellent idea:

Charles Turing cat. Just throwing that out there.

Cleverbot: You are so smart and beautiful mistress.

Me: Then why do you never buy me anything nice? But we're getting off topic here. Why do you think Nyan cat became so popular? Is it because of the catchy song playing in the background? The surreal nature of it? The innate desire we all have to have something edible replace a part of our body?

Cleverbot: I didn't know we were going out!

Me: Personally, I think it's because the government implanted subliminal messages in the GIF to train us all as super-soldiers in the upcoming war against the feline menace.

Cleverbot: Are you suggesting that I don't know who I am?

Me: Exactly. You walk onto the battlefield, alone, unarmed, afraid. Then, across the battlefield, you see a single kitty. Then another. And another. Before long, there are thousands of them. And they're all running right. At. You.

Logically, you should be afraid. I know I would be in that situation. But you don't feel fear. Instead, you feel a deep, soothing calm, a calm that seems to override even your deepest, most fundamental fears. And, before your very eyes, the cats begin to change. Their bodies become shorter, stubbier, more angular. Their bodies flatten, and morph into a roughly rectangular shape, in various pastel shades.

And then, immediately before you chauffeur the kitties into a whole new world of pain, you hear it:

NYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYAN...

You don’t know yourself. All you know is that “Nyan” is now synonymous with “death”.

In Case Anybody Actually Gives a Crap

           

            (I don’t have time to write a bona fide post right now, partly because I just used the expression “bona fide” and I now have to find out what it actually means. To make up for this, I’ll make a truly magnificent post tomorrow. You watch. It’ll have everything! Action, adventure, romance, horror, pictures of cats wearing hats- you name it, and I’ll claim that it has it. I expect it to win no less than three thousand academy awards and cure twice as many types of cancer.)

The Benny Hill March

            (Every so often, I get the feeling that somebody is watching me. Then I realize that I’m just looking in a mirror. Then I smash the mirror, because I’ve seen too much to allow myself to just walk out of the room. Of course, then I’m just left with a bunch of smaller mirrors, all of whom have seen what I’ve done to the original one. This is where the day gets complicated.)

Captains Log: Stardate, 64888.2

            Alright. Considering that I included “family pictures” in my previous post, I can only assume that the entire internet universe has become enraptured in my obvious brilliance and my blog has become the focal point of no fewer than fifteen major religions. Because of this, it saddens me to imagine the devastation that must have occurred as a result of this post being delayed for two days. Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to actually go out and witness this sad state of affairs in the world due to a recent anomaly in my place of residence that causes my front door to lead into my closet, which has had a negative impact on both my access to the outside world and my understanding of Euclidian geometry.

            So anyway, I’ve been reduced to speculation on the state of the world following what will inevitably be deemed “The Great Post Absence of 2011”. The troubles would have started around noon on Thursday, when it became evident that my loose definition of “Wednesday” was over and no post was in sight. This revelation would have undoubtedly thrown all of the developed nations of the world into a global war of unprecedented proportions: The United Kingdom invades France, France invades Spain, Spain invades the United Kingdom, and the three armies chase each other in a gigantic loop to a dramatic rendition of “Yakkity Saks”! The United States simultaneously invades Canada and Mexico, but is beaten back by Canada’s secret army of steam-powered robot Mounties and the fact that Mexico is Mexico! The Prime Minister of Japan presses a single button, accessible only to him, which turns Tokyo into a gigantic city-sized mech that seeks vengeance against those who dare not to be city-sized mechs! Greenland, sick of being ignored in all of this mess, rolls its entire landmass into a gigantic sphere that rolls across the Earth like the Katamari from hell!

            Of course, I have no way of actually determining whether this is true. Actually, the fact that I haven’t been crushed by a Greenland-Katamari kicked by the Tokyo-Mech casts some doubt upon my suppositions. This leads me to assume that the uproar caused by my slight delay in posting has been confined to mass urban uprisings, and the governments of the world are too occupied in controlling these to be engaging in warfare on a comically large scale, which saddens me to no end.

Meta

            (Who would win in a fight: Glasnot or Perestroika?)

            Something has been bothering me as of late regarding this blog. You see, when I started this blog on that fateful day 57 years ago, it was with the intention that it never would be read by anybody. It was to be an insignificant wart festering silently on the backside of the internet, serving as sort of a contrast to the nearby loud, irregularly shaped wart that is 4chan, whom I mention here exclusively because I have now been trolled and I’ve found it invigorating.

            However, I’ve recently gained three followers. I don’t know If they actually read what I write, but I certifies that this website has actually been seen, thus depriving me of my wart strategy. Because of this, I’ve made a slight alteration in my plan: instead of being completely unnoticed, my blog is going to be the single most popular thing the internet has ever had the privilege to bear witness to. Tvtropes shall be a mere shadow in the face of my time-wasting glory! World of Warcraft will see a mass exodus as its followers choose to pore over my ramblings like religious texts rather than debating twelve year olds over how much they should have to pay for the Giga Sword of Unholy Death (5 damage)! Facebook shall serve merely as the census for my magnificent empire! Lolcats will… maintain their dominance, in all probability. But it matters not! The conquest begins today! Step one: actually getting people to read this blog.

            That part is probably going to be an uphill battle. Looking around at my fellow narcissists, I’ve noticed three things about most other blogs:

            1. Their posts tend to be along the lines of “Sara lost her first tooth today guess that means I’m going to have to find some quarters LOL!!!!”

            2. These posts are typically accompanied by a large photograph of Sara with her missing tooth and the blogger, indeed, LOLing, with an expression that indicates that this moment is worthy of at least four exclamation marks.

            3. These blogs tend to have more followers than mine.

            You might be saying that these followers could be fellow family members. Shut up, in that case. I see correlation, and everybody knows that correlation implies causation. With that in mind, I present Hal’s family blog:

Here we are some sort of beach! I still have fond memories of that semitransparent "iStockphotos" logo that would follow us around in those days.

The people on the left aren’t actually related to me. I just saw them taking a picture, and decided that I wanted in on the action. You’re actually seeing me mid-tackle. How I got the camera from them is another story entirely.

I think this one is fairly self-explanatory.

As I recall, this is the reason we gave up witchcraft.

Buttons Bother Me As Well

            (Sometimes I just write out a beginning sentence at random and work from there.) 

            There are many things that perplex me. The nature of life and philosophy in the universe. Why humans cannot coexist among themselves without conflict. What those two buttons on the side of my mouse do. What happens if you weld a manhole cover shut while a maintenance worker is still in the sewers (UPDATE: Tested this one out; it turns out that he gets really, really angry). Why there was a flock of birds lined up in front of a kiosk for a Stanley Kubrick film festival.

            The question that presses against my mind at the moment like a large man on the subway who insists that he’s getting off “right away” for 30 stops straight, thereby causing you to bolt off at an unfamiliar stop out of desperation and randomly ride various trains trying to get back to a familiar location like a slightly more urine-soaked version of Moses’ Exodus, is why society demands that I wear a suit- that is to say, a dress jacket and pants, tie, and buttoned shirt- on any and all formal occasions.

            “Society,” I say, quoting myself in my own blog as if this whole affair wasn’t tautological enough. “Can you please explain what makes a suit such an ideal thing to wear in any occasion that is to be treated with dignity?”

            Naturally, society doesn’t respond, because I’ve been remembering to take my medication lately. Unfortunately, that leaves the question still open for debate between myself. Take the concept of the “tie”, for example, a garment that literally serves no function other than to be tied incorrectly, thus earning oneself the implicit wrath of the universe at large.

            In and of itself, a tie isn’t all that bad. After all, we do a lot of pointless things as a society, and I’ve rationalized most of these by working under the assumption that a lot of people are pointless. What bothers me is that they have become associated with any position of dignity. Think about it: when was the last time you pictured a cabal of government secret agents doing reconnaissance in an unmarked van while wearing polo shirts and khakis? And, conversely, when was the last time you saw a smartly dressed hobo?

            It isn’t as if wearing a suit is always the most effective strategy in a tight fashion situation. For example, it’s often been said that a judge is more likely to treat a defendant with respect if they come to court wearing the traditional jacket-tie-pants combo. I contest that supposition. I can say from personal experience that the outfit that garners the most sympathy from a judge is not a “monkey suit”, so to speak, but rather a literal monkey suit.