Ted

Hyper-Ecto-coatl Neo-Maxi-Zoom Evil Double Robot Parallel Post #0

2008-08-20T07:36:03Z

Hi there! This is Ted's evil robot double. I had an evil day today. This is my third post now.

(Evil robots with fuzzy logic increment by hyperbole, not numbers.)

I went to the evil robotic breakfast nook around the evil corner from my evil apartment. It was sinister. I had an inhuman killing machine omelet and some evil orange juice - squeezed from the last lifeblood of a convicted orange!

Then I loomed off to the evil bus, and robotically rode to my evil work. Typical evil day - evil 9 to robotic 5.

Then I came home and watched some evil television for an evil while.

And I found an evil robotic sixpence upon an evil robotic stile.

Love,
Evil Robot Ted

P.S. Exterminate?

Super Triple Mega-Bonus-Evil Robot Double Ripple Post #0

2008-08-19T02:15:38Z

This is still Ted's hyper-evil double parallel universe robot twin, still updating while Ted is away for unknown reasons. This is the second in an ongoing series of evil ideas.

(Evil robots always increment by zeros.)

Einstein famously said, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." I take that as a challenge.

I've purchased a live hog at an auction. I'm intending to teach it to go to market while staying home, and to have roast beef while also having none, and at the same time to go wee-wee-wee all the way home.

Once it has mastered the balance between these contrasting elements, it should also be able to prevent and prepare for war pretty easily.

I need help with training, though. Please provide seemingly contradictory insights in comments below, to help me with teaching the pig. Otherwise, I'll have to wrestle with the pig instead.

P.S. If you know how to install a robotic goatee, please tell me in comments as well. I am having a little trouble.

Thanks!
Ted's Evil Robot Double

Evil Robot Double Guest Post #0

2008-08-18T00:09:34Z

Hi! This is Ted's evil giant robot double. I'm posting while Ted is out for uncertain reasons in unknown ways.

I'll be posting about my evil ideas here in the interim. Oh, I'm not sure how I can be a giant robot and also a double. Please don't ask.

(Robots count from zero, of course.)

Here's my idea. It's a medical cure. You've all heard of the power of the placebo, right? That the body heals better when it believes it's healing.

Clearly, there must be some mechanism for how this happens. It cannot happen in a vaccuum. That belief must send some neural signal, hormone, enzyme, or something out to the body. Maybe a combination of them, I don't know. Since it exists in the body, there must be some way to duplicate it: some way to boost this incredible healing power, even for people who aren't as suggestible or eager to believe as the ideal patient.

I'm not talking about a sugar pill. I'm talking about an artificial placebo, that synthesizes the belief in healing. I suspect that it would have tremendous benefit, especially when given to skeptics.

The only problem I can see is that it will be very difficult to do controlled studies.

Please invest billions of dollars in the comments section below. I assume there's some way to do that; I don't use LiveJournal much so I can't tell you how.

merovingian @ 2008-08-16T23:18:00

2008-08-17T08:32:21Z

I'm not here right now!

I went outside last night to see something, and I don't know where I went. I was just gone.

I put out an ad on Craigslist asking after me, and I got a lot of replies, but none of them were me.

My car did call, though. It said it hadn't seen me. Thanks, my car!

If you see me, please let me know.

I'm going to go looking for me. If I don't come back.... wait, this can't be right.

I must be my evil robot double right now!

Seven Strings

2008-08-16T05:54:27Z

This particular guitar, I'm told, is different.

This one I have in my lap here. It seems innocuous enough to me, but I don't know how to play the guitar, so I really wouldn't know how it's different.

It's a lovely guitar, all electric and silver and black. It looks like some custom rock star guitar, hand-built and unlabeled. Really, just sitting with this guitar, I probably look like a rock star.

But not suspiciously so.

When I let a guitar player friend borrow it last week, he couldn't play it. It was all wrong. Completely off. Absolutely backwards, every string more wrong than the last.

So last night I lend it to a friend of a friend who knows guitars. She makes them, plays them, sells them. She's not good enough to be world famous, I don't think, but she's certainly good enough that she was the first person to come to mind when I needed a guitar person. Asked if she could figure out how to make it work.

She came in this morning with bloodshot eyes and twitching hands.

"This particular guitar," she said as she sat in my lap, "is different."

And then she closed her eyes, turned into a glowing silver sphere, and flew out into the moonlight.

So, you know, I figured, whatever happens next, I'd better blog about this.

I'm going to go outside and check that she's okay now.

merovingian @ 2008-08-14T08:22:00

2008-08-14T15:24:39Z

I was reading a book in the lobby of my chiropractor's office, when suddenly I felt a creeping shivery hatred in my spine. It was the grating voice of another customer.

"Hey," I asked, "are you the guy who does the voice-overs for all those unfair sneering political attack ads? The ones that veil any substantial issues with a thick helping of decontextualized accusations and smear tactics?"

"Every single one," he said, and I was ready to punch him.

Then he said, "I come to the chiropractor's office to correct the creepy shivering hatred in my own spine, induced by my grating innuendo-plagued voice. But, you know, it's a living."

I was thinking of challenging him to a duel, but we ended up racing remote-control helicopters instead.

Thanks, Sneering Political Voice-Over Guy! I had fun too.

Stimulus

2008-08-14T02:52:15Z

I went to see a movie today. One of those summery movies, that busts blocks.

Outside the theatre were two Caucasian men, maybe in their late forties, sitting in chairs. One of them had a huge stack of money. Like ten thousand dollars. The other had a wooden stick. They kept trading them back and forth.

"What are you doin'?" someone else asked as I passed by.

"We're raising the Gross Domestic Product to boost the economy. We pooled out savings to do this, but after a few hours we've each sold fifteen million dollars worth of raw materials! If everyone did this, we'd be out of this recession in no time at all!"

And, you know, that's true. But they're going to have to pay a lot of taxes.

merovingian @ 2008-08-12T22:53:00

2008-08-13T05:54:35Z

The strung-about bales of barbed wire fence looks like a tangle heap but it isn't; that's palladium in the middle of that metal, and the whole thing is a high-fidelity ArcNet circuit. The barbed wire connects the old telegraph wires to the PHP-driven servomotors that control the old rusty Depression-era tractors. The dim-lit jukebox doesn't play anything but old scratchy recordings of Shakespeare plays, it's true, but it's hardly random. Moisture, temperature, and pheromone sensors extrapolate the emotional state of everyone within earshot, and the neural network that drives the jukebox picks the play, act and scene that you need to hear.

Do you understand? The Great Machine wants to be built.

The pattern of the gnat clouds is far from random; those little brats are massively parallel coprocessors, plotting vectors for the satellite-trackers hidden inside the abandoned refrigerator farm. Inside that old moonshine still is a reactor that runs on clean "desktop" cold fusion.

Do you understand? This junkyard is a paradise.

The scarecrow out there is an inductive magnetic reader-projector. Wear his threadbare hat and wait - you'll feel yourself flying in the body of the next bird that lands on his shoulder.

Do you understand? We can rest easy on these patches of brown grass.

The rust on the combines is a superfood. The disintegrating wooden fence is a weather control console. Those mouldy sock monkeys in the corner are loaded with antibiotics. The river mill is putting benign femto-organisms in the water supply. The weather-vane rooster is collecting news information from the wireless networks and aggregating it into broad social trends. The old out-house with the moon on the door is a hypno-training chamber.

Do you understand? Every part of this place has been wired together. Come visit me here.

The Great Machine should be built, I tell you.

Two years later.

2008-08-12T03:03:11Z

I'd like answers, please!

View Poll: #1239081

merovingian @ 2008-08-10T21:25:00

2008-08-11T04:26:33Z

I finally got my furniture-communicator working today, but all the furniture seems to do is complain, complain, complain.

I'd assumed furniture was more stoic than that. I guess I'd have been better off not knowing.

Oops, sorry, you too, I guess.

Gratitude for a Fortunate Childhood

2008-08-10T00:00:52Z

I went to the arcade this afternoon and it felt a lot smaller than I remember. It isn't, of course -- I'm taller now -- but it makes me grow wistful for the never-quite-forgotten days of childhood.

My memories of the video arcade are probably like yours: I went there often but never nearly enough. I resisted the temptation of the flashy games that hyped some user-interface gimmick but only delivered ripoffs. Before I started to learn a new game, I watched other people play for a while to see if it seemed worth the effort and the hard-begged money.

Usually I'd just play the games I knew best. At various times, these were: Burgertime, Spy Hunter, Gauntlet, Marvel Superheroes, Street Fighter 2 (Blanka 4 Lyfe Yo!), the Lethal Weapon 3 pinball game, Area 51, and of course Becoming a Robot.

You probably don't know that last one -- only my local arcade had it. At the time, I didn't know it was anything but one of many delightful distractions. I'd watch my older brothers play it, or just random arcade whiz-kids, and eventually I tried it myself when no one was watching, sinking quarters into skills so that later my quarters would yield the sweeter fruits of pride and engagement.

(Much later, I discovered that the basketball-ticket games weren't a rip-off if you learned them, and I actually started winning prizes for my quarters, but that was much later. The dangerous, maddening things I won with those tickets are another story entirely, and perhaps if you bake me some baklava I'll tell you. Today, though, I'm talking about Becoming a Robot.)

You might have guessed what the Becoming a Robot really was. I found out the awesome way. Those chiming pellucid abstract shapes mixed and matched in deceptively simple patterns, forming gems and secrets and eventually circuits. The more you played the game, the more you saw the world in that same peculiar idiom. The more you thought like the game did, the more your internal organs would convert into hyperefficient robotic analogs.

The changes were surprisingly subtle, never visible to a casual observer. You wouldn't feel any different until you were more than 50% converted. In fact, a skilled doctor probably wouldn't notice a difference much earlier than that. The brain was last, and by the time your brain conversion was complete, you were programmed, fully loyal to the video game's creator company and (presumably) some nameless overarching conspiracy.

By that time, you would also be awesome at the game and everyone would like you.

At the first sign of behavior changes, my parents stepped in and stopped me. They were unaware of the complex physiological changes; they just noticed my slipping grades and worsening table manners. At the time I screamed and railed at the unfairness of it, but now I'm grateful for it: I was never drawn into the shadowy agenda of that robot company, and I still got all the awesome robotic internal organs.

And now I go back there and the arcade seems so much smaller, but of course it's just that I'm taller now. I resisted the call of Becoming a Robot today, but I played a quarter on Burgertime. I got my initials on the top score list, but I didn't get anywhere near my adolescent personal best.

merovingian @ 2008-08-08T20:21:00

2008-08-09T03:42:20Z

There is a rhythm to it, clip-clop, clip-clop, like a million penguins in tap shoes all marching together, so close to a perfect beat that every little flaw just makes it more crisp, chickity-chick chickity-chick, just like that.

And the the fires start, and everyone just forgets everything and tears ats their clothes, and smears their faces and chests with mud, and runs down, and just starts just screaming, hands in the air or fingers in the ground, all thump-a thump-a hoo-a, thump-a thump-a hoo-a!

And we're all connected to it and there's a rhytm to it, ancient and animal, hungry for expression, mad and wailing, intense enough that the heartbeat is right there and the mind is far far away, eyes red and too wide, black suns in a sea of deep purple blue, clip-clop clip-clop, chickity-chick, chickity-chick, and with every beat we forget something and we remember something with every step, and we wonder how we ever lived without it.

At least, that's what my dentist's office is like.

Vision

2008-08-08T01:01:16Z

Today, I figured out how to reverse the direction of narration and vision. I can see you through your screen right now. Here, I'm waving at you right now - wave back!

After that I had some soup. I guess this is a sign that I'm living my life right.

merovingian @ 2008-08-06T14:16:00

2008-08-06T21:20:41Z

I had lunch at one of those highly-falluting places, with the fancy napkins and lamps and candles and whatnot.

The restaurant was such a vision of luxury and privilege that it took me a while to see the sign by the maitre's podium:

YOUR COMPLETE SATISFACTION
IS OUR ONLY PURPOSE
IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED IN ANY WAY
NO MATTER HOW MINISCULE
PLEASE LET US KNOW
AND WE WILL KILL OURSELVES
AND YOU

Does being terrified count as dissatisfaction? I sure hope not.

merovingian @ 2008-08-05T19:02:00

2008-08-06T02:18:35Z

I'm in the airport now, looking for the non-denominational chapel. My people tell me they stored a book there.

And in the book there are rhymes and songs. Steganography, of course. The tunes, written out with the right notation, detail an algorithm that will turn vodka bottles into people and predict the tides of future corporate acquisitions.

My people tell me there's a manticore there, but it must be disguised to get past security, so who knows what form it may take? I can't walk in suspicious of every chair, window and prayer mat, so I think I'll need to find some way to lure it out.

My people say that manticores love the taste of vodka, but I don't really believe that. Why would a manticore love vodka?

So now I'm playing it by ear, listening to the overhead airport music for clues, checking out the mini-museums, Maybe I'll see the manticore before it sees me. Maybe I'll notice the book quickly.

Look, I'm a perl scripter, okay? Nobody told me I'd need a keen sense of vision for this job.

merovingian @ 2008-08-04T11:18:00

2008-08-05T07:32:31Z

I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but when I saw the first umbrella I was not delighted. Yes, it was brightly coloured and yes, the people underneath the umbrella were happy and friendly, but I was late for work and they were blocking the road. They seemed surprised and perhaps a little offended that I wanted to get past them, but they did move out of my car's way with little protest.

I was not delighted to see the umbrella, because joy should not create pain for others.

Then I rounded the corner and got to the big boulevard and I saw the rest of the umbrellas. Like Christo's umbrellas of '91, but a hundred different colors, all bold solid colors, all picnic umbrellas, all through the streets. A festival of umbrellas. It wasn't art -- it was entertainment.

I'm sure if you've checked the news at all today that you know the rest of the story. Umbrella picnics in the streets across the globe. All other activities and needs suspended for a day, streets closed except for emergencies. Laws and crime both canceled for the day, a moratorium on work and cost, just a day's worth of umbrella picnics. And how did they pull it off?

Now that I'm checking the news it makes sense. A network of angels declared it the day before. The motion was carried and called by robots and lions, rainclouds and snakes. Somehow I missed it in the papers, but the good news is someone had an umbrella and a basket of wine and fruit and cheese and little spicy sandwiches, just to lend me. Come on over to my picnic umbrella if you get bored of your own. Mine's turquoise-colored. We can share little sandwiches with the crusts torn off.

I'm now delighted by the vision of the umbrellas, but a little nervous too; it's hard to leave your own hustle behind.

merovingian @ 2008-08-03T21:44:00

2008-08-04T04:45:34Z

Downtown someone made a roadsign, and I don't know what it says, but apparently it's very beautiful. It probably has a design on it of some kind -- a geometric pattern, or some stunning array of colors, or some very fine optical illusion -- but I haven't seen it, nor heard from anyone who has.

The roadsign is stopping traffic. People see it and stop and stay there. At first, it was a traffic problem, and then they sent police to check it out and they saw the sign too, and stopped moving. The good news is that when the camera crews arrived, the sign got in their field of vision before they could point the cameras it.

I don't know what that roadsign says. Do you?

Maybe it's something really good!

merovingian @ 2008-08-02T22:28:00

2008-08-03T05:35:19Z

So, I've been working on a web comic for a while now.

Oh, um, you know, that was ambiguous -- I don't mean I've been writing a web comic, because I have no idea how to write fiction. I mean I have taken up a job as a character in a web comic.

It's all vision here - people talk with speech bubbles (often irritatingly misspelled), and you can't smell anything unless it has stink lines coming off it. And there's no motion (except in action lines) or proprioception (except in proprioception lines). Or justice, except in punch lines.

Truth told, I'm so visual in thinking, I can barely tell the difference. And it pays the bils, you know. Or at least, I assume it does, because I don't see any.

merovingian @ 2008-08-01T20:48:00

2008-08-02T03:50:58Z

If you unfocus your eyes while you read this sentence, you may see an owl where your vision of the text blurs, and if you do, go ahead and grab it before it flies away!

Time

2008-07-31T23:11:47Z

We went hand in hand down into the valley last night, and I was never sure if I was walking with a monkey or a peacock, you know? Some travel companions are like that - enigmatic or shapeshifting and I'm never sure which.

When we got to the bottom there was a tollbooth out there on the trail, incongrously blocking us in the middle of nowhere.

"Hey," I told the soldiers at the tollbooth, "my companion and I are looking for some way to connect subjective time with the objective ticking of the universe. Something that will anchor my flawed and ever-straying sense of memory and experience, and pin it to the orderly decay of the universe. Can you give us aid?"

"You mean, like a clock?" the lieutenant said.

"Oh, I suppose that would be just right."

He handed me this big clock, which I now wear hanging around my neck.

Yeah, boyee!

merovingian @ 2008-07-30T08:53:00

2008-07-30T15:53:32Z

I woke up this morning with ostrich claws instead of feet. Big sharp talons, big enough that I can grab my own head with them. A ruffle of grey feathers around my upper calves where they start. I don't rhink I'll need to wear shoes any more.

I'm pretty happy with them, but they almost tripped me up this morning.

A man was lingering at the local café this morning, watching me. Then he noticed my feet and looked away.

"Yeah, they're new," I said with a smile, "I don't exactly know how it happened."

"No," he said sadly, "they're very nice. I just thought you were someone else. Someone without crazy bird feet."

"Oh, I just got them!" I said, flexing and splaying them proudly.

"Oh!" he said, suddenly interested. "Then you are probably the man I want."

He handed me a ten dollar bill, all rolled up and crumpled and ratty. "Read it," he said, when I looked confused. So I did. Someone had written on it: TOM DIAZ. I AM STILL ALIVE. PLEASE COME FIND ME. -LUANN. 5/10/2006.

"That's my daughter, LUANN" he said. "I lost her in the 80s in a disaster, and then I found this. The detectives couldn't help me, but now I think I can find her."

"Oh! Good luck! But, uh... what does it have to do with me?"

"Eight months ago, you bought a book at a yard sale around the corner from here, and you spent this ten dollar bill to get the book. The book was Leaving Things Undone: A Stressful Guide to Indolence. Do you remember?"

"Oh yeah!" I said, wiggling my talons with interest, "That was a good book."

"Where did you get that ten dollar bill?" he asked, "I need to trace it back to my daughter."

"Oh, gosh, I don't even remember looking at it," I said, "I'm really sorry. I could tell you where I usually spend my money, and maybe you could--"

"No," he said, "that's okay. I can teach you the secrets of perfect memory, and then you can remember and tell me. It only takes about three months, full time. I own a big trucking company now. I can pay for your lessons, and your rent and expenses too, while you learn. I already did it once, with the guy who sold you the book. He moved to New Hampshire afterward, which is why he was having the yard sale, and he forgot having the money, too, but I found a way to teach him to remember, and that's how I found you. We'll do the same."

Inconvenient, maybe, but I have to step up, you know? Otherwise I wouldn't deserve these crazy feet.

merovingian @ 2008-07-29T23:16:00

2008-07-30T06:18:54Z

"It looks like your time machine is having wild rampant fluctuations, due to Scrabulous no longer being available on Facebook," the utilities operator said, "We're going to need to send a time travel service agent come out to repair it. Can you specify a 2000-year period where you will constantly be home?"

The good news is Romans solved this problem 2000 years ago.

merovingian @ 2008-07-28T23:24:00

2008-07-29T06:34:28Z

I woke up this evening from a nap, to find that a constrictor snake was swallowing me whole, from the feet up.

I was surprised. I mean, I was a little surprised that I woke up to find a constrictor snake eating me, but not much, because I've had this happen before. Other things surprised me more.

I was definitely surprised that I couldn't tell what kind of constrictor it was. I couldn't tell if it were a python, or an anaconda, or a vastly overgrown boa. Truth told, it had the features of all of those things.

I was more surprised that I had completely forgotten about the previous time I woke up to find a constrictor eating me. You'd think you might remember that, but I've had so much going on lately (see my previous entries for this year) that I'd just forgotten it. But once it was happening again, it seemed like it was just moments ago that I'd last faced this situation. Similarity distorts time, and loops it back onto itself.

But what really surprised me was this: the last time this happened, I reacted very differently. Last time, my thoughts ran along these lines: "Hey, where do I kick or punch to get myself free, and hopefully kill this snake, who totally deserves it for waking me up like this?" This time, my thoughts were like this: "Oh, this is surprising for a number of reasons. Hey, I have my cell phone right here. Who can I call for advice on how to handle this devoured-by-a-snake situation? Do I have any friends who are experts on this, or should I dial 411 for a zoo or a vet or a circus or something?"

It's hard to see changes in ourselves, because we can't usually jump forward in time enough to see it. Sometimes the best way is to notice your surroundings, remember the last time it was similar, and notice any change in your own reactions.

P.S. Does anyone know what I should do about this snake? It's up to my waist now.

merovingian @ 2008-07-27T19:54:00

2008-07-28T02:55:26Z

I think I've mentioned the gay biker gang in my neighborhood. Tough but friendly, rowdy folks with tech jobs during the day. Spare your jokes on the subject, please: what I need you to know right now is that I've just discovered they're all Chinese animals who used magic to take human form.

And hey, you know, fair enough. Good for them really.

The problem is they found out about my time machine and now they're all hey Ted, how's it going, we made you a cake, hey, can we stop by and maybe try out your time machine? Hey, wanna come ride with us? I'll teach you to ride my spare bike. Maybe after we can, you know, get dinner, or hey, we could try your time machine?

All the darn time.

I think they get access to the Celestial Libraries after one thousand years, and I think maybe they want to cheat or something?

Or maybe they just want to soup up their bikes.

They're laying it on a little thick, but hey, the cake is moist and delicious.

merovingian @ 2008-07-26T18:06:00

2008-07-27T01:07:53Z

You know how people have a very flawed sense of time? Like some things feel slow and others feel fast and sometimes you can't tell whether something happened yesterday or tomorrow? And how people always underestimate how long it will take for anything to happen?

Well, it turns out that's on purpose. If you get all of it exactly correct, you start getting time travel mishaps.

Which is how I found myself back here in the 3rd century BC. Still in California, though. I'm leaving this entry on a stone tablet with instructions to my lawyers to place it on LiveJournal on my account on July 26, 2008.

Actually, those were the instructions right there. Thanks, my lawyers!

Anyway, could someone please convince me not to do that? I think maybe it had something to do with tax codes and Ancient Assyrian. Could someone please stop me? Thanks.