The Real Robot Revenge: Part 2

Hollywood has been warning us against this for years. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Star Wars to the television series Futurama, sci-fi writers have always been fantasizing about the role of robots in the future. They’re sassy. They’re smart. They’re homicidal.

The Matrix
“Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague, and we... are the cure.”

– Agent Smith

Al Gore agrees. He even looks like an agent. If we didn’t have as many people around, our carbon footprint wouldn’t look so much like a Sasquatch sighting. Then again, you know what they say about big feet…

Sure, using humans as generators doesn’t make sense if you know much of anything about thermodynamics and how the body works—but just try to explain that to your robot overlord!


The Lord of the Rings
Don’t tell me you missed the subtext! “Burn the forest,” says the villain. Start manufacturing weapons and armor and scorch the earth a black that can’t grow back. Obviously Saruman’s slave force and Sauron and the Ring of Power represent the Middle Earth equivalent of our big, bad industries and robots. Who are the heroes? The quaint short people with green thumbs. You don’t want to end up like Frodo almost did when he so poignantly said, “No, Sam. I can't recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I'm naked in the dark.” Every time I kick a vending machine because it ate my dollar, I’m like Legolas shooting an orc in the face.


Jurassic Park
Probably one of my favorite movies of all time. The kind of flick that has you leaving the theatre pretending to be a velociraptor. But if you think about it, the message is clear: too much automation and t-rexes start eating people off of toilets. Maybe we should be careful about trying to genetically engineer and reconstruct pre-historic carnivores, but more importantly DO NOT PUT ONE ORNERY, EASILY-BRIBED COMPUTER SCIENTIST IN CHARGE OF ALL THE DINO CAGES! Chances are he’ll write up some computer code to do all the hard work and then get eaten by a dilophosaurus before telling anyone his password. Learn from history….er, Hollywood.

Moon Water!

A self-made billionaire who goes by the name of Bubba Fat has embarked on a quest to re-christen the entire bottled water industry. 

Bubba Fat decided one day while rolling around in piles of his money and left over popcorn that he was thirsty (and also bored with his money). So, his logical deduction was to make bottled water. 

However, the idea that struck him was anything but practical. Mr. Fat didn't just want to dig a hole in some cave or spring and sell the water he found, he wanted to tap the new glaciers recently discovered by the Japanese on the moon. He recounted the story of his epiphany to me:

"It was a late night and I had just finished watching the movie Hot Fuzz for the 7th time. The money piles were making my back a little stiff and I felt itchy. I sat up and I felt this parched sensation in my throat, as if I had just eaten 3 buckets of popcorn without anything to drink. Well, my butler said that is exactly what happened and he offered me a bottled water. The stuff tasted like...well...water. And it bored me. So, I decided to start my own little bottled water company, with moon water!"

Moon water. That is the name Mr. Fat has decided to name his new company. When asked about logistics he said:

"Well, initially the Chinese said I was too fat to go to the moon, but then they said there could be a way. They said they'd take me up there instead of the orangutan they were going to send (he didn't pass the drug test), and they wouldn't even charge me. So, I told them I'd throw down a hundred million if they made me a giant hose connected to a tank with a heater."

Mr. Fat says that if the trip is successful he might even branch out to making a product called Real Moonshine. He said he could make it in his basement with a touch of weed killer, moon water, and his "special ingredient."

"The market for bottled water is still growing, even with the facts out there that say it's not as healthy or as green as tap water. People are enticed by the novelty. And if it's novelty they want, I think moon water wins. It even beats that 10,000 year old Alaskan stuff any day," said Mr. Fat.

Bottled water and liquor from the moon. Could life get any better? I submit that it cannot.