Monkey Robots

By Spencer Dobson
Staff Writer

I can’t get my head around anything this week. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the debt ceiling. I don’t grasp the complete repercussions of the Minnesota Government shut down. I’ve been inside for two beautiful summer days with pink eye because I don’t want to give it to anybody. This article is going to be a mess.

I watched two documentaries yesterday. One was about how apes evolved into humans, titled “Ape to Man.” The other, “Transcendent Man,” was about how we will eventually have micro robots in our blood that will keep us healthy and make us super smart and our consciousness will be something we can back up and reboot in another vessel like the data on a hard drive. It wasn’t science fiction; it was based on technology we already have and the patterns our technological advances follow. So in the future our consciousness might very well live forever.
When you put the two documentaries together, you realize that we are simply a stop on the road that starts at monkey and ends at robot. (At this point I feel I have to say that if you write me a letter about evolution being a theory and all that nonsense, you will have to do it by email. And since you will have to be on your computer to send me an email, take a second and Google evolution and really read up on it and then don’t send me the letter. Thank you.) It’s kind of mind blowing. I’m sure if our more ape-like relatives from the past could see what they turned into, they would be in awe. “You’ve mastered fire and you use it to bake pizzas with cheese right in the crust.” I bet if you could be a fly on the wall at the virtual reality museum that our future selves will visit you could see them shake their heads in wonder as they look at our lives and say, “can you imagine, they hadn’t even figured out how to put crust in the cheese in the crust. Much less cheese in the crust, that’s in the cheese that’s in the crust. How did they live?”

Two steps back on the timeline, we’re monkeys. Two steps forward, we’re super robots. I think if you watch a video of a guy getting racked in the nuts on an Ipad while you hurl your feces at The Hadron Super Collider, you would literally be at the midpoint between monkey and robot. You can buy 3D printers now (http://tiny.cc/3Dprinter). It will print an object. You could make a three-dimensional model of a human brain taken from a CT scan and send it to the greatest brain doctor in the world. It would be cheap and easy to make a porn joke here, so why don’t you try one and I’ll wait…Good one.

Someday there will be a 3D printer in every home. It will be as normal as a toaster. And when that happens, we will be able to be so much meaner to each other. Instead of texting your boyfriend that he’s a cheating piece of crap, you can literally send him a life sized, three-dimensional piece of crap. You could label it “3D sexy sexy sexy” and then when he goes to print it…poop. Take that jerk face.

I have come to the conclusion that I’m ready for George W. Bush to do cameos on TV shows. I hate the guy and I think it is going to take years to repair the damage he did that is repairable and even longer to forgive the damage that’s not repairable. Since we’re not going to put him in jail, it might be worthwhile to use him as ironic subtext on shows like “30 Rock” and “Parks and Rec.” They already did it with Condi last season. To be honest with you, it made me gag to see her on my favorite show. However, if we start putting Bush in little parts in shows, maybe we can convince the world that he wasn’t the idiot king, but rather more of a Borat-type character and the whole 2000 decade was just a huge prank. “Iraq, you got punked.”

I saw a food review for a salad that they make at Wendy’s. The fast food place. The review was written by a person whose job it is to write things. This person writes for a newspaper that people buy with the money they earn at a job they may or may not like. I don’t think the writer was trying to be the Chuck Klosterman of food writing. (Look that one up if you have to. It’s a pretty good joke.) Wendy’s recipes are created in a corporate test kitchen somewhere. We have really talented people making all kinds of food using their own ingenuity and creativity right here in the Red River Valley. What’s your deal, food writer? “This year’s winner of the Grand Forks County Fair pie baking contest is…Little Debbie.” That’s what you did food writer.

I was in Denver last week. They have people that stand on the street with signs advertising pot as in marijuana as whacky tabacki. I don’t smoke pot. I have nothing against pot and I would legalize it if it were up to me. But pot doesn’t sit well with my brain, so I don’t smoke it. Going to Denver as a non–pot smoker is like winning a ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory as a diabetic. I spent the whole time going, “man, somebody else would love this.” On a side note, pot is readily available in Denver and people think it’s okay to paint your house purple. Do the math.
Well, these are a bunch of thoughts that don’t tie together. Hope you liked em. -Spencer

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