The following is an extremely true account of what happened at work the other day. A Wenco is a computerized GPS dispatching thing that knows your every move every minute.

I was hauling off of shovel 9
It's Friday and I was feeling fine
Until my Wenco started going crazy
Telling me "start hauling loads, stop being lazy"
Well, we all know, the Wenco, it's gotta go
I'll be the first to say I told you so
But how to get rid of Big Brother GPS?
I knew I'd have to scheme and be devious
Just then the radio played some Miley Ray Cyrus
And it hit me! I know, I'll make a virus!
So I mashed all the buttons on that little unit
For good measure I thought I'd pull my pants down and moon it
But then something happened that was kinda weird
There on the screen a robot appeared
It laughed and said "Now you've gone and done it
"I've taken over your truck and now I'm gonna run it"
My seat belt, it wrapped around me I'm trapped
and my truck took off like a bat that'd been zapped
Went straight for the dump, passing 145
and if you know Myriame, you know that girl can drive
we came to a stop in front of Craig's dozer
and dumped it right there, not one rock went over
He was so mad he called me snot sausage
But it's not my fault! I'm being held hostage
What the Wenco did next I should have expected
It went on the network, and so it infected
all of the trucks and shovels in PC3 pit
that's when I thought I might be in deep shit
so I used ninja tricks to jump outta my truck
just my luck I landed knee deep in the muck
I pulled myself free and looked up to see
Shovel 9 with its bucket was coming at me
It tried to eat me! I swear it's the truth
Lucky for me it was missing a tooth
I jumped through the clamshell but no time to relax
I still had to dodge shovel 9's tracks
Swinging around it came in for the kill
Time to bust out all my GI Joe skill
I adopted my patented Miyagi stance
Part kungfu with voodoo and hiphop dance
With a jab and a feint and a flying round kick
I separated shovel 9's boom from its stick
My triumph short-lived as the rest of the fleet
was headed my way and I knew I was beat
I was just about to give up in defeat
When I heard on the radio Cito say "Sweeeeet!"
So I dodged and I kicked and I punched until three
That's when I stopped for coffee lunch and a pee
At 3:30 I said "Alright" and "You betcha!
"You're coming for me but I'm gonna getcha!"
I wrecked every last truck, including the Kresses
You shoulda seen Jimmy, you know how he stresses
But anyways, to make a long story short
This is the end of my Incident Report!

Fanart Friday: Wall E
The last couple of Pixar movies haven't been my cup of tea but Wall E looks amazing, and it is getting some pretty great reviews too- the Edmonton Journal called it the movie of the decade. Since it just opened today there isn't a whole lot of fan art out there but here are a couple, from kisaru and bosstones22 respectively:



And in other news, they have discovered that some African frogs can extrude their toe bones as claws, Wolvie-style, when threatened. Crazy! Like the movie Logan, doing so causes pain and unlike X-Man, they don't have a healing factor so it is a last resort. I kind of wish poison dart frogs could do this, but I am also glad they can't. One of the challenges of writing Poison Dart is the bad guy I have is pretty crazy tough, and I'm not realy sure how Dart is going to prevail. Some adamantium claws would go a long way in badassing him up. But really, little Dart's appeal is he is not a badass superhero but just a little froglet. Albeit a poisonous one. Ribbit albeit!
Turns out Epantiras already imagined a frog with ninja claws:

I'm back from being the brains of the giant robot. Of course it's not really a robot, just a huge machine that could give King Kong a run for his money. Or maybe that new Cloverfield monster. Earlier in the night I was operating a much older shovel, which is 33 years old and really really run down. But as much of a pile of crap as it is, it can still dig. It's basically the exact same technology, just without computers. In fact, the principle of power shovels has changed little since Fred Flintstone's time, and hardly at all since Mike Mulligan's time, just that now, instead of steam, they are powered by electricity, or in some cases, diesel. We're getting a hydraulic diesel shovel in a few months, that will be cool.
I often think it wouldn't really be that hard to adapt shovel technology to make a working AT-AT. I couldn't do it, but maybe you could. I know where there's a supply of 33-year-old parts you could scrounge.

Michelle's school is putting on a production of Les Mis this week, we caught the matinee (how can I make a french e with an accent?) and I was really impressed. That's an ambitious musical to perform for a professional troupe, let alone some high school students. And I have to say it was nice to walk in on Michelle's grade 7 class and have them remember me and start shouting out the details of my story that I read to them, waaay back in September. They wanted me to make up another story for them on the spot but I was literally saved by the bell.
And now, in true Victor Hugo fashion, I will completely change the subject and ramble on about something altogether unrelated for a while.
NASA put on a Regolith Excavation Challenge, in which the object was to design a machine for digging Lunar regolith. The rules were fairly straightforward- it had to be less than 40 kilos, totally autonomous and had to dig 150 kilos (330 lbs) of regolith in a half hour. No one won. At first I was a little surprised by that- I mean I can dig over 80 tons- 160,000 lbs- in one scoop, not even a minute. How hard would it be to design a little miniature shovel or loader that could do the scale equivalent? But I guess the point is to develop something lightweight enough to be economically feasible to send to the moon, that can work in a vacuum, under radiation and micrometeorite bombardment. And it has to be a robot.
But still. Next year they're offering $750,000. How much you figure it would cost to build something?

From A History of Robotics, Third Edition by Wei MeiDe, © 2074, 2081 Puffin Books, New York:

As we saw in the previous chapters, the Americans pioneered many of the foundational technologies that led to the rise of modern robotics. The Japanese refined and expanded on those technologies, so much so that by the early 21st century they were the world leaders in the field by a wide and inarguable margin. Thus it shocked the entire world when the first truly autonomous and sentient robot was built, not by the Japanese, the Americans or even the emerging Chinese powerhouse, but by bears.
The story is familiar to schoolchildren everywhere, so that we forget how truly singular and amazing it was when the first robot bear materialized out of the woods of the Canadian Rockies. In retrospect it is easy to villify the authorities who panicked and overreacted- the implications of which are perhaps better suited for a political science textbook than this humble history. Regardless, we now know that the UR-515 unit was initially built for a variety of purposes. It was given the capability, which long eluded its builders, of opening bear-proof garbage containers, and of using the garbage obtained therein for power. Having no need to hibernate, they were able to give bears year-round security.
Of course, its primary programming concerned scientific exploration and surveillance, as the grizzlys then were very concerned with their diminishing habitat. But as time wore on, we learned that it also possessed the more ominous ability of dealing with problem humans. Whenever such a person encroached on grizzly territory, they were targeted by a UR-515 sonic stunner, rendered unconscious, tagged with a satellite tracker (the PAN-da 2 SpySat launched from China the previous year was thought to have been created by the Chinese government but we now suspect it was built by the Wolong Sanctuary pandas. Of course their current crisis makes verification impossible) and released into the wild- usually a city hundreds of kilometers from the human's home.
It remains the holy grail of robot researchers to obtain an UR-515 for study, but we have never been able to, though there have been several ill-fated attempts to capture one. Human technology has never been able to attain the prowess of the robot bears, and perhaps never will.
It is small consolation that the bears' technological supremacy was only finally surpassed when British Colombian beavers engineered a rigorous nanotech industry.
__________________________________________

Special thanks to Shane Cheffins, the R3dEyeJedi, for doing such a great job with the robot bear you see to your right. Check out his Kraftworld site for more ninja/robot/alien goodness!

I wonder what kind of robot you could build out of a cellphone battery, an old non-wireless laptop network card, a mechanical pencil, two flashlights and a 6-volt drill without any drill bits? I bet it would be pretty cool if you could get it to work.
I could probably get some scrap metal from the mine, if you have any ideas. Not to mention all the coal you could ever need, should it be powered by coal rather that cellphone battery. Can you imagine the robot you could make out of this kind of stuff:

Happy Valentine's Day! May you not be embittered by this oft-heartless day. Here is a V-Day poem dedicated to my amazing wife- not one of those mushy and cliched poems, with lots of references to eyes being like oceans,though, or climbing really high mountains. It's just a love poem, with robots. In fact, that's what it's called:

Love Poem, with Robots


A fleet of technospaceships
full of robots
from the planet Technotopia X
arrived at Earth the other day
looking for the meaning of life
and love
all the questions of the human condition
that have plagued robotkind since
at least the golden age of pulp fiction
they sent a robot researcher
down to study you and I
and make a report to the mothership
he followed us around
mostly unobtrusive
but occasionally pestering us with
tiresome requests to clarify some
figure of speech
that he took literally
anyways
he kept a careful tally
medians modes and means
of every time we
hugged
touched
said I love you
he returned to his
mothership
to report on his findings
love is
he said in his robot voice
love is . . .
love . . .
love . . . does not . . .
compute
love . . .
and then
his technoneural processors
fried
and he died
so the fleet of technospaceships
fled
back to Technotopia X
we felt sad
I said
I loved that little guy
and you said
I love you!
I laughed
and said
I love you too!

We saw a robot dinosaur at the store yesterday. Cool, eh? Some sort of carnosaur- likely the mighty Rex. It was walking and roaring and chomping its teeth. Little children were playing with it. Much as I love robots, and dinosaurs, I'm not sure if it's wise to allow young kids to have one. If I have learned anything from science fiction, it is never to trust robot dinosaurs- it's only a matter of time before they run amok. Luckily this one was very small.
Anyways, all you parents out there, my advice to you is this: if you must buy this ticking timebomb for your toddler this Christmas, at least buy this book for yourself while you are at it. Please.

Here's a poem I wrote last month, never really came up with a good title for it. Just a little wistfulness, and robots. This picture helped crystallize an idea that's been floating in my head for quite a while.

I remember reading
books with titles like
‘The Year 2000 and Beyond’
that promised
acid rain
from brown skies
at lunchtime
Comforting dystopia
for an alien yet inevitable
civilization
where
through the gloom the
red lights of robot eyes
offer you their umbrellas
and guide you across the street

We are well beyond the year 2000
and I stand at a crosswalk
in the pH-neutral rain
with my robotic suit and tie
the red lights of SUVs blurry in the gloom
while Pod people briskly walk by
safe in their isolation and
dystopian comfort
and I realize I would trade
every crosswalk crossing robot
and shark-shaped submarine
for a chance to go back
and read those crazy books
while my mom made me hot chocolate
and said
“Why don’t you go outside and play?”

This poem is a direct result of driving around Cape Breton Island, listening to the Gorillaz' (and Dennis Hopper's) "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head", and mulling over Dan Simmons' Ilium, a curious tale about the Trojan War on Mars, among other things. And if this reminds you of the Iron Giant, that's okay, too. Stuff written on one's honeymoon need not be very original or amazing, as long as it's about robots.

The Lighthouse Cove

At the edge of the world
where green grass meets blue sea
a lighthouse stands
where it has kept vigil
for over a century
guiding ships safely
past the rocks

Then one day
with a sea storm's suddenness
a giant black robot
over a hundred feet tall
and not quite humanoid
descended from space
and landed
next to the lighthouse

The residents of the sleepy little cove
watched with apprehension
and wariness
waiting for the strange thing
to do something
anything
probably devour them all
but all it did
was incline its head
toward the heavens

Slowly they overcame their fear
and approached the black shell
the robot didn't devour anyone
it didn't react at all
the braver boys discovered
that it made a hollow clanging sound
when you hit it with a rock
and the girls drew on it with chalk

Inevitably the government came
and so did the tourists
while the residents went about their lives
some of them got jobs as tour guides
in the Robot Interpretive Center
all the while
the lighthouse stood guard
and the robot didn't move
though sometimes its eyes glowed
different colors

The government and all its
secret organizations
could not discover the robot's origins
though there were lots of books
with all kinds of
conspiracy theories
and crackpot hypotheses
sparking endless debate
and boredom
while the robot stood tall
next to the lighthouse

Many years later
with no warning
the robot flew away
leaving the lighthouse behind
where it remained impassive
searching the seas for ships in distress
while the citizens scanned the skies
to no avail
so they returned to their lives
in their sleepy little village
now devoid of government and tourists
and they renamed it
Robot's Cove

A Hundred Buttons



I built a killer robot
and it has
a hundred buttons!
The start button's green
and the stop button's red
There's buttons for all its weapons
missiles machineguns grenades and
skunks
Buttons for
highspeed
lowspeed
turbo mode
stealth
shapeshifter
laserguided/GPS/mp3 mode
Infrared ultraviolet sortagreen and babypink buttons
It's got a Headsup Display
and a Bottomend Bass
I added a Manual Grease button
(all those moving parts need to be lubed)
I even installed a special
Babysitter Mode button
But that one still has some bugs in it

"I think I'm being voodooed," said Ammit, the Egyptian devourer of souls who was actually just a robot who had sold his soul to the devil once and named himself Ammit.
"By who?" I asked.
"I do not know. I had hoped that you might."
I had only known one houngan in my life (and no mambos), and I was pretty sure he had passed away peacefully in Denmark a few years ago. I couldn't think of anyone that had recently taken up the Haitian death magic. "Maybe it's the devil, getting some revenge on you for ripping him off?" I suggested.
"No, he's not mad about that- he tried to rip me off first, so we called it even and laughed it off."
Just then the papertiger came and delivered the morning news. The headline proclaimed, "Mayor Delves Into Voodoo, Hopes It Will Balance Budget". Ammit and I exchanged surprised looks. We decided to pay a visit to city hall.

The unemployed hockey players who guarded the entrance to city hall blocked our way with their sticks, but Ammit just made his eyes glow red like he does when people get in his way, and they let us pass. I guess they think he has a death beam or something but really his eyes just light up. Ask him to show you sometime.
Mayor Mainott was in his office, which was decorated in a very Haitian style, though Mayor Mainott had never been there, preferring to holiday instead in Denmark. There was a beautiful tanbou in the middle of the office, decorated with a scene of elephants parading in E-Town . Mayor Mainott had been an elephant trainer before he was mayor, and thought it was a good use of budgetary funds to herd elephants down Main Street. He greeted us warmly, even though it looked as if he was quite busy with the budget and his voodoo rituals.
"What can I do for you?" he asked.
"Have you been voodooing Ammit?" I got right to the point, a useful tactic in dealing with politicans, I had often found.
"No, I never voodoo constituents. That would be a good way to lose votes. I may or may not voodoo non-constituents, for example the mayor of C-Town, but certainly not our own good citizens." He held up a voodoo doll of a suit-and-tie-guy wearing a cowboy hat.
"Hmmm," said Ammit. "Then who could it be?"
"How do you know you are being voodooed?" asked Mayor Mainott.
"My servomotors often act of their own accord. And I get a strange sensation as if someone was poking me with pins and needles."
The mayor nodded thoughtfully. "Well, if you like, I can perform a ritual to see if we can find out."
"No rituals," said Ammit. "Voodoo creeps me out." My old houngan friend would have been offended by this comment, but I could sympathize with Ammit. He was being voodooed after all, and that is enough to creep anyone out.
"Okay, no problem. How about this? I can pass a bill in council making it illegal to not admit it if you are the one voodooing Ammit."
"Do you think that would work?" asked Ammit. I was a little skeptical myself.
"Well, depends if we could enforce it or not. There are quite a few hockey enforcers that need jobs right now, though many of them are in Denmark playing with the minor leagues . . . " In the old days the police force would have handled such a thing, but they had all been fired for putting in too much Overtime. At any rate, the thought of 30 hockey goons running through the streets of E-Town knocking down doors and terrorizing the populace didn't sit too well with me.
"Wouldn't that cost you votes?" I asked.
"Oh yeah, you're probably right. Well, I could form a committee to see if they can determine who is voodooing Ammit." Ammit just rolled his eyes.
"How about if I grant you diplomatic immunity from being voodooed?" Ammit's eyes started to glow.
"Okay, okay, don't shoot. Here's a grant for $30,000." He handed us a moneybag with a dollar sign on it. "Figure it out on your own. Now my budget's shot."
So we used two grand of our grant to buy a voodoodetector, and found out it was just some kid who was trying to build her own remote control robot, and the signals were interfering with Ammit's subprocessors. We gave her fifty bucks so she could get a better RC unit.
Then we used the rest of the grant money to take an extended holiday in Denmark. It was fun.

This is the conclusion to the robot story- scroll down to the previous poost to read the first part.

All kinds of ideas were swirling through my mind as I caught up with the robot. There had to be a way to beat the devil at his own game. Some kind of robot virus that would mutate the soul, so that Satan wouldn't be able to recognize it; or maybe he used nanocyte ink that would disappear or even alter the contract to make it null and void. There had to be a way.
"The devil tricked you! You already have a soul!" I said, without even a greeting.
"How is that possible?" Reading robot expressions was hard, but he didn't seem to be alarmed, just curious.
"Well, I heard a fable once when I was a kid- about a lion who was concerned that he didn't have a soul. So he asked a wise man how he could know whether he had one or not, and the wise man told him, 'The fact that you are concerned that you have a soul is proof of its existence.' Maybe it's something like that. You grew your own soul from wanting one so bad!"
"I still haven't chosen a name. Can you help me?"
"What the hell are you talking about? Who cares about your name? We have to figure out a way to get your soul back from the devil!"
"I think something from Egyptian mythology might be cool. What was the name of the creature who would eat your soul if it weighed less then the golden feather? Ammit, wasn't it? I think I will be named Ammit from now on."
"Dammit Ammit! This is serious! Focus, we have to save your soul here!" I felt like screaming. I did scream. "Gaaaaarrrgghhhhh!!!" But "Ammit" just kept blathering on as if he didn't even hear me.
"Yes, Ammit. The devourer of souls. I like it. It's much better than Robby the Robot. I'm glad you and the devil wouldn't let me be Robby. Of course, I was so sure my name was going to be Robby that I'm afraid I signed Lucifer's little contract under that name."
I was still screaming so it took a second or two for that statement to sink in. "Wha . .? You mean . . ."
"I must confess that I sold Robby the Robot's soul to the devil. I hope he doesn't mind. Since he is an inanimate object collecting dust in a studio warehouse somewhere I think I can safely assume he won't. The devil will probably be angry, but he'll have to take it up with Robby."
I never kissed a robot before, and I wouldn't recommend it since they are cold and metallic, but it was definitely appropriate on this occasion. Then we danced- the Robot, of course.

A robot of my acquaintance sold his soul to the devil. The deal was, Old Nick would provide my robot friend with a soul, and in return the robot would sell that soul back to him. I tried to talk him out of it- I mean, I hardly ever use my soul, so what did he need one for- but he was pretty determined. You know how hard it can be trying to talk a robot out of something once he has made up his mind. All the same, I figured I better go with him to meet the Prince of Darkness.
Satan was a lot like I imagined he would be- a class act, but indescribably evil at the same time. He wasn't actually doing anything evil, exactly, but you could just feel those vibes emanating from his Versace suit. We met in an uppercrust retro-20s jazz club uptown. I introduced myself as the robot's attorney. It was a lie, of course, and the devil knew it, but that just meant I had earned his respect.
The robot wanted to get straight down to business, but I steered the conversation back to small talk. Shooting the breeze with the devil is surprisingly easy. If you ask just the right questions, he will tell you some of the most amazing stories you'll ever hear. Just don't be ingratiating- he hates that. And it probably goes without saying that you shouldn't talk religion with him. Politics, though- he's all over that. Anyways, after a few drinks (I had beer, hellboy drank highballs and the robot is a teetotaller) we were ready to discuss terms.
"My client wishes, against my advice, to obtain a soul from you. In return, he will pledge that soul back to you. Upon his demise the soul shall revert back to your ownership."
"Agreed," said the devil. He produced a contract from his inside pocket, signed it and handed it to the robot to sign. Then I witnessed it and it was official. Done. Robot had a soul and, well, so did the devil.
"Now that I have a soul I can give myself a name!" said the robot. "I think I will be . . . Robby."
"No," I said. Satan agreed.
"Why not? I like the sound of it."
"Trust me, you don't want to be Robby the Robot. Pick another name."
The devil said, "I'll sell you a name." I shushed him. Not everyday you can do that to the Evil One.
"What would you suggest?" he asked me.
"Ah man, I don't know. Choose something that has meaning for you. Maybe you should try and 'find' yourself first, now that you have a soul and all."
So he got up and left without even saying good-bye. Protocol wasn't his primary function, apparently.
I turned back to Satan. "So what's your scam?"
"No scam. I always honor my deals."
"If you could just make souls out of thin air then you could have as many souls as you wanted and wouldn't need to make deals for them."
"I like the challenge of obtaining them this way. I am an afficionado."
"I still don't buy it. I think you're lying."
"I encourage that vice in others, but find little need for it myself."
I raised my eyebrow at him, and stared him in the eye. A dangerous gambit, but I sensed the devil kind of liked me so I risked it.
"Fine," he grinned. "You are correct- I can not manufacture a soul from nothing. But your friend does indeed possess one- I did not lie about that. It is not my fault if he was ignorant of this fact before he came to me. I merely gave him the necessary impetus to be able to believe. Call it the Dumbo Effect, if you will."
"And all you charged for this service was his eternal soul."
"Yes."
I was angry, and I had to get away to think. The wheels in my head were spinning, but not nearly as fast as a robot's would. I needed to find "Robby" or whatever the hell he was calling himself. We needed to figure a way out of this contract. I excused myself.
"Let me get the check," said Lucifer. "It's the least I can do. And here's my card- call me if you ever want to sell your soul."

In an admittedly bizarre synthesis of my last two poosts, here is a poem about conservation. And robots.

The robot bear roams way up there
Up in the north where there's no more air
Where the ozone hole has burnt the pole
And turned all the animals into coal
His primary mission is not salmon fishin'
But scanning for signs of life-force emission
Since all life is dead he'll just read code-red
Green gone to sleep in her fossil bed
So there he'll remain, searching in vain
Slowly rusting from the acid rain