We Are the Robots

Hello folks. I'm putting the brakes on comedy once again this weekend to talk about something that has been on my mind for quite some time now. It's been bugging me so much that I find it impossible to sleep at night unless I watch old reruns of "The Price is Right" until I drift into an uneasy slumber, usually waking up later in some stranger's house covered in blood and semen, but that's a whole other problem all together. What's been bugging me is that my relationship is on the rocks as of late due to the fact that my better half thinks I spend way too much time on the computer. I'm starting to hear a lot of "Frolixo, stop image spamming dancing chickens on Internet forums and message boards and let's go for a walk!", or "Frolixo, can you please stop running missions for Jabba the Hut by shooting Jawas in the face with your laser blaster 35-124 dmg +4.3% range hit, and come make love to me?" It's enough to drive me insane!

But being a rather reasonable and open-minded fellow, I tend to think before I smite down my woman in a fit of rage, unless I'm drunk or lose the lotto of course. I began to do some soul searching and realized that maybe I do spend a lot of my time on my lovely, precious, sexy computer, far more than would could be called a healthy amount. After thinking about it for a while and tallying up the numbers, I gathered that counting work I spend about 63 hours on the computer a week. That's 252 hours a month, 3024 hours a year, and assuming that I will live 80 years (oh god I hope not), 241,920 hours during my lifetime. That comes to 27 years of my life sitting on my ass in front of the computer chatting with transvestites with Down Syndrome about crop rotation and hoarding gold for my Halfling cleric/nightclub dancer so I can buy a virtual house and not get hassled by my folks.Which leads me to the question: "What could I accomplish in life if I stopped wasting time on a computer?" Well, I sent my computer statistics, IQ scores, and a DNA sample to MSU (Men Seeking Unicorns), to calculate. The results were astounding. If I cut the hours I spent on the computer in half, these are the things I could accomplish:

Contribute to society by building soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
Become a millionaire by starting a chain of shoe store/mexican food outlets.
Become fast friends with actor/director Jeff Goldblum.
Sleep with a model. Consensually.
Invent a more effective type of cancer.
Develop a nice tan and join the cast of Baywatch as "Little Jimmy".
Own the largest jar of fingernails in the world.
Create a new and improved Cotton Gin called Cotton Gin 2000.
Learn the oboe.

As you can see, my whole life is passing me by and I have nothing to show for it except for a handful of e-friends who are 8-year old Korean boys that secretly mock me when I'm not online, and a spinal injury from slouching in my chair all day. However, I am secure in my belief that I'm far from the only person that is in this situation. In fact, I believe that I'm just a typical male raised in the computer renaissance, breast fed from early game consoles like Atari and Intellivision, nurtured through childhood by the Commodore 64, and raised into a young adult by Nintendo, Sega, and my first PC with a modem. The way we interact with other people, live day to day, and our psychological processes have all been dramatically altered by the dawn of the computer age. Let's look at some of the ways computers affect our daily lives, shall we?

This is a typical Saturday night for me.

Social Interaction

Let's face it, most real computer geeks are pretty antisocial people who were not very popular in school. In the past, outcasts would find solace in a nice book, perhaps a game of Dungeons and Dragons with fellow nerdlings, or just sit at home looking at the women in the Sears catalog and weeping. Finally the loneliness would become so overbearing that they would force themselves out of the house and make friends, or just start murdering children. These poor humans probably thought they were the only ones in the world that felt left out from the crowd. But that all changed once the Internet came into being and nerds and freaks could freely communicate with each other, creating a solace for these once wayward souls. Whole online communities were spawned and soon sprawling cyber metropolises dotted the the Internet. People that would never normally have met or spoken to each other were now connected, making friends, starting relationships, and flaming each other over whether Gimli could take Legolas in a one-on-one battle. Of course this new way of communication has its drawbacks.

It's one thing to be socially inept, but some of the people who broke the chains that held them in the basement and started making websites are just fucked up beyond comprehension. Of course I'm talking about the furries, vores, hate mongers, conspiracy theorists, and run of the mill wackos. Normally we would never have to encounter these people or even know they existed, yet thanks to the Internet, thousands have sprouted up like fresh sores on a syphilitic penis. It's bad enough to know that these people exist and they seemingly blend into society when they're not in their fur suit or covered in peanut butter so the Mason Jew Satanists can't find them, they actually have enough people to form a fairly large community, giving them a sense that what they are doing is ok and normal. But that's not the worst of it. Like a garbage pile attracting all kinds of vermin, the number is steadily growing to alarming levels. Soon we will be overrun and there will be no choice to abandon the Internet and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Games:

I am going to conveniently lump in video games with computers since they are basically brethren. I think I can speak for the majority of males in the age group of 4-28 when I say that video games have played a major role in our childhood and a part of our daily lives. From the halcyon days of moving a clump of dots away from the smaller clump of dots until you pass out or your controller explodes, to the golden age of arcades where a quarter guaranteed at least a good 15 minutes of playing time, and into the present age of high graphic first person shooters and immense strategic games, we have immersed ourselves in this form of entertainment, taking over the TV as the time killer of choice. Everything we need to know to succeed in life we've learned through video games. For instance:

If you see a mushroom in the forest, eat it to grow 2x in size.
Horde as many gold coins as you can. Kill anyone who gets in your way of obtaining them.
If you ever get in a fight, position your opponent next to a cliff or pit so you can take him out with one jump kick.
Eating hamburgers and similar food items will heal any major wound.
If you beat hookers or bums to death with a baseball bat, floating piles of money will appear above their bodies.
Fuck saving the princess or any female for that matter. The bitches are never where they're supposed to be.

When I try to explain all this to my girlfriend she can't understand it, or why I spend hours a week building mighty civilizations, storming bunkers while shooting Nazis in the groin with a rifle, and building my character's skills so I can make pants for Stormtroopers. Frankly I don't think she'll ever understand, so the battle continues.

You just know this guy has no pants on.

Internet Pornography:

Gentleman, I don't think I need to tell you that we are living in the golden age of pornography. Ripe bushels of free pictures and movies can be picked off the Internet tree in unlimited quantities, causing men with Internet access around the world to rejoice, and PETA to call for a worldwide protection act over the abused penises. In the past, pornography was a low key, hidden affair. Men would discreetly walk into their shop of choice, tortured with guilt and embarrassment, buy a magazine to last them a few months, and scuttle off to their room for a short session of masturbation. That all changed after a couple of doctors on the newly invented Internet crafted by the Holy Architect, Al Gore, were sharing some medical information and one of them sent a picture of a girl with big boobs and the message "I wouldn't mind injecting her if you know what I mean". It was all downhill from there. Soon the Internet was flooded with hordes of free unlimited pornography. Men didn't know whether to break down in tears, masturbate furiously like a chimp on speed, or attempt to hoard every single picture and movie file on hardrives and disks like a horny dragon. Needless to say, men are motivated primarily by sex, so how has such a drastic change in the availability of porn affected our attitude towards sex in general?

I'm no psychoanalyst, although I have watched a lot of Judge Joe Brown. I think it's impossible to be exposed to the doses of pornography this generation has been bombarded with without becoming at least a little desensitized. By "desensitized", I mean that anything less than a male/male/female/goat/anal fisting/balloon/leper/mature shemale nazi/mailmain is old fare and seems to be too boring for the throngs of converted perverts. This has given a rise to the more twisted, disgusting, or downright ridiculous fetishes that have found their natural home on the Internet. Much like their skill of killing a lot of people in WW2, the Japanese and Germans have mastered this new area of perversion. The Germans with their hardcore sadomasochism, and the silly Japanese with their bizarre hentai tentacle rape dickgirl incest Pokeman cartoons. Like the furries, the popularity of these hardcore fetishes is a bit disconcerting.

All this porno seems to be putting a strain on relationships as well. There's always a continual game of hiding files from the spouse or girlfriend in a classic game of cat and mouse, or in the eventuality that she finds it, explaining that you accidentally downloaded it looking for circus pictures because you want to move to Russia and become a ringmaster. This lie never works, trust me.I'm sure we aren't far off from having virtual reality sex, and then relationships will end all together. I guess it's not too bad.

Health:

It's a fact: sitting in front a computer screen for hours a day is not good for our bodies. Furthermore, unless you get some sort of exercise at least once a week, your bones will quickly turn into red jello, and your body will resemble a wad of silly putty thrown over a badly crafted wire frame. Much like watching TV, the computer and snacks go hand in hand, resulting in the majority of regular computer users a little large around the britches. I myself slouch in my chair so badly that my spine is curved like a boomerang. When sit up or walk around, I hunch over like I'm miming Monty Burns from the Simpsons. All I'm missing is a hump and I would be jumping around in bell towers and what have you. But I assume this problem will go away after they figure out how to detach our heads from our bodies and hardwire it to the computer. Until then, invest in a very large hamster wheel.

This is a piece of art I made depicting man's struggle with computers.

Literacy:

Computers and the Internet have not only destroyed the King's english, they've tortured, burnt, crucified, and shat upon it. This is true especially with the younger kids who grew up using "AOL speak". Dozens of news stories have reported kids turning in papers written entirely in AOL speak. This is ebonics for white folk, and it's only getting worse. Sure I'll admit that once I got my cable modem hookup, my book reading plunged to a very low level (and by low, I mean none). Our attention span is growing shorter and shorter, and it's evident all around us. I was going to say something else but I forgot what it is. Oh well.

As you can see, we are a generation that has been molded by the technology of the age. We are a byproduct of the computer age, and the benefactors of the good effects and bad. Going back to my girlfriend problem, I told her that I would try to cut down on the amount of time I spend sitting at the computer as long as she went back to the kitchen and baked me sweet Toll House cookies, and fetch me a beer without any sassy quips spewing forth from her mouth. I am currently nursing a black eye that is directly relevant to the prior request. Thankfully, I've found that pressing my face against the computer screen helps the swelling through what I can only assume is pure magic or cancer rays. Whatever it is, my computer has helped me once again.

State Og

It's your State Og representative Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell, reporting in as always. The other day someone asked me what I'd do if I won 75 million dollars in the lottery, and the first thing to pop in my head was "wear a cape". Upon further reflection, I don't understand why I'd need all that money to feel comfortable wearing capes in public, so I just might start doing it regardless. Speaking of seques, here's an excerpt from this week's State Og!

Incredible bargains are lurching around every corner, like a horde of mindless zombies craving brains! Run, don't roll to Uncle Shad's now and score bargains by the bushel! Choose from a fine variety of quality cast-offs such as:

Barrel O' Spines: Each barrel comes packed to the rim with genuine human spinal columns, twitching spastically while suspended in green ichor! Who wouldn't enjoy that?
Devil Lego: Equal parts stimulating toy and powerful connection to dark powers, the possessor of this set will be able to build anything, as long as it isn't pure.
Gang of lurching zombies: Surprisingly common! Surprisingly uncontained!

You must now read this week's State Og since there is no possible alternative, aside from not reading it.

– Reid "Frolixo" Paskiewicz