A conversation from the future.

It’s an exciting time to be alive; our modern age has seen technology advance at its most rapid pace in all of human history and globalisation has made the world a much smaller, and more peaceful, place. Twenty years ago our forefathers would never have dreamed that smartphones and 3D TV were just around the corner, why would they? It was a simpler time, a time when Russia was still applying Sudocrem to its derriere after getting its ass thoroughly kicked in the Cold War, and a time when Kurt Cobain was the hottest new thing around. Should a woman, provided that Stockholm Syndrome has finally kicked in, ever agree to mate with me, I often wonder how to properly explain to my offspring the significance of this period and the importance of one man’s story to an entire generation growing up during the 90s.

The following conversation takes place in the year 2029 between my progeny and myself.

Me: Come over here son.

Lando Kent (henceforth known as LK): What is it pops?

Me: It’s about time that I had a very important talk with you.

LK: Is it about where babies come from?

Me: Now Lando, you know that that’s what Youporn is for. No, I want to talk to you about something that’s very precious to me. Do you know who Will Smith is?

LK: Of course, Will Smith and his spawn are responsible for over 60% of box office receipts in this era, the not-too-distant future.

Me: You have learned much my child, but do you know where Will Smith came from?

LK: Well some say that he was created in a lab run by Scientologists, others that he is the lovechild of L. Ron Hubbard and John Travolta.

Me: What? How is that even possible? I knew sending you to a religious school would be a mistake, especially one named after Tom Cruise! No son, Will Smith was originally a rapper who was part of a musical duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff.

LK: You mean President DJ Jazzy Jeff?!?

Me: Haha, yeah. None of us saw that coming. Anyway, Will Smith garnered enough fame to land the lead in a sitcom called ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ where he played a young man called ‘Will Smith’.

LK: Truly one of the world’s greatest living actors…

Me: Now this ‘Will Smith’ was from West Philadelphia, born and raised. On the playground was where he spent most of his days…

(You can see where this is going, and frankly this joke has been done to death so I’m just going to go ahead and skip typing out the theme tune – it’s not like any of you don’t know the words!)

LK: Holy cow!

Me: Don’t swear son.

LK: Sorry, I mean: Fucking hell!

Me: Much better. See? Manners are their own reward.

LK: What happened next?

Me: Well, once Will arrived in Bel-Air he met his Aunt Vivian, played by some no-name, his cousins Ashley and Hilary, also played by no-names, his other cousin Carlton, played by Alfonso Ribeiro.

LK: Who?

Me: Exactly. And his Uncle Phil – played by James Avery.

LK: I don’t know who any of these people are.

Me: Come on! James Avery! You know, Uncle Phil!

LK: No, I have no idea who Uncle Phil is. You just started telling me about this TV show three minutes ago.

Me: You know who he is. Big black guy.

LK: James Earl Jones?

Me: No! James Avery! He voiced shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

LK: Teenage mutant ninja what now?

Me: He was in the Brady Bunch Movie.

LK: What?

Me: Ok, fair enough on that one.

LK: No offence dad, but this show sounds lame. Barely anybody famous was in it.

Me: It’s not about the big names; it’s about the story!

LK: Ok then, what was the story?

Me: Well basically, Will lived with his rich cousins and hilarity ensued.

LK: That’s it?

Me: No, well. There was this one where they played pool and Uncle Phil bailed them out. And this other one where Will was going to get married but he didn’t. And-

LK: I’m going to go outside and played on my hoverboard.

Me: But I haven’t told you about the best part! Whenever Jazzy Jeff was in an episode he’d always say something stupid, and Uncle Phil would throw him out of the house and he’d go ‘AHHHHH!’.

LK: Bye.

On second thought, maybe it’s better that we don’t tell our children about the Fresh Prince. They won’t understand. They weren’t there when it all happened. They don’t know what it’s like being in a room full of people, saying ‘Iiiiiinnn West Philadelphia…’ and having everyone join in. It’s ours - and maybe we should keep it that way. So I beseech you: if you have children, or ever have them, don’t show them the Fresh Prince, don’t force it on them. Let them have their own iconic TV show to enjoy – and let the few who do watch the Fresh Prince act like pretentious douchebags because they watch an outdated TV show that no one cares about anymore. That is what being a good parent is all about.

                                                                   1990-1996. Never Forget.

                                          At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.    

                                                           

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Earlier today I started watching Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and was forced to give up watching after half an hour. ‘What forced you to give up watching?’ I hear you ask. No, it wasn’t Academy of Wooden Acting alumni Hayden Christian’s acting, nor was it the fact that the film appears to have OD’d on CGI effects. It was the fact that the robots, THE GODDAMN ROBOTS, all have personalities.

Now don’t get me wrong, in the original trilogy the robots’ personalities were kind of endearing, as C-3PO constantly fretted about absolutely every single plot point that arose and R2-D2 was little bit cheeky, and we liked it that way. But the new trilogy took it to another level. Whereas before R2 (as he likes to be called by his circle of acquaintances) would just emit irritated beeps from time to time, Episode III has a scene in which he incapacitates two super battle droids (as a write this I’m starting to realise how much I loathe myself) by squirting oil out of what looks suspiciously like a little chrome pecker and making them slip about comically in a pool of oil before collapsing in a heap. All of a sudden R2 is the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers and Charlie fucking Chaplin all roll into one little steel rubbish bin and it’s not even that the fact that these personalities simply make the droids more annoying, it’s much worse! Think about this logically: each robot in the Star Wars universe is built for one specific task: C-3PO is a translator (human-cyborg relations to be exact! …I hate myself so much right now), R2-D2 is a maintenance droid, yadda yadda yadda. So if every robot is built for just one purpose, why give them sentience? It’s not like you’re intending for them to take up and hone brand new skills. But that’s not even the worse part! The personalities don’t just make the robots annoying whilst simultaneously being utterly pointless – they actually stop the droids from doing their jobs properly!

First example: in Episode IV: A New Hope, Chewbacca is being 'escorted' by Han and Luke through the Death Star. As they walk, a small black box with wheels that’s supposed to be a cleaner droid, or some other kind of robot designed for blue-collar work, whatever, drives up to him. Chewbacca growls at the droid, it lets out a high-pitched squeal and rushes back the way it came. Now because the morons at Robot Co, or wherever the hell these things are made, decided to give their robot designed to clean a floor emotions, it wasn’t able to do it’s one job. But even when there isn’t something preventing these clinking clunks of chrome from fulfilling their one reason for existence they’ll still find a way to slack off. At the start of Episode III R2-D2 is the hangar of General Grievous’ ship where Obi-Wan and Anakin landed their ships to rescue Emperor Palpatine, when two super-battle droids enter. Now what’s the first thing one of them says? ‘Yup, those are definitely Jedi ships’. No shit. He enters and expresses surprise in a manner befitting some small-town hick farmer who’s found his neighbour’s cow wandering around his cabbage patch. I mean come on! But it gets worse! R2-D2 makes a noise; one battle droid says ‘What was that?’ and the other replies ‘Ah forget about it, get back to work!’. He doesn’t inspect the noise out of sheer laziness. He’s a battle droid who hears a suspicious noise and can’t be bothered to find out what it is. Maybe it was a slow day and he had no reason to suspect that the enemy are aboard, it’s not like there was a battle going on outside- OH WAIT. THERE WAS TOTALLY A FUCKING BATTLE GOING ON OUTSIDE! This guy, in the heat of battle, hears a noise after finding two enemy ships in the hangar and ‘Forgets about it’. For shame George Lucas, for shame.

And Star Wars never addresses the wider implication of sentient robots. Why haven’t they decided that humans are obsolete and tried to eradicate us like in Terminator? Maybe all the personality defects, anxiety complexes and laziness that they install in these robots were a way of preventing them from ever rising up against humanity because the robots can never be arsed doing it? Maybe it was part of the plan all along?

Then again, it would have been far quicker and easier to never give them personalities in the first place.