God Computes

Dear Mr. Sisk:

Regarding your exclamatory remark after learning your two-year-old laptop was not upgradable to Windows 8.1. 
I empathize with your frustration.  Though I invented the cloud, I’ll be damned if I can control it.  (I like saying, “I’ll be damned.”  It gives me funny hiccups.)  But consider this.  I remember turning my back for just a moment (a long time ago from your point of view, which is limited by design) so I could have a strategic planning meeting with my event coordinator, Moses.  From my point of view (which, naturally, is all points), I was only distracted for a moment.  But apparently it was long enough for some trash-talking ape-heads to erect a fake cow to throw prayers at.  That really pissed me off—those prayers were for me.  In fact, I thought hard about this being a really good excuse to use up all that rain left over from the last time I got mad.  Cool heads prevailed in the end (all mine).  I think Moses took it harder than I did.  I know what my editors wrote, but that guy had a really short fuse.  And he never did reassemble those last three commandments–told me ten fit the math better (as if I needed a math lesson).  Nonetheless, Mr Sisk, every time I hear, “Holy cow!” I get pretty riled up.  Just say, “Holy shit!”  I can take that.  Hell, I invented the stuff!

Thank Me,

GOD

PS:
Yes, backwards my name spells ‘dog’.  But I invented those too.  So I win either way.  If that confuses you, it’s your own damned fault.  One thing I didn’t invent was English.  (When I say that something is your own damned fault, carefully consider the source.)
And yes, I write a lot of asides.  But that’s kind of silly to point out to an omnipresent being, isn’t it?  (Don’t spend too much time on that one.)
Also, get a Mac.



Keep Scatting

Keep is Google’s voice transcription app.  I’ve been experimenting with it on my smart phone.  Very interesting.  It gets many things right, like, The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog, and, She sells seashells by the seashore.  In general, simple sentences and good diction yield acceptable notes.  But going off the beaten path can give unexpected results.  When I recited the classic rhyme, Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you, I got the transcription, Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy to kill a baby too wouldn’t you.  A little scary.
For fun I tried a short scat phrase, along the lines of, bee-bop ba-boop, which the app transcribed as, give a f*** up pop boob (including the asterisks).  A longer scat with different vowels turned into, people in the middle of the police department.  One came back as, Billy badly bubble f*** pop; another as, boo boo boo 5853 felt that.  And one of my favorites was a short babble that converted to, f*** your fishing trip.  The asterisks aren’t here because I’m bashful.  They’re what the app actually provides.  
Hidden in this nonsense I see a pattern.  First, Google wants very much to translate difficult sounds into a certain curse word.  Second, it simultaneously tries very hard to censor that word by substituting asterisks.  That’s a little f***ed up.




July 29, 2013