A RESOLUTION SOLUTION

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-31-19)

     We're almost a month into the new year, and I wanted to ask you how your New Year's resolutions were holding up. If you answered, "Oh crap! Thanks for reminding me!" Then I'm guessing not so good. If you didn't even bother to make any resolutions because you knew you wouldn't keep them, then that's even worse. Those brave souls who fought the crowds and the weather on New Year's Eve in Times Square certainly took the whole thing seriously, even if you didn't. They were out there for hours with no umbrellas, because an umbrella could be used as a weapon. Don't you remember when the Penguin would show up at a gala for a gaggle of rich gals, and he'd point his umbrella into the middle of the room and this pink gas would come out, and before you knew it all the ladies were on the floor and these guys with black derby hats would stroll in and fleece the entire place and clean out the wall safe? Well maybe YOU don't remember that, but the NYPD certainly does.

      So, no umbrellas, and no porta-potties in Times Square either, because they could be used in a terrorist plot. All it takes is one commando to infiltrate the area and open the door to one of those things, and en entire city block could be immobilized. So you're left with hundreds of thousands of adults wearing adult diapers, and there's not even any alcohol to make it all seem festive. It's so crowded that everybody's packed in like sardines. Picture a bunch of sardines, perfectly sober, wearing adult diapers, and you'll begin to get an idea of the kind of commitment New Year's Eve takes. Plus, Times Square is a security nightmare, along with all the other nightmares I just described. Think of all the bad actors that could be on Broadway at any given time.

      So suck it up and honor your promises for the new year. If you really want to work things efficiently you should line up your resolutions in November, and that way you can ask for Christmas presents that will make it easier. There is plenty of new technology out there that can help. Make the whole holiday season work together to transform you into a better person. One way to ensure that you are living up to your goal of staying more physically active is to ask for a fitness tracker for Christmas. The fitness tracker can provide important physiological feedback to you, such as the fact that you are pathetic. You can program it to monitor your heart rate, calories burned, and the number of Dairy Queens within a two-mile radius.

      What about a refrigerator that actually talks to you? You can ask it to help your diet out by giving you misleading information about what's inside. "Close the door that light is right in my eye. What are you doing here, anyway? Do you realize what time it is? Well neither do I because you never set my clock. If you're here for the cookies your wife already ate them." "She did not, she's the one who told me to finish them up." "You know what? I happen to agree with the Fitbit- you're pathetic." I have a flashing message on my refrigerator that tells me when it's time to change the lettuce crisper filter. It's been flashing since 1985. Imagine if it could talk to me? What would it say? "CHANGE THE CRISPER FILTER YOU BLITHERING IDIOT." Or something to that effect.

      Some people want to clean up their house and start the new year off on the right foot. There are several robotic vacuums on the market that just wander around the room all day in a random pattern and clean your rug for you. In our house the main offender is the cat, who also wanders around the room in a random pattern and soils the rug for you. I remember when my wife had this black light that was supposed to highlight where the cat was messing up the rug. She could smell the evidence but she couldn't see it. It was like an episode of "Forensic Files." I said why don't you spray the area with Luminol, and see if the cat actually committed a crime? We got the cat from the cat pound, and I have no idea what his background was. He could have been an axe murderer for all I know- every time I try to pick him up it seems like he tries to kill me. He has those retractable claws like little stilettos, but I've never actually patted him down for weapons. Anyway, the genius of these robotic vacuums is not that they pick up all the dirt so great, it's that they chase the cat around and prevent him from staying in one place long enough to do anything that might constitute a misdemeanor.

      We're all living in this microcosm we call Earth, so our resolutions might actually intersect. If you have a resolution to take better care of your teeth, odds are that your dentist has the same resolution. I just bought an electric toothbrush that lets you know when you've brushed your teeth for one minute. The ADA recommends that you brush your teeth for two minutes, so I brush my teeth until this toothbrush goes off twice. I've found that it also comes in handy with my other resolutions too, so it's a win-win. For instance, I want to spend at least 10 minutes a day walking my dog, and my dog has that same resolution too. So I take my toothbrush along and brush my teeth until the timer goes off ten times. Another one of my New Year's resolutions is for other people to be nicer to me, so feel free to help me out with that one.

THE FUTURE IS HERE BUT ONLY TEMPORARILY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-24-19)

      If you're as cynical as I am you probably already know that we're all headed for Hell in a hand basket. And if you attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, you could get an idea of what Hell is going to look like when we get there, and whether the hand basket will get us there with an automatic pilot. And because I care about my readers, I am going to summarize the important things you need to know about the CES so you don't have to feel bad for missing it, and can concentrate on feeling bad for completely unrelated reasons.

      There were many robotic and automatic devices this year at the show, and many seminars to attend. if you bought a robot at last year's show, you could program it to sit in on an event entitled, "Trends Reshaping the Future of Mobility and Connectivity," and that way you could Reshape your own Mobility by walking across the street to the Diamond Cabaret and Reshape your Connectivity there without missing out on anything.

      Featured at this year's convention, the Royole Flexpai is the world's first folding smartphone. It has a flexible spine that allows it to be bent in half, enabling you to put it into your pocket, provided that you literally have deep pockets. The idea seems like a case of over-innovation to me, but when I thought it over a little more, I realized that the phone could save you the embarrassment of butt-dialing someone, unless your butt butt-unfolds the phone first.

      If you love folded laundry, but without the drudgery, the Foldimate automatic laundry folder is for you. The very first thing you should do is feed one of those folding phones in there and see if you can break the phone and the laundry folder at the same time while they are both still under warranty. I can think of a thousand things I'd like to fold, but just never had the means, motive or opportunity. For instance, I've always wondered what my cat would look like perfectly folded. What about all the businesses that are about to fold due to all the robots parading around at the CES? Just feed your failing business into the Foldimate along with a bankruptcy lawyer and presto!

     If you want to take the perfect shot of yourself, AirSelfie is a drone that will snap the photo from the air. The flying camera will shoot a picture of you along with a bunch of people calling Homeland Security.

      An innovation called the Y-Brush offers to clean all your teeth in 10 seconds. You stick some toothpaste into the tray, shaped like a set of dentures, and let the automatic bristles do all the work. Your teeth will be healthier than they've ever been, which makes it all the more tragic that you died of embarrassment when somebody caught you using this goofy-looking gadget. Luckily they will be able to identify you easily with your impeccable dental records.

      There were also a few tragedies at the show. A videotape that went viral showed a self-driving Tesla running over a promotional robot that was in a parking lot near Congress Hall, just the type of thing you would expect to happen at CES. My theory is that it was no accident, but the distraught robot threw itself in front of the moving car. The robot was probably hired as a valet to park cars, and now that cars are able to drive themselves, it was out of a job. What automatically comes around automatically goes around....

      People are looking into the future, and it doesn't look to pretty. All these robotics are taking over the factories, doing the assembly more efficiently, faster and with no coffee breaks. They can even program them to complain about the boss at regular intervals, and make fun of his hair, which looks like a rug that no robot would have assembled, because they would have done a lot better job. Then you go outside to catch a cigarette, and who's out there too? The robots, smoking away more efficiently and they don't get lung cancer. Anyway, my point is that nobody is thinking ahead to the ramifications of these household robots. I take out the garbage, I chop the firewood, I kill spiders, I do all kinds of useful things that I can't think of at the moment, but trust me, they are important. If somebody comes along and invents a robot that can do all of these things, exactly what is MY job going to be? Sure, I'm extremely handsome and droll and know all the gags from old episodes of "Get Smart," but a robot has all day to comb the internet for clever things to say. I'm going to come home from work, say something that I think is going to make my wife laugh, and that damned robot is going to be say something even funnier, sitting there smoking a cigarette with the laundry folded, all the dishes done and about 12 dead spiders there in a pile. And my wife is smoking a cigarette too, and she never used to smoke before. Do you get my drift or do I have to spell it out for you?

THE YEAR IN REVIEW- 2018, PART II

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-17-19)


     Already, really dumb things are happening in 2019, so I had better get through covering 2018. Here are the rest of the news items from last year that you swore you didn't have anything to do with, and no one believed you.

ELON MUSK LAUNCHES TESLA INTO SPACE
     When I first read this headline I assumed he launched his Tesla into a parking space, which seemed a bit of overkill, but Musk is kind of a nutty guy. In fact, he launched the Tesla into outer space on top of a SpaceX rocket that was headed there anyway. Once out of the Solar System, it was discovered that there are no charging stations for the car, so it will have to make an illegal U-turn at some point. The vehicle may eventually make it back to Earth, as soon as the GPS finishes recalculating a route with no tolls.

WOMAN DENIED EMOTIONAL SUPPORT PEACOCK ON FLIGHT
     In January a woman boarding a United flight at Newark Airport tried to bring a peacock along for emotional support, which ruffled some feathers at the airline. Isn't a peacock a bird? Why doesn't it just fly there by itself and meet you at the luggage carousel? And who's to say that the peacock didn't book the flight and bring the human along for emotional support? It isn't often you get to hear a conversation between a large pheasant and a psychologically fragile human, so let's listen in: "Okay- I really don't expect any more emotional support from a peacock than I would get from a cold pizza, but at least with you I won't have to fight for the armrest. I just want you to be there for me, man." "First of all, I'm female. And if I don't see a cup of coffee in front of me in 30 seconds I'm going to make a noise that will make your hair curl. And judging by the look on your face, you don't look great with curly hair." The human and the bird were both denied entry onto the plane.

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES APOLOGIZES TO GIRL NAMED ABCDE AFTER GATE AGENT MADE FUN OF HER
     I am a very sensitive person, and I would NEVER make fun of a person who was named Abcde. Instead, I will make fun of the letters themselves, parading around at the front of alphabet as if they were something special. If those letters ever try to board a flight that I am on without a child attached to them, the airline is going to hear from me and my emotional support peacock. You can't blame parents for wanting their kids to be the first in line. Abcde will always be ahead of that kid named YOLO, not to mention children named LMFAO and NSFW. And that nice mom whose daughter was insulted because she gave her a stupid name should send the airline a letter, but which letter?

16 COWS CHASE SUSPECTED CAR THIEF IN FLORIDA
     In August a group of cows helped police capture a criminal that was on the lamb. The bold bovines called for the female thief to stop, but she hadn't herd them because their voice was a little horse. The cows lassoed the perpetrator and tied three of her legs together, and for once the cow was the hero instead of the goat. And if ewe don't believe me there is police videotape to go with this.

WOMAN INJURED WHEN DYNAMITE SHE MISTOOK FOR CANDLE BLOWS UP IN HAND
     Honey, who put candles in the dynamite drawer? Raise your hand if you've done the EXACT same thing. If you can't raise your hand, well then I guess we have our answer, don't we? This isn't a funny story of course, but let's all learn from this: if something you are holding in your hand has a fuse attached to it,  don't light it with a match.

MOM ARRESTED AFTER KIDS FOUND HOME ALONE WATCHING 'HOME ALONE'
     That pretty much says it all, but I will say that as a training device for children's survival, this film is severely lacking.

BANKSY ARTWORK SELF-DESTRUCTS MOMENTS AFTER SELLING FOR $1.4 MILLION
     The shrewd shredder pre-programmed the painting's frame to tear the piece to ribbons once the gavel hit the block. That's why I always pay by check outfitted with a similar device.

NASA SPACECRAFT LANDS ON MARS AND TRANSMITS A PICTURE OF ITSELF
     Folks, if you think your tax dollars are being wasted, this story should put your mind at ease. NASA has spent about $830 million dollars on the InSight robotic lander, which touched down on Mars and promptly took a selfie, despite the fact that its hair did not look great. Of course, it has other functions too, like updating its contact list and trolling SpaceX's Tesla on Twitter. The Jet Propulsion Labratory has been trying to send it instructions for the rest of the mission, but it is now wearing headphones and has not responded. By the way, I happened to notice that nobody is taking a selfie on Uranus, but don't take it personally.