Computer Love

Lottie has a new friend and his name is Chef Robo. He’s an automatic dog feeder. He has Wifi. It's hard for me to figure out my own relationship with advanced technologies, let alone how a dog might feel about one, but I think she's in love. Chef Robo's inner working are likely mysterious to her, but his reliable disbursement of food probably doesn't have her asking too many questions. Twice a day Chef Robo whirrs to life and trickles out kibble like coins from a slot machine. No bets needed—it's always a jackpot.

I didn't send a newsletter last week in part as a test. It's good to let your audience know that anything can happen. Week by week it's a constant stream of this nonsense, then, poof!, silence!, gasp!, nothing. You think since I zigged that I must be zagging, but no! I went in an entirely novel direction. I zoogged. No post! The other reason I didn't post was because my seven year old laptop took its last byte. I'll miss that old workhorse. I'll especially miss how its cooling fan doubled as a static noise machine.

Sam and I saw the Guillermo Del Toro Pinocchio exhibit the other week. I feel like as a kid you can discover acting, drawing, dancing, and singing pretty easily and no one will try to diagnose you with anything. Puppetry raises questions. For good reason too: It challenges the gods on who's allowed to bring inanimate objects to life. Even though I loved puppets as a kid, I think I sensed that they came with a lot of responsibility, tending for that pretend sentient being. Plus I already had a very fulfilling life with my stuffed animals.

I reread Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams over the week I was in Los Angeles early in the month. I used to say it was my favorite book, but I had my doubts even when I did say it. Not that it was bad, or that I couldn't justify the choice. No, it's more the feeling you get after you've confidently determined that your favorite food is “spaghetti” or “hot dog.” You feel obligated to have a favorite food picked out and a hot dog can't hurt you if it's thrusted into your hands in someone's backyard. But you know your heart is always workshopping a better answer that may never comes. Eventually you give up trying to have a favorite anything, and embrace the impermanent “great!” and “really good!”s of life. (This might also be why I’ll never get a tattoo. Hard to work yourself up to getting ink needled into your body of something “really good!”) I was expecting the cool bread and warm snap bite of the hot dog reopening this book, but I might have unearthed a deeply burrowed formative thought:

I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon—even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches.

Now, at the surface perhaps not the most astounding set of nouns and verbs and all of the other connective bits you’ve ever read. But I swear to you that this was somehow key to a younger me finding something funny about existence. I wasn’t a dour kid or anything. I think I just believed that whatever or whomever formed reality—space, the universe, existence—was a spectacular underachiever. I can respect that in a person sometimes, but if you’re going to sell me on the bigger idea that all this was someone’s plan, well, I’m going to get the impression that some god really phoned it in on “don’t give humans anxiety” day. Coconuts though? That shows a sense of humor.

I couldn’t have been the only person who saw this half-eaten PB&J balancing on a bike rack. But it’s possible I’m the only one who took a picture of it. I moved in quick not because I was worried that someone would take it (I got the impression that bike rack sandwiches don’t go quickly), but because someone might think I staged it. Then I’d be stuck with it. One minute you’re taking a picture and the next you’re tending to someone’s sloppy abandoned meal. Is this what photojournalists feel in the field? Pondering your obligations to your photo-subjects? Camera in one hand, goopy peanut butter in the other?