Misadventures In The Electron Stream

I thank God for machines being stupid. I don't want artificial intelligence. The whole concept just doesn't sit right with me. Come with me. Embark on this misadventure with me and let me give you some perfect illustrations as to why.

This week, Stretch from Hooah Radio came into contact with me. He'd wanted to talk to me about possibly doing a talk show with me. Hey, I've been wanting to do a show that's strictly talk! This was my opportunity. I've proven to myself that I kick ass as a rock DJ but now, co-host on a talk show...let's see if I could pull that off. Nothing to lose but failure, right? I told him to get in touch with me this weekend coming and we would talk.

Friday came along and my anticipation had been high. The thought of a talk show may finally become a reality. For once, I may be able to display my abilities to quit relying on music to carry me forward and just do it myself. Let's see how my persona lasts under the duress of having to carry total subject content and become educated in the things that I may not know. That day proved to be a success, having met Stretch and discussing with him, at length, the idea. He would handle the technical/broadcast end. I would handle podcasting and the oddball content searches. We even settled on a name right then and there...The Talk Show. It sounded simple, basic, devoid of life and, most of all, about as uncreative as could be. I'm not sure that Stretch intended it to be that way but I knew I did for the simple fact that we were creative, full of life and anything but basic. Who the hell said we needed some great huge show title to carry us. Oh no, the 6'9" Star Wars geek and myself would do it all on our own.

Without warning, as we were discussing ideas and compiling notes, one of Hooah's station managers wanted him to take the stream. Without warning, the Pre-Pilot edition of The Talk Show aired. Much of the content was actually whipped out right out of our heads. We talked with reckless abandon, sparing no feelings and disemboweling the rules that Hooah had set forth. What rules we hadn't broken, we had tread so borderline that we'd end up strung up by our toes had a station manager been tuned in. I don't DJ for Hooah, even though my family does have quite the military background ending with me. I don't like their rules. You can't discuss politics or religion...even to joke. You can't talk about suicide...understandably so. You can't give out a soldier's personal details. Got that, that would be putting them into the path of some improvised incendiary explosive device otherwise known as, but not limited to, a pipe bomb. Some of the rules I understand but others I think are shit. The shit rules I challenge to no end until the logic is presented to me and that's only if the rationale isn't fucked.

Still, a large quantity of The Genocydal Empyre v2.0 would be put highly at risk if I actually worked there. Here I was though, shaking two middle fingers in the face of authority...and they weren't even there to see it. The show did go on, of course. Four straight hours of nothing but Stretch and myself gabbing on about bullshit including obscure dumb laws that should have been repealed by now. I'm thoroughly intent on breaking as many of these as I can. Some of them, I've already broken and am quite happy to report that I've gotten away with them untouched. Now, all I'm waiting on is the show to come through so I can dice it up for podcasts.

Near the end of the Pre-Pilot edition of The Talk Show, my monitor began to give out. I'd attempted to switch it out with the monitor that Zephyrael and Lycan left over here as a spare and it gave out entirely.

"Shit!" I said, cursing my rotten luck. I had a solo show to do that Saturday night. This trip to Wal-Mart was going to be an emergency trip. I thought I'd pick up a CRT monitor pretty cheap from there but when I got to the Wal-Mart, all they had were the flat-panel monitors that were only slightly more expensive than the only CRT monitor on the shelves. I grabbed the flat screen thinking that it might free up some desk space for a change and allow me to see things a little more sharply. It did. Then it was the grocery round-up. Stuff I knew I'd need for later. Nothing superlative in that, I think. Just listening to DerDRAKOS on my iPod, manhandling a shopping cart that had become loaded up with the things I'd need.

While sitting in the checkout lane, it occurred to me that I may be running on empty. I hadn't slept yet and now I was already into Saturday Morning and ready to crash after I got home, put all this food away and the initial set up and test of the monitor. It was then that a woman behind me had seen the cat food in my cart and asked me, "Oh...do you have cats?"

The bewildered look that I faced as I turned around told a story to me. She could not understand how one, such as I could have enough compassion inside me to raise one cat let alone many.

"No," I told her, "I'm actually on my Purina diet again. I figured I'd give it another try after waking up in the intensive care unit with tubes coming out of nearly every opening and an intravenous drip in each arm."

The man behind her looked even more bewildered than she did.

"Why are you dieting like that?" she asked. I could tell that the entire thing had not only flown over her head but had sailed wide into Destination: Unknown.

"Well," I said, "You see, the concept is quite simple. I stuff my pockets full of these little nuggets and just eat a few whenever I become hungry. The nutritional value is quite high and the diet does work."

"But it landed you in the hospital!" she exclaimed, "Didn't it?"

That's when I looked at her again. Her poor enfeebled human mind was locked into some kind of logic war with itself. The programming was now intensely teetering on the verge of Oblivion. Time to push it over the edge.

"Oh no no no no!" I said, in all seriousness, "I couldn't resist the overwhelming urge to drop to my side in the middle of the street to lick my genitalia and then a car hit me. That's what landed me in the hospital."

I never cracked a smile.

The man behind her roared into fits of laughter. I thought he would expire upon us from lack of oxygen due to the intensity of his laughter. The unknown woman had simply looked as though she were about to crumble. That mask of sanity upon her face was slowly slipping away. She vacated our line and simply joined another.

As my groceries were being passed through the scanner, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the Laughing Man again.

"Hey," he said, "You never cracked a smile. Were you serious? Did you mean all of that shit you told her."

"Not one single word," I said as the total came up. I paid it, bid him a good day and walked, leaving him in even more laughter than when he'd asked me.

After setting up, putting away and taking care of the finishing touches on rearranging the computer desk and making sure everything was right for the show. I went to bed...at 4:00 pm.

It's the latest I've stayed up yet. Now, my skin crawls because of it. I'd spent too much time in the damned daylight again and it had left me sapped of any type of recourse I had hoped to gain from it.

I woke up just in time to get everything ready for the show. Last minute emails, myspace postings, bulletins, reposting the playlist, announcements and looking at what the ignorant fools on the Free The West Memphis Three message board were saying and then it was time to bring up the program, send out the messages, turn on the KrushBot and then....showtime!

During the rearrangement, the phalanx of cables and wires in the back of the computer had become tangled, causing a mess. Little did I know I was in for more technical difficulty ahead. Lisa, my manager, was going to be calling in, talking about J-Sin Trioxin's band Mr. Monster, one of the bloodiest horror-punk bands in existence, the Michale Graves "Almost Home 2" Tour, The West Memphis Three DNA testing and a host of other updates I couldn't recall as of right now. Everything was ready and then we were supposed to take the air. Problem, the microphones were picking up nothing. I cut to another song. Just long enough to give me time to figure out what the bloody hell was wrong now. I'd just awakened less than an hour before and was not ready for any more technical difficulties. They weren't plugged in. The splitter had been freed from it's mooring in the jack at the back of the computer. I stuck it back in and cut back to my voiceover music to find that the mics were still not picking us up. Again, I cut to music and, this time, I realized, I hadn't fully plugged the splitter back into the port. Damnable Machines! Impudent piece of technology!

Finally, we took the air and it was off with the updates, DerDRAKOS' premier, Dr. Misty (our psychologist) talking about sociopathy, psychopathy and it's application to the West Memphis Three Case. The whole interview took two parts and was not only in-depth but this was one of the best shows ever committed to hard drive space in my opinion. It would make for great podcasting.

Or would it?

No. For the second damned Saturday night in a row, the show didn't save. Once again, no podcasts and the last two shows had been so mediocre I wouldn't bother clipping the voice segments out of it. This one had been full of outbursts and clarification, vilification and catharsis and, at it's denouement, a real sense of total satisfaction. But it had not been saved. It never encoded itself. Nothing to show for it once again.

Now, it's Sunday morning and I'm disappointed all over again. I had wished to unleash upon my machine and it's programming. I wanted to blast away at it with a flamethrower making the point that my wrath upon it would never be complete. Instead, I went and did my laundry.

I have gone through it one more time just to make sure. I have even tested it. If it does, however, fail to record again, the program is more likely than not to face imminent deletion. This program is far too errant for me to be keeping around if it won't do the one thing I need it to do which is archive the damned show.

This is precisely why I don't want artificial intelligence. The damned things won't do what we tell them to do now. If we allow them to think for themselves...they will hunt us down like dogs and destroy us to the last.