iSuck

This may carbon date me as some fossilized, one hundred-million-year-old dinosaur, and may likewise doom me to a similar fate, but I gotta get it off my chest: technology is the worst.  Now look, I know that’s not the most original take, and I assure you I’m not some hapless, ancient geezer yelling at the sky.  I drive a car, when mine’s not out of commission; I have a smart phone, though sometimes I wish I had the fortitude to go back to the simple brick; I use multiple streaming services, when I can remember my passwords.

So, as you can see, it’s not like I live a completely cloistered life, actively shunning and railing against the obvious perks afforded to us by technology.  I just think it—technology, or artificial intelligence—has gotten a little too big for its britches lately.  But whose fault is that, technology’s, or the humans’ whose mission in life is to continuously advance it, the suckers like me who can’t not use it?  Like, if a mother is constantly stuffing chicken parms and meatballs and Ho Hos down her child’s gullet, she can’t then one day turn around and act all surprised when the kid’s gone from a 24-inch waist to a 34 and needs new pantaloons.  And, one day, that child will grow into an even bigger and stronger adult, and, who knows, perhaps all that force-feeding and the never-ending trips to the mall for new clothes will get to him, his physical body having been so expanded, his mind so tweaked, that he’ll snap and murder his mother.  Same with technology.

Luckily, we’re not there yet.  Case in point, a couple of weeks ago, I was having a drink with Reverend Al, and he was going on about how Ms. Spigot had threatened to put him on a new diet, said that she knew just by looking at his fingernails and the bags under his eyes that he wasn’t getting enough vitamins and minerals.  Fearing that any disruption in Ms. Spigot’s daily routine, even in tasks as menial as cooking, would send her to an early(ish) grave, Rev. Al assured her that he’d come by the nutrients on his own.  I figured he’d started taking a multivitamin, one of those color-branded ones for the old balls such as himself—Silver? Platinum?—but that would’ve been too simple for Al.  Nope.  Instead, he pulled out a Ziploc bag of small, pill-sized pebbles.  It’s rather ingenious, he’d said, and more natural, too, when you think about it.  Turns out, Al, in all his wisdom, had done what so many of us do multiple times per day and had gone to ask the internet.  It was an innocent enough question: how to get vitamins and minerals?  The new Google AI software informed him that the best places to find vitamins and minerals were, well, in rocks.  I imagined Al at the keyboard, nodding his head, like yes, yes, of course, it’s so simple, and then Al typing out how many rocks he should eat per day, and the faceless and bodiless AI spitting back to him instantaneously that it’s recommended he eat at least one small rock per day on account of their being chock-full of vitamins and minerals which, as we all know, are essential to building strong bones and teeth, boosting the immune system, regulating hormones, etc. etc.  Al then said that, below his results, he saw that another fellow internet user had asked a similar, yet different, question, wondering whether eating too many rocks would get him stoned?  So, now that I think about it, maybe we’re closer than I’d previously thought, considering the AI is convincing at least a couple of us to fill our bellies with rocks…

But, right now, that’s a little too futuristic (hopefully).  My main gripe is with this “smart” vacuum thing, this iRobot or Roomba that Kelley bought for me a little while ago after she saw the state of my house, discovered that my sole cleaning supply was a dustpan-less broom.  The vacuum, which I’ve not-so-lovingly named iSuck, isn’t big enough to murder me itself, but I swear to God the thing is out to ruin my life.  Like everything these days, it’s operated via an app, and, knowing that I either won’t remember the login information or that I simply won’t use it—probably a combination of the two—Kelley keeps the app on her own phone and, without warning, will order it to begin vacuuming from afar.  So, at least once a week, I’ll hear the little chime go off and then the ensuing rumbling and sucking as iSuck rolls across my floors.  I guess it does a decent enough job, but it’s like the little fucker knows where I am at all times.  Like, if I’m in the room farthest away from it, it’ll make an immediate beeline for me; or if I go into the kitchen for a quick glass of water, the thing will follow me in there.  One time, I was downstairs, and then all of a sudden I heard this thunderous and chaotic booming, like an airplane was landing on the roof of my house, but when I went to investigate, it was just that iSuck had driven off course and tumbled down the stairs. 

Just the other day, Kelley turned it on, so I left to grab a coffee, hoping that when I returned, it’d be finished.  Well, when I got back and tried to get inside the house, where was the thing but right behind the front door.  It’s an ornery little fucker, too, because it went into shutdown mode right after I’d hit it with the door, a surly defense mechanism of sorts, and goddamn the traction on its wheels—I swear to God I couldn’t budge it.  It eventually turned itself back on and returned to its home station.  I figured it was done, so I went to the bathroom; but, right when I’m on the shitter, I heard that fucking chime.  It must’ve only been recharging, I thought, and I told myself that, surely, it was almost done, that I’d been gone for over an hour, so it had to have already covered the bathroom?  But then I hear its annoying, mechanical whine getting closer and closer, and then I see it slowly round the corner, with the stupid guiding light on its front like a robotic, hoovering Rudolph, and yep, over the threshold and into the bathroom, and so there I am, getting an impromptu ab workout, lifting my legs up and down, up and down, as the pissy little fucker goes back and forth, back and forth.  Took over five minutes to vacuum about fifteen square feet of space. 

Ah, but maybe the little useless article is growing on me.  Perhaps iSuck is always trying to locate my whereabouts not because it’s pursuing some queer, robotic vendetta against its human owner, but because it simply wants to hang out with me?  The more I think about, it is essentially a household pet.  I mean, every now and then, I have to dispose of and replace the waste bag.  Not much difference from a cat with a litter box, when you think about it?  And, when I hear it turning on, I do find myself picking up the odd, stray blind cord so that it doesn’t suck it up and choke on it, or setting on the couch the wobbly pedestal side table so that it doesn’t topple it over on top of itself.  So, sure, maybe the little iSuck isn’t all that bad.  But, then again, that is probably exactly what the technological and artificial intelligence overlords want me to think…