I’m starting to compile material for a second edition of etherbot. If you’re interested in contributing there are two ways to do so; 1) write a story about a robot (or something to do with robots) 2) make a black & white vector graphic or 3) take a picture. I’m planning on having this edition bound somehow and distibuting it. The mag will also be available for download on navigammatron.org.
This is my favorite story from last year;
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Andy’s fav chair was always the electric chair. “It goes faster,” he would say, “Like the lights these days.” Andy loved air conditioning and had it installed everywhere he went. When he went to Cuba he had the whole country done up by the same ppl that did Bally’s in Las Vegas. Not just air conditioning like “Hey it’s cool in here”; this air conditioning had a special smell like carpet deodorizer and embalming fluid. Andy said it was to remind the Cuban children that if they stayed cool that they could be like us in all the important ways.
Andy wondered what we would do when the war was over. “I wonder what we will do,” he would say “When the war is over.” Of course, he knew that the war would never be over, but it was a funny joke to say it anyway. Andy liked to give people things they didn’t need. He bought house insurance for the homeless and heart surgery for lawyers. “I don’t mind paying so long as they have no use for it.” Once Andy bought a candy factory and paid a diabetic girl to live there for a year.
Andy had a deep appreciation for rubber penises and always had two or three with him at all times. “Now’s a great time to play with our penises, “ he would say, usually at children’s parties and in crowded elevators. Andy understood that the automobile was the greatest thing ever achieved by civilization. He drove everywhere at 100 mph and never slowed down for anything less than a bus.
All the best robots are made by Andy.
Andy makes the kind of robots you learn to hate because they’re so good at what they do. At first you’re like, “Wow that robot is totally rocking the shit.” But after awhile you start thinking, “Hey if they can build a robot that great they might build a robot as great as me.” Andy laughs when people tell him things like that. When Andy started making real robots no one believed him.
“You’re pulling my leg, Andy!” Is what people would say. He would go to a party and start introducing someone as one of his robots. “This is my real robot,” he would say. Once in awhile he’d meet some rube at a bar and get him going with a big story. And we’d all laugh.
These days Andy has a new joke and people still believe him sometimes. He says, “My name is Andy and I’m a robot. I wasn’t always a robot.”
Of course everyone knows that Andy has always been a robot.
