A Child's Garden of Robots [part 1]

from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF ROBOTS

An Optimal Morning

A robot with a blinking head

Stood beside my trundle bed

Took my vital signs and said

“Normal tolerances read.”

The Little Friend

I have a metal playmate Papa made when I took ill

He fetches things I cannot reach, and brings my morning pill

He tells me what’s on telly, and he wheels me on the green,

And he helps me keep my dining room and playroom good and clean.

When he stands right beside me, he comes just up to my chin,

But he can touch the ceiling when he squeezes himself thin

And he can lift my bed up just by spreading out quite squat

And he can make me go to bed, if I want to or not!

One morning, I woke up before the clock was telling five

And saw him there beside me, very still, his eyes alive.

He tracked each movement that I made, and hummed and clicked inside,

I asked if all was well. "Oh yes," my metal friend replied.

My metal playmate’s my best friend. He's with me every day

He's stood by me, although my other friends have gone away.

My life would be so dull without the truest friend I've seen.

And Papa says he’ll make a girl for me when I’m thirteen!

The Traffic Copper

The robot on the street tells all the autos where to go

And tickets robot cars who drive too quickly or too slow.

It’s terribly observant, and its eyes don’t miss a thing;

Its moves are like a dance so quick it makes you want to sing.

When I start walking 'cross the street, it holds its hand up high

To signal all the robot cars to part and let me by

But if I ask “How do you do?” it never answers back

But gives a friendly little wave to keep me on my track.

I sometimes stand and watch it from the bus stop’s comfy bench.

It’s never tired or angry, and it has no thirst to quench.

It does its job all day without complaining of sore feet.

Why can’t we all be like the shiny robot on the street?

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The New Ozymandias

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I met a farer from a far-off strand

Who said, “Two giant feet of bronze, gone green,

In water sit, bedecked with broken chains

That show their maker well did understand

That bonds of former slavery, still seen,

Convey defeated servitude’s remains.

Near by, a broken torch lies, dead and dark

In grimy water’s tide that, fitful, passes,

And on the base, these words my eyes did mark:

‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses

Yearning to breathe free—’ Here ends the poem,

The rest is swallowed in the rising water.

Along the shore, starved, feral humans roam

Whose brandished weapons offer only slaughter.”

KW 20180310

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Ten Years of Uselessness

.
It makes sense that I should post this somewhere I can point to it, since I still do that. Up to now, I've simply given a link to some site or other that has reposted it, but what if they all wise up and drop me? Then what? Hah? Anyway, back in July of 2003, I was laid up with the flu. This was the tangible result. It began, "I've been sick lately, and, well, I wrote a sketch..."

---
USELESS INVASION SKETCH (by Kip Williams, age 46)

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (played by John Cleese) walks down the street carrying THE IRAQUI INVASION (played by an empty parrot cage). He walks into THE WHITE HOUSE (played by a cheesy storefront) and addresses COLIN POWELL (played by Michael Palin).

AP:
Excuse me... boy!

CP:
(turns around and stands up) What d'you mean, 'boy?'

AP:
I'm sorry; I have contact lenses. At any rate, I wish to register a complaint!

CP:
Sorry, squire, I can't talk to you now. It's Code Orange! (he hastily starts to put up a sign)

AP:
Never mind that now, my fine fellow. I wish to register a complain about this military action, which you sold me just a couple of months ago.

CP:
Oh yes, the Iraqui invasion. Lovely little war, that was. What... uh, what seems to be wrong with it?

AP:
I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's empty, that's what's wrong with it.

CP:
Oh, no, no, no. It's not empty at all. It's served its purpose, it has. Freed the oppressed people of Iraq, fed the homeless, brought everlasting fame and glory to our bulging leader.

AP:
But when I purchased this dreary little police action from you, you assured me that the whole and entire purpose was to disarm Saddam Hussein and take away, quote, his vast stockpiles of ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction, end quote.

CP:
Oh, there's some mistake. We went in to liberate the poor oppressed people of...

AP:
Listen, mate. I took the liberty of recording your voice when you sold me that thing, and here's what it says. (produces tape recorder)

Tape: (CP's voice)
"We know just where they are. We know just what they've got. They're buried in these bunkers right here, which our surveillance satellites have photographed not more than twenty minutes ago. They could not possibly be used for any purpose other than the storage of hideous, slime-dripping nuclear anthrax chemical weapons of mass destruction. Say, are you recording me?"

AP:
Right. And when we "liberated" those poor bastards, the bunker was found to contain little more than a twenty-year collection of Penthouse and Hustler magazines, plus a dozen lava lamps and a mini-bar.

CP:
Well...

AP:
Well?

CP:
Well, of course they'd cleaned it out before they left. Sold it all to their chums in the Taliban, they did.

AP:
I happen to know that their 'chums,' as you so colorfully put it, hate their guts and have referred to them repeatedly as "scabrous lackeys of the internationalist secular state," end quotation.

CP:
Well, they have to say that, don't they? I mean, it's all part of the grand scheme. Lovely little war, wa'nit? Liberated all them poor...

AP:
Stoppit! All you've done is make their lives worse than before. That's why they keep killing our soldiers.

CP:
Oh no, squire. They're grateful. That's why they pulled down that statue.

AP:
I've seen the footage of the event, and the only Iraquis in the picture appear to have had their feet nailed there.

CP:
Well, of course they were nailed there. If we hadn't nailed them, they'd've been crushed by the falling statue, wouldn't they? It was for their own safety. That's why we liberated the...

AP:
Shut up. Did you or did you not allege on several different occasions that we had found the weapons of mass destruction and that therefore the entire ill-advised escapade was a rousing success?

CP:
What, them trailers? Well, of course they was weapons of mass destruction. They could've used them for germs, or chemicals, or...

AP:
In fact, they were used for hydrogen, and precious little of that. They didn't even have walls, for pity's sake.

CP:
Well, hydrogen's pretty dangerous, isn't it, Squire? It could power tanks or jets or... and what about that Hindenberry thing? Let's see you stand in a room full of liquid hydrogen with nothing but a ripe boysenberry to defend yourself with, and you'll soon see mass destructive. Wouldn't want to be in your shoes then! And anyway, we liberated the...

AP:
Liberation don't enter into it, mate. It was a bleeding sham.

CP:
No, it was liberation!

AP:
Sham, sham, sham! And you didn't find any weapons of mass destruction!

CP:
Well, of course we didn't, Squire. They was... they was looted.

AP:
Looted? LOOTED?

CP:
Yeah. When our boys was busy not looking at the museum, they looted all them weapons out from under their noses. And anyway, we liberated...

AP:
You're saying that starving peasants with no resources of their own simply looted vast stores of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons? With What??

CP:
They carried them off on their bicycles.

AP:
But a missile weighs several tons, and a bicycle can only carry, at most, a couple of hundred pounds.

CP:
They used two bicycles, with a bungee cord between 'em. They're a nasty lot, Squire. Not like the ones that sang songs to us when we liberated...

AP:
Will you shut up? Since when is it liberation to leave a people destitute, without food, water, electricity, or law enforcement?

CP:
Those things was all shackles on them. We freed 'em, I tell you! They're grateful to us. They're singin' songs...

AP:
Those aren't songs, you parsimonious prevaricator, they're protesting in the streets, and shooting at our soldiers.

CP:
They're just exuberant. Like to fire off their guns a lot, now they're free and all. They don't mean nuffin' by it. They're just so happy to be liberated, with Hussein gone. You mark my words; he was the real weapon of mass destruction his own self, why, he...

AP:
That's another thing. You didn't even get him, did you?

CP:
Well...

AP:
You don't even know where he is, do you?

CP:
We got a tip...

AP:
You've been blowing up caravans and bombing cities and striking about blindly, because your yahoo cowboy boss refused to listen to any intelligence that contradicted his beliefs. Which, when you come down to it, precluded the use of any intelligence whatsoever.

CP:
I see. Quite. (pause) Well, then, we'd better replace it, hadn't we?

AP:
With what?

CP:
Well, them Iranis are gettin' pretty swaggery, ain't they?

AP:
I thought you were encouraging them to rise up against their religious leaders, now that they aren't accepting any more cakes from your lot.

CP:
Fair enough. How about something in a nice little Afghanistan?

AP:
You've already done that one. Worse than Iraq, if I recall.

CP:
How about... coming up to my place and re-electing my boss?

AP:
Why in the world would I want to do that? Why wouldn't I just vote for the Democrats and chase you idiots out of office, once for all?

AP:
Oh, no, Squire! No, no, no, no! You wouldn't want to do that, trust me on this one.

AP:
And why not, if I may be so brash as to query?

CP:
Well, they're a bunch of psychopathic liars, they are, always Whitewaterin', 'aving sex in the Oval Office, taking' expensive haircuts on Air Force One, trashing the White House, murderin' poor ol' Vince Foster, and claiming they invented the Internet.

AP:
Point taken! Well, then, I'll have a North Korea to go, please.

CP:
You won't regret it, Squire! I'll just wrap it up. (tears an American flag off of a roll and clumsily wraps up the same cage the AP carried in.) Come again!
.

in which we leave our hero

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He sat at his table, dregs of Victory Hunny unlicked on his cheeks. He sat very still, not even brushing away a fat fly that came to inspect the glistening stickiness on his face. He tried to hum a hum, but all he could think of was “Three fours are fifteen.” And sometimes it came out “Three fours is fifteen,” and he didn’t know which was which. Owl came by with a Very Important Message about the Progress in the War Against Heffalumps and he listened attentively to it.

It didn’t matter. He knew that the Heffalumps would be defeated, just as he knew they would always be fighting them. It did not bother him a bit to hold both these thoughts fervently. He smiled slightly and hummed, “Three fours are fifteen.” He would do anything for Christopher Robin. He would give Eeyore over, just as Piglet had given him over, and for the same reason: love. The love of wonderful Christopher Robin, from whom all goodness flowed.

A tear twinkled from one eye and slowly tickled its way down his cheek. Winston Pooh was happy, happier than he’d ever thought possible. He was a Silly Old Bear.


[reprinted from Chunga 18]
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two great tastes

We all love middle English, and we all love legacy comic strips, whose creators have moved on to that great bullpen in the sky. "Angry Kem," rightly divining these sentiments in society, has leaped to combine them into one, easy-to-digest web site, Japes for Owre Tymes.

JfOT is now in its second great day. Don't get run over: leap on the bandwagon now!

Angry Kem is a commentator at The Comics Curmudgeon, as am I ("Muffaroo"). Don't say I never give you any good links.

glory

Leonardo DaVinci writes:
OF THE WAY OF REPRESENTING A BATTLE.

First you must represent the smoke of artillery mingling in the air with the dust and tossed up by the movement of horses and the combatants... The more the combatants are in this turmoil the less will they be seen, and the less contrast will there be in their lights and shadows. Their faces and figures and their appearance, and the musketeers as well as those near them you must make of a glowing red...

The air must be full of arrows in every direction, some shooting upwards, some falling, some flying level. The balls from the guns must have a train of smoke following their flight. The figures in the foreground you must make with dust on the hair and eyebrows and on other flat places likely to retain it...

And if you make any one fallen, you must show the place where he has slipped and been dragged along the dust into blood stained mire; and in the half-liquid earth arround show the print of the tramping of men and horses who have passed that way. Make also a horse dragging the dead body of his master, and leaving behind him, in the dust and mud, the track where the body was dragged along.

You must make the conquered and beaten pale, their brows raised and knit, and the skin above their brows furrowed with pain, the sides of the nose with wrinkles going in an arch from the nostrils to the eyes, and make the nostrils drawn up -- which is the cause of the lines of which I speak -- and the lips arched upwards and discovering the upper teeth; and the teeth apart as with crying out and lamentation.

And make some one shielding his terrified eyes with one hand, the palm towards the enemy, while the other rests on the ground to support his half raised body. Others represent shouting with their mouths open, and running away. You must scatter arms of all sorts among the feet of the combatants, as broken shields, lances, broken swords and other such objects.

And you must make the dead partly or entirely covered with dust, which is changed into crimson mire where it has mingled with the flowing blood whose colour shows it issuing in a sinuous stream from the corpse. Others must be represented in the agonies of death grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes, with their fists clenched against their bodies and their legs contorted. Some might be shown disarmed and beaten down by the enemy, turning upon the foe, with teeth and nails, to take an inhuman and bitter revenge.

You might see some riderless horse rushing among the enemy, with his mane flying in the wind, and doing no little mischief with his heels. Some maimed warrior may be seen fallen to the earth, covering himself with his shield, while the enemy, bending over him, tries to deal him a deathstroke. There again might be seen a number of men fallen in a heap over a dead horse.

You would see some of the victors leaving the fight and issuing from the crowd, rubbing their eyes and cheeks with both hands to clean them of the dirt made by their watering eyes smarting from the dust and smoke... And there may be a river into which horses are galloping, churning up the water all round them into turbulent waves of foam and water, tossed into the air and among the legs and bodies of the horses. And there must not be a level spot that is not trampled with gore.

from The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci (reprinted from my LJ, July 2006)