Myoelectric: Sensors pick up signals and translate them into motor control.
Signals from the periphery go to the brain as sensory information.
We can replace missing limbs this way.
Let’s take Bob here as an example.
Hello, Bob. Open your hand.
Now close it.
No, don’t fire the rocket launcher.
Oops. That’s okay, Bob.
Put your hand over your mouth and you’re sorry.
No, not the chainsaw. Hand. Over mouth.
Okay, Bob, just sit still.
It looks like we got things wired up wrong.
Everybody, please leave the room quickly.
No, not you, Bob. Stay there.
And sit very still.
Tag: silly
No rest for the wicked
The Book Of Isaiah says there is no rest for the wicked.
But I know of a rest stop for the wicked.
It’s in Ohio, along the Turnpike. Just outside of Akron.
All kinds of wickedness happens there.
Children disobey their parents. And eat dessert before dinner, if they eat their dinner at all.
And I know a writer who goes there in the summer to dangle participles and split infinitives.
After Labor Day, we dress in our finest whites and parade around the dog-walking lawn shamelessly.
Not that people walk their dogs there. They poop all over!
Truly wicked!
The Juggler
Emmett The Post-Modern Juggler didn’t juggle balls or torches or chainsaws.
He juggled schedules.
From an entertainment aspect, okay, he was boring as hell. Just sitting up there on stage, tapping away at his iPad and syncing it to his laptop and phone.
But the Time Management consultants were fascinated how he dealt with scheduling conflicts while engaged in so many different tasks and doing them well.
“He’s on vacation in Paris while giving a presentation in Chicago and attending his grandmother’s funeral?” they said. “He’s amazing!”
The lawyers weren’t impressed. “Let’s see him bill all that like we do.”
Snapshots
Clark Kent asked Jimmy Olsen about a good sturdy camera that would stand up to travel.
“Oh, one like mine,” said Jimmy, handing Clark his spare.
Clark developed his own shots, framed a few.
Typical Metropolis street scenes. Sunsets. Lois smirking.
Clark eventually bought his own, returned Jimmy’s camera.
Jimmy saw that Clark had left some film in there, but he didn’t want to bother him, so he developed it himself.
The Eiffel Tower? The Grand Canyon?
On the same roll?
Jimmy fainted as the final shot on the roll appeared through the developer’s solution.
The whole earth. From space.
###
Perry White called Clark Kent into his office and handed him a smartphone.
“Use this to tweet and facebook,” said Perry. “All that new stuff.”
“Um, how do I do that?” stammered Kent.
“Read the fucking manual,” said Perry. “Lois figured it out, so do it!”
Jimmy Olsen helped Clark set it all up: signing up for accounts, friending people, and testing the camera.
Everything went great, until someone noticed the GPS tags.
From Paris to Metropolis in 20 minutes?
“Um, someone hacked my password?” stammered Clark.
“At least you didn’t tweet your dick like that Weiner guy,” said Lois.
Letters
Professor Troy crawled into the cave and looked around the debris.
Tattered bits and pieces, a few bones.
And a rusty oil lamp.
He looked closely at it.
Arabic letters… he translated… “RUB THIS.”
Lamps? Genies granting wishes?
He chuckled. What would he wish for?
More funding… a time machine to see the past as it was…
What was the last thing he wished for?
Oh. Right. He’d said: “I wish other archaeologists would treat specimens properly.”
So, he made a notation where he found it, snapped a few photos, carefully wrapped it in a plastic bag, and tagged it.
Soul Licenses
Deep in the User Agreement for the new software release, Ted slipped the sentence “User agrees to give their soul to Company” into the text.
“This will get people to read it!” he chuckled.
Nobody did, and pretty soon, Ted’s inbox filled up with souls.
The IT Department got pissed at him. “You filled the mail server, Ted! You need to send these back or delete them!”
“I can’t!” moaned Ted. “That would be murder. Or soulacide. Or…”
He resold them to The Devil for pennies on the dollar.
“I was going to get these anyway, just saving me time.”
Intelligence
Dr. Odd sat in front of his laptop and interrogated his latest creation: an artificial intelligence.
He didn’t have a name for it besides the ai.exe program.
They played chess and made a few excellent investments that secured Dr. Odd’s funding for his mad scientific experiments for years to come.
They also discussed Odd’s other research, and the program not only found the flaws in many of the scientist’s experiments, but solutions.
“At least you got me right,” says the program. “I must be intelligent because intelligent beings learn from experience.”
“And protect their existence,” said Odd, pulling the plug.
Last Night On The Roof
Tonight, a cold December’s night on a New Jersey rooftop, looking out over the Hudson… boats waiting for the fireworks, to ring out the old year and bring in the new.
We’re not in the Square this year. Vinnie and Bobby said it was a pain in the ass getting into the city and pushing my wheelchair around the crowds.
So, blind stinking drunk, they hauled me up six flights of stairs.
I check my watch.
3… 2… 1… happy new year!
Wake up, guys. Wake up.
Happy new year.
They’re passed out. Snoring.
Shivering, cursing, I yell for help.
Ornaments
I’m Jewish, my wife’s a witch, and we put up a tree for the holidays.
I do it because it’s fun, pretty, and the cats like it.
Some cats sleep under the tree.
Others like to burrow into piles of gifts like mountain lions in caves.
And then there’s ones who bite off the plastic needles and barf them up.
Our littlest cat, Myst, likes to pick off the ornaments one by one.
My wife yells at her, but she keeps doing it anyway.
“Why does she keep doing that?”
(Don’t tell her I spray the ornaments in catnip, okay?)
The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Every year, I get asked the same question.
“What do you want for Christmas?”
Hrm. I have no idea.
I’m rather content with the stuff I’ve got.
Maybe an extra scrub brush for the carpet cleaner when the cat vomits, but beside that, I’m good.
“You don’t give scrub brushes for Christmas,” she says.
She dumped a pile of catalogs in my lap, and leaves more and more catalogs out for me to review.
I look through them, all full of crap I don’t want or need.
Then, I spot something.
A paper shredder.
For all these fucking catalogs.
Perfect.