The Friday Challenge: 2/1/08
After reading (and laughing!) our way through all the entries, the winner of last week's Friday Challenge has got to be Kelly, for the hilarious Riding in Bangkok. Kelly, come on down to claim your prize!
This week's Friday Challenge owes its existence to an old professor of mine, who used to love to shake his students up by stating that Americans owe their high standard of living to having a slavery-based economy. He didn't mean it in any racial context, of course, and these days would probably be drawn and quartered for making such an insensitive assertion in public, but he would make that statement just to rattle his students — and then, when they started to protest, he'd point out that the typical modern home is full of "tiny electric slaves," which do work that previous generations would either have had to have servants or slaves do or else would have left undone.
I dunno. "Slaves" seems like kind of harsh word. I mean, me and Mr. Coffee, I think we have more of a "partnership," or maybe even a symbiotic relationship. I know that I certainly would have a hard time living without him, and without me, his life would be devoid of meaning.
But anyway, there's your challenge for this week. I want you to think of your favorite household appliance (or conversely, the appliance you find most aggravating), and then imagine it's another 20 years in the future and your most favorite/most hated appliance is now equipped with some kind of suitably articulate artificial personality. Give us a few paragraphs describing your relationship, or perhaps a dialog.
As always, we're playing for what's behind Door #2, and playing by the rather aleatoric rules of the Friday Challenge. If you don't feel like entering, you're still encouraged to comment on and vote for the other entries.
Ready? Then go!
This week's Friday Challenge owes its existence to an old professor of mine, who used to love to shake his students up by stating that Americans owe their high standard of living to having a slavery-based economy. He didn't mean it in any racial context, of course, and these days would probably be drawn and quartered for making such an insensitive assertion in public, but he would make that statement just to rattle his students — and then, when they started to protest, he'd point out that the typical modern home is full of "tiny electric slaves," which do work that previous generations would either have had to have servants or slaves do or else would have left undone.
I dunno. "Slaves" seems like kind of harsh word. I mean, me and Mr. Coffee, I think we have more of a "partnership," or maybe even a symbiotic relationship. I know that I certainly would have a hard time living without him, and without me, his life would be devoid of meaning.
But anyway, there's your challenge for this week. I want you to think of your favorite household appliance (or conversely, the appliance you find most aggravating), and then imagine it's another 20 years in the future and your most favorite/most hated appliance is now equipped with some kind of suitably articulate artificial personality. Give us a few paragraphs describing your relationship, or perhaps a dialog.
As always, we're playing for what's behind Door #2, and playing by the rather aleatoric rules of the Friday Challenge. If you don't feel like entering, you're still encouraged to comment on and vote for the other entries.
Ready? Then go!
posted by ~brb at 11:02 PM
