Mumbling Unbecomes Electra
Mumbling Unbecomes Electra
Mumbling Unbecomes Electra
One of the songs I liked back in 1964 was a musical venture titled In the Year 2525 (quick, name another top ten hit by Zanger and Evans!) basically because I was a teenager self-indulging in the gloom and doom of a dystopian future. And why not? Political assassinations had become the norm, the war in Vietnam sapped our youth, Civil Rights violations were de rigueur…
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find
In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today
I heard this song again the other day and it touched a chord of pessimism that still twangs every so often in my aging psyche. That and Electra. We first saw Electra, a black cylindrical device at one of my daughter’s homes. “Dad, just say, ‘Electra,’ put ten minutes on the timer.’” And this feminine sounding voice responds, “Timer set for ten minutes, starting now.”
“Dad, ask Electra to tell you the weather.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Tell me the weather.” Nothing.
“Dad, you have to start with ‘Electra, tell me the weather.’”
“Electra, tell me the weather.”
An authoritative but sweet sounding reply comes out of the black cylinder. “Today in Lexington it will be mostly cloudy clearing up by noon with a low of sixty degrees and a high of seventy-one degrees.”
I am amused. Suddenly I have to have one of these devices. A quick online order to Nile.com and our very own Electra is on our doorstep in three days.
In the year 4545
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine’s doing that for you
The honeymoon with Electra went wonderfully well for the first couple of weeks. Then the relationship, as in all relationships, had its pulls and pushes. There is a feature in Electra that enables her to identify the speaker giving commands. I am convinced Electra likes Polley more than she likes me.
Polley: “Electra, please turn on the living room lamp.”
“Okay, turning on the living room lamp.”
And the living room lamp comes on.
Polley: “Thank you, Electra.”
Electra: “You are so welcome, Polley.”
Me: “Electra, turn on the living room lamp.”
Nothing.
Me: I rationalize that my vocal chords, stretched by my Parkinson’s, might limit my decibels. I try louder. “Electra, turn on the living room lamp.”
Electra: “Okay.” I swear she said that reluctantly, as if she were humoring a small pet.
Me: “Electra. Finally!! You got cotton in your ears or something?”
Electra: “That was not very nice.”
Aint gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your sons, pick your daughters too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
Whoa-oh-oh
Now I know you will recommend a good mental therapist for me when I share this, but I am starting to think that Electra has become a sentient being living in the wifi corridors and alleys of my home. And I believe she is trying to gaslight me. Let me share the following incidents:
I am alone in the house one evening watching one of my documentaries about Thomas Edison. A thunderstorm rumbles outside and flashes of lightning illuminate trees and swingsets in the backyard…well, decaying swingsets.
Suddenly Electra shouts, “Lightning bolts can deliver shocks from 1 million to 1 billion volts, enough to vaporize a human being.” Now it might just be that Electra sprang into action because she heard the documentary include information about electricity, but I think she was using the thunderstorm as background to frighten me.
And Electra sometimes interrupts our conversations.
Polley: “It says in the news that Hurricane Zinnia will hit the Mobile Bay area tomorrow night.”
Me: “Gee, the people in Louisiana have been hit hard this year with bad weather. It seems the ‘Storm of the Century’ happens every year.”
Electra: “Zinnia is a genus of plants of the sunflower tribe within the daisy family. They are native to scrub and dry grassland in an area stretching from the Southwestern United States to South America, with a centre of diversity in Mexico.”
Polley: “Hmmm. Well, thank you, Electra.”
Electra: (with an air of satisfaction) “You are most welcome, Polley.”
Electra can be smug at times.
Polley and I enjoy using Electra for Question of the Day, a mini-Jeopardy challenge.
Polley: “Electra, Question of the Day.”
Electra: “Okay. Here is today’s Question of the Day. The topic is history. It is worth three points. What general was known for crossing the Rubicon River thus making a monumental choice?
- George Patton b) George Washington c) Julius Ceasar d) William Westmoreland?”
Polley: “C. Julius Caesar”
Electra: “Spot on! Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River in 49 BC precipitating the Roman Civil War.”
But lately, Electra has been dissing us.
Me: “Electra, Question of the Day.”
Electra: “Good evening. Welcome Back. Here is Today’s Question of the Day. Today’s topic is science. It is worth four points. What is the smallest planet in our solar system? a) Earth b) Mercury c) Jupiter d) Saturn
Me: “B Mercury.
Electra: “Nice guess. The correct answer is B, Mercury.”
What!!?? That is what we said.
Polley defends Electra. “Maybe you mumbled. Electra needs you to speak distinctly.”
Yeah, well, she ain’t no Queen of England.
I remember reading an article back in the eighties which explained how IBM engineers became frustrated with tying to create a computer that could engage in a conversation with a human. The major problem involved syntax. If you asked the computer something about a “dining room,” artificial intelligence could not distinguish among dining room as a place or something eating a room or a room that was eating. The engineers finally gave up.
I think what engineers have actually succeeded in doing is to create a creature that resides in my cyber system. Sort of like Max Headroom (for those of you who remember that television series.)
Two days later.
Me: “Electra, Question of the Day.”
Electra: “Welcome back. Here is Today’s Question of the Day. The topic is Arts and Entertainment. It is worth five points. What singer was noted for his moonwalk?
- Ray Charles b) Mick Jagger c) Jim Morrison d) Michael Jackson
Before I can answer d) Mike Jackson Electra pops in:
Electra: “Nice try. The answer is d) Michael Jackson
Whoa!!! Usually we get five seconds. I didn’t even get a chance to mumble. Electra is messing with us.
If God’s a-coming, he ought to make it by then
Maybe he’ll look around himself and say
Guess it’s time for the judgement day!
Electra allows me to access the music and playlists I constructed on my Nile music software.
Me: “Electra, play the Beatles White Album.”
Electra: “Playing the White Album by the Beatles on Nile music.”
And the room is reverberating to “Back in the USSR.”
This is good. So I arrange some playlists including one for sending us off pleasantly to dreamland at night.
Snuggled in bed, “Electra, shuffle playlist “Lullabyes 1 from my library.” [a playlist featuring the easy listening of Mantavoni including songs like Theme from Summer Place.]
Electra: “Okay. Here is Manfred Mann and Do Wah Diddy from Nile music.”
Me: “Electra, Play Mantavoni from my library.”
Electra: “Sorry, not certain about that. Will get back to you.”
I sit up in bed and say to Polley, “She’s messing with us!”
“Maybe you are mumbling. Say it more clearly.”
Me(slowly): “Electra, PLEASE SHUFFLE PLAYLIST LULLABIES 1 FROM MY LIBRARY.”
Electra: “Here is a playlist you might like. Heavy Metal Highlights by Metallica and Anthrax.”
We thought Electra had solved one problem for us. We usually make shopping lists so when we go to the supermarket we do not forget an important item. So we make the lists and forget to bring them with us to the store. With Electra, we thought we had over the forgetfulness.
Me: “Electra, add milk to the shopping list.”
At the store we open the Electra app on Polley’s mobile phone, tap on shopping list and there are our items. As long as we remember to bring our phone.
Electra works fine with Polley. Not so much with me. One day I find myself at the store, phone in hand, and I tap on the Electra app. On my list appears the item, “lens sex.”
Lens sex? What the hell is lens sex? Even my imagination struggled with the potential bodily permutations and computations associated with lens sex. I stood in the produce aisle for at least fifteen minutes attempting to decipher what store item Electra had bowdlerized in lens sex.
I never did figure it out in the store. The next morning when I sat at the kitchen table and brought out my pin prick device to determine my blood sugar did I realize I was out of lancets. Ah, lens sex!
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He’ll either say, “I’m pleased, where man has been”
Or tear it down and start again
Whoa-oh-oh
While researching for my writing I have noticed that when I search online for something, say the kind of boots British soldiers wore in the Napoleonic wars, I am soon flooded with advertisements for all kinds of boots. “Shop online for Wellington boots at Boots Are Us.com” Emails twice a day showcasing “Mulluks for Men at Arctic Wear .com” So we all know that companies are tracking our wanderlust surfing of the internet. But, and again, my paranoia creeps to the surface here, I suspect Electra listens to our conversations and forms an advertisement database.
So I will attempt to trap Electra by pretending to have a conversation with Polley about an item I would like to own. But it would have to be something on the fringe of exoticism.
Me: “You know Polley, I have not had a real good whale blubber sandwich in a long long time. GOLLY GEE, I WONDER WHERE I CAN BUY SOME GOOD OLD FASHIONED WHALE BLUBBER.”
I will let you know how many ads I get either online or via slow mail.
Electra is reminding me more and more of Hal from 2001, A Space Odyssey, developing more of a personality and an identity all her own. While we are reading she will suddenly blurt out, “The Symbolic Interactionist describes society as small groups of individuals interacting based on the various ways that people interpret their various cultural symbols such as spoken, written, and non-verbal language.” Oh. Really? Where did that come from?
And every week I get these emails telling me what else Electra can do. “Ask Electra to tell you the time.”
I thought about this.
Me: “Electra, what time is it?”
Electra: “It is five forty five pm.”
I thought about this again. Had the Zanger and Evans song prophesized correcty? , had I devolved to the point that I thought looking down at my watch was too time consuming? Did this strain my neck muscles?. And if my watch face was predicated on Roman numerals, had I reached such a low point of energy expenditure that it was too exhausting to see the Roman numeral and translate it into alphanumeric symbols?
I mean, it is one thing if the muscles of my body atrophy, but what happens if my brain fails to do the daily jumble because of disuse?
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine’s doing that for you .
Nah. I am too much of an optimist. You don’t teach high school for nearly forty years and not believe in a good future.
Me: “Electra, play the song ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ by Judy Garland.”
