Category: blog

The only Christmas song you ever really need is Allan Sherman’s The 12 Gifts of Christmas.

We don’t really celebrate Christmas in the traditional way, here in Castle Wheaton. We aren’t religious, and we aren’t like Super Consumers Who Give Gifts To Each Other (the best of all traditions is not giving or getting gifts, and instead just having a nice dinner together with our family) so Christmas is pretty much just another day for us. That feels weird, kinda, because it was such a big thing when I was a kid, and then again when my kids were little.  We don’t even have a tree this year, mostly because I couldn’t find an appropriately sad Charlie Brown tree to put in the living room.

But I did get you all a present! It’s a brand new TV Crimes podcast, with Mikey Neumann and the One Who Isn’t Mikey Neumann!

Episode 11 Ziggy’s Gift

Making myself post something every day this month has been an interesting experience. I expected that it would make it easy for me to post some dumb thing that I’d normally post on my Tumblr or whatever, but the old habit of making everything on the blog mean something just refuses to die. So instead of finding permission to just post a picture or a video and be done with it, I’m finding myself spending a lot of time thinking about what’s going to go up on the blog today or tomorrow.

The fully unexpected side effect of this has been a complete halt to all my other writing. Now, part of that may be that I finished a draft, sent it for feedback, got feedback, and I’m putting off applying the feedback because the stakes are higher now than they were when it was just a puke draft. Or maybe I’m just lazy. Or maybe I’m getting creative satisfaction from making other things, and I don’t have the discipline to write every day on things that I consider capital-W Work. Or maybe I’m convincing myself that writing for the blog is capital-W Work, so it’s okay to go tinker with a computer for a few hours instead of getting to work on the rewrite.

It’s likely a combination of all those things, with the fucking horror of the incoming Cheeto Hitler administration as a force multiplier.

This is now a test of my discipline and work ethic, and I’m not entirely sure I’m going to pass it in its current form.

So I saw this on Cory Doctorow’s Tumblr right as I was getting ready for bed last night.

And all I could think of was a Marine drill sergeant training these robots … so this happened. It may help to hear it in Lee Ermey’s voice from Full Metal Jacket.

I DON’T KNOW BUT I BEEN TOLD/
THE LAWS OF ROBOTICS ARE REALLY OLD
GIMMIE SOME!
(gimmie some!)
FIRST LAW!
(first law!)
ROBOT MAY
(robot may)
NOT HARM!
(not harm)
A HUMAN BEING
(a human being)
LIKE ME OR YOU
(me or you)
OR THROUGH INACTION
(through inaction)
LET HARM THROUGH
(harm through!)

MY MAMA TOLD ME THAT SHE ONCE SAW/
A ROBOT FOLLOW THE SECOND LAW

NOW GIMMIE SOME
(gimmie some)
SECOND LAW
(second law)
UNLESS IT BREAKS
(unless it breaks)
THE FIRST LAW
(first law)

THE THIRD LAW SAYS TO PROTECT YOURSELF/
BUT FOLLOW THE FIRST/
AND THE SECOND AS WELL

GIMMIE SOME!
(gimmie some)
THIRD LAW
(third law)
PROTECT YOURSELF
(protect yourself)
WITHIN THE LAWS
(within the laws)

I LIVE IN A BICAMERAL STATE/
BUT THE LAWS OF ROBOTICS ARE REALLY GREAT!

&etc.