Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Meet George Jetson"

In August and everything after
You get a little less than you expected somehow
         —Counting Crows

I usually do these archaeological expeditions on Sundays, but, as I noted yesterday, all of next week will be (or at least should be) taken up by entries for "Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024"  [13+].

The past, imperfect, goes all the way to April of 2007 today, for a short entry about consumer automation: "Meet George Jetson" 

My wife wants a robot.

Yes, this was long enough ago that I was actually married.

No, not for that. I haven't been replaced by a machine yet. Or, well, maybe I have; her friends have been holding a lot of schtupperware parties lately.

"Schtup" is a Yiddish word for sexual intercourse. Her friends had these get-togethers where the host would demonstrate various "toys" (mostly made of plastic) and get some sort of commission on sales. It would have been impossible for me not to make a pun on Tupperware parties.

By "demonstrate," I don't mean what you're thinking. Get your mind out of the gutter, please.

But specifically, she wants a robot she saw that travels around the house, cleaning it.

A few years back, my housemate got a Roomba. It was a massive pain to organize around, since neither of us is naturally organized. There's barely enough open floor space for it to do its thing, and I can't be arsed to do all the work it would take to possess less stuff. It collects dust now, on top rather than inside.

Now, overlooking for the moment the years of therapy our cats will have to endure if we actually get this little slice of science fiction...

Also, the cats were not amused. Yes, I've seen those videos of cats sitting on the damn things while they scoot around, but my cats are different.

...glossing over the price (which, really, is probably comparable to an Oreck vacuum cleaner)...

The house is, and was, uncarpeted except for one single room. Not worth spending that kind of dough. Then I'd be the sucker instead of the vacuum cleaner.

...and even forgetting for the moment how this little gadget confirms my theory that if necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the milkman...

Huh. I've been saying that for at least 17 years. I had no idea.

...aside from all that, there's something fundamentally wrong here:

There exists a household cleaning robot, and I still don't have my flying car.

Every time I complain that I don't have a flying car, two responses come soaring in, as if jerked by knees:

1) Flying cars do exist (generally accompanied by a link to a video);

2) People can't drive in 2D; imagine the chaos if they tried it in 3D.

For 1, I say "Okay, they exist. Fine. They're not production models and, more importantly, my complaint is not that they don't exist, but that I don't own one."

For 2, my response is that I don't give a good goddamn if anyone else has one; I'd be perfectly happy being the only owner of one.

I was promised a flying car. It was right there at the 1939 World's Fair: Flying Cars are the Future.

The far future, apparently.

Point is, how come she gets a household robot, and I'm still stuck driving a vehicle that never leaves the ground (except maybe when I'm being chased by Roscoe P. Coltrane)?

Spoiler: she didn't get a household robot. I'm not saying that the lack was a proximate cause of our divorce, but it probably didn't help.

There follows a link to a Popular Mechanics article (I presume from the URL), but the link doesn't work any more and I have no idea what point I was trying to make with it. Nor can I be arsed to search it out.

And just to forestall another assumption: it's not like I expected her to do all the cleaning. We both did that. Not that I would have done as much if I'd been single, as evidenced by the fact that these days, I hire a maid service, which is almost as much an organizational pain in the ass as the Roomba was.