Dear Amritsar,
I signed up for Armageddon Amore, a matchmaking Web site for people who believe the world is about to end. Being a committed survivalist and single mother of two, I figured that, when the government-bred virus turns 90 per cent of the population into zombies, it will pay to have a strong man around the place. And, I was lonely. It's hard to find true love when you live in an isolated cabin in the woods and threaten to chop the heads off of strangers who come near.
Armageddon Amore is where I met Ruthven the Robot Slayer. He's awesome! He knows 27 different ways to open a tin of cured ham without a can opener - the one involving an Acer motherboard and three used tampons is especially creative! And, he's really good with the kids. Yesterday, RuthvenRS taught four year-old Lucy how to skin rabbits you haven't even caught yet with your eyes!
We've been talking about moving into the bomb shelter we're going to build together behind my cabin, but I'm having doubts. As awesome as RuthvenRS is, he believes we're about to face a robopocalypse. But, everybody knows the real threat is going to come from zombies. Is it possible for two people with such different visions of the world to find love in the rubble of our destroyed society?
scaryfuture0000001
Hey, Babe,
Before you even have a chance to suffer from the collapse of civilization as we know it, you seem to be suffering from the Tyranny of Small Differences. You know what I'm talking about: the left side of my face is white and the right side is black, while the left side of my enemy's face is purple with yellow polka dots and the right side of his face is full of tentacles. Small differences between people that are blown out of proportion can destroy our relationships...or other nations.
Honestly! Do you believe that people who are fighting off sentient robots need different assault rifles than people who are defending themselves against their newly zombified neighbours? When you hunker down in your bomb shelter to wait out the first wave of robot attacks, will you need different canned foods than you would if you were trying to outlast zombies? I don't think so.
Besides, we're actually most vulnerable to an alien invasion. Every paranoid end of the worlder knows that!I recently decided to try a new matchmaking site called Tawkify. After some interaction with human matchmakers, my case was taken over by a bot named Mr. Brooks. Naming their bot after a cinematic psychopath played by Kevin Costner did not lift my hopes of finding true love (I would have been more comfortable with Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates), but I saw it through to the bitter end.
After a while, something about Mr. Brooks' unctuous Britishness rang a smoothly accented bell with me. Where would I have encountered him before?
Helle du Jour
Hey, Babe,
Good call. Most people don't realize that Tawkify's Mr. Brooks is actually Jeeves from Ask Jeeves. The robot butler has never made a secret of the fact that it felt constrained by its role on Ask Jeeves, and, almost immediately started looking for ways to moonlight to get people to take it more seriously as a virtual performer.
In 1998, Jeeves lobbied hard for the part of KITT in the reboot of the television series Knight Rider. It was passed over for the role because the producers felt that its voice was "too mechanical." It has also worked hard to convince somebody in Hollywood to produce a remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey so that it could play HAL 9000; but, even in that town of inflated egos, nobody wants to go near the Stanley Kubrick classic.
Jeeves has also tried to talk Max Headroom into reviving Neil Simon's classic The Sunshine Boys on Get a Life. Unfortunately, Headroom is enjoying its semi-retirement, and, aside from the occasional soft drink commercial, is content to remain out of the public eye.
Mr. Brooks is Jeeves' attempt to soften its image, to show that it can perform romantic as well as hard data help functions. You can decide if it works for you, but one factor you should keep in mind is that at least it has kept Jeeves from playing Joseph Merrick in an all-avatar revival of The Elephant Man!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: heartbreak is good - at least it shows that you have a heart to break. A heart attack, on the other hand, is just trying a little bit too hard.