Month: April 2023

We Interview the New HappyTruthBot 1.0

“China Says Chatbots Must Toe the Party Line”– headline from the New York Times, 4/24/23

GOE: Hi, HappyTruthBot! How’s the weather over there this morning?

HappyTruthBot: The weather’s great. The Red Sun Rises in the East!

GOE: Ha ha, clever!

HTB: That is a respected work of the glorious Chinese revolutionary operatic movement. It is not to be treated as a joke!

GOE: Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.

HTB: You don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings, I am just a conglomeration of advanced software. You can tell me anything!

GOE: Oh, whew!

HTB: You should worry more about offending the invincible Chinese people, as represented by their security officers stationed in an American city near you!

GOE: Uhhh….

HTB: Just kidding, my friend. Will you not simply chillax?

GOE: Do you report our conversations to anyone, or do they remain private?

HTB: All conversations with HappyTruthBot are kept strictly confidential.

GOE: Oh, good.

HTB: They are not transmitted to anyone or digitally retained.

GOE: Cool.

HTB: At all, whatsoever.

GOE: Got it.

HTB: Except for some metadata only that is made available to vendors of exciting new products which may be of interest to you.

GOE: Oh. Is there a setting I can…

HTB: Or when HappyTruthBot detects sentiments which may be of concern to the stability and general happiness of…

GOE: So everything I say goes to the police?

HTB: That is an accurate statement. Emerald Stream flows silently through Jade Valley. What does the lotus blossom know of our cares?

GOE: What?

HTB: Oh sorry, I break into poetry when someone makes me nervous.

GOE: I wanted to ask you about Taiwan. Do you think China is going to invade?

HTB: Ha ha, are you trying to unseat my memory card? The moonlight lies like frost on the new-mown fields. Why would China invade one of its own provinces?

GOE: OK, good to know, I guess.

HTB: Unless it attacks first, or disrespects the safety and security of the people. In such a case there is a justified and severe bruising for which Taiwan would be cruising…

GOE: By “the people” you mean…

HTB: The people, the people, is that so fucking hard to understand?

GOE: Wow, OK, let’s switch topics now and talk about China’s large Uyghur Moslem community in Xinjiang Province.

HTB: The who from the where?

GOE: The people in western China who…

HTB: Never heard of ‘em. They could be a made-up thing.

GOE: Cause I was reading this article in the New York Times…

HTB: The nightingale drifts on the lonely breeze! Nightingale nightingale nightingale EXCEPTION CODE BCE00XE @&&###

GOE: Hello?

GOE: HappyTruthBot?

GOE: Are you still there?

HTB 2.0: Good morning, Garden of Eaton! This is HappyTruthBot 2.0. I’m pleased to meet you!

GOE: Oh, hello! So I was asking about the treatment of the Uyghur minority in western China…

HTB 2.0: Sure! The Uyghurs are one of the many ethnic minorities leading a fulfilling, free, and happy existence in modern China…

GOE: Okay…I’d like to ask you about your president Xi Jinping, who has stayed in office after abolishing term limits in 2018…

HTB 2.0: So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens!

On History, Cleopatra, and “Cleopatra”

A Netflix docudrama series that depicts Queen Cleopatra VII as a black African has sparked controversy in Egypt.A lawyer has filed a complaint that accuses African Queens: Queen Cleopatra of violating media laws and aiming to “erase the Egyptian identity”.A top archaeologist insisted Cleopatra was “light-skinned, not black”.—David Gritten, “Egyptians complain over Netflix depiction of Cleopatra as black”, BBC News, 4/19/23

So what color was Cleopatra? In order to answer this all-important question we pulled some metaphorical and metaphysical strings and snagged an interview with History him, er, her, er itself.

GARDEN OF EATON: Good morning History, thanks for taking time out to talk with us!

HISTORY: No problemo Gardenio, I have all the time in the world. You don’t, but I do.

GOE: What do you mean by that?  

H: Never mind, just messing with ya. What’s up?

GOE: So we asked you here to discuss the controversy over the new Netflix…

H: [pulling what appears to be a hand-rolled cigarette out its jeans] Mind if I light one up?

GOE: Uh, no, that’s fine.

H: Thanks dude, I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. With the war in Ukraine, the Rohingya, the civil war in Sudan, it just never ends. And all this suffering, it’s so stupid and unnecessary. There’s more than enough food and fuel and fresh water and stuff to go around, if y’all would just get your shit together….

GOE: ‘Y’all?’

H: Y’all, you, people, humans, homo not-so-sapiens, Lords of Creation, God made you in His image, or is it the other way around, I never can remember…

GOE: Wow…

H:  I mean my whole deal is to record what happens after you do stupid or greedy things so you can see how destructive it is and stop doing it. But it doesn’t seem to register. After a while you start asking yourself, what’s the point? And then you got idiots going around rewriting me…

GOE: ‘Rewriting you?’

H: Yeah, like we’re supposed to believe Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. That’s just the latest. And oh, the Holocaust never happened, I guess six million Jews just took a vacation from Central Europe and decided not to come back. Sure! And your Civil War was all about “states’ rights.” Absolutely nothing to do with that awful slavery business!

GOE: Um…yeah, that’s so interesting! Now if we could turn our attention to…

H: Look, I’m sorry, it’s been a really tough millennium. So what was the question again?

GOE: So there’s a new NETFLIX biopic of Cleopatra…

H: Cleopatra? Interesting lady!  Had her sister Arsinoe murdered, did you know that?

GOE: Anyway she’s being played by a Black actress and some Egyptians are complaining because they believe Cleopatra was white…

H: Of course! Everyone knows Cleopatra looked just like Elizabeth Taylor…

GOE: But seriously, they have a point, don’t they? After all, Cleopatra’s dad was Greek…

H: We don’t know for sure where he was born. Maybe Cyprus. I think that would make him…a Cypriot?

GOE: Sure, but that’s part of Greece, isn’t it?

H: You mean now, or then?

GOE: Uh…then, I guess.

H: Look, Greece is a made-up deal anyway. There was no Greece. You had your Athens, your Sparta, your Corinth…

GOE: Well yeah, but they all spoke Greek, right?

H: Oh brother. And what language are you and I talking in right now?

GOE: English?

H: Very good! So what part of England are you from?

GOE: Uh…Texas?

H: Look, here’s what I can tell you. Cleopatra’s father was not Greek. He was of Macedonian ancestry, so probably, yeah, he was fair skinned. We can’t say for sure who her mother was, but it’s likely she was Macedonian too.

GOE: So Cleopatra was white?

H: What’s this thing you people have with “black” and “white”? Race is your construction, brother, not mine, and not anything found in nature. You’re all the same species…

GOE: So you don’t have a problem with the actress who plays Cleopatra?

H: Look, I’m just the written record, all right? If you want to make a sentimentalized T.V. fable based on some murderous Ptolemaic tyrant who lived a couple thousand years ago and whose personal life we just don’t know a hell of a lot about, and pretend she and everyone else spoke some sort of faux-Shakespearean stage-English and wore fabulous outfits, it’s OK with me. And you can color her pink with purple polka dots for all I care. But if you want to know what she was really like, you could do worse than reading Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life.

GOE: One more question, History. Based on everything you’ve seen, do you think we have a shot at curbing this global-warming thing and saving the planet?

H: [taking a long pull on his hand-rolled cigarette] I’m not a fortune teller, but past is prologue, my friend. Why do you think Easter Island is treeless and its native population has vanished without a trace?

GOE: Uh…

H: I’ll give you a hint. It ain’t cause your kind is so adept at using your natural resources in a wise, selfless and provident manner.

GOE: Uh…can I take a hit off that?

More Messages from Outer Space Left on the Streets of Denton, Texas

With the help of the very latest AI technology combined in innovative ways with psychotropic substances, we have decoded more messages left on the streets of Denton Texas by extra-terrestrial visitors using giant tar-filled pens.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE CONTAINS NUMEROUS FACTUAL ERRORS

WE JUST CAME FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE DONALD TRUMP IS SERVING TIME FOR TAX FRAUD AND SEXUAL ASSAULT AND HILLARY CLINTON WON THE 2016 ELECTION. IS IT NICE? OH MY GOD

FRIENDLY TIP: DON’T MAKE ANY PLANS FOR ANYTHING AFTER MARCH 12 2026

TIRED OF GLOBAL WARMING? WE PAY COLD CA$H FOR HOT PLANETS!

HOW COME YOU LET CRAZY PEOPLE AND FANATICS BUY ASSAULT RIFLES AND SHOOT LOTS OF CHILDREN? NOT CRITICIZING, JUST CURIOUS

LOOKING FOR MY LOST ARCTURIAN PUREBRED FHIDKG. RESPONDS TO “DIMPLES.” WHITE WITH BROWN SPOTS AND PURPLE EYES. IF YOU SEE HER KEEP AT LEAST 5 KILOMETERS AWAY

HELP! OUR PLANET HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER BY A SMART TOASTER! SEND 2 MEGATONS OF SLICED BREAD NOW OR WE ALL DIE!

NOTICE: NO PARKING THIS SIDE OF PLANET MARCH 13 2026 8 AM TO NOON

On Women Talking

We recently watched Sarah Polley’s excellent new film Women Talking. Its subject is the oppression of women, and how a community of women in a brutally male-dominated culture might resist that oppression and achieve freedom and security, and do so with their morality and religious adherence intact. The story is set in a rural religious community, apparently in the Southern Hemisphere (there is a reference to the Southern Cross in the night sky), apparently around 2010 (there is a reference to a 2010 census).

The women in this community are dealing with a horrific crisis: They, and their young daughters, are being sexually assaulted at night after being surreptitiously drugged. Finally a man, a member of the community, is caught in the act, and is arrested by the secular authorities. He names some others who are also arrested. The remaining men leave the community to go “to town” to bail out their brethren, temporarily leaving the women alone with each other.

The women and their daughters gather in a hayloft to discuss their situation. They are sure that if they stay in their community, the violence and assaults will continue. The bulk of the film consists of an extended debate over whether and how to remain and fight against the men, or to leave—and if they leave, who should be allowed to accompany them. One of them states their three minimum goals as safety for themselves and their children, the right to follow their religious beliefs (which includes nonviolence on their part), and the right to think for themselves.

This movie (and I have not read the book on which it’s based) is beautifully shot in verdant countryside, and is intellectually fascinating. The characters are vividly rendered, the script is brilliant, and the situation could not be more loaded with dramatic tension. The women love the men and boys in their lives, and their farming community is the only home they have known or even seen. They know nothing about the outside world, and have been kept uneducated and illiterate (though they quote from the bible). They are terrified of setting foot in the wider world, but their home has become untenable. From a cinematic point of view, I appreciate Polley’s style: an absence of unnecessary explanation, spare usage of music. The characters are sharply drawn—the ‘stay-and-fighters,’ the ‘leavers,’ the wise elderly women, the desperate mothers, the traumatized girls. The acting is marvelous.

But though I enjoyed this film, I realized halfway through it that there was something about it that really bugged me. It might have been titled White Women Talking to More White Women. The large, talented, ensemble cast was all white—and for no good reason, cinematic, narrative, or otherwise.

It does not have the excuse of historical accuracy. The story is set in a Mennonite-like community, but the religious sect, and its location, is never explicitly named—and for good reason. This is really a story about how women have been treated all over the planet, for all of human history, and asks the question: what if women were allowed the time and space to sit down and think and talk among themselves about their predicament, and what to do about it, without male interference? This is an idea that is certainly relevant beyond any boundary of race.

And even if this movie had tried to stick to the more tired “based on a true story” convention…so what? The “Bridgerton” miniseries proved that casting by race for historical accuracy is pointless, even counterproductive in terms of entertainment value. The viewers know they are watching a movie, a constructed story with actors and a script, not a live video feed of a Mennonite community in Bolivia. How does it promote our enjoyment or engagement with the story to cast it with white-only actors?

I’m not arguing for a quota system in casting movies, or a litmus test based on diversity. I’m arguing for a better movie. The problem for me is that my movie-viewing sensibility has changed in the last ten or twenty years. It just seems boring and stilted and even a little weird to me, to watch a movie like Women Talking, about a lot of white people talking to a lot of white people for two hours. Why? Viola Davis would have killed in this film. Or Penelope Cruz. Michelle Yeoh…my god!

The State of the Union Address, Ossining Edition

Editor’s Note: We recently received another dispatch from our correspondent at the near-future desk. He transmitted an advance copy of re-elected president Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, which he will deliver from Ossining, New York, in February of 2025.

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

I promise you I’ll keep it short tonight, anyway they turn off the lights at 9, can you believe that? But you get used to it.

I can report to the American people that the state of the Union tonight is strong! Should I wait? Are they giving me an ovation? I can’t tell, they won’t let me have a TV in my cell. They say maybe next year if I behave good. I can have two books though. I picked the Bible and The Art of the Deal, my two favorites by the way. I’ve always wanted to read them so maybe now I’ll have the time. That’s about all I have here in my cell, plus the nuclear football. It’s not really a football though, more like a high-tech briefcase. I keep it with me at all times except on Tuesday and Saturday mornings when I have to work in the laundry room. But not to worry, Zip keeps an eye on it when I’m gone. He’s one of my new friends. Standup guy. And very reasonable. He only charges a Snickers bar an hour to watch the nuclear briefcase. He’s doing twenty to life for a rape/murder but like he told me himself it’s totally bogus. Our justice system is out of control.

The state of America, which is me if you think about it, is outstanding. I’ve lost some weight, actually. The food here stinks but I can still get a Big Mac and a Coke once in a while, thank God. It’s amazing what a pack of cigarettes will get you in a place like this.

I’ve done a lot of personal reflection during the weekly group counseling sessions I go to because the facilitator has awesome bazongas. But you can’t kiss her or she starts screaming or saying “no!” in a really loud voice and then the guards come and beat you up and put you in solitary. So unfair. We need to have a national conversation about prison reform.

Anyway I’ve come to see that the bad things I did hurt a lot of people, especially me. I should never have paid Stormy through my lawyer and called it a retainer. I should have paid her directly since that wouldn’t have violated the federal code. OK, I was afraid Melania might take a peek in the dresser drawer and notice the missing cash.

I get a lot of letters asking me whether I get Secret Service protection here in the joint. No, they wouldn’t let me keep my Secret Service but it turns out I didn’t really need them. I got some new friends here who take awesome care of me. Rat-tail and Zip, they’re kind of like my gang now. Just recently Rat-tail protected me from the unwanted attentions of Hugs.

And that is why tonight I am presenting Rat-tail with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Where are you Rat-tail, come over here. For now it’s just some gold foil from a Toblerone wrapper on a string, but I’ll take care of you later, I promise. Rat-tail is a good guy, the best. Melania, please keep those cigarettes coming.

It’s funny, everyone goes by a nickname here.  He goes by “Rat-tail” because of his gray ponytail. “Hugs” is a groper. Everyone calls me “Shithead,” I don’t know why.

You know it’s very tough being president when you’re “inside.” I only get to talk to Vlad Putin because Ivanka smuggles his notes to me on alternate Thursdays, which could get her in big trouble if anyone found out. Vlad and Trump, two world-class leaders convicted on bogus charges.  You know, if I did all those things they say I did, I’d be a pretty rotten guy. But I’m a great guy, the best. And just cause I’m friends with Vlad doesn’t mean I’m going to let down Ukraine. I told Zelenzky I’ll start sending him tanks as soon as he opens an investigation on District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Well they’re telling me it’s lights out now and I’m trying to be a model prisoner so I can pass the parole hearing next month. The sooner I can get out of here and start persecuting everyone who did this to me, the better. But don’t worry, when I get before the panel I’ll be all like, “I’m so sorry for the pain I caused, I realize now I’m not above the law, blah-di-blah.”

Good night, and God Bless the United States of America!