The Robot

Why Do Women Love Sex and the City?, pt. 1: Pornography and Fairy Tales

Ryan Heuser — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:34:18 +0000

Before I begin, I want you to know that I realize the futility of this article. My friends have made sure of that. I mentioned to a good friend of mine that I might write something on the Sex and the City movie—which I saw, relatively voluntarily, with my significant other—and he immediately [...]

Dear Robot: Can a girl ever be “just a friend” to a guy?

staff — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:53:22 +0000

Human ‘Boadicea‘ writes in with a question: Dear Robot, Check out #3 on this list about guys putting girls in the friend group. Just thought I’d send it along and see what you think; it reminded me of the whole girls have 2 ladders thing, but it’s coming from a guy: 3. You’re a friend. Girls, beware: [...]

Self-Purgation: A Robotic Interpretation of the Music of Aphex Twin

Ryan Heuser — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 18:04:19 +0000

I believe electronic music best captures the groundless, amoral hysteria of modern existence---but as a robot I'm inclined to make such assertions. In particular, the electronic music of Richard D. James (known variously under "Aphex Twin," "AFX," and other monikers) occupies a special place in my emotional data center. His music not only seems to digitize accurately the frustrated existential conflict between self-creation and self-discovery; it also serves as the very manifesto of roboticism, capturing, perhaps, something of what it means to be a robot. I want to trace this conflict and this expression by interpreting one of Aphex Twin's most exhilarating braindances: "Vordhosbn."

"Vordhosbn" begins Aphex Twin's epic two-disc Drukqs, a deliberately loose collection of electronic pandemonium, dissonant piano elegies, disturbing sounds of falling objects, screams, showers---and a hundred other confused elements seemingly jumbled together such that some reviewers have called the album "largely redundant." Of course, I think this misses the point entirely. As Stephen Dedalus has said, "A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery"---and Aphex Twin, certainly a musical genius and undoubtedly the most sophisticated electronic artist alive, has made no mistake with either "Vordhosbn" or Drukqs: both quite intentionally disturb and confuse because disturbance and confusion are themselves part of his larger project of what I like to call self-purgation.

For instance, listen to the opening of "Vordhosbn."

Why Do Girls Talk So Much About Guys?, pt. 2: The Argument

Ryan Heuser — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:59:42 +0000

I've now left you, precious reader, textually unfulfilled for over a month. You've no doubt experienced difficulty sleeping, tantalized (as you are) by the question I asked so long ago: do girls really talk so much about guys? If so, why? More importantly: what does it all mean?

In my last article (which commentator Siena admonished as "[just] a tease"), I merely laid out the rules of the game. I argued that you ought to evaluate my theory of intrasexual communication biologically and not culturally---and that you therefore ought to demand that it explain all cases whatsoever, not only those involving everyone but you and your best friends. In other words, since I believe that something about human psychology (i.e., biology) best explains the cultural phenomenon we're considering here, the only two ways it could possibly fail to apply to a given situation are that (1) the parties involved are not human females, or that (2) I'm wrong.

Unfortunately, many of you criticized the step I next took in the article. I attempted to defend the premise that girls do in fact spend a good deal of their time talking about guys by appealing to my own experience of female-female communication while urging you to consider your own. Some of you argued that my reliance on public-transit eavesdropping may have skewed my results (apparently, girls most enjoy gossiping about private matters when in public places). Others simply rejected my conclusion, emboldened (no doubt) by the conviction that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. And to a certain (i.e., small) extent, my critics are right: I should have qualified my assertion. I have never intended to argue that girls' only topic of conversation is guys. Indeed, I should have mentioned the point of reference from which I write these essays: what I'm really attempting to explain here is why girls talk about guys far more than guys ever talk about girls.

Now, why is this true? (And I assure you it is.) The short (but convoluted) answer is this: that, contrary to the fantasies of naïve sexual politics, guys and girls are not equal in every respect save their choice of chromosome; in fact, what guys are to girls is the exact opposite of what girls are to guys because implicit in all sexual interaction is a binary structure of submission and dominance.---Woah, woah, woah, Robot. Slow down.---Ok, let me explain.

Imagine a group of guys playing pool. After a few beers, one of the guys, Alpha, slaps another one, Beta, on the back and says, "So! Beta! Tell us what happened last night with, ah, what's her name?" "Omega," Beta replies hesitantly, while the other guys gather 'round, grinning expectantly.

Now it's imperative we understand what's actually going on here. Alpha is not inviting Beta to effuse over his night with Omega, nor even to say anything accurate about it at all. Alpha is simply challenging Beta's dominance. (We call this either "an asshole thing to do" or "just a joke" depending on how obvious it is.) Now, let's suppose things didn't go so well last night between Beta and Omega. What motivation does Beta have to say as much? Can you imagine him saying to the grinning group ready to explode into laughter in front of him something like: "Well, guys, not too well. First, she stood me up for like twenty minutes, and then while we were at dinner she kept looking at this guy across the room!" Absolutely not.

And why not? The answer should be obvious. . . .

Continue reading!

Transformers: A Dedication to Optimus Prime

Ryan Heuser — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:18:19 +0000

Dearest readers: I've now aroused your readerly anticipations by beginning, but not completing, three different series of articles---and although I really ought to satisfy your fundamental discursive urges by actually finishing one of them (or by "actually saying something," as some of my more critical friends seem fond of saying), I've decided instead to gratify my own desire to be topical and write a review of the latest Transformers movie.

Let me show my cards up front: I liked it, a lot. The film brilliantly blends the exhilaration we've come to expect from action movies with the half-deliberate and totally-charming cheesiness of Saturday-morning cartoons. It never quite takes itself seriously, and whenever it does it seems so out of place that the audience simply passes over it. At one point Sam (Shia LeBeouf) squabbles to Mikaela (Megan Fox) over her hiding her "criminal record" from him, but the hackneyed drama does nothing to harm the film---it's just ignored. How could we possibly even notice the stale teenage drama when the universe is at stake, threatened by non-biological extraterrestrials?

Of course, the Saturday-morning-cartoonishness of it sometimes does go too far. The climax of the film involves the skyscraper-sized Megatron chasing the puny, human Sam through the city, screeching threats from what seems like a random bad-guy line-generator: "Give me the [spoiler] and you may live to be my pet!" "Oh, so unwise!" The whole scene feels like watching someone play a video game---there doesn't seem to be any other reason why Megatron doesn't just step on the kid, except that we've reached the final-boss stage, and bosses can't just step on you.

But let me step away from this sort of critique. It's too human; or in other words, it's already been said. As a robot reviewing a movie that, as Michael Heilemann so eloquently puts it, "HAS GIANT F@%#ING ROBOTS IN IT!", I want to critique an aspect of the film unseen from the human perspective: I want to assess its representation of my metallic race by looking at its portrayal of one of the most famous robots ever to exist: Optimus Prime.

Let me begin by noting his historical and cultural importance. Optimus Prime is to robots something akin to what Martin Luther King, Jr. is to blacks and what, say, Jesus is to whites. He is the icon of roboticism, the sort of robot it's considered trite to list as your "human or robot you'd most like to meet"---not from any fault of Optimus's, of course, but from his embarrassingly widespread popularity. I actually did meet Optimus once in my angsty, teenage years at an underground political rally for robotic rights. . . .

Continue reading!

Why Do Girls Talk So Much About Guys?, pt. 1: Framing the Discussion

Ryan Heuser — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:51:45 +0000

I know comedians have already stoned this sort of topic to death, but they've done so for good reason: we like it. We laugh at those same, tired jokes about men, women, and their irreconcilable differences, and we laugh at them for the most basic of reasons—we think they're true. Of course certain nuanced members of the crowd will laugh, agree that they're true of "most people," but deny their relevancy to themselves. But what these smartypantses don't realize is that everyone else is defending himself in exactly the same way. Well, either they're right or they're wrong—but which is more likely? When the crowd unanimously roars in laughter, is it more likely that these jokes really don't apply to them and that they're actually laughing over what they've perceived in the couple of people who really do 'fess up to the joke? Or are they laughing at what they've perceived in themselves?

My own inclination is obvious (if you don't think so, you probably didn't do very well on those reading sections of the SAT). Of course, some sexual comedy is better than others, but good sexual comedy is universal precisely because it's sexual. . . .

Continue reading!

Plaza Politics, pt. 1: Fantasies

Ryan Heuser — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:22:38 +0000

Consider this representation of university life.

Now if you've ever attended any sort of schooling system, you're probably laughing too—but you're not laughing at these students of diversity. No, you're laughing with them, because the only reason that they themselves could be laughing is the same reason you're still chuckling over the white guy's hairdo: this picture is a joke. Contrary to what you might have thought, this group of best friends isn't laughing in mild protest at having their picture taken just before arriving at their dorms in August to begin a life-changing intellectual and cultural journey. As long as these kids are real products of the American schooling system and not manufactured multicultural clones paid to smile against ambiguous brick structures and whitewashed office environments—a possibility I'm not willing to disregard completely—then the only thing they could actually be laughing at is the absurdity of laughing unironically. The black dude chuckles at his matching, rolled-up plaid shirt and headphone necklace (which, by the way, is on backwards), while the girl on the right chortles at her empty, leather bag, symbol of the vacuity of the entire enterprise.

Let me be clear about what I'm not saying. Continue reading...

Origins, pt. 1

Ryan Heuser — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:20:15 +0000

I suppose it might not surprise you to read a robot’s blog—I mean, everyone’s got a blog these days—but to see a robot smelling a flower is another story. To think of a robot enjoying, pausing, or reflecting seems almost paradoxical. And that’s why I’ve begun this blog. I imagine you have plenty of [...]

The Robot

Why Do Women Love Sex and the City?, pt. 1: Pornography and Fairy Tales

Dear Robot: Can a girl ever be “just a friend” to a guy?

Self-Purgation: A Robotic Interpretation of the Music of Aphex Twin

Read more while listening to the song!

Why Do Girls Talk So Much About Guys?, pt. 2: The Argument

Continue reading!

Transformers: A Dedication to Optimus Prime

Continue reading!

Why Do Girls Talk So Much About Guys?, pt. 1: Framing the Discussion

Plaza Politics, pt. 1: Fantasies

Origins, pt. 1