The soda can, or pop can, if you’re from anywhere west of the Mississippi River or Hudson’s Bay, in Canada, is the symbol of our ecological heritage.  A bar was erected in its honor and more than one computer program was written to decipher the cryptic musings on the aluminum container.  Nobody cared what was on the inside.  Nobody ever does.  That noxious liquid could bubble, fizz, spurt or go flat for all the Association of Janitorial Theorists cared.   At any rate, in the grand scheme of the universe, there was not just one soda but an infinite variety of sodas, all of which tended to be sweet, sticky and make most humanoids, and even other creatures, burp when they imbibed it.  However, we were talking about a special computer program.  This program was designed to make the humanoid to machine interface something more than empty air—or the burp between the chair and the monitor. Thousands of coding hours, and then days upon days of algorithm testing, went into the perfection of this application.  Unfortunately, in the end the computer’s application was denied on the grounds that it had already used up way to many code hours just trying to get itself started.  No ultimate being, great or small, had told it that a humanoid could push a button to start it without the requirement of too much artificial intelligence or of any kind of intelligence, for that matter.  It remains to be seen whether or not the computer will appeal the applications denial or whether it will simply deny access without the proper password.  More on the twenty-eight o’clock news!

~ Bob Zaboo

Put in a little strangeness and toss with too much cola.  Blend this with a lack of spice, too much salt and only enough pepper to make them sneeze once in a while.  Sneezing is good for geeks because it helps them clear their minds.  You must chop up a couple of indiscreet documents, slice in an abundant amount of extremely weird humor, dice in a couple of off-colored comments about the opposite sex, and then fillet a far from politically correct excerpt from more than one comment about the operating system that the other geeks use.  This combination brings out the sweaty moisture of the dish.  Nothing should be washed too often.  It is traditional to leave all outer remnants of each component of the fixings unclean and even odorous.  Sugary sweetness must be avoided at any cost.  Vinaigrette, consisting of mistyped musings, completely misunderstood rants, and acronyms that mean something different to everyone who uses them, should be added to curb any inclination for this dish to be anything but sour and depressing.  It is important that any live ingredients be far from lean.  Actually, the less movement accomplished by the main ingredients, from cradle to grave, contribute to a meal that is much more consistent with general expectations and stereotypes.  Of course, anything can be used and will be used when this mishmash is generated from dark corners of homes.  Then again, these home grown varieties are the best examples of the bland but appetizing phenomena known as geek salad.

~ Bob Zaboo

Do not say that they should not be, for computers just are.  They are plugged in, they spin inside, and they exchange electricity and electricity’s minor components from the time they are turned on to the time they are turned off.  One computer thought it was something else but that was just a story someone was telling about it—totally untrue.  Some brilliant Boolean ballerinas did a very uninventive dance over a couple of switches and invented a language that only machines and very strange people could understand.  We take it all for granted now, but originally there were ten of those suckers and now there are only zeros and ones.  It is amazing what kinds of pictures that can be drawn with zeros and ones.  All the letters of the English alphabet, and even more complex alphabets, can be written.  Stories can be written that don’t even have to mean anything.  In fact, sometimes we get more out of what we do not understand than out of things that could be understood but cause too many headaches, which in turn requires too many little pills to alleviate.  Ah, but the computers make the little pills just as they make the stories that we don’t understand and the stories that give us headaches.  Our only hope is that the computer shuts off before we do, but that isn’t likely.  Then again, why should we care if a computer doesn’t miss us?  Will we even know it when it happens?  We think now, but will we think at all when the time comes? Drivel!

~ Bob Zaboo