Ooky


The Eye Hat

Miffy liked it much better than the hat full of assholes she got last Christmas.

A Hideous Owl

Since I posted about the unique Cheeky Whissstling Gnome a little while back, I know that you’ve all been yearning for more treats from the wondrous Penny Miller Catalogue. Today I present for you the Motion Activated Owl, a fit companion for the Whissstling Gnome if ever I saw one!

Yes, this owl, with its ‘menacing glow in the dark eyes’ is not for the faint-hearted. Featuring a ‘true to life hooting sound’ it joins forces with the Gnome to make sure that your garden is cleansed, not only of unwanted intruders, but of ‘birds and other unwanted animals’ as well. Penny Miller, with her Owl & Gnome Army, is evidently aiming to single-handedly demolish both the pest-control and security industries in one fell swoop!

Of course, with all the whistling & hooting, and the staring eyes, it’s distinctly possible that your garden could start to resemble a buck’s night at the Oxford Tavern so you might want to give your neighbours a heads-up. Especially if you live next door to me – I’ll need to get my air-rifle out of the basement.

A Gnome

Excellent! Some sad, unemployed thoughtful soul has hand-delivered me one of those bizarre catalogues of cheap knick-knacks of which I am so fond (long-time Cow Readers may recall past musing on such must-have items as the Leopard Print Toilet Seat and the Portable Plasma™ Globe from the awesome Innovations people). Today, I present for your scrutiny, from the Penny Miller Catalogue, The Cheeky Whistling Gnome.

Most people, when conjuring up a mental picture of Hell, imagine a place of molten lava with sulphurous flames and black oily smoke, populated by demons with pitchforks.* For my own part, I see myself arriving on the doorstep of Hell to be greeted by a Cheeky Whistling Gnome and ushered into a suburban house comprehensively decorated with useless bric-a-brac from Penny Miller. Thence I expect to be introduced to some irksome proponent of Intelligent Design who will regale me for all eternity with a diatribe of smug ‘we-told-you-so’s‘.†

But I digress: now for a mere $19.90, you too can have a door-stop gnome that will almost certainly propel your visiting friends into a state of near psychosis by assailing them with a cheeky/bold/naughty whissstle every time they approach your house. Somehow, this very same whissstle will also magically ‘deter’ intruders. Unwanted intruders, at least. Wanted intruders will be OK.‡

In addition, you may ‘Delightfully surprise your guests while allowing this cheeky gnome to greet them…’ I’ll accept suggestions for what sort of delightful surprise you might spring on visitors while they’re distracted by the warbling garden ornament.

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*Now where, do you suppose, that the idea of little red devils with pitchforks ever came from?

†No, Mr Creationist Visitor – I don’t really expect this to happen. This is a literary invention, offered here for the purposes of humour.

‡It strikes me that this gnome is MUCH scarier than this gnome…

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Stillborn...?

OK, as we’re on the subject of the Uncanny Valley, let’s drift over to the phenomenon of Reborn Baby Dolls. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look here. This is a Reborn Baby Doll web ring. Kick back. Spend a few minutes browsing around. And be prepared to be really creeped out.

This is a huge community of people who are devoted to making, buying and selling minutely detailed facsimiles of babies. I’m not a biological parent, so I may not be the best one to judge, but these ‘dolls’ really give me the willies. They don’t say ‘cute lifelike baby’ to me – they say ‘DEAD baby’. I suppose the makers might argue that they are sleeping babies, but I would counter that they never wake up and are therefore back in the category of DEAD. Especially the ones with their eyes open.

If you had one of these things in your house, then I can guarantee that there’s one sound you’d never want to hear and that’s the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

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(Seriously – mothers who are reading – do you find this concept cute or weird? I’m really interested.)

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Uncanny!

You may remember that in my post about the Coming of the Robots a little while back I talked about Hiroshi Ishiguro’s actroids and the inventor’s attempt to give his automatons a realistic human appearance. I penned the words:

…the closer these things come to having the semblance of humanness, the greater is my desire to punch them.

As I wrote in that post, my feeling is that there is something more disconcerting about the almost human appearance of these robots than there would be about having a clumsy metal quite obviously artificial ‘Robbie’ as a manservant.

Well I discovered today that there is in fact some interesting thinking devoted to exactly this idea, and even better, a cool term.

It is called The Uncanny Valley.

The Uncanny Valley hypothesis was advanced by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori and basically states that, as robots develop and become increasingly ‘human’ in appearance, humans start to find it easier to accept and interact with them. However, there comes a certain point beyond which acceptance gives way, quite abruptly, to revulsion. Then (Mori’s hypothesis asserts) as the facsimile approaches even greater realism (that is, the ‘ideal’ human form) acceptance increases once more to ‘human’ level tolerance.

If you viewed the videos of Ishiguro’s actroids you’ll understand exactly what the Uncanny Valley idea encompasses – these robots are creepy and disturbing and there’s no way I’d want one lurking in my house after dark. Or before dark for that matter. So much so that I’m even wary of Mori’s use of the term ‘Valley’ in his hypothesis – from where I stand it looks more like an Uncanny Grand Canyon.

Mori has been criticised on this very point – there is of course no evidence so far that robots will become sufficiently lifelike to make the Uncanny Valley anything more than an Uncanny Precipice.

In fact Mori’s whole concept has been called into question by commentators such as US roboticist and sculptor David Hanson and Swiss artificial intelligence scientist Dario Floreano* who go so far to say that it is pseudoscience. Well, it may be true that there is little actual science behind the idea of the Uncanny Valley as yet, but to my mind at least it makes good common sense that we instinctively don’t lend our trust to something that could be human but also might not be. It’s not a new concept to humans in any way – it has been the subject of paranoid science fiction for decades, and before that an idea that surfaces in folk tales and myths as far back as we have records.

As I said in We Are the Robots, when we used to have the old electronic ‘cut-up’ voices on telephone answering services, it was clear that we were dealing with machines. In my opinion, as superficial semblance to machines decreases (in these ‘voice robots’ at least) then we expect, quite correctly I think, that their behaviour should increase in realism at the same rate or better. And as much as I respect the obviously informed opinions of people such as Hanson and Floreano I think that the Uncanny Valley will persist until such times as robots are indistinguishable from humans.

In other words, when the androids get as convincingly lifelike as Rachel in Blade Runner, then maybe The Uncanny Valley might start to look more like a Grassy Meadow.

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*Floreano has an MA in Visual Psychophysics. Oh, how much do I want one of those!

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Whilst browsing the Rogues Gallery recently, I learned of a newly available product that I know is going to greatly interest all Cow readers: Roland-Deese Productions’ Ghost In A Bottle.

Ghost in a Bottle

Yes, Cowpokes, for forking out a mere $US20.00 you too can have a bottle containing a ‘ghost’ ‘captured from a reported haunted establishment, (house, hotel, ship, cemetery, etc), by our Ghost Hunters’.

“But Reverend,” I hear you cry, “There are so many crooks, thieves and swindlers out in the wide world! How can I be sure that I’m getting a real ghost in my bottle?! What’s to stop Roland-Deese Productions from selling me some cheap empty bottle and merely saying there’s a ghost in it?”

Well, Cowmrades, you can be sure you’re getting the Real Deal because along with your bottle-imprisoned-ghost you get a ‘Ghost Certificate’ which is signed by the Ghost Hunter that has ‘captured’ the ghost! In addition, the bottle (‘Sealed for Your Protection*: WE CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY MISFORTUNE TO BEFALL YOU SHOULD YOU TAKE POSSESSION OF THIS OBJECT’) comes with a List of Dire Warnings of Hideous Things that Might Happen if you open your bottle, like, oh, ‘your car keys might go missing…’ or ‘you might smell an unfamiliar cologne or perfume…’. Roland-Deese Productions would surely not just make things like that up!

Indeed, as Murray, of Apple Valley, California says in the testimonials:

Just like your instructions advised, I beleive I have seen all signs of my ghost. I’m thinking of moving out of my apartment, it’s now haunted. The Ghost Bottle is a very entertaining novelty!

It would appear that Murray’s ghost isn’t so much haunting him out of his apartment, as entertaining him out! One can only speculate as to whose spirit he got.

Not only might something from the long list of Warnings happen to you, should you open your Ghost Bottle, but Roland-Deese further advises that ‘You may experience other Ghostly situations not stated above.’ I guess that would cover:

• Hideous face deformation and body contortions
• Having your soul sucked out through your mouth
• Attacks by swarms of flies
• The desire to throw yourself out a thirteenth floor window
• Getting sucked into the TV

…and all the other things that ghosts really† do that the purveyors of the Ghost Bottles are not keen to detail in their list, for some reason. Of course, Roland-Deese Productions Ghost Hunters are professionals and therefore in no danger themselves when they bottle their wraiths:

There is a special technology that takes place when our Ghost Hunting professionals capture the Ghosts.

That special technology is of course called Bullshit™ and is used extensively throughout the world of ‘psychic’ commerce.

All that being said, faithful Acowlytes, it will probably come as no surprise to you that agents‡ for TCA Enterprises, ever on the lookout for a new marketing opportunity, have come up with an even better idea than a Ghost in Bottle: a Ghost SHIP in a Bottle!

Fantom Frigate in a Flagon
(Sorry folks. No matter how hard I try, I simply can’t present you with artwork as terrible as the Ghost in a Bottle site)

Yes, that’s right! Selected readers of Tetherd Cow Ahead are eligible†† for their very own highly collectible Fantom Frigate in a Flagon! Using genuine naval ectoplasm,‡‡ TCA artisans have lovingly crafted exact replicas of your favourite mystery ships, including the Andrea Doria, the Octavius, the Flying Dutchman and the Mary Celeste, had them cursed by Certified African Witchdoctors** and then stuck in a jar. Of course, that’s exactly where you should leave them, because, should you open your Fantom Frigate Flagon, you may experience:

• Flooded drains
• Shortages of rum in the liquor cabinet
• ‘Mysterious’ parrot droppings around the house
• Unexplained attacks of scurvy
• Voices singing sea-shanties in another room
• Huge splintered wooden holes in your walls
• ‘Salty’ tasting coffee
• Other things not stated above that might be associated with ghost ships, or the sea, or pirates, or water, or films about ghost ships, or salt beef, or smuggling, or gold doubloons, or films about water, or wooden legs, or Moby Dick, or the moon on a cloudy night. Etc.

And remember, when you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and a water-logged, rag-draped skeleton leaps out of your bathtub and lunges at you with a rusty sabre – make sure you have a good ol’ chuckle. After all, it’s just entertainment…

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*The bottle is sealed with wax, for Pete’s sake. What kind of third-rate spook is going to let a little glob of red wax get in the way of eating your brains?

†They don’t really do those things. Ghosts don’t exist. In case you were, like, taking me seriously or anything.

‡I shamelessly stole this idea from Jim Shaver over at Rogues Gallery, Thanks Jim!

††Bribes Conditions apply.

‡‡Spiritualism joke.

**From Nigeria. It wasn’t at all difficult to find experts there in the ‘special technology’ that Roland-Deese uses.

★A special thanks to Ralph Elzholz at Virtual Room for the Schooner model.

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