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Dieter Substitution

36 Comments

I didn’t have the television switched on too much today but I think I saw Marie Osmond at least three times. It occurs to me that I haven’t seen her hawking her diet system since before Halloween. Interesting that the diet ads start up right away on January 1.

Weight loss is the number one resolution in America these days (and has been for decades). And I read something recently that says most folks have blown through all their resolutions after six weeks.  I’m guessing that means we’ll have plenty of Marie Osmond until Groundhog’s Day.

I also saw recently that PETA wants to replace Puxatawny Phil with an animatronic groundhog. This seems absurd to me; would we really be able to program it to recognize its own shadow and forecast the end of winter? Of course, we could always program it to monitor diet ads; once spring and summer arrives, the ads drop off. This made me wonder if we replaced Marie Osmond with an animatronic dieter, maybe SHE could tell us when winter is ending and save PETA the trouble of replacing Puxatawny Phil!

What robot would be useful in your life?

 

 

36 thoughts on “Dieter Substitution”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Well, housecleaning robot, of course. What other task is so loathsome? We drove across Nebraska yesterdays so a car driving robot would have been welcome. Sunday night we stopped in Iowa to visit my mother. When we awoke it was -20 degrees. A dog-walking robot would have been nice.

    We are now headed to brunch with my High School music teacher. We will have brunch at 10000 feet in Conifer, Co. Then we will proceed through central Colorado on a scenic tour. Tomorrow afternoon we should be in Fountain Hills.

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  2. Marie Osmond, Puxatawny Phil, and robots. Great good humor. But maybe some good ideas there as well. Which other TV celebrities could be “roboticized?”

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    1. It is a strange juxtaposition isn’t it? Marie Osmond, a groundhog and robots? But that is where my brain took me yesterday.

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  3. Dusting. A dusting robot would be really useful out here, where I could dust a couple of times a week and still barely keep up with it. I guess it is because of all the wind.

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    1. Maybe some of CB’s flying disco balls could be refitted for that purpose. Better yet, the same site that offered the balls for sale had flying fairies. Imagine a squadron of flying fairies perpetually dusting…

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  4. I’d like to have a robot that could identify and vaporize creeping charlie because I’m never going to do that. A Weedba. Of course once the creeping charlie is gone, the yard will be mostly bare so it would have to be followed by a Lawnba that would seed grass and nurture it.

    The idea of an animatronic groundhog is not only absurd but it mistakes form for substance. There are plenty of Phillips among the population of Punxsutawney, much easier to find than groundhogs with that name. Why not just have a Publisher’s Clearinghouse-style van drive around at dawn on February 2, stopping at the door of a preselected Phil, ushering him out, blinking and perhaps in his pajamas to predict the advent of spring? Maybe as compensation he could be awarded a modest stipend for the year in the form of a giant check.

    Alternatively, rather than going to the expense of engineering and building an animatronic groundhog for just one event, why not borrow the Disney animatronic Donald Trump? He could probably be programmed to execute the groundhog’s schtik and then he could go back into his hole for another year.

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    3. Bill – love the creeping Charlie robot. I do a lot of yard work for my sister (I am in a condo so no yard work there) and have been fighting a losing battle with the stuff for years.

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    1. Since the holidays represent a diversion, a break from the normal flow of your routines, for a post-Yule robot I think I’d go with Resume-ba.

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    3. I got a real person to take down the christmas decorations. But it wasn’t neatly (not sure why it’s considered “put away” to pile the containers in front of the shelving unit). Once my lifting restrictions are lifted, I imagine I will be putting things in the right container and putting the containers on the shelf.

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  6. I would definitely go with a housecleaning robot. I don’t have super high standards but hey if a robot was doing it all, my standards might improve. I would definitely want it to clean the bathrooms and all the floors on the main floor. I would add: vacuum the stairs, file papers, clean out the refrigerator every other week, clean the insides of the kitchen cupboards every other month, and pick up the back entry/mudroom every day and clean it thoroughly twice a week. Wash curtains twice a year. And although I’m not sure what “dusting” is, I’ll let it do that, too.

    Can you tell that I’m not terribly fond of doing housework?

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    1. Housecleaning robots already exist. They are called Roombas. I recently read a story on the internet.about a woman whose Roomba set sail to vacuum the house unaware of the fact her puppy had made a major deposit on the living room floor. When the Roomba hit the steaming pile it became a device for distributing brown stuff evenly throughout the home.

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      1. It strikes me as kinda funny that you remember that story as being about a woman and her Roomba. You read it right here on the trail on December 12th, and it was written by a man. He had bought that Roomba at Hammacher & Schlemmer, and after he told them the story, complete with having tossed it in the bathtub full of water in an attempt to clean it, they honored their warranty and replaced it.

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        1. Oh, there’s probably more than one of those stories floating around the internet, PJ. It’s quite possible that Steve read more than one version. Heck, I know I’ve read that story before (or some variation on it), but I certainly didn’t remember it being on the trail.

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        2. It’s entirely possible that Steve read it elsewhere on the trail as well, ljb, but since he did comment on it here, I’m assuming he did read that version. Part of what was so funny, apart from all the hilarious details, was the fact that Hammacher & Schlemmer replaced it despite the fact that he admitted to them that he had immersed the whole damn thing in a tub full of water. At least that was my take on it.

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      2. That’s one of the things that keeps me from seriously considering buying a robotic vacuum; we have an elderly dog and accidents are more likely now than ever. Also vacuuming is not my most onerous chore – once all the picking up is done, vacuuming is fairly easy, except for the stairs and I don’t think a roomba does stairs. It also doesn’t scrub tubs or toilets. And it costs enough money that I know I will never get one.

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    2. I shudder to think of the possibility that there just might be enough nutcases in Minnesota to get her elected. I never thought that we’d be sitting here in Minnesota on the eve of the 2016 election and not have an overwhelming vote for Hillary Clinton. Never. Still not sure I have recovered from that shock.

      Hans plays pickle ball twice a week with a bunch of mostly retirees, and afterward they go out and have a beer. Most of them are Trump supporters! Still! Can you believe it? These are folks who depend on their Social Security income and Medicare to survive, and they’re supporting Trump. This is in the TC metro area (West St. Paul, to be precise) – wonder what out-state Minnesota is thinking?

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      1. I think part of Trump’s attraction is that he doesn’t bother to craft a persuasive argument for his positions. He just denies facts and accuses the media of lying about him for political reasons. It makes it easy for people to support him. They don’t really have to have a political philosophy or any facts to support their position. Anything they want to be true is true because they say it is. Very uncomplicated.

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        2. And any news source that contradicts what you want to be true is thus considered fake news.

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