Look, I wasn’t alive when machines took over manufacturing; but I think that I would have been OK with it.  I’m pretty friggin’ lazy.  When computers learned how to spell for me, I was actually damn glad—even if I do have to click undo every time my cell phone auto-corrects “Binghamton” to “Birmingham”.  I was EVEN OK with it when they invented a robot to replace fashion models; feminists, doctors (and anybody else with a brain) have been saying for years that no human being should force themselves to be that skinny—and apparently some robotics geek in the IT department took them literally.

But robots writing my porn?

A line must be drawn in the sand, people.  I’m telling you: robotic strippers aren’t far behind.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  This all started when I heard about The Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.  Anything that trivial and still well-publicized seemed like a worthy feature for BingPop.

But then I learned of this year’s “controversy”.  *GASP* Among nominees such as “Curbside Consultation of the Colon” (appetizing!), “Strip and Knit with Style” (titillating!), and “Baboon Metaphysics” (um, stupid), was a title that was COMPUTER GENERATED.  “The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais” was “written by” Prof Philip M Parker.

(PS, Fromage Frais is a French diary product not often found in the US.  And yes, I had to look that up on Wikipedia.  Don’t judge.)

Now it’s probably true that most great inventions in the world stem from one form of laziness or another—but Parker takes the cake; he wanted to be a best-selling author without actually bothering to write a book.  Instead, he invented a computer algorithm to do the writing for him.  On just about any topic he plugs into the machine.  The algorithm searches the Internet for all available info, organizes it, creates a few pretty charts, and voila: Parker’s now got over 200,000 books listed on Amazon.  Which has got to make him very popular with the ladies.  Who like books.  Sexy librarians?

Anyway, what he’s working on next will definitely make him popular… with somebody; computer-generated romance novels.  Or what I like to call “pornography for sexually repressed women”.

Parker: “I’ve already set it up.  There are only so many body parts.”

Ya know; I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to remember hearing about something similar… a device for piecing together random bits of memory and placing it in a new context… some sort of “internal creative device” if you will…

Oh right, your f&$king imagination.

God, we’re lazy.

PS, one of next year’s potential nominees for the "Oddest Book Title" award is about to be released: "Soft Drink and Fruit Juice Problems Solved" from Woodhead Publishing.  And that little nugget of weird came from the brain of a real live human being.  How quaint.