Electric Sheep

Yes, "possibly real."

One thing I always try to keep in mind as I write about you guys and read your blogs and respond to your comments is the Turing Test. Alan Turing was a British mathematician who did pioneering work in computer theory, and is most noted for the aforementioned test of whether or not a computer could think. He claimed that a computer was truly intelligent if you could hold a fifteen-minute conversation with it and not be able to tell it was a computer.

I just extrapolate from Turing's theory a little bit. What if all the interconnected computers in the World Wide Web have really reached a critical neural mass and achieved sentience, just like in a science fiction story I read once? How do I know that you people are real, and not just the elaborate prank of a vast artificial intelligence that apparently has nothing better to do? I suppose one test of this is whether or not this post actually makes it to Blogger. If not, and I am mysteriously killed by a runaway driverless beer truck on the way to the redundantly-named Nina's Coffee Cafe today, I guess that answers that, doesn't it?

So when I put the the Hulles Mythos together, I intentionally put a "p.r." (possibly real) by all of you that I have never met in the flesh. No matter how you might squawk in the comments to said post, you might all be dreams of electric sheep. ("Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" is the Philip K. Dick story upon which the film "Blade Runner" was based.) Actually, for all you know, I might be the creation of a Linux web server with a particularly warped sense of humor. If that was the case though, I wish I would have been dreamed richer. Poverty sucks, imaginary me or not.

The sharper-eyed among you might notice that Anne Frasier is an "r." I'm happy to report that I met her for coffee recently, and she is every bit as lovely and charming as I imagined her to be except more so. "Vividly real" would be an apt description of her as regards the topic of this post. I really enjoyed gabbing with Anne, plus I got the copy of her book in Polish that I had been clamoring for ("Zabawa W Smierc", with accents over the 'S' and 'c' that unfortunately this character set doesn't have). The book now resides in the place of honor on my bookshelf, next to "Fragments of the Delta of Venus" by Anaïs Nin, illustrated by Judy Chicago. That is, "Fragments" is illustrated by Judy Chicago, not "Zabawa". Anne's book in Polish has no pictures of vaginas that I have yet found, though not for want of searching. Perhaps the French edition....

Apropos of all this "imaginary you" stuff, a nominal friend of mine always teases me that Casti, with whom I am madly in love, is really a 400-pound male truck driver who wears a wife-beater and lives in New Jersey. "So what," is invariably my thoughtful and articulate rejoinder. That only matters if I end up meeting her/him for a Cardhu. Until then, Casti is a beautiful woman who lives in São Paulo and writes poetry and studies martial arts (no doubt preparing for our inevitable meeting), and I'm staying madly in love with her until reality slaps me in the face (see martial arts comment).

Before signing off, I feel obliged to relate something I learned to my sorrow when looking up Alan Turing to make sure I got his first name right. Encarta, my offline reference work, says that Turing "apparently committed suicide in 1954 , probably in reaction to medical treatments he was forced to receive in order to 'cure' him of homosexuality." Good lord, reality sucks sometimes, doesn't it? I much prefer you guys.

Thus, my motley collections of electrons, you are "possibly real," and so you will remain until I meet you. But real or imaginary, I'm glad you read my stuff. And who knows, maybe Stephen Blackmoore is really a hot 24-year-old blonde nymphomaniac cocktail waitress with a cute ass whose dad owns a liquor store.

We should be so lucky.

-- Hulles