do androids dream of electric sheep?

Dude, my fingers hurt.  Ya know when they get all dry and cracked and break open?  And then you work with your hands all day and you’ve been doing a really dirty, hard on your hands job like removing 700 feet of tile with a mud back and something that resembles chicken wire?  And you’re hands get cut and scratched by the tile and wire?

 

Well, that’s what my hands feel like.

 

I’m gonna have to get back into a lazy man job in an office somewhere.

 

I’ve been thinking about getting a part time gig at the local movie theater.  I mean, I’ll just about work for free movies anyway.  I really think I could help them out down there.  They got so many stupid ass teenagers working there the place looks like crap.

 

I mean, if I’m paying almost nine bucks to go see a movie on a Wednesday night, or whenever really, I want the place looking nice.  I don’t want to see popcorn all over the butter station.  I don’t want to see the stupid ass teenagers behind the counter talking to their managers instead of getting me my ice cream.  I really don’t want to see their managers talking to other managers over the counter while I still don’t have my ice cream.

 

How hard can it be?  Apparently very hard when all you hire is dumb ass teenagers.

 

Or maybe the Barnes and Noble.  That would be cool.  I wonder what kind of discount they get?

 

I need a new book.  I just finished reading “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.”  It’s pretty good. 

 

I’ve been a fan of Blade Runner since I first saw it years and years ago but I just now got around to reading the book from which it is based.

 

It’s kinda close, but there’s a lot of stuff that gets left out.  Just like with any adaptation from novel to the big screen.  There’s just not enough time in a movie for everything.  And there was some interesting stuff going on in there that would have been fun to see on the screen.

 

One of the “andys” in the book was an opera singer but for the movie they turned her into an exotic dancer.  Nice.  Gotta get some boob shots in there somewhere.  Way to go Hollywood.

 

The whole thing about once an artificial intelligence gains awareness of itself and expresses basic survival instincts; does it not then become alive?  And is it not then entitled to all the rights we give to living creatures?

 

An interesting concept to say the least.  A concept that has spawned hundreds of books, movies and TV shows.

 

Something else that was left out of the movie was why it was so crowded in some places and yet that one dude lived all by himself in that big ass apartment complex.

 

Well, the Earth was being covered by radio active fall out, or dust, from the big war and everyone was leaving the planet.  They were immigrating to Mars or the moon or some other planet. 

 

Except for the andys that were trying to escape to Earth so they could live out their lives in freedom.  And also the “specials”.  People where were too stupid or too affected by the radioactive dust to pass an IQ test allowing them to immigrate.

 

Interesting stuff to say the least. 

 

There is a religion of sorts that predominates human culture in the setting of this book called “Mercerism.”  Mercerism uses what’s called an empathy box where you actually fuse with Mercer.  Wilbur Mercer is this old dude that just climbs a hill.  With the help of the empathy box, you journey with him up this hill where some unseen force hurls rocks at you with the purpose of keeping you from continuing up the hill.  People even get marks where they’ve been hit by stones while fused with Mercer.

 

The point of the empathy box and the fusing with Mercer is to allow you to feel everyone else who is fused with Mercer at that same point.  Everyone shares the experience.

 

I suppose if we were to use some form of technology to feel what Christ felt on the cross or in the Garden of Gethsemane.  If you happen to be Christian.

 

Mercer places much emphasis on sustaining life.  And since the fall out thousands and thousands of animals have gone extinct.

 

People put such a huge value on any living thing they purchased live animals almost like status symbols.  And if they could not afford a live animal, they simply purchased a false animal. 

 

But of course the line between what was real, and what was false becomes unclear.  The things that should be alive act like they are not, and the things that are supposed to be false, act like they are alive. 

 

The most human person in the book was the “chickenhead”, or special J. R. Isidore.  Who in the movie version was one of the genetic engineers who designed the brain unit for the Nexus-6 android.  In the book he was too stupid to pass the IQ test and had to remain on Earth as a driver for a false animal repair shop.

 

Anyway, I dig sci-fi crap like that.