Category — Song

It’s no secret, I love a good choreographed dance scene. Okay, any choreographed dance scene, because really, is there such thing as a bad one? No, no there is not. Dancing makes me happy.  Other people dancing makes me happy. Shit, dance music makes me happy. Especially booty shakin’ music, but that’s another post altogether.

(Because I’m gangsta’.)

(Which always surprises people. Ask Barbara.)

Sunday I was driving to my in-laws’ for dinner, and could not find anything worth listening to on the radio. I was a channel flipper, which is so NOT ME, because I can always find something worth listening to. (I was pissing myself off with the rapid-fire tuner-skipping,  I don’t know how Mark sat quietly through that.) I love music, all music. It’s not like there weren’t any good jams, there just wasn’t anything right for my mood just then. Does that happen to everyone? 18 pre-sets, and nothing worthy of my time. 

And then, like an answer from the heavens, there it was on 107.5. (WGCI CHICAGO HOLLA!)

Dr. Dre saved the day. Sigh.

Anyway! Choreographed dance scenes! Right.

This has been sitting in my inbox for a week. I’m not ashamed to say it made me so happy that I may have cried a little when I watched it just now.

It’s ok, I won’t tell anyone if you want to cry a little, too. Get it off your shoulders. You’ll feel better, I promise.

Keepon is a creature-like robot full of scientific purpose and research value.

The goals of “understanding humanity” and “humanizing robots” are tightly related to each other. Infanoid Project is trying to relate robotics to human sciences in order to understand the underlying mechanism of social communication specific to humans and some species of primates.

Early communication between a child and caregiver is mainly embodied through touch and eye-contact. By investigating the developmental mechanism of the embodied interaction, we are trying to study the core human communication capabilities and design principles for future info-communication systems with which we can make symbiotic relationships.

Currently, we are implementing the social development on these robots; also we are observing and analyzing how human children interact with these robots. We believe these two complementary activities will help us to model social communication and its development during the first years of life. In addition, we are transferring the research outcomes to our society by utilizing the robots in the remedy for children with developmental disorders and by organizing a series of international academic workshops “Epigenetic Robotics”.

Cool, yeah. But also? IT DANCES.

.: This is my favorite Dilbert ever; it always makes me feel better.

This morning, as I was trying to get out the door, just about everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

I bribed my department into starting an hour early by promising them McD’s breakfast this morning . We were all going to come in at 8, eat, and hit it. I was ready to walk out the door on time at 7:30, but couldn’t find my belt. Because I didn’t want to fight the plumber-look all day and I only have one belt, I had to tear shit up looking for it. (Found it.) Then the cat yakked on the carpet, and I had the privilege of cleaning that up. Then when I did get out the door, I realized I didn’t have any cash and would have to stop for that too. Except… (wait for it) …I left my debit card on the coffee table. Then I had to grab stuff for our lunches (which ended up being Hot Pockets, jello, pistachios, applesauce, dried fruit and a turkey-and-stuffing-freezer-dinner) before running out the door a third time. I was 30 minutes late. I hate being late.

I knew that it couldn’t possibly get any worse, so I was going to have a great day. Right? How could it get any worse?

Then, my BFF called to tell me that her gramps, just diagnosed with lung cancer this week, had a seizure and ‘coded’ earlier in the morning. Wow. So, I’m an asshole. He’s stable now, thank God.

My husband’s response to my email, wherein I declare myself a horrible person for saying the day couldn’t get any worse:

When you said that the day couldn’t get any worse, you were referring only to the specific context of being unprepared to meet the day in the way that you would have liked.

In the existential sense, it can always be worse. That goes without saying and is generally omitted when we refer colloquially to the course of our lives.

So, you’re off the hook, basically.

This is only one of the reasons why my husband is perfect. Tonight when I got home (at the end of a day that got increasingly worse), he hugged me, parked me in front of my computer, put a popsicle in my hand, and hooked my iPod into the Bose stereo where now I’m listening to Jose Gonzales. I’m so lucky.

And, tomorrow will be better.