As a child of the 60’s, I share this innate fear of talking computers.  You didn’t even have to see the 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” to know that if a computer refuses to open the pod bay door; it’s time to panic.

Today’s talking computers are everywhere.  Every grocery store has a different version in the self-check where I go because I never have enough time to wait in line.  They may sound alike, usually a female, but each voice has a different personality.

First you are asked if you want English or Spanish.  I never choose because I am hanging on to the slim hope that this will cause the machine to be mute.  Personally, I cannot think at the same time I talk and I really want the self-check to concentrate on the job at hand. 

But it doesn’t work.  They start talking to me anyway.

Usually the computer can keep up with me.  Normally, I’m running about ten minutes late so I really hum my purchases past the scanner.  If this was Guitar Hero, I would be at the expert level playing Freebird at Eddie Van Halen speed.  Given the current crop of reality shows, I would not be surprised at all to see “Survivor: The Self-Check Line” on a future television schedule.

There is this one self-check machine, though, that is obviously running on code that was written by someone who desperately needed caffeine.  I zip my purchase through and then wait.  And wait.  It will show a picture of a generic item slowly floating in the air and then going into a bag in the time it takes me to grow my fingernails a quarter-inch.  Words fail to describe the intense loathing I feel for this particular self-check station but it’s still faster than going through the regular line so I use it anyway.

Given the average coffee consumption by the residents of the Pacific Northwest, we automatically do things at a faster pace here.  We all try desperately to stretch out our espresso-mocha-latte-vanilla crème-frappuccino-double shot-low foam-extra whip concoction until we can work the amount of time it takes to earn enough money to buy another one.  You want to know why this area has such a meth problem?  Meth is cheaper than coffee.  It’s that simple, people.

We’re already steamed at the meth-heads for taking away our narcotics of choice: Nyquil and Actifed.  Because these nitwits figured out how to modify our cold products in such a way that it produces meth, we are all suffering.  It’s wintertime so that means roughly everyone has a cold of some sort and all we have for relief is the cold medicines that are Newly Re-Formulated! which is ad-speak for “does not work.”  We used to mix our Nyquil with Actifed and a triple espresso which would make you understand the presidential primary process, be overwhelmed by the depth of Dr. Seuss or maybe see God.  But now we have to sniff, snort and hack in misery and secretly hope that the next medicine they abuse to make meth is Viagra. 

We can all only guess at the effectiveness of a Newly Re-Formulated! version of that product.

One of my favorite computer voices is the navigational system in the car.  This lady has a real attitude and you can tell, she is in desperate need of caffeine, meth or Nyquil or she just got stuck behind some nimrod at the self-check lane who finds the whole process too cerebral and is stunned into a stupor.

I hate it when that happens.

She’ll be real calm in telling you to “turn left in one-quarter mile.”  When you approach the intersection, the turn chime sounds two times.  However, if you do not turn left in one-quarter mile, she lets you know her displeasure.

In the snarkiest tone imaginable she says one word and drags out each syllable to its maximum effect just so you know the trouble you have caused her: “Recalculating.”

And don’t you just know she would dearly love to add “you, dumbass” to that?  It’s like “I told you to turn left, but no, I guess that was just too difficult for you to figure out even with the two-chime reminder and now I have to go through a lot of extra work to recalibrate the proper coordinates to get your sorry ass to where you want to go because you’re too intellectually deficient to read a map.  You, pinhead.”

But I’ll tell you this: if that spawn of HAL starts singing “Daisy, Daisy;” I’m walking.