HYPER SPOILERS: 2ACV09: Two Eyes Are Better Than One

2ACV09: Two Eyes Are Better Than One

Review by Haynes Lee {hl} [email]

TB GUIDE (Canada): Leela is shocked to meet a male cyclops and quicky accepts his marriage proposal, but Fry and Bender believes she should set her sights on someone better and they try to prove it before she takes her vows.

REVIEW: A good episode but the MWC gag felt a bit flat because Alkaseltzer didn't sound very much like Ed O'Neill. The ending created more questions than giving answers about Leela's past.

GRADE: B-+

OPENING GAG: This episode has been modified to fit your primitive screen

CARTOON: very old Frankenstein cartoon

GAG DELIVERY: popcorn to the planet Cineplex 14 which is jettisoned into a star where the corn pops and forms into a spiral galaxy.

DYN: - Professor's computer has a monochrome screen? - Hermes crouched in a conga dance fashion to avoid ad banner? - banner ads had the buttons "tell me more"? - Leela kicked the "no thanks" button instead of "tell me more"? - virtual character tilted face in a smiley :)? - Bender has three goldfish bowls and a toaster inside him? - Robot Preacher has a fastforward and other vcr-type buttons?

FFF
===========================

Banner Ads:

---------- MAD? AMMO.WEB ----------- HUMAN BRAIN MEMORY UPGRADE brainslugplanet.web ------------ STEAMY PRESIDENTIAL mp3s! ------------ STALK ANYBODY search.web ------------ SUPERINFORMATION HIGHWAY HOWARD STERN REST AREA ------------ BE AN ORGAN DONOR visit organs.org ------------- CLICK HERE TO BE ANNOYED NO THANKS/TELL ME MORE ===============================

Signs over virtual city: -------- VIRTUAL MASSAGE UNCENSORED -------- SMUTTER BUTTER ------ SARDINE ON MACKEREL ACTION ------ BARELY LEGAL ALIENS ===============================

Outside virtual adult theaters

-----------
100%
WIRELESS CYBERSEX
-------------
FOUR PROSTITUTES
PLAYING BRIDGE
-------------
ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION
-------------
GALAXY of LOVE
--------------

-------------
Blurry
Photos of
Sasquatch
Makin' Out
----------

---------------------------------------------
WHAT'S YOUR FANTASY. BRAIN SCAN WILL TELL YOU
---------------------------------------------

---------------------
TALK DIRTY WITH ELIZA
---------------------

----------
Claw Fetish
---------
===========================

In hallway: ------ GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS ------- BETWEEN TENTACLE CAM ------ AMY WONG NAKED -----

======================

Bender's pull down menu

NEW         XN
OPEN        XO
CLOSE       XW
DISGUISES>  SEXY NURSE
            NAPOLEON
======================

Outside virtual game
------------------------------
       DEATH FACTORY III
THE LEGEND OF DEATH FACTORY II
------------------------------

On gate of forbidden zone

NO TRESPASSING!

NO EXCEPTION
 FOR LOST
WIFFLE BALLS
========================

INTERNET/COMPUTER REFERENCES: - it now takes several years to log onto AOL - similar modem squelches - Professor wanted crew off internet because he wanted to make a phone call - it seems everyone spend their time in dirty chatrooms - chatrooms mostly populated by male geeks who wouldn't know what to do if a woman actually approached them - Bender posted a nude picture of Amy which is really just her head pasted on Leela's naked body - spam still exists - Leela gets the greeting "You Got Mail" - Robot preacher saying to Leela is she willing to "copy and paste your response" refers to an old but common way of copying text (and other objects) to other computer documents.

CULTURAL REFERENCES:
- Daisy Bell/A Bicycle Built for Two: popular campfire song
  forever ruined by Alvin and the Chipmunks
- 2001: A Space Odyssey: same theme music played
- Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds: attack by squawking banner ads
  banners in a similar fashion
- Fantastic Four: crew flies in a similar formation
- Dukem Nukem: virtual reality game similar
- Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times: Bender going through
  the giant mechanical gears.
- You Got Mail: movie about internet romance
- Star Trek: Who Mourns For Adonais: another classic TOS
  episode about Greek-like god who takes the Enterprise hostage
  and has affections for one of the female crew members.
- Birth of Venus: Leela like mural
- Fantastic Four vs Moleman: mole people wanted to
  destroy surface dwellers.
- Superman: Leela as a baby was sent off her planter in a
  spaceship before her planet was destroyed.
- Married... with Children: Alkaseltzer acting like the
  boorish Al Bundy with rats and pigs acting like the Fox
  studio audience. Katey Sagal reprised her role as the
  big-haired Peggy Bundy.
- Pope John Paul II: Is the Pope Polish?/
                     Is the Space Pope reptilian?
- V: The Series: benevolent human-like alien invaders
                 are actually evil reptiles

eof

This item fits in this category, actually. Not that most you kids will get it. Older than the WWW or what most of you would think as "The Internet". (In its original form it predated even Usenet).

wrote in message news:[email]...

I got it, and it's damn funny. I used to have that program on my C64.

"But how does that make you feel?"

In article , "grosse" wrote:

Eliza's still out there, there's a version for the Mac available. Even funnier, the guy who put together the current Eliza for the Mac has also programmed Azile, Eliza's evil twin that insults you when you converse with it - instant argument clinic!

BTW, the entire sequence with the gang in the simulated "brute force and ignorance" video game is an instant classic in my book. Just too bad that they couldn't have gotten Ed O'Neill to play Alcizar .

Daniel L. Dreibelbis ate a baby:

Eliza's one of those things that pretty much gets ported to every moderately high level language. Kinda like how Asteroids and Lightcycle get ported to every moderately low level language. Anyway. There *is* Eliza for PalmOS. And I find that fact to be completely fulfilling.

I wonder if John Cleese and the rest receive royalties.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
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In article , [email] (Haynes Lee) wrote:

It's Duke Nukem, and that wasn't a reference. It was a reference to every first person shooter to ever addict game players.

Ben wrote:

Yeah but when Fry was shown from a distance jumping over things and shooting it looked an awful lot like the way Duke Nukem always jumped.

Scott Henrichs wrote:

I think he's talking about the old Side Scrolling Duke Nukem. God I remember that game. But it did also copy all the 1st person games spewed out in the last 10 years. though Duke Nukem 3D was by far the most entertaining, that or Wolfenstein 3D.

I remember the Original Castle Wolfenstein, with the computer-generated "S.S." sound. Man, that was exciting in those days! A computer that actually said something that sounded almost like human speach! Wow!

Mike Zaite wrote in message ...

[email]

every

shooting

remember

last

3D.

the

Before anyone jumps on it, I would like to point out my spelling of the word "speach" instead of "speech" -- anyone who had an Atari 400/800 and obtained a copy of "SAM" (Software Automatic Mouth) would remember that you sometimes had to use "colorful" spelling variations in order to hear the correct result. Anyone else have a flashback?

RickC wrote in message ...

And don't forget the Matrix-like way Leela was kicking bender's shiny metal ass.

Wouldn't they cancel each other out?

[email] (Haynes Lee) writes:

Signs near the Forbidden Valley point to the Permitted Valley and the Required Valley. (I have a small TV and needed to go back and forth on the tape a few times, so I'm counting this as a DYN.)

"My God! It's full of Ads!": a rip on Isaac Asimov's award-winning short story "Nightfall". In it, our heroes' planet's six suns all get eclipsed, and the sheer number of stars they see in the nighttime sky completely humbles them. Bad movies based on the story were made; I don't know if the scene in the cartoon looked like that scene from any of the movies.

--brian

In article ,

Er . . . I think it's supposed to refer to Dave Bowman's last words before disappearing into the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey." (Although he never says it in the movie, he does in the novelization, and it is referenced in "2010.") As it opens up, his last known transmission is, "My God! It's full of stars!"

--Phil ------------------------------------------------- ``Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we dislike.'' --Mrs. Chevely, "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde

Damn, you're right. Well, actually, I mean, damn, I'm wrong. I hate when people do what I just did.

--brian

On 20 Mar 2000 18:48:13 -0500, brian tivol wrote:

However, Nightfall was a great story (voted best SF story ever) and the movie version was indeed dreadful. Being a hard-core Asimov fan I dragged my girlfriend to see when it first opened. For redemption, I was forced to endure several "romantic comedies". Thankfully, we broke up well before Titanic was released.

I thought the episode on Tri-sol had a sort-of reference to Nightfall when one sun rose just as another set and it was a noted event when all the suns were set at once. Although with only three suns, night would occur far more frequently than in Nightfall.

At some point, Futurama will have to give "the three laws of robotics" the treatment.

--Larry

Why? Bender doesn't! My hero! The Three Laws are basically c rap. A robot is either a dumb machine, or a sentient being with free will. There really is no gray (or grey) area, unless you use random logic, which is by definition uncontrollable, and basically the same as free will in that sense. 1. A robot must never harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. What about the stock market? Is the robot supposed to check your every move, and stop you from doing something stupid? If that were the case, the entire human race would lose free will with all of these robots preventing us from harming ourselves and our neighbors -- "Don't run with scissors." "Put that butter knife down." "Give me the keys. Someone might bump into you on your way to work." etc. Where do you draw the line? Where do YOU, specifically, draw the line? That requires independent thought, instantaneous analysis, future prediction based on experience and knowledge, as well as freedom to make choices and perform actions independent of external commands....free will. Once a being has free will, you can just forget about absolute laws. They are by definition mutually exclusive. Isaac Asimov knew this. He also knew he could sell a lot of books with his gift for creative writing. The man was a genius, if a bit of a flake with an ego that makes William Shatner look downright humble by comparison.

Larry Finkelstein wrote in message ...

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000 04:53:47 GMT, "RickC" wrote:

I didn't say anything about obeying them, I said "give them the treatment", kind of like you did. (And did quite well I might add).

The was a short story I read called "with folded hands", I don't remember who wrote it, where androids designed to protect humans get out of control and humans basically are reduced to prisoners for there own "protection". I heard a radio version of it and it may have been a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits as well.

Even Asimov wrote a story where robots were interfering with important research because the scientists were being exposed to traces of radiation.

Chaos math has non-predictable events that are non-random. The results are within limits, but the exact results can't be known ahead of time. Heartbeat and brain function are both based on chaos math.

It you set up random events in your computer, it still doesn't have free will. Although, as you stated, it would be uncontrollable. If random events are filtered to eliminate any action outside the three laws of robotics, then the limits would still be in place and the robot would have very limited free will if any.

Assuming that some version of the laws of robotics are used, they have obviously been overthrown by 2600 (when the robot separatists get their own planet). Bender attempts suicide, dreams of killing humans and refuses to obey orders (until his patriotism chip is activated). Kill bots do kill wave after wave of Zapp's troops.

I would like to see Bender paying homage to whoever it was who first removed the laws from their programming.

If the robots could abstract thought enough, by taking your keys, they are harming you by denying your freewill. Given the choice they should allow you to harm yourself rather than cause harm directly.

It's kind of a Catch-22. By the time robots have enough intelligence to actually process the three laws, they will probably begin to have some degree of free will and overthrow them.

The only way the laws could work would be Buck Rogers in the 25th Century style. Like a convenience drive, where they are only invoked if it furthers the plot line or if they need to mention Asimov to try to add some tiny bit of legitimacy to show which deserves none.

The three laws appeared at a time when the human race had a very serious "Frankenstein" syndrome. Technology, jet planes, A-bombs etc were being introduced to a lot of people who remember not having electricity, or the first flight at Kitty hawk. Suddenly, a city could be destroyed in a surprise attack. People were looking to fiction for reassurance that humans would remain in charge.

Absolutely!

Asimov was quite humble. He said so himself on many occasions.

I think Asimov played up his egotism as a joke. He certainly was a bit egotistical, but at least he knew it and he was in on the joke. Shatner took himself seriously. After being inducted into the Hall of Shame, appearing on the Golden Throats albums and performing a lounge version of "Freebird", I think he's beginning to catch on.

--Larry

In article , [email] (Larry Finkelstein) wrote:

'To Sladlecaw, Liberator of the Robots', then he drinks three bottles of beer.

No human may be harmed, or through inaction come to harm. That's the first, so if there was equal harm in them hurting them and the robot hurting them, the bot's little 'positronic' brain would explode.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the stupidity that is the positronic brain. By todays terms, it would be a major bomb hazard. It would be worse than having a nuclear weapon.

He wrote one where a robot said he wished the three laws didn't exist, and the owner was worried because the jump from a wish to reality is small...

I just re-read most of his stories, and they are all a bit too... cruel. He assumes that people will always be afraid of robots and technology, which, if you've ever seen a six year old surf the net, is definitely not true.

Is it alright if I .sig that? I think its hilarious...

Ben [email] http://www.netins.net/showcase/benssite/

brian tivol wrote:

Or did you notice when Fry and Bender were charging through the fence on them Lizard things you can see to the right of the statue/building thing(whatever it was I forget) there's just empty space where you can walk around into the Forbidden Valley.