My Inventions

This is my apartment. You don't live here, I live here. I don't come to your apartment and look in your toilet and make clucking sounds. It's not right. No, it's just not. I don't do things like that to you, you shouldn't do that to me. So what if it's a little grimy, right? It's just I ran out of the bowl cleaner. And Windex, that's why the windows are a little grimy. It was a long winter anyway, I couldn't go outside to clean them because the windex would just freeze.

Why are you even here, anyhow? Who complained about me? You keep saying that you're not my landlord, but someone let you in and I've never met him, so he could be you. I expect he'll show up sooner or later, though. He always does. Always does.

You see, he has to, or I don't pay him. He thinks he can send threatening papers and make me leave to go to court, but I know what he'll do. He'll just lock the door if I go to court, so I tell him, if you want the money just come for it. I work, I work really hard, and they know about me, so they send me my checks here at home. If you want those checks, you gotta work with me too because you knew about me from the time I moved in here, you gotta come and get them.

This dropbox bullshit might be okay if you're on your way to work, but I don't go to work, work comes to me. I do it here, where I can be in my place. I like to work with my curtains and my desk and I don't like strangers coming by and scowling at the toilet. If you want me to clean it, you have to bring me more cleaner. The grocery stopped delivering.

You aren't the grocery, are you?

I didn't think so. Well, if you're going to be here and you're going to refuse to leave, at least sit on the couch. Not that couch! That is my couch, it has my hair and my skin cells on it. You sit on the one that's wrapped in plastic. I can clean that one with bleach after you go. Don't you dare sit on my couch.

Now, if you're going to stay and you're not going to tell me what you're doing here in my apartment, then I'm afraid I'll have to do all the talking. Maybe once you see what I'm thinking of doing with the place, you'll see why I so seldom have guests over. It just isn't right of you to sit here and judge a project that's unfinished. Get me? It isn't right that you're here, I haven't gotten it all ready yet.

I might have been done by now if the grocery had kept delivering, but it's been difficult working with no supplies. You see, I have been thinking a lot about my predicament, and about how difficult it can be to find understanding people, real people who view my problems as reasonable and help me instead of just waiting for me to go into the front yard so they can padlock the door and steal my inventions.

That's what my project is. It's a full-house invention so that people like me don't need to worry about which couch you sit on. Instead of having to trust the grocery to deliver or wait for the landlord to threaten you and then send people to collect his money, the house will take care of it. It will use a mixture of small animatronic devices connected together through bluetooth technology and a 3G cellular network, and essentially they will go into the world and do what you can't do without leaving your apartment.

Imagine what it will be like then, to walk the streets of New York City and see... Roomba robots, all whirring along. No traffic jams. No landlords with court papers. And the different Roomba robots, instead of having vacuums, will have specialized tools. The one you are will have a high definition camcorder so that you can take a walk while sitting on your couch. Other robots will have tasers, for disciplining guests who sit on the wrong couch.

All these little programmable discs will just roll along through our streets so that we can stay inside, where it's safe and the light bulbs won't give you skin cancer, and we can do our work without missing the daytime talk shows. Of course, if it all goes according to plan, those will become radio shows. After all, who wants to watch a bunch of tiny robots with speakers on them yell at each other? What kind of world would that be?

You can see my first prototype here. Don't touch it! You don't see with your hands! Now I'll have to clean him with bleach. You can see, though, that I've mounted a check case like they use in restaurants to him so that he can carry my rent down to the office without having it blow away. All they have to do is pull on the corner of the check and it will come out.

I almost have it taking the right route, but the maintenance people always pick him up and the bleach really does a number on him when I use it so much. That folder's leather, and I keep having to replace it. You can see here I've started on my second robot. I want this one to learn to be a maitre'd. If you open up his dust receptacle, you can see that I've filled it with mixed nuts. Go ahead, you can touch this one.

I've designed him for that. You can't go through your whole life without touching anything, am I right?