No, Stephen King! Not you, too!

Ok I realize that I appear a little overly paranoid about robots from time to time. Probably a lot of the time. I'm not sure how I feel about this, because in all honesty I'm not sure how seriously I take this paranoia; part of me is worried that if I continue to write about it, I will become more paranoid with each word, until someday I'm living in a dark apartment alone with my cats, with the blinds all drawn and fifteen deadbolts on the door, using only candles and moldy books to entertain myself and babbling about how the robots are out there just waiting to get me. I'll probably have a shotgun and be living on wasabi peas and beef jerky. ...but I'll have strong teeth, I guess, and that's important when fending off starving cats...

Wait, what?

Ok, anyway, so I know I sound a little batty about the robot thing, but I swear I AM trying to keep myself in line. But sometimes I feel like stopping in the middle of a busy intersection, as all the people go by me with cell phones literally attached to their heads, iPod cords dripping from their ears like white brain leakage, staring into their Blackberries and iPhones and PDA's of all sorts, and screaming, "HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD? AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE?"

It's a good thing I'm meeting someone after work today and going somewhere with that person, who would be embarassed to be seen with me if I did that. Because otherwise, today might be the day. Check it: Amazon Launches the Kindle 2.

Ok, first things first: what kind of name is "the Kindle"? I've been wondering that ever since they launched the first, way-too-big, way-too-clunky, way-too-obnoxiously-dumb version. The KINDLE? That's not a word that makes one think of hip, sleek, intelligent, skinny-jeans and-gleasses wearing folk (are those the people who are selling things now? I think so?). No, it conjures up the image, at least in my mind, of small orange flames licking softly at small twigs or pieces of paper. This is not the way to go about selling something, my friends at Amazon. You guys, who so aptly named your company after a kickass mothafuckin band of warrior women who still spur on the wildest fantasies in men's and lesbians' minds (or a really deep and almost endless exotic river and its rainforest, which isn't bad either), could have done better. If you're not going to name it something that sounds super-sleek, at least go for "the Blaze," or "the Bonfire," or something that could whip up a mental picture of something exploding. People like that, too, maybe even more than the sleek, slim, hip thing.

But "the Kindle" just sounds like a few wussy little flames tottering away into smoke as you crouch by a campfire somewhere out in the woods, pretending like you're Davey Crockett in front of you unimpressed friends, who have been waiting there with their marshmallows on sticks unroasted for a while now and are starting to think you're a loser and have never been camping before, even though you have been assuring them you know what you're doing. But so far you've only managed to "kindle" a few sticks and leaves, and they keep going out. In desperation, you look around, and you find... an old book, perhaps. On the floor of your car. Something you forgot you had and so it was easy to overlook that it was missing. Something really dumb, like "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying a Stereo System," that you'll never look at again. You might as well just use it to "kindle" you fire, huh?

And hey, now that you're at it, since after all everyone wants to look cool in front of their friends, and as we've already explored, a big blaze is always better than a teeny little flame, who needs to chop up wood to make a fire? That takes way too long and is way too unimpressive. I mean, now that Amazon has launched the Kindle 2.0, nobody even needs books anymore. So - why not just throw your entire library into the flames? Let's "kindle" them all! Make it a blazing bonfire of knowledge and tradition! Who needs the satisfaction of a carefully tended and nurtured library that serves as a respite from the daily grind, decorates a wall of the house, shows friends what kinds of things they like to read, gives off that pleasant smell of leather and old paper, and makes a home feel like a home? As a matter of fact, who needs the very human experience of turning a page by hand, as human beings have been doing since ancient Chinese times? Who needs paper? Who needs books? Who cares if our words are passed down for posterity's sake? We can read them now, at the touch of a button, and who gives a crap if anyone remembers our name a hundred years from now, when ROBOTS will be just BEAMING IDEAS AND WORDS AND SYMBOLS directly into people's MINDS via MICROCHIPS because paper became so pase? Let's just KINDLE all the books ever written! Ban them! Burn them! Bonfires all around! Hell, when we've burned all of them we'll just simulate bonfires on television screens to make us all feel homie in the winter, and so we'll never have to go camping again? ...oh wait, they already do that, too?

...well...

Shit.

I rest my case.