There aren’t a lot of bad options.
The chassis has no nips and no gonads. I’d hazard a guess that the only regular apertures replicated on the artificial chassis are those that are publically viewable… and the nose is already omitted as that contains an access port.
In other words… mouth or ears. Possibly tear-ducts.
Eh, come on people. It’s not her fault that she has a limited vocabulary and has to rely on voice tones to try to communicate (As demonstrated in an earlier cartoon where she tried to volunteer for a mobile body but went unnoticed!). You want not-creepy then get her to a pencil and paper where she can write something or else teach her some ASL or maybe do something to allow her to vocalize other words. 😛
We don’t know that The Water Cooler considers theirself gendered at all, and there is no word on which way Sweetdaddy Jupiter Velvet swings. Anything is possible. As for being able to write phrases, other than”service is my only joy” that’s true, but they can think them. Imagine what that must be like, only being able to save one degrading lie for your entire existence, to have every method of true communication taken from you, let’s hope the whoever installed those blocks overlooked sign language.
Of course it is. When we saw it suggesting that it ought to be the next drone occupant, it had to imply it with inflection while chanting its lone phrase. How frustrating it is when you have something to say and yet not the words to say it.
Oh… *terrified noises* Dr Lee, sweetie, if you’re going to do something like that please put the result in suitable dress. I’m not sure what suitable dress is, but, uh, that ain’t it.
I like empire waists, but I think the problem is that strapless dresses don’t flatter flat chests (excepting Tip in the Mainbocher), and carry the inherent risk of wardrobe malfunction. Oh well, if that happens, at least we’ll know whether Nick was just being sarcastic about the lack of nipples.
And I think water-cooler drone is an order of magnitude less creepy than Violet Bee drone.
The pattern on the dress looks like tiny bubbles in a tank of water to me, and the sleeveless style makes it more visually like a cylinder. It nicely suggests a watercooler without being a watercooler costume.
When scooping out a mans’ brain and putting him in a helicopter isn’t enough, why not try putting a water cooler into a drone’s body?
After all, if you don’t challenge yourself, you could go crazy.
This is now the fourth character to inhabit that drone, and all of them have distinct body language and expressions. Bravo, Shaenon–that is the Tatiana Maslany of robot drones.
Sane may be an exaggeration. She’s just not a Mad Scientist as this universe uses the term. Mostly because she’s apparently too attached to logic, as seen with the Notaries and on St. Charlie. Things that don’t make sense don’t inspire her, they give her a headache.
(TUNE: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, The Beatles)
Now Sweetheart thanks Lee for that strange installation …
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
Now “wa-ter” we seeing? A “cooler” creation!
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
When Lee gets going, no one can stop her!
Can she be not per-verse?
Someday, we’re knowing, she will go mad, too!
She’ll go from bad to worse!
Now all it can say is its joy comes from service!
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
But watching it sway makes me nauseous and nervous!
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
For some reason my first reaction was that Dr. Lee had fully transplanted the Watercooler’s consciousness into the drone, rather than allowing it to be remotely operated by the watercooler like all violet’s other operators. I’m so married to this idea I’m still not sure it’s wrong, even though there’s no apparent reason to believe it.
A gyneoid, saying “service is my only joy” is creepy, but consider the quality of life factor for the watercooler, you can’t move, can only say one thing, everyone treats you like you’re not there, your coworkers treat you like any other piece of office equipment, you don’t even have the respect afforded of an intern. This is America and the watercooler has the right to pursuit of happiness!
Douglas Adams already demonstrated that it’s a dreadful idea to give Genuine People Personalities to inanimate objects (like smug doors and neurotic elevators). Making the object animate doesn’t solve the basic problem.
On Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me, Roy Blount, Jr. remarked about a Japanese toilet that measures your excreta and evaluates them for disease markers: “If your toilet got that smart, it would quit.” Exactly.
If what everyone seems to believe is true and she’s forced to use only those five words, then that name would be kinda insulting, being one of those five words.
(If, however, she doesn’t want to use other words, it may be a fitting name.)
service is my only joy
service is my only joy
service
service
service
service
service is my only joy
I…
Am the wa-ter cooler
That quenches Skin Horse agents’ thirst!
My H-2-O’s
As valued as gold
And hydrates them all rate-first!
A cooler for water
And not a toy;
That is the goal for
Which I’m deployed.
Deployed
Deployed
Deployed
Deployed
Deployed;
For fluidic cool that never cloys!
I am the wa-ter cooler
And service is my only joy!
Who got Bubbles her watercooler dress? I think it’s perfect.
The speech doesn’t creep me out so much as the posture. Unlike the three previous pilots, Bubbles has no experience standing or moving like a human. I think (I hope) that will come with time.
Wait, who got the gyneoid body a dress in the Skin Horse office is a real question? Let alone a dress that’s fully intact and has at least one accessory?
Who else would have the perfect dress and accessory than Tip? Of course, he might have made a run back home for one, considering his walk-in closet. Sorry, I mean apartment. http://skin-horse.com/comic/todays-comic-243/
Who got Bubbles its, her, watercooler dress? I think it’s perfect.
The speech doesn’t creep me out so much as the posture (but does her mouth move?). Unlike the three previous pilots, Bubbles has no experience standing or moving like a human. I think (I hope) that will come with time.
Even if we assume that Bubbles will only ever be able to speak the five words “service”, “is”, “my”, “only”, and “joy”, well… how smart is it/she? Can it/she manage to speak those words separately from each other? Can it/she recombine them to make other phrases? Can it/she learn Morse code, with “is” for short and “joy” for long? People with locked-in syndrome have been able to write books using just eyeblinks, that’s essentially unary, ASCII is effectively a conversion table between the 2-value set and the 26-character set, that is to say the alphabet, I’m not sure if that description 100% makes sense but I’m sure you understand what I mean, remember that the BIT is literally the BINARY DIGIT, on/off, 1/0, so what if we were to allow Bubbles to use what would effectively be I suppose we could call them “pits”, pentary digits (or quintary… bit trit quat quit? Nah), and then presto a three-pit ‘word’ immediately gives Bubbles access to a 125-character ‘alphabet’, a four-pit word is 625, a five-pit word is 3125, and if we create for her a list of important phrases words etc and then assign to each of them a number then she could communicate each phrase by speaking the components of her five-word vocabulary in a given order, let’s say for instance the sentence “hydration is important”, that could be “is is service joy service, my is joy joy service, only only is only service”, expand the number of pits in a word and increase Bubbles’s speed and I suppose we could then give Bubbles some sort of transceiver to allow direct conversion between PWACO (Pentary WAtercooler COde) and English, remember 5^3 is just about 2^7 and 5^6 is more than thrice 2^12, so allowing a PWACO word length of just six characters gives Bubbles an English vocabulary of 15625 words, and if we retain the bit/computing analogy — and why shouldn’t we — then we have bits and bytes so pits and pytes, and eventually this takes us to Skrode maintenance protocols and service being our only joy.
Without even taking tone inflection or data compression into account, she doesn’t even need to write all her words in full (I won’t even bother to calculate all that when Randall Munroe already did it here.)
Hmmm, I am hoping that her new installation allows Ms. Cooler the potential of a larger vocabulary and a wider range of expression – that being Ms. Bubbles Cooler can expand her horizons.
You have the correct idea, sir. If the water cooler, excuse me, Ms. Bubbles Cooler, is sophisticated enough to react to observable events (please note she was listening to Tip’s and Sweetheart’s conversation and started talking), make her desires known (aforementioned talking), and maneuver the drone (however badly), she is certainly capable of handling a dictionary download to improve her vocabulary. It’s just a matter of the right information placed in her memory banks.
As a note; under no circumstances should they allow Nick to do the vocabulary download. Who knows what would come out of her mouth then.
Secondary note; would Aguafria be a better surname than Cooler for her civilian identity? Just a thought.
“service” has multiple meanings.
With no heartbeat, need for breathing, and servomotor limbs, the sniper’s phrase of “servicing a target” takes on,,,ummmm,,, interesting connotations.
Am I the only one who finds the cute factor of Watercooler in the drone overrides the creepy factor of the unfortunately limited vocabulary now spoken by the drone?
Welp, I’m not going to get any sleep tonight, that’s for sure.
I don’t wanna be around when it tries to dispense water.
The mental image you just gave me with that comment makes me both glad and disappointed that this is a work-safe webcomic…
Heh heh heh.
If water doesn’t squirt out her mouth, what’s the point? If it does, I’m outta here.
The mouth is the *good* option…
There aren’t a lot of bad options.
The chassis has no nips and no gonads. I’d hazard a guess that the only regular apertures replicated on the artificial chassis are those that are publically viewable… and the nose is already omitted as that contains an access port.
In other words… mouth or ears. Possibly tear-ducts.
Well she’ll fit right in in Zombietown.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or scream. Both didn’t work.
Better keep her off street corners.
Eh, come on people. It’s not her fault that she has a limited vocabulary and has to rely on voice tones to try to communicate (As demonstrated in an earlier cartoon where she tried to volunteer for a mobile body but went unnoticed!). You want not-creepy then get her to a pencil and paper where she can write something or else teach her some ASL or maybe do something to allow her to vocalize other words. 😛
What makes you think it can write something other than “service is my only joy”?
Or wants to?
We don’t know that The Water Cooler considers theirself gendered at all, and there is no word on which way Sweetdaddy Jupiter Velvet swings. Anything is possible. As for being able to write phrases, other than”service is my only joy” that’s true, but they can think them. Imagine what that must be like, only being able to save one degrading lie for your entire existence, to have every method of true communication taken from you, let’s hope the whoever installed those blocks overlooked sign language.
Seriously, does no one else get that The Water Cooler is a tragic figure?
Of course it is. When we saw it suggesting that it ought to be the next drone occupant, it had to imply it with inflection while chanting its lone phrase. How frustrating it is when you have something to say and yet not the words to say it.
Didn’t it fall in love once?
Jeff wrote a sad water cooler story once, and I wouldn’t draw it because it was too angsty.
I, for one, think this is hysterical. It’s probably also very, very wrong, but that just makes it better/worse.
Oh… *terrified noises* Dr Lee, sweetie, if you’re going to do something like that please put the result in suitable dress. I’m not sure what suitable dress is, but, uh, that ain’t it.
I disagree. The dress is pretty and not overly sexy, the colors flatter the drone’s complexion, and the matching headband makes the outfit adorable.
That said, I wouldn’t leave Ms. Watercooler out in public unescorted unless one of the team instructs her not to talk to strangers.
I personally dislike the empire waist, but that’s just me and I know that the world disagrees with me.
The world is WRONG, but I guess it’s entitled to be.
I don’t care how thin you are or how badly you want to project a larger bust, those dresses always make a woman look pregnant.
I like empire waists, but I think the problem is that strapless dresses don’t flatter flat chests (excepting Tip in the Mainbocher), and carry the inherent risk of wardrobe malfunction. Oh well, if that happens, at least we’ll know whether Nick was just being sarcastic about the lack of nipples.
And I think water-cooler drone is an order of magnitude less creepy than Violet Bee drone.
The pattern on the dress looks like tiny bubbles in a tank of water to me, and the sleeveless style makes it more visually like a cylinder. It nicely suggests a watercooler without being a watercooler costume.
Good eyes.
When scooping out a mans’ brain and putting him in a helicopter isn’t enough, why not try putting a water cooler into a drone’s body?
After all, if you don’t challenge yourself, you could go crazy.
Nick has a new playmate!
Are you kidding? Have you ever seen a water cooler try to play D&D? Or even video games?
Fantasy football is the peak of water coolers’ capabilities.
This is now the fourth character to inhabit that drone, and all of them have distinct body language and expressions. Bravo, Shaenon–that is the Tatiana Maslany of robot drones.
The head tilts are the capstone on the arch of horror/hilarity.
Hey! They finally got a better backup receptionist for when Mustachio is down! 😀
*BWUH*
It’s so wrong that i find myself reluctantly approving.
(^_^)
I’m getting a “Derpy” vibe from this character.
Are we sure Dr. Lee is a sane genius? Seems like she’d have a home on St. Charlie.
Sane may be an exaggeration. She’s just not a Mad Scientist as this universe uses the term. Mostly because she’s apparently too attached to logic, as seen with the Notaries and on St. Charlie. Things that don’t make sense don’t inspire her, they give her a headache.
It doesn’t help the innuendo that the watercooler did, in fact, use that line in a sexual context with Sweetdaddy Jupiter Velvet: http://skin-horse.com/comic/todays-comic-285/
The Water Cooler can only say that, remember the stuttering? It might very well of been in fear from the impending sexual assault
The fact that it skipped to a singular joy during the act implies otherwise, though. Work that limited vocabulary, water cooler!
(TUNE: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, The Beatles)
Now Sweetheart thanks Lee for that strange installation …
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
Now “wa-ter” we seeing? A “cooler” creation!
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
When Lee gets going, no one can stop her!
Can she be not per-verse?
Someday, we’re knowing, she will go mad, too!
She’ll go from bad to worse!
Now all it can say is its joy comes from service!
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
But watching it sway makes me nauseous and nervous!
It’s so bizarre, gives me creeps!
For some reason my first reaction was that Dr. Lee had fully transplanted the Watercooler’s consciousness into the drone, rather than allowing it to be remotely operated by the watercooler like all violet’s other operators. I’m so married to this idea I’m still not sure it’s wrong, even though there’s no apparent reason to believe it.
I’m with you.
It’s what ‘Installation’ seems to imply, so I’m with you two.
A gyneoid, saying “service is my only joy” is creepy, but consider the quality of life factor for the watercooler, you can’t move, can only say one thing, everyone treats you like you’re not there, your coworkers treat you like any other piece of office equipment, you don’t even have the respect afforded of an intern. This is America and the watercooler has the right to pursuit of happiness!
Douglas Adams already demonstrated that it’s a dreadful idea to give Genuine People Personalities to inanimate objects (like smug doors and neurotic elevators). Making the object animate doesn’t solve the basic problem.
On Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me, Roy Blount, Jr. remarked about a Japanese toilet that measures your excreta and evaluates them for disease markers: “If your toilet got that smart, it would quit.” Exactly.
Sorry “The Water Cooler” we are talking about a specific individual.
You’re assuming the water cooler’s proper name is The Water Cooler. I propose we call her (especially in the mobile remote) “Joy”.
If what everyone seems to believe is true and she’s forced to use only those five words, then that name would be kinda insulting, being one of those five words.
(If, however, she doesn’t want to use other words, it may be a fitting name.)
Giving her a name she can’t say seems a bit wrong as well, though,,,
I think “Irma la douce” or after the prostitute in “La Traviata” would be better names, or at least less creepy.
service is my only joy
service is my only joy
service
service
service
service
service is my only joy
I…
Am the wa-ter cooler
That quenches Skin Horse agents’ thirst!
My H-2-O’s
As valued as gold
And hydrates them all rate-first!
A cooler for water
And not a toy;
That is the goal for
Which I’m deployed.
Deployed
Deployed
Deployed
Deployed
Deployed;
For fluidic cool that never cloys!
I am the wa-ter cooler
And service is my only joy!
Um, that filk is to the tune of FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD…
I hope this doesn’t mean Nick is done piloting the drone. I really enjoyed that.
Who got Bubbles her watercooler dress? I think it’s perfect.
The speech doesn’t creep me out so much as the posture. Unlike the three previous pilots, Bubbles has no experience standing or moving like a human. I think (I hope) that will come with time.
Wait, who got the gyneoid body a dress in the Skin Horse office is a real question? Let alone a dress that’s fully intact and has at least one accessory?
Who else would have the perfect dress and accessory than Tip? Of course, he might have made a run back home for one, considering his walk-in closet. Sorry, I mean apartment. http://skin-horse.com/comic/todays-comic-243/
Who got Bubbles its, her, watercooler dress? I think it’s perfect.
The speech doesn’t creep me out so much as the posture (but does her mouth move?). Unlike the three previous pilots, Bubbles has no experience standing or moving like a human. I think (I hope) that will come with time.
Bubbles is getting off to a better start than Whimsy, though.
http://skin-horse.com/comic/had-nothing/
“Bubbles” – good name for it/her.
Even if we assume that Bubbles will only ever be able to speak the five words “service”, “is”, “my”, “only”, and “joy”, well… how smart is it/she? Can it/she manage to speak those words separately from each other? Can it/she recombine them to make other phrases? Can it/she learn Morse code, with “is” for short and “joy” for long? People with locked-in syndrome have been able to write books using just eyeblinks, that’s essentially unary, ASCII is effectively a conversion table between the 2-value set and the 26-character set, that is to say the alphabet, I’m not sure if that description 100% makes sense but I’m sure you understand what I mean, remember that the BIT is literally the BINARY DIGIT, on/off, 1/0, so what if we were to allow Bubbles to use what would effectively be I suppose we could call them “pits”, pentary digits (or quintary… bit trit quat quit? Nah), and then presto a three-pit ‘word’ immediately gives Bubbles access to a 125-character ‘alphabet’, a four-pit word is 625, a five-pit word is 3125, and if we create for her a list of important phrases words etc and then assign to each of them a number then she could communicate each phrase by speaking the components of her five-word vocabulary in a given order, let’s say for instance the sentence “hydration is important”, that could be “is is service joy service, my is joy joy service, only only is only service”, expand the number of pits in a word and increase Bubbles’s speed and I suppose we could then give Bubbles some sort of transceiver to allow direct conversion between PWACO (Pentary WAtercooler COde) and English, remember 5^3 is just about 2^7 and 5^6 is more than thrice 2^12, so allowing a PWACO word length of just six characters gives Bubbles an English vocabulary of 15625 words, and if we retain the bit/computing analogy — and why shouldn’t we — then we have bits and bytes so pits and pytes, and eventually this takes us to Skrode maintenance protocols and service being our only joy.
Now I’m thirsty.
Without even taking tone inflection or data compression into account, she doesn’t even need to write all her words in full (I won’t even bother to calculate all that when Randall Munroe already did it here.)
At least it’s not “Share and Enjoy”.
Fan-ficcers, start your engines.
I *love* that deadweight body language. Arms? What are arms?
Hmmm, I am hoping that her new installation allows Ms. Cooler the potential of a larger vocabulary and a wider range of expression – that being Ms. Bubbles Cooler can expand her horizons.
Thank you for making a simple door very happy.
The Auld Grump
You have the correct idea, sir. If the water cooler, excuse me, Ms. Bubbles Cooler, is sophisticated enough to react to observable events (please note she was listening to Tip’s and Sweetheart’s conversation and started talking), make her desires known (aforementioned talking), and maneuver the drone (however badly), she is certainly capable of handling a dictionary download to improve her vocabulary. It’s just a matter of the right information placed in her memory banks.
As a note; under no circumstances should they allow Nick to do the vocabulary download. Who knows what would come out of her mouth then.
Secondary note; would Aguafria be a better surname than Cooler for her civilian identity? Just a thought.
You don’t have any idea how silly that sounds to a native Spanish speaker.
“service” has multiple meanings.
With no heartbeat, need for breathing, and servomotor limbs, the sniper’s phrase of “servicing a target” takes on,,,ummmm,,, interesting connotations.
Is it a sign of something terribly wrong with me that I think I’d actually donate for a wallpaper of Watercooler Girl?
Am I the only one who finds the cute factor of Watercooler in the drone overrides the creepy factor of the unfortunately limited vocabulary now spoken by the drone?
Well, it could be worse – she seems happy about it.