Dante Delivers
The letter arrived. But more than a letter, it was a manila envelope. I tore it open just trying to imagine what Dante, the graphic designer, had done with the words “My Robot Is Pregnant”.
Here is what I saw.
This is what I pulled out. I stopped to look. I wondered if Dante had gone crazy. He was speaking his own language. R.U.R.? and + -? Dante said himself he was 76. Many people live much longer than that and are very cognizant. Dante was crazy. What should I expect from an internet friendship?
But then my good friend Sean says to me, “Did you google R.U.R.?”
Suddenly this thing starts to make more sense than I even knew. Isn’t that the way with old people? They speak a language richer than our own. R.U.R. is the origin of the word robot. Googling + – didn’t help, but now I’m sure it means more than I know. Is Dante referring to a pregnancy test? My R.U.R. is +?
I reread the letter he sent, and his wife, bless her heart, must not speak Latin either. But I pieced together, “I’m responsible, wicked responsible, robot is +-.”
Now I’m starting to think Dante is a psychedelic character, down with Mr. Leary. I can’t wait to have dinner with him and find out where he is coming from. He is truly a wild at heart free spirit, and those types are hard to comprehend at first, but if you give them a chance, you understand they are saying something very important.
Mr. Dante, you are cordially invited to San Francisco for an Italian dinner. Thank you so much for sending me these.
Tell Dante that clarity is for Starbucks and IBM. We need more clarity like we need more civil wars. God help us if 1000 years from now we are not judged purely by our mass media and environmental apocalypse. Maybe small pockets of low resource art will survive long enough to prove our species wasn’t completely ignorant. I wonder if a scrap of paper won’t outlive all the digital bytes in the world. I hope so.
Comment by oggy — November 8, 2007 @ 10:50 pm
right on brother!
Comment by Rolston — November 9, 2007 @ 9:26 am
well, you’ve established that the R.U.R. may be a reference to a Czech play from the early 1920s in which the world is introduced to robot as cheap labor (no pun intended)…
I took both of Dante’s two images at the end to be 2 references to pregnancy:
the first, the + as in a positive pregnancy test. You made that leap yourself. And, by the way, may you never find one of those positive plus symbols. that is unless you’re gunning for a spawn.
the second, I took to be a burger bun on its side – i.e. a bun in the oven. it’s a stretch, but fuck it, until Dante offers up a better explanation I’m going with it. subject to interpretation, right?
Comment by Matt — November 10, 2007 @ 3:03 am
This is totally bizarre: after reading this post I sat down with the most recent New York magazine crossword. The clue for 39 across is “Capek play which introduced the word ‘robot.’”
Comment by K — November 10, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
damn, Dante!
Comment by molly — November 15, 2007 @ 7:19 pm
My daughter, (AKA killer), called and urged us to take a look at your website Mr. Rolston.
We did and it was funny.
This is nothing original, but…”Jon, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Ciao.
Comment by Dante — November 20, 2007 @ 7:07 pm
My pop rocks!
Comment by Roberta — November 23, 2007 @ 3:58 pm