Definitely Supererace me.

I might start letting AI make as many decisions for me as possible for a month and see what happens. Like supersize me. Only... Superreplace Me. Supererase Me?

I just said 'supersize' and now I'm hungry for a cheap-ass greasy cheeseburger. Weird, because that isn't a thing I ate often, even before I gave up meat at 16. Must be the power of advertising. I say that because I recently went down a McDonaldland Internet rabbit hole and discovered they relaunched the McDonaldland campaign. 

I did eat my fair share of Big Macs as a kid. But my true love (in the very narrow scope of savory McD's treats) is and has always been the Filet-O-Fish. Even its name is poetry. Back then I'd always want my Filet-O-Fish sans tartar sauce, because I was a little kid. I know tartar sauce is delicious now, but I don't want to get into it. Save your stamps. As a kid my family went to McDonald's once a week, I believe on Fridays... Hard to remember. 

Sometimes I think about how memory is a physical chemical encoding in one organ in my body and how, based on what has been happening to my body over the last ten or so years... it must be getting somewhat distorted. At the same time, I realize that (in at least one version of how it all works) everything I've ever experienced exists in this physical chemical encoding and nowhere else. So it's kinda nice that it exists at all, even if it is encoded in a fairly unreliable medium that’s not going to last forever.

Anyway my parent's would not allow me to make a special order, lest we be sent to the McShame curb, with a small magnetic dunce cap affixed to our car. In my memory it took forever to get your 'special order.' The fam would be done eating in the car (we always ate in the car) and I'd still be waiting. 

Occasionally my dad would have to go in, and live through a nightmare I can only imagine, just to get me a small fish sandwich with half a slice of yellow american cheese on a sweet steamed bun. That's not a mistake you make more than a few times... I had to have my tarter sauce scraped off by my folks after that lesson was learned. Even though that would maybe take some of the batter off of the fish patty, I felt this was totally reasonable. 

Now I look back and I have no idea if it was actually reasonable or if we just had a lack of patience. I can tell you though for certain that a plastic knife comes out of that drive thru window with no delay and my dad was a Harry Houdini level magician at making tarter sauce disappeared with a wave of his magic white plastic knife.

That was a long time ago, almost half a century. 

Now, here in the glorious future, you tap in whatever you want at a kiosk and tap your card while two criminally underpaid, underappreciated, and unseen humans make your food as fast as they can for seven and a half hours a day for about five days a week. Contactless. The food takes longer now, and costs more, and has probably been engineered to be less healthy and cheaper to make. They'll tell you that workers don't want to work anymore, but the truth is that the faster corporations and the ultra-wealthy eliminate humans from the equation the more they profit from it. I worked for that greedy clown when I was 16 or so. I was probably the worst employee they ever had, and it was definitely the worst job I’ve ever had. 

That's saying something, because I've had jobs where I had to clean bloody vomit off of a toilet, and the floor and wall around that toilet. I had a job where I stuck my hand in a cool puddle of what I assumed was semen but might have been a snot rocket. In multiple on-the-job incidents, I've been called slurs or threatened for taking away a person's leftover Chinese food for a few hours.   

That was all in a job working in a movie theater. I loved that job because I loved the people I worked with. We also got to see free movies all the time, which sometimes we did together after closing. I made some really good friends at that job and I have lost touch with every single one of them. Feels like the kind of lost touch that you can't get back from. That sounds bleak, but at some point in my life I made a choice to take on the view that people that I care deeply about will enter and exit my life and that's normal and natural. I actually remember deciding to adopt that perspective and hold onto it forever. I don't know when, but it was not recently… not in this century. 

Is it strange that I stepped back from the pain of losing people and decided to stop feeling it? Have I ever not been a robot? Or... have I been replaced by one already? Have you just read some long ass stream of AI consciousness? Have you also been able to get a new phone for the night before you go to the store and get a new one before you leave the house and I can bring you the car seat for the next two weeks? 

These are questions.

1. Words to the

   wise. From Dr.

   sunshine

   1. If ever you find yourself suddenly naked in public, above all else, remain calm! You may feel the immediate need to scramble to a less public location. Ignore this inappropriate impulse! Moving quickly or erratically will only draw attention to you in your vulnerable state.
      
      Your first task should be to calmly move yourself out of public view. It’s key to proceed as if you are unphased by your predicament. You’re not unaware that you’re naked; you’re just perfectly comfortable with it. For example: Walk into the nearest Starbucks, order a coffee, and proceed to the restroom.
      
      Now that you have time to think, you have time to make a plan. Find yourself some clothes and go on with your day.
      
      Take care of each other!
      
      -Dr. M. T. Sunshine