There exists a seemingly vicious group People for the Equal Treating of Animals or PETA, that bellows and barks (pun intended!) for animal rights. They stomp their feet and thump their own chests in classic demonstrations of aggression, but the Trio can see through their bluffs. Usually, they have lame and uninspired plans like painting and nudity to further their cause, but recently, they had a proposal so intellectual, it made my dog gasp in delight.
Replacing the immortal Punxsutawney Phil with a robotic groundhog? Brilliant! Us here at the Intellectuarium have long advocated the pervasive use of robots wherever possible – and boy, is Robohog Day possible! Long a prisoner of his meteorological ways, the immortal Punxsutawney Phil has for decades been sheltered in dismal living conditions where he is “treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania,” according to groundhog slave-owner, William Deeley. Average children get gruel – we need that groundhog to live better than the exceptional and upper-class children of Pennsylvania, wherever that is.
In addition to the definitive lifestyle improvements, replacing the malnourished and dangerously obese Punxsutawney Phil (who is also subjected to witchcraft at the hands of his evil keepers, see number two) will almost certainly improve the seasonal predictions from a meager real groundhogged 39% to an astonishingly complicated algorithm-driven, robotic 100% accuracy. If I'm paying good money for a prevision, I want it to be better made.
Truly though, the replacement of the actual animal with a robotic superanimal makes sense, not just in this specific and important instance, but as a general philosophy. More and more humans have taken to indulge in the wicked practice of animal slavery. They call these poor creatures “pets” (as if the idea alone wasn't disgusting enough – the name says it all). Some Japanese corporations are leading the charge here, selling robo-dogs for mere thousands of dollars. It would thrill the Trio to no end to see “pets,” dogs and cats alike, go back to the wild, fend for themselves and return to their natural habitat, assuming it's still as they left it.
Finally, while the improvements annotated above are helpful and downright inspired, the Trio never stops there. Perhaps you have heard that there are six billion people on this planet and the number grows everyday. Since no one seems to support my population control methods (namely, baby death cage matches to accelerate natural selection), the day is fast approaching wherein experts and policy-shapers will have to address the world's food supply. Of course, that day is yesterday, as that was the last day that the problem was unsolved, thanks (once again) to me, the Intellectual Trio.
Replacing animal celebrities with animatronic doppelgangers is imminent, and the robot-pet revolution is already underway. But they true robotics solution lies in robotic livestock. Luckily, the Trio has worked “all around the clock” on some of the prototypes in the Intellectuarium: Robocow's beefy flesh, the succulent Bionichicken drumsticks and the surprisingly sweet Automatapork. The initial reports are good and, like their feline and canine brethren, this means a welcome return to a feral state for cattle, hogs and poultry alike. Basically, robots are the future, and a small tip of our incredibly large hat to the folks at PETA for inadvertently leading the Trio where we are all too comfortable: one step closer to complete bondage of Mama Nature, once and forever.
