A moment before I began to engorge myself of the cornucopia of festive holiday food offerings, I received a text message from a friend that read, "Happy Thanksgiving, Meat is Murder."

A few days before Tam, Julie and I walked by a house that had a pleasant holiday decoration set up in front of their house. A teepee and three four foot high illuminated plastic figures stood in front of our neighbor's brownstone. The first depicted a pilgrim man, the second a native american and the third a pilgrim woman. They stood together as friends prepared be thankful for all they had received in the past year.

I was overcome with the urge to come back with a bottle of ketchup and sever the native figure's head and squirt ketchup all over its be-headed and mangled body. I mentioned this to Tamara and Julie and I said, "Now that would be a realistic holiday scene, don't you think?" I'm not so sure they agreed.

So we are a grateful lot, and as we give thanx we also remember who helped us through those first long and hard winters:

With Philip and most of their leaders dead, the Wampanoag were nearly exterminated. Only 400 survived the war. The Narragansett and Nipmuc had similar losses,

- Wampanoag History

Due to the public's overwhelming distrust of Instant Messaging and Robots, the Federal Ministry of Instant Messaging Fear and Robot Distrust has forced me to disassemble mwilkiebot and scatter the bytes to the four corners of the globe (how a globe can have corners I'm not quite sure). In the end, mwilkiebot was charged with breaking the unspoken fourth law: Do something worthwhile.

Farewell mwilkiebot, your glorious and inspired automated responses shall be missed.

the only known photo of mwilkiebot

Super Human Intelligence Trans-global Inc. is proud to announce MWilkieBot 1.0* **.

MWilkieBot, where the future was yesterday.

Afters years of research and development at SHIT laboratories, we have perfected the mwilkiebot prototype and are now prepared to preview it to the public.

The researchers at SHIT Inc. have spend years perfecting a highly sophisticated user interface called "iCommand Line® " and we have brought this dramatic new technology to the Instant Messaging sphere. Why just IM your friends to say 'hey', IM MWikieBot and say "HEY!"

MWikieBot 1.0 supports the exciting new feature: search movies by title.

How do I get in on the ground floor of this exciting new technology you may ask? Open your AIM client and start a chat with mwilkiebot, and then prepare yourself to be blown away by the power of "iCommand Line®".

MWikieBot 1.0 - in stores nowhere near you.

* MWilkieBot may have various similarities to N4CHL1N BOT 1.4, but any, or most, similarity is purely coincidental.

** MWilkieBot my cause extensive bleeding from the rectum and /or massive coronary infarction.

added a couple of new bot commands tonight.

1. hal ?
2. showtimes 'zipcode' list movie theatres and showtimes for a particular zipcode

Capitalizing on all of Jim's hard work, I stole...err, borrowed his AIM chatbot code to hack up my own chatbot.

Jim leveraged the very nice perl Net::OSCAR AIM APIs, which makes it very easy to write up an AIM chatbot.

In the future I will use the bot to do exciting things like, well, I don't really know, but it'll be great. For now the bot responds to a few simple commands, one of which will let you read the latest post here at bitterpill.org. So instead of reloading this page every day for a month or so waiting for a post, you can send a simple IM chat command to see that I haven't posted. Ah technology, it really is making our lives better.

Send an AIM message to mwilkiebot for loads of hot bot on bot action.

Send an AIM message to N4CHL1N to chat up Jim's bot.

Jim uses the Acme::Wabby APIs to make for some interesting bot conversation.

In the field of computer technology, one in which I find myself affiliated, people refer to themselves and others as geeks. Geeks are a breed of smart and talented people who supply the knowledge and skills that drive modern technology. Some would claim they are changing the world, and for the better.

There was a time that the term geek was used in a derogatory light, when geeks had braces and greasy hair and worked many hours alone in their room with their Radio Shack electronics kit while reading popular mechanics. Today it used as a point of pride. The more of a geek you are the greater your technical and intellectual prowess. To be labeled a geek is to be labeled a technology expert of the most highest degree. There are even some, at least purported to be some, attractive geeks that actual men and women would like to spend time with, even date, and at the most extreme engage in carnal relations.

The geek has reached a new pinnacle in modern society. Both feared and revered for their technical abilities, they are payed well and valued in the business world. Portrayed in popular media as hip kids with a flare for technology, the modern geeks have far surpassed their pencil necked ancestors. Slide rules have been replaced with laptops and ipods, greasy hair replaced with a tight cut and sideburns, band-aided glasses transformed into contacts or stylish rims. Their knapsacks and courier bags are filled with state of the art technology gadgets coveted by many. A quick trip to any Apple computer store will provide a crash course in the new world of geekdom. If technology is indeed the future, then the geeks have their hands wrapped safely around the yoke.

I never considered the term geek when I began my foray into computer science. Nerd was the prevailing derogatory term of the day. Geek wasn't included in the local lexicon during my school age years, so it was rare, almost never, that I heard the term. I distinctly remember the first time I heard the word used in a positive light. I was working as an intern under a smart, if not overly arrogant and self centered, Unix Systems Administrator. He was tinkering with 3D rendering software, and he was producing some interesting 3D images. A local advertising firm was trying to recruit him. He relayed the story to me and said, "I told them I don't want to be in advertising, I am a geek." I had never heard anyone refer to themselves as a geek before, nor had I heard anyone refer to anyone as a geek with the intent of compliment instead of scorn, and to hear someone refer to themselves as such, it was all a bit confusing. And yet, this was only the beginning. The Internet was just a fuzzy dream on Al Gore's horizon. 2400 baud modems were all the rage. The bubble was still an un-chewed piece of Bubbleyum sitting in a wrapper on some venture capitalist's desk somewhere. The nerds still languished in their parent's basements watching mail ordered laser disks of Return of The Jedi. The future wasn't now. It was tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

While reading the novel Geek Love I was reminded of the origins of the term geek.

geek is now chiefly associated with student and computer slang; one probably thinks first of a computer geek. In origin, however, it is one of the words American English borrowed from the vocabulary of the circus, which was a much more significant source of entertainment in the United States in the 19th and early 20th century than it is now. . .The circus sideshow is the source of the word geek, "a performer who engaged in bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken."

- Dictionary.com

As many professions of old, the original talents of the geek have slowly passed into history. The name has been co-opted by a new generation who wash their hands with anti bacterial soap after brushing by a package of chicken breast thawing on the counter. Even tails of Ozzy Osborn biting off chicken heads are wildly exaggerated. The modern day geek gently sips the head of foam from their half-caf latte while nibbling on the top of a biscotti at the local Starbucks and worries about the dangers of the avian flu.

And yet I wonder, are geeks really that different than their carny ancestors? Are they that far detached from the sideshow? Have they just wiped the blood from their lips, washed their hair, hidden their retainers and stepped out of the basement into the light of day? Maybe somewhere deep inside they long for the sliderule and a pocket protector. Maybe all they really need is a live farm chicken and a carnival stage.