Speech Recognition Disaster

I invested a fair amount of time “training” Microsoft’s speech recognition software to translate what I was saying into a microphone onto a page of word processed text. As long as I’m careful when I speak, use a good quality microphone, and have it positioned just right, and all the planets are in alignment, it usually works pretty well. However, you can get some pretty unusual results if you do things like clear your throat or mumble, laugh, curse, or speak in a weird, halting accent. I tried reading Rudyard Kipling’s “Gunga Din” in a ridiculously poor cockney accent and what I got is reproduced verbatim below. It’s actually a pretty vivacious piece of writing and seems to have meaning of its own. If you know the poem well (although I did recite only selected lines, entirely from memory), you can occasionally catch a phrase or two, but on the whole what shows up below is pretty much a creation of Microsoft Office’s sick computer brain. Also, this text your reading now was also produced with the speech recognition software and only had to be cleaned up for about 2 minutes longer than it took to speak it.

So without further delay, ladies and gentlemen, excerpts from a dramatic reading of “Gunga Din” as told to Microsoft Office Speech Recognition:

You may call a tin NBA unequal was safe area and sent to pay for its in warden
Schulte it the when it comes to see that said you do you all would “and you take
the demand beats it means his goal at that inches Sunday Tom well all used to
spend the time a seven of a mad Steve McQueen of all that that face cramp the
finest men on nail was all regimental beastie gloom to Dean it was deemed didn’t
didn’t you even with a devotee of been you get mana wall to put some join CNN
all merrihew this minute if you didn’t fizzle on it going again all seem that to
owned in the base ways clone way it’s always Bobo drew a new column teen of the
squad on the kells didn’t drink the called themselves us well get this week it
as from: good demand tin tin tan they’ll walk barricades human flights you
bought from different gold that’s major you open a man and Aryan: the DN.

Some of this shit is downright artistic: “spend the time of a seven of a mad Steve McQueen” and “owned in the base ways clone way it’s always Bobo” are phrases of epic poetry that will withstand the test of time. I don’t care how many monkeys you have typing for an eternity, they couldn’t have produced this.

Career Opportunities

So your high school occupational aptitude test said your were best suited to be a toilet bowl brush? Don’t despair, this is the roaring aughties – today’s economy is busting open with entry level opportunity. In China. But check out the following up and coming occupations, to be occupied right here in America’s hottest metropolitan markets, by Americans. The position’s incumbent? You!

Drive-Through Photo Lab Attendant

The machine is down. You look like a dorkwad in your little hut. The nearest bathroom is in the McDonald’s at the other end of the parking lot, and if you close for even five minutes, that will be when the regional jerkwad will come and take away all of your Service Stars for the month. And so what – it’s not like anybody ever drops off a stinking roll of film. Hasn’t this company heard of the Internet??? That’s why this is an excellent turnkey franchise opportunity: your very own drive-through marijuana dealership.

Serial Rapist

Crime pays! But it’s the intense psychosexual gratification that keeps today’s serial rapist on the job. Says Roger S., grandmother-rapist for 24 years (with a six-year sabbatical for an unrelated breaking-and-entering beef): “there’s not as much money in the robbery and carjacking sidelines of serial rape as you might think – it’s in the endorsements, really – and the variable hours can make a rewarding home life difficult. But I wouldn’t trade my stocking mask for a desk job – never!”

Bottle Cap Collector

Dahlia R. is always on the job – and loving every moment! “You can send them in somewhere for cool prizes. And they make good boats.” Dahlia has apprenticed and worked at her trade for nearly a third of her nine year old life. Her personal collection of caps is spread throughout her parents’ home. They can be found in the laundry, under sofa cushions, in the dog food bin. “In some of them, they still smell like Coke. If you’re real hungry or thirsty, and you have enough, you could probably keep alive by licking them until your mom brought you something to eat and drink.”

Focus Group Moderator

Americans love to talk. You can’t get them to shut up! And when it comes to learning how to sell shit to them, American companies will pay to listen. Here’s where you come in: Put 3 to 4 Senior Exec VP’s behind a one-way mirror, put 8 to 12 homemakers in front of that mirror, get them bitches talking fabric softener, and watch the money roll in!