Equus Asinus

Rubí Donkey writes her Rubí Tuesday blogue.

Today I am going to consider the way pooters affect all our lives and how they make things more complicated for people and donkeys, but first we need to understand why pooter alrithmogs will never be a match for old proverbs.

Yesterday evening Morris was braying for his supper and the Peasant said it was only five o’clock, so that was enough of his ridiculous noise and he’d have to wait until six o’clock.

“A donk in need is a donk indeed,” I said, quoting old wisdom from the Book of Equine Proverbs, and the Peasant was so moved by this appeal that he brought our supper early.

This incident just goes to show that the ancient ways have not been entirely replaced by digital alrithmogs and it is up to us donkeys to ensure that humans do not let machines control our lives. You cannot eat alrithmogs, so what’s the point of them?

Do you know, even our manure gets entered on a Ministry of Agriculture computer? Every year the Peasant has to go into the local ministry office in La Vila Joiosa and submit his forms for manure control, showing how many kilos of manure went off the registered donkey land each month, where did it go, and what is the ministry registration number of the land in Orxeta that it was put on! All this information is entered on the ministry computers and some self-important Digital Poo Tsar sits at a desk and surveys his poo flow charts and looks forward to an annual six-figure bonus if the poo has increased since last year.

Morris donkey reads the interweb and I writties my blogue every Tuesday, and we take computers or leave them. But the Peasant’s identity has now been completely stolen by his computer! In order to get his Spanish citizenship the Peasant had to go to the town hall and apply to have his identity turned into an e-dentity, so he is only recognized by the Ministerio de Justicia website if his computer is talking on his behalf.

After fourteen months of doing all the tests and gathering all the papers he needed, with special watermarks and apostilles and stamps, the Peasant found that the Ministerio de Justicia computer was quite happy with the scans of these documents and all the important papers are still on the Peasant’s desk. Nobody actually needed them and they cost a lot of money! The two computers are talking happily to each other and they don’t need the Peasant either. So he is now suffering an e-dentity crisis because he thinks his computer will become a Spanish citizen and he is now irrelevant in the process.

This has all helped to raise Aitana’s hopes that she might be able to apply to the Ministerio de Agricultura and become a horse. Matilde strongly disagrees and she insists she did not give birth to a horse, so the Ministerio de Agricultura can write what it likes on their didical alrithmogs but Aitana was born a donkey and will always be a donkey.

Morris says that is rubbish and anyone has the right to change into something else these days. He said that he read on the interweb that everyone feels they were born as the wrong thing, so it’s only right they get it changed and become the thing they think they were meant to be.

“If you do your bray-barking, mother,” he said, “and you think you are meant to be a dog, there should be no objection and you can just apply to be a dog. That’s cool.”

“I don’t want to be a dog,” I replied. Even as I said it, I felt that I was looking increasingly uncool. Maybe Aitana is right to think she is a horse? Or should we all become chickens… ? Are chickens cool?

“I’m going to become an edimepiologist,” announced Morris. “It seems every third person in the interweb is an edimepiologist these days.”

“What are the other two people, if every third one is an edimepiologist?”

“Trolls,” he said.

Just then, the Peasant arrived. We asked him if he was Spanish yet. He said not quite yet but he was eating gazpacho and drinking sangria and he hoped this would be further evidence for the Ministerio de Justicia. Morris said his computer was slowing down and could he have more RAM in it?

“I’ll tell you what to put in your computer to improve the memory,” I said. The Peasant, Matilde and Morris looked at me in surprise as I didn’t usually suggest technical things.

“What?” asked Morris.

“An e-lephant.”