I checked my iPhone yesterday and saw that I had a voicemail. I opened it and scanned the transcript before I listened to it.

Earlier in the week I had stopped by Three Rivers Market to check on an item they no longer carried; I wanted to know if I could order it. Randy said he would check and someone would get back to me. The voicemail was from Heather, who had the information I had requested.

The transcript read that while they no longer carried that specific type of Adam mommy, I could order it if I was willing to buy a full case — 8 boxes. When I called Heather back to confirm the order we had a good laugh about the transcription program’s butchering of the word edamame.

I was reminded of other computer translation programs and specifically of one example a friend of mine posted on Facebook. Someone had taken the words to “Rocky Top” and run them through several different languages and then back to English. The result was surreal. I tried the same thing just now with a different song:

Here we go

Come on, hand, days

So it’s open

Play a new game

This is the current laughing boy

It thrives well

In the morning, blasphemed

In the heart

The above is, of course, the first verse to “Brown-Eyed Girl.” It appears that even with all the advances in AI there are still some things that work much better with a human touch.

By the way, my order of Adam mommy should be here within the next few days. I’m looking forward to it; we ran out just last week.