Angry Robot

I’m feeling increasingly compelled to formally name Angry Robot. “Who?” you ask.

me

My wife gave me Angry Robot about 2 years ago – I think he might have been a toy from a Happy Meal (so many layers in that already). His head actually spins. On the one side, you get Angry Robot, with the requisite angry red face, frowning triangular mouth and arching, indignant brows. He’s the one that routinely sits on my desk, glaring, his mental voice bubble loudly proclaiming “Type your dissertation, Fool!” while he shakes his mobile fist (it really does move).

Oddly his other face, which you might have expected to be a smiling, encouraging face, is actually green (as in Go!), with a straight line for a mouth, and slightly 0-ed eyes. Usually, I have this face to the wall, because that’s where it seems to want to look. This side is clearly cowed by Angry Robot and only offers a slight shrug, mental bubble saying “He’s right, you know.” Resigned Robot (or, occasionally, Mundane, Get a Backbone Robot) is somehow more depressing that his rambunctious counterpart. Thus, the face to the wall.

Somehow, they seem like an unlikely conjoined twin replica of Nick Hornby’s two side-kick characters from High Fidelity – Dick and Barry. We might remember Dick as the guy who got pushed around a lot, who was quiet, not quite sad but simply … mundane (in the movie version, he’s the one who ended up with Darlene Conner from Roseanne). Barry was the jerk who screamed at customers. Somehow, I’m not sure Barry has quite the *oomph* that Angry Robot deserves in a name. Resigned Robot – he seems fine with the name he has. Of course, he wouldn’t say otherwise.