Mojo Jojo -- Microsoft User

Wednesday, 31 May 2000

I've spent a good part of my work day using Microsoft Word. As always (except when I'm using trusty ol' version 5.1), this was an inspirational experience, but not the good kind.

During my visit to Seattle, the lovely and talented Mimi turned me on (wait for the rest of the sentence, please) to The Powerpuff Girls, the animated adventures of three super-powered moppets. My favorite character on the show is their main enemy, Mojo Jojo, a super-intelligent chimp who builds giant destructive robots in his bid to conquer the world. And isn't that a perfect metaphor for humanity? Aren't we, as a species, just a hyper-smart monkey, clever with tools, bent on world domination?

Mojo's most charming feature is his dialog. He's got a deep, super-villain voice, and he keeps up a constant stream of redundant threatening chatter -- "I, Mojo Jojo, will destroy the Powerpuff Girls! And when they have been destroyed they will be defeated, and I will have defeated them, and I will have won! And then I will rule the world, because no-one will be able to stop me, and the world will be ruled be me, Mojo Jojo, who will be the only ruler!..." Even when he's making breakfast: "One egg left! For a nutritious breakfast, two eggs is the minimum requirement, and I have but one, which is much less than two, and it is two that I need. Curses!..."

Anyway, I've figured out why Mojo talks that way -- he's used to using Microsoft Office Assistants! These are the annoying animated characters that pop up whenever you ask a recent version of a Microsoft Office app for help, and give you a dialog box to type a question into, and then give you an answer to some question that shares some number of keywords with the question you asked, but isn't what you want to know. I came pretty close to going Mojo this afternoon. "I want to renumber the pages of this document so that they start at 1 on this page! Change the page ordering so that page one is this one! It is this page, and not the first, that I wish to be numbered as the first! Curses!" It's enough to bring one to create giant rampaging destructo-bots.