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FOR LOSERS ONLY
BITTER IRONY

March 10, 2005

Vivienne, an interactive companion accessible on powerful, “third-generation” cell phones, was recently introduced by the Hong Kong company Artificial Life as a high-maintenance, video-image “girlfriend” who goes on dates with you, kisses, speaks six languages, converses on 35,000 topics, accepts flowers and diamonds, and may even marry you (though you also acquire a troublesome mother-in-law). Vivienne so far is prudish (no nudity, no sex), owing to Artificial Life’s aim at marketing in modest cultures, but she will appear in Europe and some U.S. cities by the end of this year (at about $6 a month plus airtime). Said one Hong Kong videogame player characterizing Vivienne for

The New York Times

, “It’s a little bit for the losers.”







CHUTZPAH!



Porchia Bennett of Philadelphia was last visited by her father, Lester Trapp, when she was one, then virtually abandoned by her drug-addicted mother, Tiffany Bennett, at age two, to fall to the custody of Tiffany’s drug-addicted sister and the sister’s boyfriend, who lived in rat-infested squalor and who are now charged with killing Porchia at age three through starvation and physical abuse. In February, Trapp and his parents filed a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia for failing to protect Porchia (with Tiffany also entitled to share the proceeds as Porchia’s “beneficiary”).







MISSING THE POINT



In January, Richard Graybill, 42, pleaded guilty in Chester County, Pa., to unauthorized use of a vehicle. He had taken a car that had been parked, awaiting repairs, at a shopping center, but he was later discovered by the car’s owner when he happened to pull up to the drive-thru window at the Wendy’s restaurant where she worked. She confronted him, and he sped away, but he returned a few minutes later and tried to persuade her to sign over the title to him, in that he had put a lot of effort into fixing the car up after he took it.





LEAST COMPETANT PEOPLE



Richard Arredondo, 18, and two pals had to be rescued by sheriff’s personnel in California’s San Bernardino National Forest on Feb. 5 after getting lost while mountain biking; on Feb. 6, they went back in to retrieve their bikes, but again got lost and had to be rescued. And according to a study released in the Journal of Advanced Nursing in February, only 3 percent of people with nipple or genital body piercings sought professional health-care advice despite the fact that two-thirds eventually experience problems ranging from infections to interruptions in urinary flow.