First off, what you see above is the cover for that album, and it’s something we’re pretty happy with. All of the pictures you see there are hand drawn by me and Derek on crayons and construction paper. There’s certain individual pictures that we’re pretty happy with, even though they can’t really be seen well in the cover photo, so we might reveal shots of individual pages later on.

Next up, here is the final track list.

1. Scoops, The Natural Born Cuddler
2. Boys…Men…DUDES!
3. Foolish
4. A Great Time
5. Take Pictures
6. Olympic Donuts
7. Speed City Kitty
8. (Everyone’s Got) A Case Of The Glitches
9. You Are Marvelous
10. Rootbeer Baby
11. If Love Is A Fire, We Will Set This City Ablaze

Finally, here’s something I wrote up a while ago about the origin of our lovable friend, Scoops.

In the year 2015, a small technology company known as Excellence in Robotics Incorporated, or EIRI, began work on on a project known as the Synthetic Companion, or the SC. EIRI distinguished itself from other robotics corporations by shunning military contracts in favor of something much more important. They were interested in creating one of the world’s most precious resources: Friends.

Their first product in the SC line, model 00 turned out to be their most successful. His AI wasn’t complicated, but it didn’t need to be. They didn’t try to model his appearance off of the human form to make him more familiar, and instead opted for a stout and boxy appearance. As a result, he was relatable because he appealed to the old images, ingrained for generations, of how robots should look. Of how the future should look.

From the start, the SC’s creators had very clear ideas about how they wanted the SC to act. He wouldn’t speak any sort of identifiable language, as this might make him less appealing to non-English speakers or very young children. He would instead communicate in a single word, and use enunciation, emphasis, and movement to get his point across.

The dedicated psychologists working on the SC struggled to find an appropriate word. It needed to be mono-syllabic, and pleasing to the ears of people from multiple cultural and language backgrounds. The actual meaning of the word was meaningless, and in fact worked better if the definition was ambiguous. The word was simply the canvas on which the SC would paint his emotions and feelings. Development continued, and still no-one knew through what word the SC would communicate.

After a lot of scrapped plans and false starts, they finally got it right with revision P5. The full model number was SC-00-P5. And here, the scientists realized, was their precious word, The simple, audibly pleasing, monosyllabic word that he would use to communicate. This same word became his unofficial name. Scoops.

However, there was one more aspect to Scoops’ development, one steeped in legend more than factual events, still uttered in hushed tones by the former robotics workers at EIRI. The story goes late one night, a young scientist was working on the SC’s motherboard, soldering connections together. When attaching the final connection, there was a sudden, small arc of electricity across the circuit board, leaving a tiny, charred crater in the green surface. No one can really explain how this happened considering that there was no power going to the unit at the time.

Nevertheless, the young scientist was understandably frightened that he had ruined the prototype, and hurriedly put it back into the robot, and powered him on. From that day on, Scoops was different, in a way no one could explain. A little more eager, a little happier, a little more real. EIRI soon realized that they had stumbled on something extraordinary, something that they could not duplicate. They soon shut down all SC operations and converted their plant to manufacture winter clothing, all without changing the company’s name.

Only one employee still words for EIRI’s robotics division. That same young scientist, now in his 50’s. He is Scoops’ sole caretaker and maintenance technician, and they live together in a small town, somewhere in America. At this time, Scoops has only one primary objective:

Make the world a better place.

Expect a post like this for Gearhart later in the week.