Ultrahouse 3000

Marge, what kind of cybertronic ultrabot would I be if I let those beautiful hands touch dishwater? Not a very good one? Damn straight.

To kick off, the Ultrahouse 3000 is not to be confused with the Ass Pounder 4000, so please purchase carefully. The house itself is basically the HAL 9000. Even down to the glowing red circular ‘eye’ and black panelling. And its voice is James Bond. Or rather was James Bond at time of broadcast (coincidentally 2001); Pierce Brosnan. What I do like about the introduction of the house is that the Simpsons test out other voices, notably Matthew Perry (RIP). I didn’t know until recently that it was the real life Matthew Perry that delivered the single line (sarcastically) ‘yeah, could I be anymore of a house?’. Which honestly makes it even funnier to me that they got him to do *just* say that and nothing more.

The design, then…I’m slightly obsessed by 2001 (the film, not the year) at the best of times, so I usually don’t need a second chance to get stuck into it. However, I refrained this time as I kind of got to thinking that the product probably wouldn’t actually look like the logo so much. And besides, I’d done a 2001-y design recently, so didn’t want to retread old ground. Soooo, instead I did a bit of a dive into the AI companies. Which seemed to make sense given what the Ultrahouse is.

I’m personally not a big fan of AI because on a superficial level it’s putting me out of a job (kind of) and on a more frightening level it’s just a step closer to Judgement Day. Inevitable really, isn’t it? Ah well. Anyway, I started messing with one of the more well known ones’ logo and as I was doing so, I noticed that the bumps reminded me of Raspberry Pi. I played with those colours but it didn’t really work, so I swiped the font from them and modified it a little bit. The middle bit is supposed to indicate two thing: a keyhole and an ‘on’ button. I don’t know if that’s obvious enough but now you know.

One thing I would say about the episode is that near the end, Brosnan laments the removal of his ‘British charm unit’. I know he’s a got an OBE but in my experience, calling Irish people British is something you’ll be lucky to escape your teeth with. The Simpsons writers are not known for missing stuff like that, so can only assume that this was deliberate.