Wednesday, February 25, 2009

DBC 1/7

Edward de Bono, previously best known for inviting us to wear toothbrushes in our shirt pockets, has developed his own special code. Like all of Mr. de Bono's ideas, it doesn't seem to be in response to any obvious defect in the English language. Indeed, this week's message expresses disappointment that, rather than coming up with craaazy new ideas, people only ever "solve problems." The de Bono Code (DBC) certainly has no such shortcomings. On first examination, it's hard to see whether any problem could be solved by talking in code.

The DBC
bears some resemblance to the international maritime code. Much like means "I wish to communicate with you," "DBC 5/10" means "Thank you very much for your comments. They are much appreciated. Thanks for taking the trouble to communicate with me." Similarly banal phrases make up most of the rest of the de Bono Code banks, divided into such thrilling categories as "negotiation", "response", "attention directing", and "meetings".

While I'm sure any meeting would be livened up by judicious recourse to the Edward de Bono Official Code Book, the DBC truly shines in section 14, codes for ending relationships. Whichever way you want to leave your lover, there's a code for it. From
"This relationship has run its course. It was never meant to be a long-running event. It was great, but now it's over"
to
"The plain truth is that I have met someone else. It is best you hear this directly from me,"
painful situations can be streamlined with the de Bono Code. If breaking up with your girlfriend requires too much talking and feelings and crying, or if you're just strapped for time, text (or tweet!) "DBC 14/9". If she knows her DBC, she'll get the message.

By contrast, the section on moods, No. 10, is disappointing. Mr. de Bono notes:
"Very few people find it easy to indicate their mood to others. The most people manage is 'I am tired' or 'I am under pressure'. To this might be added: 'I got to bed late last night' (meaning 'I have a hangover')."
It's definitely illuminating to know that when Edward de Bono goes to bed late, he goes to bed drunk, but the ensuing mood codes, focused on feelings of happiness, anxiety and sadness, provide no way to express in DBC that you are hungover. It seems like being hungover is one circumstance in which it would be helpful to describe your mood in an 8-character shorthand, but the DBC does not provide us with the tools to do it. On the other hand, Mr. de Bono is always soliciting ideas from his reading audience. Let's help him out!
  • 10/25: "I drank 2 bottles of wine last night and 8 shots of Jaegermeister. My vision is fading in and out, and I have a splitting headache. I'm going to lie in my office with the lights off."
  • 10/26: "I have been up for 5 days straight on a crystal meth binge. I am full of energy and confidence, but increasingly worried whether there are bugs crawling on me"
  • 10/27: "I am sleepwalking under the influence of Ambien. I have limited awarness of my surroundings, and poor motor control. Please don't let me operate heavy machinery."
  • 10/28: "I am high on PCP, and inexplicably enraged. You are nothing to me, and as a god-like creature, I can destroy you with a flick of my wrist. Beware!"
If these code words defuse even one awkward situation, Edward de Bono can consider his system a success. What it would look like as a failure, I'm not sure.

Digitalis

"Digital," as you will know by heart if you watch TV commercials, "is better." I suppose it's a matter of taste. As the reluctant owner of a digital/analog signal converter, I'm torn. The converter itself is actually quite charming, a pleasant addition to the robot family that lives on top of the TV set. About the size of a paperback book, it has one LED and one button (I don't know what the button does.) and it draws 7 watts, a cute amount of power for any appliance. And while I no longer get PBS, I do get an NBC affiliate that seems to play nothing but women's winter sports.

The signal, however, is disappointing. As the DTV public service announcements have only recently started mentioning, you need an antenna array the size of McMurdo Station's
in order to get decent reception. Without it, (and we only have rabbit ears made of a coat hanger and a bra underwire) you get static, and not wholesome analog static, either. Digital static, like a scratched DVD, has all the sinister qualities of a malfunctioning robot. With stuttering; melting, pixellated faces; and large blocks of dead, signal-less screen, it doesn't generate faith in the digital revolution. It generates a vague fear of Skynet.

For now, at least, there's still analog broadcasts, delivered in delicious sinusoidal waves. But "on June 12th," as our DTV catechism has it, the bandwidths used to carry analog transmissions will be gone... and like contrary clockwork, hipsters will have found a new way to be hip. "Analog television just had a warmer feel," they might say. "DTV is so crisp, so cold and soulless."

Recreating analog broadcasts might present a problem, but where there's a will to ironically relive the past, there's a way. Look for cool kids to set up pirate radio transmitters entirely within their homes, converting digital television back into a low-wattage VHF signal for their personal enjoyment. Just rig up a (re)-broadcast antenna in your kitchen, tap your household appliances to provide that familiar, comforting interference, and all that's left is to settle in with some snowy, flickering reruns of Green Acres and drink your ironic drinks as you reflect that the FCC has it all wrong: It doesn't get any better than analog.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Twit

The word has come down from internet central: Twitter is it. Now, I'm not exactly sure what Twitter is. I gather it involves mobile phones, and text messaging, and I know that politicians use it as a novel way to make the same old political blunders, and to tell us what they had for breakfast and whether they went to the gym, which you might consider a "blunder" of an entirely different nature.

"Tweets", as they are called, are limited to 140 characters, a length that encourages either unusually florid sentences, or unusually spare modern poetry. For reference, that's about as long as the average sentence by Samuel Johnson, two thirds as long as "Buffalo Bill's/ Defunct", and even a little shorter than "This Is Just To Say", by William Carlos Williams. I guess you could tweet the whole poem without spaces, but it might fall short of the vision of the original.


Its appeal to clownish old men and suppositious modern poets aside, Twitter seems to be just the newest way that technology has invented for me to be a bad friend. With cell phones, The Facebook, online photo galleries, YouTube videos, cell phones that operate as walkie-talkies (I also don't understand that one) and text messages defining what it is to be a friend, and now Twitter, I am left stranded deeper and deeper in the cold. I'm shut out of the community of hip young people -- and the politicians who represent them -- all of whom know what one another had for breakfast.

As this twittering, tweeting vanguard of friendship passes me by on the road of ever-accelerating computer-aided amiability, I can almost see the coming technological singularity, a hypothesized date at which artificial intelligence will be able to befriend itself, with superhuman
interest in breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, and needless to say, billions of characters per tweet.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Ugly Holds Its Own

Look at models long enough and you realize they're all so pretty. Why this should be though is a mystery. Models for cosmetics, sure. They're selling a face. But this probably being Fashion Week, I'm left to wonder why everyday high-fashion clothes-horse models have such pleasant features. Sometimes they veer a little too far towards "angry alien", but by and large their complexions are clear and their features are symmetrical. The lank bony frame is probably a must, but faces are a canvas of infinite variety.

There's room here for the designer who's prepared to admit that during Fashion Week, there's no bad publicity. Most fashion designers, they tell me, purposely make hideous garments to run interference for the more serious offerings. Oddly, the models themselves are never called on for heavy duty in this playbook of the ugly/not ugly. Why not hire models with severe acne, models with one eye, models with oozing cold sores, balding models and hirsute models? Models with stitches and models with scars. I'm prepared to hear people say that a fashion show isn't a freak show, but I'm not prepared to believe it.

I Shall Wear The Bottoms Of My Trousers Rolled

It's Fashion Week (I think), and that can only mean that once again, I have no idea how the real economy works. Again and again, they explain to me how twiggy ladies walking down the runway, wearing clothing that can charitably be described as hilariously ugly, can actually influence what real people wear. Almost nobody, I learn, wears the clothing actually on the runway. But, they tell me patiently, the themes and patterns and ideas that are invoked during Fashion Week (I'm not sure exactly what that is) can trickle down to our own prole casings. Just like last year's crop of post-modernist poems is a good harbinger of what to expect on this year's Hallmark cards.

For instance, I saw a designer whose entire output seemed to consist of big boxy David Byrne suits. We all know that nobody is going to wear those -- on account of they are hilariously ugly -- so what could he have meant? Maybe he just screwed up, or maybe the joke is on me and that's what's really in store. But I think this fashion designer is taking a leaf from the great poets. Boxy suits as boxy suits is a little obvious, he might say. Perhaps the boxy suits are a metphor for some boxy pattern, perhaps check or houndstooth,
or maybe they symbolize some headier, more profound fashion trend that we can only guess at. It's a ritualistic industry, and I'm not the one to deconstruct it. Just remember that despite the outwardly superficial gloss, as Fashion Week draws to a close -- or is it only beginning? -- there are unfathomable layers of meaning under those clothes.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Wikipedia Sentence for Today

"Louis XIV is popularly known as the Sun King (French: le Roi Soleil) because he was the source of light for his people and for Europe's nobles and rulers."