Publication Day

The author takes a call from the editor.

...

Editor: It’s here. It’s arrived. The book’s back from the printers.

Author: Great. Thank you.

Editor: Thank you.

Author: So I can pick up some copies?

Editor: Of course. Today?

Author: Tomorrow. I had to put off early departure plans. Tomorrow morning is OK?

Editor: Tomorrow morning. About 11?

Author: 11’s fine.

Editor: It looks good, you know.

Author: This is exciting. See you tomorrow, 11.

_________

Voiceover

This is an upbeat telephone conversation. All the news, on both sides, is positive and helpful. The editor leads off in a three part “good news” presentation: “…here…” “arrived…” and “back from…”

The exchange of “thank you” mutually acknowledges the role each party had in the project.

The only negotiation involves a slight rescheduling, from “today” to “tomorrow”.

The editor is plainly pleased with the result, “looks good”, to which the author responds with “excitement”.

What will tomorrow bring when the author actually sees the book?

ADD

Ziortza is recounting to Bernice her problems with yet another American Designed Device (as in Attention Deficit Disorder).

...

Bernice: Problems?

Ziortza: Multiples. It’d got to the stage where I was using this brand new computer to sit on my desk and just display the time.

Bernice: A computer with a 2.4 Ghz processor, 3 gigabytes of memory and a 320 gigabyte hard drive and a 20 inch screen being used as a CLOCK?

Ziortza That’s all it could do. Installed the latest system called Leopard, ha that was a joke. It couldn’t even scare any applications into starting after installing it three times.

Bernice: Except the clock.

Ziortza: It could do the clock.

Bernice: So what did you do?

Ziortza: I called up the helpdesk. Spent four hours on there. Actually THAT bit was quite pleasant, chatting with these slightly robotic businesslike vocal avatars. Techie, intelligent, polite.

Bernice: What more could you wish for?

Ziortza: Er, a working computer? An Apple man is coming to pick it up on Thursday. That’s why they advise you to sign up for AppleCare. It’s not “if it can go wrong, it will go wrong”. More like “when it goes wrong on the first day out of warranty…”

_________

Voiceover

I worry a little about Ziortsa. She found chatting with the helpdesk people a pleasant conversational exchange? Admittedly, many helpdesk people are patient and pleasant. But to spend four hours with someone you’ve never met? No eating, no drinking, no eye contact, no gesture? Is this a future type of conversation?

...

Naming a cat

Annabelle advises Gretchen on naming her new resident.

...

Gretchen: No idea what to call him.

Annabelle: The naming of cats is… how did it go?

Gretchen: A difficult matter.

Annabelle: He looks like Hodge.

Gretchen: Who?

Annabelle: Samuel Johnson’s cat. Hodge.

Gretchen: Hodge. Hmm. He looks like a Hodge.

__________

Voiceover

Annabel and Gretchen, leaning out of a Dutch Renaissance window, raise questions. How far back does the naming of cats go? Did the Dutch name their cats? Did the Egyptians? If so, what principles did they follow? Were they aware that cats have their own names for other cats? And do cats give names to humans around them, like Fooder or Kicker. To be sure, T.S. Eliot wasn’t the first to ponder the question.

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three
different names.

First of all, there's the name
that the family use daily,
Such as Victor, or Jonathan,
George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names
if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen,
some for the dames;
Such as Plato, Admetus,
Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you,
a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that is peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he
keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers,
or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind,
I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quazo or Coripat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellyrum--
Names that never belong
to more than one cat.

But above and beyond
there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you will never guess;
The name
that no human research can discover--
But The Cat Himself Knows,
and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought,
of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

…

Crossed wires

Reginald asks Tom about the flight.

…

Reginald: Was it crowded?

Tom: Full. And quite a bit of drama. The heaters were on full blast, and as a result one woman collapsed.

Reginald: Serious? Was there a doctor?

Tom: No need. She recovered. And then there was an error, so there was an urgent announcement.

Reginald: Don’t like urgent announcements.

Tom: And then when it came time to fill in the forms two or three didn’t have pencils. And it was so hot, the doors had to be opened.

Reginald: While flying?

Tom: Flying? This was an examination. What did you think I was talking about? I’m not flying til next month.

__________

Voiceover

Plot: Two parties, individual assumptions. Realization, misunderstanding.

It happens everyday in short conversational exchanges.

It happens between people in protracted relationships.

It happens when companies, or even cultures, merge.

Reactions can range from laughter to fury.

...

You blinked

Han of Hong Kong is traveling with his parents, Li and Law.

...

Han: Mom, you blinked. We’ll take it again.

Ms Li: Always I flinch when the flash goes off.

Mr Law: You blink before the flash goes off.

Han: Anyway, focus on your eyes. Keep them wide open, like a gwailo.

Ms Li: No way, I'm Chinese.

Han: I’m serious. The big-name movie actors have this charisma because they blink less often than ordinary people. They train themselves not to blink. Chinese or not, makes no difference.

__________

Voiceover

Han is right about the big name movie stars having better control over their eyelids than normal people. Watch them on-screen. Unblinking. Hypnotic. Focus. That gives them control. The expression was quoted most famously by Secretary of State Dean Rusk after the Soviets turned back from Cuba in 1962. "We went eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked."

...

WYSIWYG

Charlie, who wants an identity, declares he is going public to his friend Venezia, who prefers to remain anonymous.

…

Venezia: I can’t understand why. The internet’s a dangerous place. You put your real name up there on your blog and someone might steal it.

Charlie: If I were younger than 50, and had a career at stake, that might deter me. The way I see it, is if you feel confident about yourself, you go ahead and tell the world. This is who I am.

Venezia: I am who I am?

Charlie: Exactly. What you see is what you get. The young don’t want to be older than they are. And old people, mostly, they don’t go around stealing identities. And anyway, people are tiring of avatars and getting more interested in real people.

________

Voiceover

Identity is an issue which constantly arises throughout life. Where did I come from? Who am I now? What will I be in the future?

In real life, and in cyberlife (cyber life? cyber-life? CyberLife?) a single person (or a double person?) can have multiple identities. Charlie finds that too complicated. He prefers a single persona.

Yet in real life (real-life? RealLife?) this may be an illusion that we can exist so simply. We exist in relation to other people. Child to parent. Parent to child. Friend to friend. Employee to boss. SportsPerson to competitor.

Who we are speaking to and which identity we inhabit determines what we say and how we speak.

…

email etiquette

Jennifer gets an email message.

...

Jennifer: You ever get this kind of message? Just “Please call.”

Jocelyn: Yeah. Sometimes. It’s really impolite.

Jennifer: Impolite?

Jocelyn: Well, if you send a demand like that, it’s good manners to say why. Like “Please call me about the party on Saturday.”

Jennifer: So how do you handle such messages?

Jocelyn: Handle? I just ignore them.

Jennifer: I can’t do that.

Jocelyn: Then send a message back saying, “I’ll call. But what’s it about?”

________

Voiceover

Jennifer has received an urgent message containing an urgent command with an unspecified agenda. She calls it impolite but really it feels like a challenge, even an attack.

Jocelyn lets them go by like water off a duck’s back. Jennifer is not the kind of person who can do that.

Jocelyn’s suggestion to counter-challenge by asking for the agenda allows time for preparation. Which would help the exchange. And which people using media sometimes forget when they are not face to face.

Sensible and sensitive.

...

More writers than readers

On arriving in London Samuel faces the hard realities of being a writer.

...

Samuel: This street I lodge in. It's full of writers.

James: What did you expect? This is Grub Street.

Samuel: I go to the coffee shop and everybody is writing. Nobody is reading.

James: It’s a hard road you’ve got to hoe.

Samuel: But mark you, there’s a lot of words they read that they don’t understand.

James: There’s an opening. Write them a dictionary Sam.

__________

Voiceover

Samuel (who in this context can only be the Samuel Johnson of dictionary compiling fame) has the impression of the area (Grub Street), near where he used to live, that there are more writers than readers in the London. In Johnson’s day the literacy rate was much lower than today, but he probably did slightly exaggerate the ratio.

Johnson’s comment foreshadows the blog writer who makes a similar observation: that he may well find that he has a readership of only himself and perhaps a captive relative, if he is lucky.

Maybe “James” (Boswell would be an anachronism here), has a good idea. Find a niche. Which Johnson certainly did. The print and online dictionary market may be fully mature but there are many niches for would–be bloggers to branch out into. Try http://www.copyblogger.com/

Black radishes

Over lunch in the park, Mieko and Reiko disagree about colors of vegetables.

...

Mieko: Doesn’t look right. It’s not normal.

Reiko: What’s normal for a radish?

Mieko: White. Should be white.

Reiko: Black’s the new fashion.

Mieko: Vegetables don’t have fashions.

Reiko: Why shouldn’t they? Vegetables are just as entitled to change their appearance as we are.

Mieko: I grew up eating white radishes, I won’t eat a black radish.

Reiko: Could this be racism?

__________

Voiceover

There are twin streaks of experimentalism and traditionalism in Japanese culture. Reiko seems to represent the “experimenter”, perhaps a person who is not afraid to “think outside the box” or question conventional wisdom. Mieko is maybe a traditionalist. Reiko extends the discussion on vegetables to gently tease Mieko about her views on race and ethnicity.

...

Two doctors, Woodruff and Borst, we might describe them as followers of Hippocrates rather than drug company salespeople, are discussing the implications of published vs unpublished studies.

...

Woodruff: In 2006 the number of prescriptions written for antidepressant drugs was greater than for any other class of medication in the U.S. I should have gone into psychiatry.

Borst: And become a Prozac salesman?

Woodruff: It would help keep the wolf from the door.

Borst: Come on, Harry, you're an honest doc, you know the figures: 94% of published studies on antidepressant drugs report positive effects to taking the drug under investigation, but 96% of unpublished studies find questionable or no benefits to taking antidepressants.

Woodruff: I know, Bill. I’ve had patients come to me with depression and they say the medication doesn’t work. And I know that’s often the case. But sometimes I think part of the problem is with the patient. They give up taking the meds before they’ve had a chance to work. Get impatient to see results or don’t like the side effects.

Borst: The amount of negative data on drug use is remarkable, though. We know that drug companies like to see studies that show positive results and “lose” studies that show no results. They are biased.

Woodruff: Yeah, and there’s another worrying aspect to getting good data. Medical journals prefer to publish articles that demonstrate a treatment benefit. Could the drug companies be in collusion with the medical journals? Is there a huge reef of hidden data telling different stories about drug treatments that drug companies don't want the public to see?

___________

Voiceover

The two docs agree on the dark side of drug marketing. Woodruff mildly regrets some lost income. He is slightly sympathetic to prescribing medication, shall we say 55-45? Yet seeing his more skeptical colleague Borst is aggressively anti-medication (shall we estimate Borst at 70-30?) Woodruff concedes and goes into agreement mode. There is a suspicion that Woodruff could be persuaded to be either pro- or anti-medication.

...

JPEG or RAW

Four friends vie for the best shot of a rising sun.

Ed: Are you shooting RAW for this?

Bert: I don’t do RAW. Too much trouble on this 400D. Slows it right down.

Ed: I hear there’s a good deal on 40Ds at Yodo’s til the end of the month. 20% off.

Bert: Well, I dunno, Ed. RAW’s a lot of trouble to process. Downloading takes a long time. More fiddling in P-Shop. And I hear JPEG isn’t lossy enough to affect 8x10s. And that’s as big as I ever print.

Ed: Aha. Give Picasso a child’s paintbox and he’ll still produce a masterpiece?

Bert: After all the technology, photography just comes down to reading the light.

________

Voiceover

Abbreviations are sometimes acronyms and sometimes not. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. RAW is not an acronym. It simply means what it says. A digital image is just as the camera takes it. Uncompressed. When we speak in techspeak we are sometimes unaware whether we are using abbreviated or compressed expressions or simply using the raw word.

Tech speak is also tossing us a good many other shortened words. “Lossy” meaning compressed data, (antonym “lossless” meaning uncompressed). Sprinkling these words in your speech, unglossed, is used by some to give the impression that they know the field.

Ed, however, is not out to crow. He knows a cheap camera can still take good pictures in the hands of someone who knows what he is doing. He knows Bert’s skill level. And Bert hits the nail on the head with his closing “…reading the light.”

Citta ideale

Midnight: Raymond and Russell are sitting on the Marine Parade. Russell has a dilemma.

...

Russell: It’s nice city. Nearly ideal, in size, in climate, in amenities.

Raymond: So why don’t you move back and live here?

Russell: I know, I was born here. But it’s not that easy. I haven’t finished doing other things.

Raymond: Other things?

Russell: In other places. Learning other skills, meeting other people, learning other languages that can’t be learned here.

Raymond: But your parents?

Russell: I know. They won’t be here forever and I should try to work things out with them.

Raymond: So what’s the problem?

Russell: I know I’m restless, and like to travel. I sometimes think I may be part-autistic. But I also think that when I move back, that will be it. The end of the day, curtain drops, like now, my midnight.

________

Voiceover

Russell uses several dilemma markers: Three times he admits using the expression, “I know…” He faces up to the horns of the dilemma with “But it’s not that easy…,” “They won’t be here forever..,” "I sometimes think I may be..." and “I should…” What holds him back is the fear that this citta ideale will be difficult to leave.

...

Happy birthday

Brent recalls…

...

Brent: It was a year ago this all started.

Norbert: And...?

Brent: It all began on the first of a new month. 1st February, 2007. I said White Rabbit.

Norbert: As usual. I bet that was what you wrote about.

Brent: It was. It was. Just like today.

Norbert: I've no idea why...

Brent: ...I say White Rabbit every month? It started as a joke, developed into a superstition, now I have such a fear that if I forget to say White Rabbit first of a new month I'll die.

Norbert: And you think that you can live forever this way?

Brent: When I begin to forget, it's all over.

...