Entries from August 2007 ↓

Everyone at work took a Myers-Briggs personality test last month. The idea was that the tests would help us understand each other, so that we’d all get along better and group-hug more.

Because there’s a definite lack of group hugging at my office. Also individual hugging. In fact, hugging is pretty much out, by order of HR. So really what the personality tests do is alert us to potential group hugs that will always go unrequited, because random hugging isn’t compatible with job retention.

I’m sure that sounds kind of frustrating to the layman. Really, it isn’t. The mere possibility of a hug, the ability to see the emotional hole where a hug should be, is enough to bring joy into a workplace. A weak sort of threadbare yearning joy, sure. But joy nonetheless.

None of this really applies to me, anyway. I didn’t take the test, so I’m not sure what I am. But here are the things I could be, according to Myers-Briggs:

• Introverted/Extroverted
• Sensing/Intuition
• Thinking/Feeling
• Judging/Perceiving

These are dichotomies. So I could be, say, an ISTF (an Introverted Sensing Thinking Judger) or an ESFP (an Extroverted Sensing Feeling Perceiver). But I cannot be an ISITFJ — because you can’t think and feel at the same time, obviously, nor can you simultaneously sense and intuit. You also can’t rearrange the letters. So, if I were an ISTF, I couldn’t go around saying I’m a FIST — sort of stomping around and roaring LOOK AT ME I’M A FIST GOD DAMN IT and pounding on walls and cars and stuff — because, first of all, that’s not what a sensing thinking introvert would do, and, second, the Myers Briggs people are joyless pedants who would sue me if I tried to improvise with their precious system.

But really, the system is silly. Honestly: what’s with all the dichotomies? Who the hell thinks OR feels? I don’t think I’ve ever had a thought that wasn’t tinged with some sort of emotion. And sense robbed of intuition is just as hollow as intuition robbed of sense. Bah.

I could go on. But I won’t, because it’s all very frustrating. Instead, I will invent my own personality test. I will call it the Vogue-Caterwaul Personality Test.

Here are the categories:

• Snorting/Guffawing/Chortling
• Singing/Caterwauling/Ululating/Gargling
• Liking/Loving/Lusting/Adoring
• Farting/Belching/Sneezing/Wheezing
• Waltzing/Vogueing/Flailing/Electric-Sliding
• Sipping/Gulping/Slurping/Sputtering
• Hating/Loathing/Despising

You’ll notice a couple of things about my system right off the bat. First, it’s awesome. Second, it’s got a lot more options. There are seven different categories, and they don’t limit themselves to piddling little dichotomies — we’re all about multichotomies here. And you can choose more than one of each multichotomy, if you want to. We won’t stop you.

So you want to be a Belching Shorting Vogueing Hating Despiser? Fine with me. Or maybe a Gulping Flailing Adoring Ululating Loather? Cool. A Wheezing Caterwauling Electric-Sliding Adorer? Whatever. A Farting Farter? Sure! I mean, you’re limiting yourself somewhat in that case, but if flatulence is what floats (or propels) your boat, that’s hunky dory as far as I’m concerned.

It’s all about grey areas. It’s about no boundaries. It’s about coloring outside the lines.

Because the caged bird isn’t singing. It’s screaming. It just happens to scream real pretty.

Don’t scream pretty, people. Vogue! Caterwaul! Despise! Adore!

Check this out. An ancient ad for the Apple I:

Highlights:

• 8K on-board RAM! Expandable to 16K!
• 40 character / 24 line display!
• Monitor attachment option, to allow for viewing of stuff you’re typing!
• 1 Kilobaud cassette drive interface, for saving of stuff you’re typing! Stuff occasionally retrievable!

I’d love to have been here when Apple and all those guys were just coming into the scene — the thought of being breathlessly excited about a bare board that you can plug an actual keyboard into sounds pretty damn cool.

The last thing I wrote in the waning days of Clarion came out in a sort of fever dream, and it shows: it’s a tumbling wordy over-the-top story about an amorphous living city’s relationship with its children.

That’s what I thought it was about, anyway. But a couple of really perceptive people in my writing group just finished pointing out to me that it is, in fact, a giant unadulterated Christ allegory.

This kind of disturbs me, because I kind of thought I was an atheist. I was, in fact, under the impression that I’ve been an atheist for years. What am I doing writing a largely approving story about god’s love for his children?

But it’s worse than that, really: I apparently have no idea what my subconscious is up to. I’ve always known that it’s down there quietly doing its own thing, keeping to itself, occasionally popping inscrutable images into my head or forcing me to engage in annoying bits of introspection or untapping undiscovered wells of feeling for no apparent reason. Mostly I hear from it when I’m writing. A lot of writers call this thing a muse. Stephen King calls it the boys in the basement. At Clarion, we called it Fred.

So, yeah. I don’t know much about Fred. Fred keeps to himself. But I always assumed that he was more or less on board with the rest of me, towing the line, and that all of his odd behavior was nothing more than idiosyncratic elaborations on the theme of me.

Now I don’t know. Is Fred Christian? Is he devout? Is he quietly steering me toward a lifetime of Sunday church and prostration to an invisible deity? Is there a communion in my future? A baptism?

Or is he just fucking with me?

I’m generally not a big fan of novels about book clubs, for a couple of reasons:

1. Things hardly ever explode, and, when they do, it tends to be meaningful.
2. No steely-eyed bounty hunters navigating the wilds of a post-apocalyptic society.
3. No fart jokes.

However — I just finished The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler, and I think I pretty clearly need to revise my standards. This book has some of the most beautifully-drawn characters I’ve ever encountered, and it lavishes an amazing amount attention on them without ever becoming florid or dull. In fact, you don’t even really notice how involved you are in their lives until suddenly, about halfway through, you realize that you know these people, inside and out. And more than that — you really care about them.

The real clincher, though, for me, came at the very end of the book. There I was, rolling along the downslope of a pleasant denouement, minding my own business, not bothering anybody, when suddenly I arrived at this sentence that just blew me off my feet — absolutely drilled me with an unexpected, inscrutable upwelling of emotion. And I didn’t know why.

I’ve talked about this phenomenon before — it happens to me every so often. I come across some innocuous phrase or snatch of music that has an effect all out of proportion to the thing itself — a short, sharp punch that leaves me gasping for air.

For a long time, this really mystified me. I couldn’t understand why it was happening. But I think I’m maybe starting to figure it out, sort of. My theory: it’s not the moment itself — it’s everything leading up to it. It’s the unveiling of a secret subconscious framework that the story is building, piece by piece, out of the subtleties of a character, the quiet implications of a conversation, the emotional ramifications of some small plot twist. All of it growing quietly below the surface, burgeoning tectonically, until — quite suddenly — it breaks through. And when it does, all of that stored potential energy blasts out at your dumb-ass insensitive clueless conscious mind with the force of a bullet leaving a gun, and just blows it — and you — away.

I think this is what The Jane Austen Book Club does, in its own gentle way: slowly builds an emotional framework beneath the surface of your understanding, and then, with one line, unleashes it all at once. And maybe this is what all good art does: ferries the bulk of its power down the dark avenues of your subconscious. The best writers know how to navigate these shadowy underroads. They know how to get to you in ways that matter.

Which is why I’m not going to mention the line that got me — because, robbed of its context, it’s just sort of cool. And just sort of cool doesn’t really do it justice. So you’ll have to go read the book. And then, when you’re done, you can go watch Bruce Willis blow something up, if you must. I’ll understand.

Typewriters were already on their way out when I was a kid. My dad had a couple of sturdy Selectrics at work, and they still showed up on TV in the mid 80s, clacking along in newsrooms or police stations or office buildings. But by the time I got to college they were pretty much history.

Two artifacts from the typewriter era lived on, though: that crazy speed-crippling keyboard layout, designed in the era of manuals that couldn’t deal with people typing too fast; and the clackity-clack.

QWERTY is still with us.

The clackity-clack is not.

But it did hang around for a while. When IBM came out with their first PC, they shipped it with a keyboard that was — and is — a hulking thing of beauty: this curved slab of metal that looked like it had been torn out of the side of an amphitheater, with keys rising from its firmament like ancient slabs of stonehenge, solid and timeless. And here’s the thing: when you pressed those keys, you pressed those fucking keys. No feather-light pressure here, no gentle touch, no soft sibilant strokes: you had to jam those bastards down, and it was like punching a tombstone through a sheet of mylar. But it was worth the effort: the sensation you got when the key dropped home was incredibly satisfying, a reverberating validation of the entire typing experience.

But it was more than just tactile, it was the sound: a solid, authoritative thunk, both on the downstroke and the release. It was the keyboard speaking to you, saying Yes, you have pressed this key. You have pressed it as no man or woman has ever pressed a key before. Well done, my friend. Well done.

You just don’t get that anymore. Keyboards these days are mush, and typing on them is like plunging your fingers into a vat of tapioca: just the barest semblance of resistance until you bottom out. It works, sure, and it may even be more efficient: but it’s not in any way satisfying.

There’s no going back now, of course. Your coworkers would no more tolerate that chunky cacophonous clackity-clack than they would scudding clouds of cigarette smoke: loud keyboards are a relic of bygone era. They’re still making them, but they’re curiosities, boutique items, targeted at the kind of people who prefer gramophones over iPods.

There are even utilities that mimic the sound through your computer’s speakers — I’m using one right now, in fact. But I think I’ll stop soon. It’s just sad: like a buggy enthusiast mounting a team of fake horses on the hood of his car.

I miss you, clackity-clack.