U.S.S. Ship of Fools, 2006

Microcosms. Fascinating word, isn’t it? Webster’s defines “microcosm” as, “the universe in miniature; anything regarded as being the universe in miniature.”

Now – owing to the debilitated state we find ourselves where literacy, education, erudition, and mental processes dependent upon the several - I am obliged to digress parenthetically here. (I might have said instead of “debilitated state” challenged, but that would be to lapse into the dyslalia, dyslexia, and dyphasia (go look it up) that is my topic here.) I propose to use the term “microcosm” by what is called extension. Experience over the last two decades has demonstrated that speaking to an “American” – still another example of our “challenged’ state: there are two hundred, thirty-four other nations in the America, but U.S. Citizens consider that only they are “Americans” – by way of anything by the eighth-grade English, Spanish, or any of fifty other tongues he is semi-educated in immediately leads to misunderstanding.

This, after all, is where a few years ago a headline in a major newspaper read, “Children who have been artificially inseminated should be informed.” The same paper demanded on another occasion that the Texas legislature fund research into “why so many people in South Texas are born with half a brain.”

I pause to let that last sink in; and to note that my remark regarding that last, a remark to the effect that the “research” referred to in the article might also explain why persons in South Texas drive the way they do, is worth considering.

To resume where I digressed, I mean by “extension” that I will use the term “microcosm” in an extended sense, meaning that I will use a personal experience in order to demonstrate what might be expected in similar circumstances of a macrocosmic experience – that of the nation. The microcosm of something, in other words, is used as an analog of the macrocosm, by what is called analogy. ‘Kay?

Recently, when the federal government’s cyber-warriors had taken down my computer for the I-don’t-know-how-manieth time, was obliged to buy another. Inevitably, that meant – as it had already meant nearly countless times – being further obliged to deal with the non compos mentis world of today’s service personnel. Here beginneth the microcosm, that of the dyslalia, dyslexia, and dysphasia I spoke of a moment ago.

Go look them up – otherwise, you’ll be in the same state as people from South Texas (“challenged,” with “issues”).

Examples of the problem – no, NOT “issue;” my children are “issues,” and this is not a debate – abound, but none more elucidative that what occurred this morning when I tried to get assistance with determining why I was unable to install my Norton Password program in my new computer (Symantec’s installation disk obliterated the brains in the previous computer wherein I tried to install the disk, necessitating purchase still another computer)

Note, please, that I do not necessarily single our Symantec or Norton here; I have encountered similar absurdity with literally (the word, incidentally means “exactly as stated,” “I emphasize what I just said”) dozens of companies, companies like Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft (want to talk to India or Japan” – just ask for service form Microsoft), APC, and I’m tired of reciting company names.

Having logged onto the Symantec (Norton?) site, I am confronted with a work of abstract, computer website designer art. Boxes, ovals, and geometric figured scattered about the screen of here, there, and roundabout. So confronted, one begins searching with intent upon finding something related to his purpose. Forget it. The designer of this, what I predict will become another of those “periods” in the world of visual art, had little or no interest in providing information. This, as I said, is art.

Clicking from page to page, I come to example after example of the same, non sequitur nonsense. Always, I am addressing “issues.” God damn! – but that word annoys me. My problem is an “issue?” Does the artist creator of this visual orgasm mean that whatever my trouble is is a matter for debate? They’ll help me only when I have absolved them of any fault? What? If there’s going to be an argument over the fact that the damned program doesn’t work – or that it functions like this @#$%&! Website – I’ll just go to the place I bought it and demand my money back.

Try it. That starts more of the same. Try calling Verizon on the telephone. Remember when you picked up the phone, called the company, agency, or what have you and someone answered your question in less than five minutes? No, I don’t suppose – that was long before you were born. Remember when you could use a dime to call home from anywhere on the planet? I do. I once called my wife in Iowa from Germany, and the phone company had her on the phone in five minutes.

Recently, I bought a cellular phone at Radio Shack. When clerk called to have the thing “registered,” activated, and al the rest that make your name, phone, number, and pedigree available to every data bank on the planet, he stood listening for a minute, then handed me the phone. “Can you understand what she’s saying,” he said lugubriously.

Taking the phone, I could see what he meant. The English – I think – was unintelligible. Thinking I recognized the accent, I said, “Nippongo ga dekimasuka?” (Do you speak Japanese?). “Ah, so – hai, hai,” the woman said gratefully and with obvious relief. “Kono denwa o kaitain desu ga. Hitsuyou no yoyaku shitain desu ga,” I said. I want to purchase this telephone and make the necessary registration.

From there, things went smoothly, and I soon had a functional – such as they are – cell phone. Around me, customers in the place including my airline captain companion that day watched and listened with amused amazement.

“It’s not the same country it use to be,” I groused.

Anyway, after a typical half hour of utter frustration with Symantec’s Gordian Knot website, I gave up. No help there. The disk that came with the program destroys the computer it’s installed in, so I guess I’ve flushed another c-note down the toilet of cyber-commerce.

To learn that the Microsoft Publisher program I bought would not do word wrap, I spoke with three young men in Bombay – or was it Calcutta? English was obviously not the first language of any of them. Only the third was sufficiently knowledgeable about Publish to tell me it wouldn’t do what I had bought it intending to do.

Endeavoring to order a book the other day from eBay, I wandered through pages of Salvador Dali-ian visual salad, trying with futility to find a way to pay for the damned thing. Worse, when the book I ordered hadn’t showed up months later, I went back to the website for another mental and psychological beating. In the box provided for my shipping address, I found an old one, given literally – that word, again – years before. Each time I tried to change the address to the current and correct one, the website insistently changed it to the old one. When I had wandered through the jungle of geometrical figures, esoteric jargon, fractured English, and obtuse diction that is the website in question, I happened – and we’re talking serendipity here – upon another of those execrable boxes, this one labeled change of address. So, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to purchase and obtain a book in only five months, five days.

There same was true when I tried to order medication from an on-line Pharmacy. That I didn’t die of my condition is due only the fact that I was ordering the medication for somebody else.
Calling – by telephone, mind you; their website, too, is more of what I’m telling you about here - my internet service provider recently to ask why with purchase of the latest my computers I could neither access my “control panel” there or work on my website, I was informed that was because my password had been changed. It was? - I said with astonishment. Why wasn’t I told?

The “technical support specialist” said, and I quote, “We assume that you will know – and call us.”

I sure as hell have missed something there, and I continue to think about it now – several months later. It makes you wonder if you’re beginning to slip.

When my recent change of residence necessitated doing business (Does anyone still remember that, essentially, that’s what things of this nature are? Does anyone still remember what that means? Or used to mean?) with Verizon, my wife and I were on the telephone one morning for four hours and eight minutes. “If you want . . ., press one; if you want . . ., press two; if you want . . ., press three,” etc. “If your dog is black, press nine; if you dog is white, press ten; if you want telephone sex, press six and pound (what do I pound?) At something like eight – no it was zero – we were able to reach a human being.

Yeah – except that the human being then did only what the recording had been doing. Handed to another cyber-programmed human being, we were handed to a third only when it had become apparent that the last – these were all women, by the way – couldn’t answer even the most basic question. She got snippy, too – that when I asked how long she had been where she worked.

Handed off to still another “support specialist,” we were given a set of instructions which we wrote down as they were being received. We also followed the instructions given us by the voice on the line, using the computer in question and before me on the desk where I was sitting.

When nothing the young man – English was not his first language, either; and when I tried to speak with him in my fluent Spanish, he got snippy, too – worked, we were handed off to another.

That’s when we were cut off. Having re-dialed, we go through all the numbers again, then all the ditzy babes. We get Fred, then Jaime – I’ve long since started talking names – then Frank. Frank is a stud. In less than two minutes – that’s literally, again (remember what “literally” means?) – Frank has solved our problem.

That, incidentally, is because Frank gave us the one, simple – “you have to click on” – instruction all of his fellow “support specialist” co-workers failed to mention.

Shall I tell you that took care of our hook-up problem? I’d be lying. The next day, when our password wouldn’t work, we were back on the telephone.

This time, though, the missus and I had decided that the only way to endure Verizon “support” was to get naked and have sex while going through the otherwise excruciating procedure. “Hooking up” while hooking up, so to speak.

Yup – all the numbers. All the girls. All the guys. Rita and I were doing the Shinjuhatte – the forty-eight positions of the Japanese Kama Sutra – so, changing positions with each time Verizon inflicted another of its “specialists” upon us, we managed.

By the way, if you want to experience a thunderous orgasm, let one of these Verizon, Microsoft, VIAnet, Symantec, APC type drive you to the point of killing fury, then have sex. You’ve never had it like that, believe me.

This time, we asked for Frank, but Frank seems to be the Verizon Wizard of Oz, the go-to guy once the customer calling Verizon “support” has been reduced to apoplexy. Finally, though, Rita having suggested that I might have had a heart attack, we got Frank. He’s still a stud – just failed to mention that letter in the password was upper case. Why did it work the first time, but not the second? Well, that’s when Rita’s second orgasm started, and I forgot to ask.

So there you have it – microcosm. Want an explanation for New Orleans, before, during, and after the hurricanes. Think about it. Want an explanation for a presidential administration like the one we’re hoping to survive? Go on the internet and try to get “support.” Want to know why damned near nothing works in the land of the free (where one in thirty-two people is in jail, on probation, parole, or the rest)? Have a look at the language.

In every instance I’ve cited here, the utter linguistic fecklessness of the people involved was the cause for chaotic result. From young people who grope for words – every sentence, for instance, punctuated by “you know,” one solecism or Malaprop after another – to immigrants who speak our language only at work, to pseudo intellectuals who would foist their “professional design” (go paint on a wall some place, Nacho) upon us, we are constructing a cybernetic Tower of Babel, babbling C.O.I.K., feminism-ese like “issues.”

A few months ago, with the visit of the Bolivian sailing ship ARC Gloria, the ship’s executive officer observed in response to our question that every minute part of the ship and its rigging had an inviolably precise name. That, the officer said, was essential to handling the ship. Without communication that was perfectly clear, the intricately complex process of handling sail would quickly turn to chaos.

Remind anyone of our own “Ship of Fools,” ship of state?