Repeat. I Say Again...

This is a repeat of a ‘Blog’ first posted...

Well, not quite a repeat, per se, but certainly it is something that I looked at before and now wish to look at again—in a different way.

A slightly different way.

Tonight we were watching ‘American Eyelid’, or something.  It was, apparently, the Grand Finale, which is, in itself, an odd mixture.  Rather akin to Duck à l’Orange or Canard in Orange Sauce.  Not the spelling (before I get French speakers moaning at me), the pronunciation.  Cf ‘Grand Prix’!  This seems to be ‘Grand Fin-ally’ for some inexplicable reason.  Oh, well. C’est la vie.

Anyway, we were watching TV and so I was bored.  Sometimes it is necessary to sit and watch something together, part of the give and take of life.

They, the people on the show, were trotting out a series of celebrities most of whom were unknown to me and, frankly, could remain that way.

You can see that my interest in the display on the screen was, shall we say, wavering.

Because of this I picked up the remote and was immediately hit with an idea sprite.  I went to the cupboard where things go to die—everyone has a place that houses items, cherished at one time, but which have not been used in, possibly, decades and found a calculator.

It may be that if you are under the age of forty you will not know what a calculator is.  It is the same thing that you have on your computer and telephone to work out odd mathematical problems but, with a calculator, this is all it does.  It does not, for example, tell you the time.

Yes, yes.  Stunningly primitive but we all used to have one.  It saved thinking.

I compared the TV remote to the calculator and found an alarming similarity.  Neither of them are ‘user friendly’.  Not at all.

The TV remote is also a DVD remote and can be used to control ‘teletext’.  Why anybody uses ‘teletext’ any more is completely beyond me—perhaps, in fact, they do not, it is merely an antiquated and disused function on the remote in which case it merely reinforces my argument.

I know.  You haven’t heard the argument yet because I’m still rambling.  Please allow me to ramble, it gives me pleasure to do so and is, in itself, a perfectly innocent pastime compared to some people’s predilections with, say, sheep; about which I spoke in ‘A Simple Guide to Understanding Jet Engines’ (a magnificent book that is obtainable from Amazon at a very reasonable price).

For this next step you will need to go and retrieve your TV remote from wherever it is that you have the television and examine it minutely.

Do you know how to use it?

The calculator.  This has many, many different functions.  Do you know how to use it?

We have a beautiful little camera.  It is electronic, all-singing, all-dancing, self-focussing, anti-shake, no red-eye, point and click.  With lots of buttons.  I have no idea how to use it.

Here is the surprise.

I am a technician.  I mend aeroplanes and teach other people how to mend aeroplanes.  Aeroplanes are easy.  A Boeing 747 holds no fears for me whatsoever!

I do not know how to use the TV remote.

Is this because I am dumb?  Primitive?

No.  I am brilliant.  I am not boasting or being arrogant I am stating a fact.

But I cannot use the TV remote much past switching the TV ‘on’ or ‘off’, changing channels or altering the volume.

There must be a reason for this.

Here is the reason.

Calculators, cameras, TV remotes, et al, are designed by extraordinarily clever people who have all sorts of degrees.

They are not concerned with any difficulty you have in using these devices, their concern is that you should be suitably impressed with their brilliance in designing them.

Almost everything these days is designed by designers for designers.  They are all trying to win some sort of award for ‘Design of the Year’ at your expense.  There is no equivocation here; your well-being is secondary—if it is considered at all.

The words ‘user friendly’ are empty promises dreamed up in a, sort of, marketing conspiracy that will part you from your hard earned cash.

[Idea Sprite:  This is rather along the lines of the ‘Glossy Brochure’ that you get from Car Salesmen.  It tells you everything THEY want YOU to know about their car while carefully avoiding silly and incidental little details like “the exhaust will fall off after eighteen months” or “the seats are perfectly sound providing you don’t actually sit in them or they will instantly tear into a multitude of thin strips if you are wearing anything marginally sharper than, say, a bath sponge”.]

What on Earth does this have to do with writing?

Just recently I have been browsing.  I like to browse.    It does my soul good to browse.  During this meandering through sundry short stories and ‘Blogs’ I have noticed that there are several writers who are able to describe intricate scenes very clearly in simple terms.  I like this.  They get my seal of approval.

These are people like India Drummond, Michael R Hicks, Janie Bill, M R Mathias—all of whom are ‘searchable’ on Amazon.  ‘Blogs’ by Michelle Yunker—‘You Are More Than Enough’, Silver—‘Tantalising Treats’ and Selena Pearce’s ‘Planet Kambing’ (Goat, by the way!  ‘Kambing’ is Malay for ‘goat’).

On the other hand there are prize-winning stories that are indescribably boring.  One was a list, nothing more.  Another one involved a series of incidents that were not explained; they weren’t explained inadequately, they were not explained at all!

These were just two of several stories that were, no doubt, expertly written using magnificent words and perfect syntax, grammar and punctuation but they were unreadable.  There was, to me, no beginning, no middle and, subsequently, no end.  Ergo, they were not a ‘story’.

Is this, I thought, the latest trend?  Is it the modern fashion to write like this?

Then there were the words.

Oh, dear.

I’m sorry to harp on endlessly about my pet hobbyhorse that has no mane because it has worn away with incessant tugging at it.

I like words.  They are fun.  Etymology is a fascinating subject that enthrals me for hours at a time.  Just recently I bumped into ‘spelunking’ again and...  No, no.  Another time, perhaps.

But there are thousands of readers out there who do not want to go to the dictionary every other page; it breaks up the flow of the story for them.

KISS.  Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Just as TV remotes are designed by experts for other experts to admire, there are too many writers out there who are expressing themselves in a manner designed to draw admiration from other academics and literary scholars. 

They are forgetting that the average reader doesn’t care about their wonderful prose—they just want to be entertained.

Speaking of which, I suppose I should go back and see who won; hopefully it will be Steven Tyler.