Areas of Unrest

21 May 2000 - The Chatty Miriam Doll

QOTD: "It's sweet to be remembered, but it's often cheaper to be forgotten." - Kim Hubbard

Reading: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Listening to: Gavin Bryars, The Sinking of the Titanic

Remember the Chatty Cathy doll? It was, I believe, the first of the talking dolls. You pulled a ring in the back of the neck to activate the voice device (a tape recorder, I assume - this was in the 1960's, long before the digital era), which played one of several phrases. She may have had a limited vocabulary, but the gimmick made the doll a major success.

Lately my vocabulary at work has seemed about as limited and so I've decided it would be a timesaver if I created a Chatty Miriam doll. My boss could bring it to meetings and pull the string every now and then and I could stay home and relax.

The single most repeated phrase would be a simple, one-word one. Namely, "What???" You have to imagine that said loudly, with intense surprise and sarcasm. I say it about every third page when I'm reviewing a document and about every 5 minutes in meetings, usually in response to seeing or hearing something like "the contractor has declared that the laws of physics are not applicable to our program."

Then there's my favorite question. "Have you coordinated that with the users?" I usually say that when I discover that yet another person has decided that they can sign an interface control document without getting it agreed to and signed by the people at the other side of that interface.

"But that working group hasn't met since 1996!" That's usually response to being reassured that a particular working group is slogging along at coming up with a way to violate the laws of physics.

"Please give me an action item form." Then I write up an action item that says something like "please explain how you are going to develop a perpetual motion machine by traveling faster than the speed of light." Or "please justify being able to write 7.3 million KLOC next week, when you haven't been able to get 300 KLOC to work in 4 years." (KLOC being thousands of lines of code. Actually they have Ks of things called SLOC, which are source lines of code, and ELOC, which are equivalent lines of code and attempt to account for still having work to do when you reuse code from other sources. You don't want to know.)

I do talk to people at work outside of meetings, though. My secretary gets to hear phrases like "I need to change my travel for tomorrow to fly out earlier" and "Here's a travel request for next week" and "Is Milo in today?". Mary Joan gets to hear me say, "did you see what Mr. H. has taken credit for this time?" and "it's Monday. He must be out sick." (Mr. H. is an abbreviation of my mocking nickname for another colleague who has a nasty habit of taking credit for coordinating reviews of various documents when all he's really done is forwarded email from the contractor. He's one of the great sources of stress in my work life. He's also out sick every Monday.) And more or less everybody hears me say "let me just get a cup of tea first."

Chatty Miriam could simplify other aspects of my life, too. I could put her on the phone with my mother and she could say "don't gamble away my inheritance" and "most people who are allergic to cats have enough sense not to have a cat" and "no, I don't remember Mrs. Vardebedian on Florida Avenue whose son was three years behind me in school but it doesn't matter because you're going to tell me something boring about her anyway."

And Chatty Miriam could talk for me in the car as I mutter about other drivers. "Exactly why do you think the 'no right turn' sign doesn't apply to you," she could say. And "merge, you fucking moron. I'm letting you in but that doesn't mean you can go 3 miles per hour." And "go back to Omaha, asshole, if you can't handle a little traffic." I don't usually curse very much, but driving in Los Angeles just demands it.

Finally, there's all the talking to myself that I do at home. Hmm, maybe I don't want a Chatty Miriam doll for that. Talking to myself is alright, but having someone answer would be scary.