Large Fierce Mammal

My senior high school English Teacher, the esteemed Paul Brison, used to say, “Works of art are never finished; they’re abandoned.” While this wise utterance obviously has applications in every field of human expression, I’ve always embraced it as defining the fundamental difference between proof reading and rewriting to death. In overthinking lies doom.

Overthinking stays the hand until the moment is past. Opportunity slips away and that woman you wanted to dance with is now in the arms of someone else. Overthinking wastes time, resources, and is to blame for most of the meetings that are held every week. This article will provide three shining examples from my own personal experience.

Back in the early 1990’s I was called upon in my capacity as a security professional to consult on what the client saw as a thorny issue that only high tech could solve. The client was a large shipping and fish processing company located in southwestern Nova Scotia with an illustrious history going back to 1923. Advances in fish processing technology and methods had resulted in the relocation of facilities from one building to another with the result that a huge space in a beautiful old structure was now vacant, and it was into this space that a museum commemorating the company and its significance to the region was installed.

Lover of museums and historic buildings that I am, I was completely enthralled by the place when I was given a tour. Everything from a ship at dock to the business office with stand up clerk’s desks to the old time cod fish processing room was modelled in full scale and to a degree of realism that was wondrously immersive. The effect was enhanced by the fact that most of the artifacts in each exhibit were authentic originals, and the portion of the museum that replicated a salted cod fish packing station was my reason for being there.

Back in the day, Nova Scotian fishery companies were heavyweight players in the lucrative trade of procuring, processing, and exporting dried and salted cod fish. Cod fresh from the sea were split, salted, and laid flat to dry in the sun on shoreline structures called fish flakes before being packaged in wooden boxes with tight fitting sliding lids that most kids of my era had quite a few of because they made great storage boxes for all kinds of things. The boxes were pretty much standard throughout the industry but each producer applied its own label to its boxes. My client still had a moderate supply of these labels, and the museum display had a small stack sitting at the boxing station just as they would have been in the old days. Unfortunately, the boxing station was within arm’s reach of museum patrons as they filed through, and the labels, which my client regarded as rare and valuable historic documents each and every one, had developed an unfortunate tendency to stick to peoples’ hands. My impossible mission, should I choose to accept it, was to come up with an archival safe means of tagging all the labels in the exhibit to ensure that none could leave the premises without activating an alarm.

Everyone is familiar with anti-shoplifting tags and what they do, if not how they work. This was the kind of thing my client had in mind. In keeping with my standing policy to assume infinite ignorance and unlimited intelligence in my readers, I will explain that “archival safe” refers to measures taken to conserve and protect rare specimens that must not in themselves represent a source of damage or vector of deterioration.

This might seem to be a rather weighty problem necessitating much study, deliberation, and the throwing of many thousands of dollars around, but no. I fixed it at the meeting immediately following my museum tour with a simple suggestion: Take one of the original labels to a local print shop, have them make you a few thousand credible copies, then put the copies within easy reach of the visitors under a sign that says, “Please take one as a reminder of your visit”.

There was the usual deafening silence and gallery of blank stares that always follows the introduction of a simple and obvious solution to otherwise intelligent people who have been tearing their hair out over it for weeks, followed by a lot of forehead slapping relief. I submitted a substantial bill for my services which my client happily paid and the day was saved once again.

Coming forward to more recent history, in this case early in this present year, we were involved in designing and implementing a sophisticated security and video surveillance system for a major facility operated by a municipal government. The facility in question is not always manned and after the initial systems were in place, I was consulted to suggest solutions to the problem of delivery drivers showing up and getting no answer to the door bell. Specifically, I was asked if I could suggest a system that would result in a call to an off-site telephone line if nobody answered the door in a reasonable time.

“I have just the thing!” I replied, “It’s a sign that reads, ‘If no answer, call <insert telephone number here>’. No money changed hands that time, but yet again the world was made a less complicated place through my untiring vigilance.

But now I come to an unfortunate situation that I was never consulted on. Not too long ago, Diana and I stopped by Dartmouth’s Mic Mac Mall and, while there, decided to consult one of the building directories located at each major entrance point. Now, these used to be large backlit billboards that bore a listing of all the mall’s stores, offices, and facilities organized by category and suite number, all cross matched to a floor map of the mall, and big enough to allow four or more people to stand abreast and get their directions simultaneously. What Diana and I found was something far different.

What now fills this purpose is a large computerized billboard complete with touch screen and talking animated woman. The animation only interacts with one person at a time so now, where once a group could achieve instant gratification through the simple act of looking, this necessitates the forming of a lineup behind what will invariably be the biggest dumbass in the mall who hardly knows where he is let alone where he wants to be, and whose thought processes are either further confounded by a life-long inability to communicate with women in any meaningful way, even animated ones, or worse, by finding her alluring enough to linger over.