Matriculate the walla mung

I figure I can't be more than 2 degrees from Scott Adams. SOMEONE please arrange for me to have coffee with him while I'm in the US. His understanding of the male psyche astounds me:

Yesterday as I was deboarding a flight I peeked inside the cockpit and wondered that the f**k all those buttons and knobs and levers are all about. Seriously. Do they really need all of that?

It seems to me that the steering wheel thingamajig does about half of all the things the pilot needs to do: left, right, up, down. Then there’s the ON/OFF for the engines, some throttling, braking, wheels up/down, a few communications functions, maybe some climate controls and a few other odds and ends. But that’s about the same complexity as any car. And I’ll bet your car doesn’t look like the cockpit of a 747.

My theory is that the manufacturer throws in extra knobs and buttons and levers just to charge more. I’m guessing that the majority of aircraft designers, and most of the buyers, are males. I think I speak for all men when I say I would gladly pay extra for knobs and levers that are not attached to anything. I like knobs and levers. Buttons too. And if you toss in a few extraneous digital readouts and dials, I’ll just stand there and drool and hand you my wallet.

As I stood at the open doorway to the Valhalla of unnecessary controls, I began panting with unbridled, genetically induced technology lust. I wanted to drag the pilot out of his uber-cool seat, put on his headphones and start poking and prodding things just to see what happened. Compounding my jealousy was the fact that the pilot and copilot were going through some sort of shut-down procedure that could not have sounded more technologically attractive. I don’t recall the details, but it sounded roughly like this:

Copilot: “Power down the main thruster modules.”

Pilot: “Check.”

Copilot: “Reset the navigation framajam.”

Pilot: “Check.”

Copilot: “Depressurize the tale fin metaskeleton.”

Pilot: “Check.”

Copilot: “Matriculate the walla mung.”

Pilot: “Did you just make that one up?”

Copilot:  “Sometimes I invent names for the buttons that aren’t attached to anything.”

Pilot: “Roger that.”

Comments

[Miriam Parkinson]

I like that.
Although everyone knows that joby-joby, whatsimmyjig, thingamybob, doodad and whatsit are all magical terms which any technical person trained in the discipline in question will automatically understand the meaning of. Hence conversations like this:

A: Are you ready for me to attach the doodad to the whatsit.
B: Nah I need to connect this joby-joby first.
A: Right. Do you need me to pass you a thingamybob for that.
B: I'm right dude. I've got this new whatsimmyjig, it works much better.

(then a long conversation along the general lines of "oooh shiny" follows)

[Colin]

Hey! I say 'Roger that.' Seriously. For real. When I'm working.

I'm cool. In fact, I may even be hella cool! :-)

BTW, I think that joby-joby may actually be spelt jobey-jobey.

Does anyone else use the term jobey-jobey?

[Cameron Reilly]

LOL okay Colin you've convinced me that saying "Roger that" is hella cool so I'm going to start using it on a regular basis. I'm still confused as to the particular application of the term joby-joby regardless of the spelling. Please explain.

[Miriam Parkinson]

joby-joby is used do describe anything and everything.

As in "have you seen the joby-joby" "can you pass me the joby-joby"

And yes he does assume that I know which particular joby-joby he's talking about at any given moment and gets cranky if I deliver the wrong one.

[Miriam Parkinson]

btw he has an excuse for saying "roger that" he works in telecommunications and uses radios a lot.

[Colin]

Hella cool! Tell you what Cam, you start using "Roger that" on a regular basis in your podcasts, and I'll start listening to them! Should be easy enough, I'm pretty sure mim has copies of them all. I'd need to make my life a lot more MP3 friendly though...

[Colin]

Incidentally, mim gets the right jobi-jobi (sp?) probably 90-95% of the time, thereby vindicating the extreme usefulness of the term.