A Short&Humorous interview with Professor Evan Level, Ph.D, Professor of Flatitudinal Studies, Pancake University, Flatchester.
S&H: Professor Level, I understand that you have revolutionized tertiary education by showing that flatness is the organizing principle of human life.
Level: That’s right, Short. By the way, you have a very strange name if you don’t mind me saying. Shorten Humourless. Suits you though. Well back to the question. We have discovered that flatness is the key to understanding everything in human culture, behaviour and the natural environment, including carob Banjo Bears.
S&H: Does this approach relate to Flat Earth theories?
Level: The flat earth dogma certainly brings an elegant simplicity to life don’t you agree?
S&H: Pardon?
Level: Let me put it this way, would you rather cook and eat a flat pizza or a spherical one?
S&H: Spherical pizza?
Level: Exactly. It’s an impossible concept to grasp, let alone cook and eat. Flat is simpler and uses less brain power, and less flour.
S&H: Can you give us some more practical examples?
Level: Of course. The biggest problem in modern technology is not broken phone screens or unreliable Wi Fi, it is flat batteries. We obsess over them. We suffer battery anxiety about our phones, our electric cars, and our pacemakers. We fixate on chargers and cables. Monster power banks have become the new essential. All because our batteries are going flat.
S&H: But it’s a big stretch from flat batteries to an all-encompassing Theory of Everything
Level: Well that’s what most uninitiated, undereducated people like you think, until we have revealed the beauty and centrality of the general theory of flatness to them. Going back to the battery example. Do you realize that most phone batteries last only a year before they’re only fit to be recycled into golf clubs?* I wonder how many senior citizen golfers realize that their clubs were formerly the warm beating heart of their phones? But like recycled toilet paper it is better not to think too deeply about the process. However, it is clear that flatness has now invaded sport. All sports fields are flat. Do you see what I mean?
Flatness is the key to psychology too. Take you. You look a bit listless. Did you wake up this morning feeling flat? Pioneering research by psychologists has discovered that our personal feelings of flatness are actually driven by our guilt and empathy for the hundreds of flat batteries that we have personally overused, abused and discarded thoughtlessly into landfill. So even you can see the trend. Batteries, sport, psychology. It’s all focused on flatness.
Architecture is another hotbed of flatness. Flat is everywhere in architecture and building science. What is an apartment really? It’s a flat. Some flats go the whole way and have flat roofs. What can be flatter than living in a flat roof flat, furnished with flat pack furniture, telling jokes to your flatmates which probably go flat, and staring out the window at the flat featureless landscape of flats all around you.
Economic theory is also embracing flatness in a big way. Especially now that so many people are flat broke, and inflation and interest rates are dead flat.
S&H: If you don’t mind me saying, Professor, flatness seems to be a very negative philosophy.
Level: Negative? Not at all. What did you say your name was? Never mind, I’m not interested anyway. By the way, put this in your article: the study of flatness is now called flatitudinal studies. Gives it a bit more scholarly weight. But getting positive about flatness, the world is just full of examples of positive flatness.
S&H: Such as?
Level: In coffee studies….
S&H: Coffee studies?
Level: Of course. Coffee is a major area of applied research these days. Without coffee the academic world would implode. My undergraduate study majored in coffee. As I was saying, in coffee studies, research has shown that the best tasting coffee uses the flat white preparation method. It’s milky enough to take the edge off those bitter old beans, but flat enough that the connoisseur does not drown in frothy cappuccino bubbles up the nose.
Then there’s mechanical engineering. Everyone loves those Porsche flat-four and flat-six engines. And there’s nothing like the adrenaline buzz of running an engine flat out. If you’ve ever been messing about in power boats like I have, you will know the thrill of running flat out down the river, whether it’s a 15 horsepower outboard motor on a 12 foot dinghy or a 350 horsepower monster on a 21 footer. With cars you only ever get to drive flat out around a racetrack. But with boats, the only reason not to go flat out is the speed limit, if there is one. You haven’t lived until you’re zooming along the water knowing you’re going flat …
S&H: (breaking in): You mentioned culture.
Level: Yes, of course. although I’m sure your readers, if you have any, are convinced about the importance of flatness by now.
In culture, just think of music. Think of all those flat notes in the scales. Half the keys on a piano are flat. The black ones I think. Most clarinets are B flat clarinets, and many popular songs celebrate flatness, including the great jazz classic “Flat Foot Floogie with a Floy Floy”, as well as Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.2 in B flat major.
S&H: Any Australian examples?
Level: Naturally. As you are Australian you will naturally relate to this example from Australian sociology and language studies. As you know all Aussies are trained at school to respond to certain questions with the same rote responses. So if someone asks you “How’s work going?” the compulsory response is “Flat out like a lizard drinking” which supposedly means you’re working as hard as possible. However, as you people from Down Under are full of chronic irony, it means something different. If you’ve ever seen a lizard drinking you will know that it’s not a very energy sapping activity. Basically the lizard is lying flat, lapping water with its little blue tongue. So in the Australian culture, “flat out like a lizard drinking” means trying to look like you’re very busy, when you’re just having a drink. Now, Mr …, whatever your name is, I must finish there. I have a Zoom meeting of all the deans of all the faculties, all over the world, who want to integrate flatitudinal studies into their curricula. As one distinguished professor said to me, if you’re not flat, you’re a flop.
© Geoff Milton 2021
* “How Long Do Cell Phone Batteries Last?” PowerBankExpert.com, paragraph “How to dispose of cell phone batteries?”
