Even though guests entering my palatial home are initially struck by the striking feng shuiness each room possesses, no one would mistake me for a highly paid, highly opinionated interior decorator. While I have the spiritual knack of a biblical prophet, there aren’t as many times I can use it as one might think.
On a submarine, it’s easy to skip the basic aesthetic essentials of interior design, believing there’s no good reason to place cute felt covers on a nuclear warhead control panel. Subs may have portholes, but choosing between blinds and curtains isn’t a decision most captains take on with any enthusiasm. They aren’t thinking about carpeting either. Why would they? The very real prospect of complete flooding puts a decided damper on the usual joys found in rug shopping. A submarine is a functional, floating home. And as such, it ought to have certain trappings of home – down to grandma’s cooking. Must warning lights always be a blinking, flashing mess? When a little added needlepoint raise the crew’s morale just a bit. Otherwise, it’s so much darn metal. Periscopes and sonar give people a vague idea of what’s out there, in immediate ocean. But it’s far from a clear portrait of the sea ahead.
I never would have thought the principles of submarine life – these sub standards - would have seeped into polite society, affecting the media landscape in its many fractured forms. Radio shows once had deep baritone announcers mesmerizing the audience with the phone number of a local car dealer ship. Podcasts don’t do that. Films and TV shows were once shot with Panavision cameras. Now they’re hooked up to the one inside your computer. Those are, plain and simple, sub standards.
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