Back in the day, I had a business with my dear friend Vanessa.

Vanessa and I are both profoundly and intensely Gen X, and sometimes (~90%) we communicated with one another in the native language of our generation. If our client happened to be Gen X, and was sufficiently unshitty, sometimes we would speak to them that way, too.

Our little business was as bilingual as Canada. We were prepared to express every one of our key ideas bilingually. We spoke in Business Casual to uptight people, and in Pottymouth to cool people. If you made us nervous, we’d give you an FAQ on the importance of design research. If we trusted you, you got an FUQ that enumerated the horrible things that befall omniscient dumbasses who leave Frequently Unasked Questions unasked. If you asked us what we did and you seemed like an asshole we said usability and innovation. “You know, ” we’d say, with sphincters well-clenched, “Making the right thing, or making the thing right. Ha. Ha. Ha.” But if we liked the cut of your jib, we explained that we’re always either “fixing some seriously fucked up shit” or “fixing to seriously fuck some shit up.”

I mention this now because I just wrote a post in a third language, which is my first language, Flakiness. That language is infinitely less socially acceptable than either Business Casual or Pottymouth. This is a crying shame because Flakiness is the only language that does any justice at all to design. Flakiness is the language I use when I am speaking to myself about things that matter most to me.

If my last little post on hermetic design left you cold, confused or irritable, maybe try this Pottymouth post on bullshit and chickenshit, which says more or less exactly the same thing.