By Olav Rokne
With the dawn of the 21st century, it is time to cast off the relics of the past. Everything must go: buggy whips, the monarchy, shoes and of course, the imperial system of measurement.
Who can truly explain why we still use this? It is archaic, cumbersome, unwieldy and downright confusing. I believe that even traditional measurements such as "funk" should be metricized.
Under the imperial system, we had a number of inconsistent ways of measuring funk. A person could be "cool," "fly," "groovy," or "hip" and no one really knew what the terms mean relative to one another. Does a person who is "hip" have more funk than a person who is "fly?" Most of us would have to look that one up in a dictionary to be sure, or at the very least reference some kind of funk conversion table. I would herein like to propose a metric scale of funkiness.
If we take the smallest increment of funk possible–the baseline from the 1982 David Bowie and Queen hit "Under Pressure"–as our starting point and use that as our basic unit of measurement, I am certain let us arrive at a workable system. As every measurement requires a name, let us name this unit of funk the "fünkit." Since we have already determined that it is indivisible, we will never have to deal with pesky picofünkits, centifünkits, millifünkits or vanillifünkits.
Usually, the human maximum of funk is about 30 kilofünkits (or 30,000 fünkits), however in exceptional cases–such as George Clinton and "Godfather of Soul" James Brown–levels have been reported in the megafünkit (1,000,000 or more) range. While these cases are extremely rare, it is clear an allowance must be made for the ultra-funky.
The previously synonymous acts of acquiring funk including "getting the funk on down," "getting down and funky" and "getting the funk on up" shall now be consolidated into the clearer, more concise and comprehensive term "funk manipulation." The degree to which the funk is actually manipulated could in turn be measured, thereby eliminating further confusion.
Since the kilofünkit and the megafünkit will be the most familiar units of funk measurement to lay people we can abbreviate these to kfünk and mfünk respectively. These catchy, easily marketable terms are sure to catch on with younger generations, making the overall transition to metric much easier.
So please, be proactive and lend a hand. Next time you see someone on the street, with blue hair and a purple paisley suit jacket don’t say "Wow! He’s cool!" Simplify things, use the metric system and say "Wow! That man has an excess of fünkits!" or "hey–he must have several mfunk!"