It is surely no accident that popular imagination has depicted the fruit of the tree of knowledge as an apple. The apple haunts art and literature through the ages from Adam and Eve via William Tell to Snow White and the Beatles failed enterprise.
The serpent too takes many forms in pictorial representations from a fairly realistic reptile to a grotesque amalgam of snake tail added to a female (of course, art was a male preserve) top.
In the twenty-first century it would be sad reflection of our ability to re-envision the iconic past in a new and exciting way if we were not able to unveil a new and even more seductive temptation to encourage the further fall (if that were even remotely possible) of Man. I use the term ‘Man’ advisedly because the New Apple that I am thinking of would probably be less effective with Woman.
It happened while looking for ‘The Name of the Rose’ for Toni who has managed to catch only snatches of the film over a period of time stretching from his military service to the present day. He now has the idea in his head of watching the film all the way through and is even prepared to buy the film (“Only if it’s cheap!”) to satisfy this longing. As he must know, a Shopping Quest is something which I relish, giving me the opportunity to scour shops on the off chance that the goal may be hidden behind a discouraging shelf. After all, anyone can find a DVD in a DVD shop: it takes a certain amount of imagination to find the requisite item in an unlikely location. Which is why I never write off a shop as totally uninteresting: there are always possibilities.
Sometimes, of course, you can use The Quest to indulge yourself. It is, after all, more than probable that the DVD will be on the shelves in a place like MediaMarkt which is also full of interesting gadgets of the electrical sort. So, with a sense of selfless generosity I forced myself to go to MediaMarkt before I picked up Toni from work.
It says little for my much vaunted martyr complex (Stephen by name; Stephen by nature etc) that I did not move immediately to the DVDs but instead found myself irresistibly drawn to the handheld computers.
And there it was! An inert, dark rectangle – almost, but not quite featureless. And that of course made it interesting. One remembers the description of the space craft in ‘The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe’ with the black control panel on which black lights lit up in black! Such is sophistication!
What I was looking at was of course my electronic apple: an actual, real, in the metallic flesh iphone!
The only thing which stopped me from buying it at once was that it wasn’t for sale. When I asked (Oh yes I asked!) I was told that they had no idea of the price; no idea of what versions would be available in Spain; no real idea when it would be available – though possibly in March!
That is five months. At least one hundred and fifty days. Lots of hours and even more lots of minutes, and don’t get me started on the number of nano seconds. It’s a long time. The world’s most desirable gadget and I can’t get my hands on it.
My only hope is that the reviews from Britain and Germany (they get it this month) are bad. Very bad.
Please!
The serpent too takes many forms in pictorial representations from a fairly realistic reptile to a grotesque amalgam of snake tail added to a female (of course, art was a male preserve) top.
In the twenty-first century it would be sad reflection of our ability to re-envision the iconic past in a new and exciting way if we were not able to unveil a new and even more seductive temptation to encourage the further fall (if that were even remotely possible) of Man. I use the term ‘Man’ advisedly because the New Apple that I am thinking of would probably be less effective with Woman.
It happened while looking for ‘The Name of the Rose’ for Toni who has managed to catch only snatches of the film over a period of time stretching from his military service to the present day. He now has the idea in his head of watching the film all the way through and is even prepared to buy the film (“Only if it’s cheap!”) to satisfy this longing. As he must know, a Shopping Quest is something which I relish, giving me the opportunity to scour shops on the off chance that the goal may be hidden behind a discouraging shelf. After all, anyone can find a DVD in a DVD shop: it takes a certain amount of imagination to find the requisite item in an unlikely location. Which is why I never write off a shop as totally uninteresting: there are always possibilities.
Sometimes, of course, you can use The Quest to indulge yourself. It is, after all, more than probable that the DVD will be on the shelves in a place like MediaMarkt which is also full of interesting gadgets of the electrical sort. So, with a sense of selfless generosity I forced myself to go to MediaMarkt before I picked up Toni from work.
It says little for my much vaunted martyr complex (Stephen by name; Stephen by nature etc) that I did not move immediately to the DVDs but instead found myself irresistibly drawn to the handheld computers.
And there it was! An inert, dark rectangle – almost, but not quite featureless. And that of course made it interesting. One remembers the description of the space craft in ‘The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe’ with the black control panel on which black lights lit up in black! Such is sophistication!
What I was looking at was of course my electronic apple: an actual, real, in the metallic flesh iphone!
The only thing which stopped me from buying it at once was that it wasn’t for sale. When I asked (Oh yes I asked!) I was told that they had no idea of the price; no idea of what versions would be available in Spain; no real idea when it would be available – though possibly in March!That is five months. At least one hundred and fifty days. Lots of hours and even more lots of minutes, and don’t get me started on the number of nano seconds. It’s a long time. The world’s most desirable gadget and I can’t get my hands on it.
My only hope is that the reviews from Britain and Germany (they get it this month) are bad. Very bad.
Please!
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