small change

gathering moss

Seems it has been raining forever. Blue skies appear between precipitous canyons of ominous clouds only in small patches to taunt us. Otherwise they, the blue skies, can be had in large doses only on computer screens, those doors to wordy littorals.

I’ve been hanging out on Twitter, marveling at the conversations and the apparent signs of life, all of it elsewhere. I am struck by silence, not because I don’t have things to say. On the contrary, the words are brimming, but silence, like insistent rain, has covered them with the muffling down of moss.

palm reader

The series of ads on TV for Palm Pre* are starting to annoy me. Framed like a Renaissance painting, but luminous with that unmistakable digital color touch when it comes to the ethereal depth in the field, these ads feature a young red-headed woman, who is very much in your face. She also happens to embody a concept of beauty first brushed into vision by Botticelli, then carried into the digital age by the old Adobe Illustrator logo, among other artifacts old and new in marketing with a human face.

It's not the beauty as such of this face on the pitch for the gadget that sets off my hackles. What annoys me is the attitude that is breathed into her speech, which steals the focus from an idea of timeless beauty and then pours it into the narrow confines of a praise to the timeless features of the gadget. The gadget as a gateway to endless magic and boundless mysticism wrapped inside a sleek case of the moment.

Juggling effortlessly, accessing past lives -- all this comes to this Venus of divine marketing without the sweat of practice practice or the commitment of initiation into art and craft. And it also comes timelessly, with a mere touch of the button. There is no ivestment of effort here, no constraint of time, and her icy blue eyes and the haughtiness of her tone makes it clear that the juggler of things in space and time is not only so yesterday in an imputed spiritual confinement, but clearly inferior to the endless and incredibly light flow of possibilities presented within the confines of the shiny box that is new new gadget in her hand.

* It is worth reading the comments on AdFreak generated by the perceived creepiness in this ad, featured on the site partially.

pinching pennies - state style

Well, yesterday was the first “furlough Friday” in the fair state of California. This meant that a good number of state offices were closed for the day, among them that prime gauntlet that is the DMV, or Department of Motor Vehicles. Of the offices remaining open on this last furlough Friday were the “One-Stop Career Centers.” A bit ironic, but it makes perfect sense in that Californian way, doesn’t it?

Since the DMV offices are no longer open on Saturdays in general, this means that with the additional closure on every second Friday of the month, you’ll have some serious time to do waiting in line for your car-related business. And since here in California our cars seem to be the only mode of transpiration near and far, there’ll be lots of cussing coming down the road – so to speak.

Last time I went to my local DMV, a couple of weeks ago for work-related business, I had to wait in line for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Luckily, I had my Spanish book with me and managed to learn the conjugation for a few more verbs, none of the choice variety for cussing, though!

I wonder if the DMV would be amenable to small entrepreneurs with a big spirit in these lean and tough times and allow them to set up “shop” at the DMV to sell food and services – perhaps even massages – and so turn the dread of waiting in an interminable line into the delight of an escape of sorts. Ah, it’s just so much more California dreamin’, ain’t it?