From our correspondent in the city of the internet.
It’s about time I started learning how to be modern. When Mr Jobs announced the new (now with assisted GPS!)
iPhone the other week I managed to hold my water. This caused me some concern. I don’t require a phone to help me with my geographic orientation – after all, I wouldn’t buy a map to order a Chinese – but the excitement was something I couldn’t understand. What was wrong, I thought. Was I stuck in the last century? Or worse, the one before?
It’s not just phones. I subscribe to a digital TV package – the kids said they would disown me if I continued to keep them from it. But I come out in boils whenever I try to watch some pixilated shrillster bawl out another blast of manufactured enthusiasm. I tell my offspring that modern life comes down to one endless imperative: BUY!!!! But they just look at each other as if to say twas ever thus, laugh away my lethargic laments and carry on stroking their new trainers.
Try as I may, I just cannot get excited about the twenty-first century. Forgive me. I know, I must seek help. I fear that if I go on like this I might have to start wearing tweed. It’s just that this toe-tighteningly tortured combination of gleam and patter makes the world appear to be little more than a second hand car dealership. And I can’t drive.
Yes, yes, I am approaching the decrepitude of middle-age and shall soon jeopardise my marriage with someone who thinks Man Ray is a make of sunglasses. But this is more than the male menopause. I am sure of it. There must be something seriously amiss with my make up. I know that my lack of connection to the momentary has nothing to do with age. Mann Père is approaching his eighth decade and spends much of every day flickring, twittering, blogging and facebooking with the rest of them.
In fact, Dad is a little concerned about me. ‘Rulwynn,’ he said the other day in the glare of his MacBook Air, ‘you’ve stopped understanding. You don’t know what’s going on around you. Books are, in the popular idiom, so last century. As our finest contemporary thinker John Gray said, the World Wide Web is as natural as a spiderweb. You must do something.’ So, I have decided to do take this paternal advice. Even if it brings me out in a deeper shade of grey.
To begin my quest to become a citizen of today then I have decided to run TwoWords TogetherAnd CapitaliseEach. QuiteInteresting … NowFeel MuchMore PresentDay. MayEven ReBrand AndBecome RulMann. That’sBetter. GoodGoogle, IAm SkatingOn TheEdge OfNow.
© Rulwynn Mann 2008
8th September 08
