iPood

His T-shirt was green with a drawing of a man sitting on the loo with those unmistakeable ipod cables coming out of his ears. iPood was written in fat, white letters under the toilet. Always up for a laugh, I smiled at the guy wearing it on the bus and told him I liked his shirt. With a very serious face he told me it's an anti-iPod campaign, as Steve Jobs has admitted to using components in iPods whose life-spans don't exceed 15 months. Seeing as it is more expensive to have them repaired after the warranty, Apple apparently hopes you will just buy a new one and upgrade.

Woah - hang on, hang on. Firstly, I'm an Apple shareholder. Secondly, I own a number of macs (okay, 2) and truckload of iPods (okay, 1) and I am applesolutely Apple-stir-crazy. Dude, have you not noticed how everything is made to break just after the warranty ends? From cars to vacuum cleaners, shoddy workmanship is where it's at! Yet, all of my Apple products are way beyond their warranties and none of them are giving me trouble.

Ok, he says, but Jobs ADMITTED that he does it.
When and where, asked I?
At a conference, when shareholders wanted to know who was going to buy the 20 and 30G iPod hard drives when they already had iPods. Steve Jobs said, "don't worry, guys - iPods are only built to last for 15 months."

I'm not buying it cos I can't find this admission on the oracle intraweb and my 'little blue' has been with me for 2.5 years already! Still like the iPood T-shirt though, just not as an anti-Appple campaign.

full circle

Why is that we humans have this thing about starting big, then going smaller and smaller and smaller, until suddenly we're back to big? I'm talking about mobile phones and portable music players. We went from carrying packs of CDs around, to bundles of mini-discs, to ipod nanos, but we're really going backwards because the new head-fashion is humungous earphones. How did we go from mid-sized, ugly, foamy headphones in the 80's to slim, black earpieces, to white iPod imitation earpieces and now those big-ass things that are twice the size of any ear under it?!

Oh, wait - I know. I just worked it out this evening. I took my hacked little-boy mullet™ to a bar-cum-restaurant-cum-club in the Marais (Paris' hip 4th district) and guess what I found? The big, padded earphones double as *purdy* necklaces when worn with black baseball caps! An indispensable accessory in any social situation. Wearing a cap indoors is always classy and having a cable dangling from the back of your neck just completes that 'plugged-in' look. Wow.

So, I have a khaki cap and tiny, tiny earphones....sighhhhh.... a long way to go.

randy saturday morning

Sarko's new government must be pumping pheromones into the air, or dumping hormones into the water supply in Paris, cos something's going on! Before 9AM on Saturday morning, I was the ungrateful recipient of unwanted handshakes, introductions, cheek kisses and not one, but two mobile phone numbers, belonging to not one, but two gentlemen - unbeknown to each other. And all this before a hearty, free radical-fighting breakfast.

I have discovered that my iPod battery obviously also powers a bright neon sign that goes from my forehead to my chest-region and is only visible to men. I suspect it has the following lettering on it:

Go ahead, talk to me, harass me, feed me your corniest pick-up lines, touch my arm, comment on my eyes, kiss my cheeks - my constitution and lack of anti-bodies makes it impossible for me NOT to reply politely to all manner of hormone-induced bullshit. I have endless patience.

In any event, my iPod battery isn't too powerful because I have noticed that these men have to step quite close to read everything and the message definitely ends somewhere around my heart-area. (And my heart is actually a tad bigger than my mammaries, so what else would they be looking at there??)

Anyway, you too can become the object of lavish attention in 5 simple steps:

1) stand at a bus stop wearing your sunglasses and iPod on an overcast weekend morning.

2) sing softly and sway or dance to yourself under the bus shelter, as one does when it is fekking early and you need to get motivated for the fekking weather bulletins on a grey day.

3) finally compute what "overcast morning" actually means and remove sunglasses!

4) without further ado, a man pops up in front of you:

MAN: Weren't you wearing sunglasses?
ME: Yes?
MAN: Why? There isn't even any sun. Why do you hide your eyes?
ME: I know there's no sun - that's why I removed them.
MAN: Aha. Well, I just came over to see your eyes. I saw you dancing. Alors!
[Eds note: clearly, if you dance, you are fair game]
MAN continues something like this: Where are you from? What are you doing? Can I be in your screenplay? Let's have coffee now. Ah - the All Blacks! Yes, I know that's New Zealand. YOU WERE DANCING! Well at least kiss me goodbye.

No sooner has he left and you are harvesting sympathetic looks from the rest of the assembled bus-expectant people when step 5 follows.

5) not the darned bus, but another male appears out of nowhere and speaks in the general direction of your face and neck and here we go again:

MAN 2: My name is ____. What's yours? Where are you from? I am from North Africa. Can I help you with that translation - I speak English.

BUS FINALLY ARRIVES

MAN 2: Do you mind if I sit next to you? Shall we have a coffee? I can get you more work? Let me give you my number. What a beautiful smile you have. Call me soon.

GETS UP TO GO AND SITS BACK DOWN TO WHISPER: I can help you anytime - I speak English.

GETS OFF BUS AND WAVES.

If all of this is tiring for you and you'd rather not engage in further conversation, please observe step 6:

6) complete the bus journey with bubbley drool seductively dripping off your bottom lip. This is the anti-dote to free radicals offering all kinds of help!