G is for Gadgets

In today’s modern times, gadgets seem to take the role of mother, daughter, father and son. I have colleagues- ex-colleagues, anyway, who are secretly engaged to their Blackberry or iphone. They refer to their fax machine as their “mistress” and their laptop (a Mac, no doubt) as their “lover”. Gadget people are most definitely not monogamous- except for me- I think I must be the only monogamous gadget user in the world. The only gadget I use is the ipod. I have hundreds of them- thousands. I’ve actually designed a special ipod wheelbarrow to wheel them around in. I go out into the garden and I wheel them around, pretending I’m doing some sort of garden-type work. Sometimes I even wear a safari hat, which is the most chic sort of gardening hat in the world. Of course, I don’t actually garden. It’s true that I draw flowers and they come to life, just as some sort of fairy tale. Yet those flowers need to be watered, as do the rest of the plants I have in my garden. They’re not going to survive on their own! But being drawn flowers, they require drawn rain, drawn suns, and so on. It’s all a lot of work if you think about it, which I don’t imagine you have. So I simply have Dries van Noten do the gardening. He’s much better at that sort of thing, you know. That’s why he has so many floral prints. (I think floral prints are for middle aged ladies with weight problems, but that’s another matter.)

Anyway, gadgets are fine, if one acknowledges that they are a gadget rather than a person. I’ve been at funerals- actually, recently I was at the funeral of a Very Famous and Fabulously Wealthy Person, and people answer phonecalls on their Blackberry or Boysenberry or somesuch during the funeral.

“And we will remember..”

Gadget obsessed man: “Hello? Yeah, I’m in a funeral right now. Yeah, it’s a really good one. They have cupcakes and everything..”

“Was a good man, and was loved..”

G.O.M: “Oh really? Did she really? Yeah, I haven’t had sex with her in- oh god- I don’t know, a week. Jesus. I know.”

“..By all that knew him. He was born on..”

G.O.M: “Oh god, there’s this guy in front of me who just can’t stop talking. God. Jesus. Buddha. So rude!”

And on it goes- people get annoyed with the G.O.M, the G.O.M gets annoyed with them and ends up twittering about how he is annoyed in one hundred and forty characters or less. This is not chic.