Steve Jobs or, The Tweets of the World are a Constant Quantity but of Questionable Quality
Figure 66.1: Steve Jobs wears jeans.
At 7am I awoke. I got straight out of bed and had a hot shower. At about a quarter past the hour, Twitter illuminated me to the fact that Steve Jobs, Apple innovator, had died. Poor Steve Jobs had died.
I tweeted, as one might, about Steve Jobs. Among the plethora of “RIP, Steve Jobs,” tweets, or saccharine 140 character odes to that tune, mine was chalky.
“While I suppose I’m a bit sad for Steve Jobs and his family, I mostly don’t care. My MacBook is great but I paid Apple €1600 for it.”
Steve Jobs made the lives of people who could afford it slightly easier with functional but elegant electronic consumer products. It isn’t charity; it’s business.
Jobs led a company, drove numerous companies, to create profit. By common moral standards this is neither a bad nor a good thing in itself, but the fact that Steve Jobs led the company that developed my laptop does not make my heart beat for him.
Further irked, the more I thought. A minute later I tweeted again.
“Apple were the ‘alternative’ multinational money machine, cooler than Microsoft? Steve Jobs wore jeans and t-shirts instead of suits. Great.”
I used to have a Dell laptop. It was really good. I also had a Sony walkman at one point. I don’t hold any love for the leaders of those companies.
The Sony walkman, one of those old ones that played cassettes, that was my first bit of technology that was my own. I look back more fondly on that than any other electronic product I have ever had.
Many of my generation learned to use computers with Windows products on Hewlett Packard and Dell Computers, as the next may learn on Mac operating systems on Apple Macs.
Bill Gates, the multi-billionaire name most commonly associated with Microsoft and Windows, is not a figure of public idolatry in the same way as the unexpired Jobs was.
An interesting albeit rather obvious comparison is fit to be drawn between Jobs and Gates. Within similar fields, both are very different kinds of innovators, inventers and visionaries. Yet Jobs is the alternative choice, the underdog, undermining the dominance of the big evil, Microsoft.
As my previously half-baked opinions on Jobs found solidity, I tweeted again. It was about half past nine by this time and it was my last shout on the matter.
“Poor Steve Jobs. He made our lives slightly easier with products that we bought from his company for cash money. A true hero.”
In 1987 a charity organisation called the Stephen P Jobs Foundation was started. A little over a year later it folded having done nothing other than employ famous designer Paul Rand to create its logo.
Ten years later, Jobs terminated all of Apple’s corporate philanthropy programs when he rejoined the company. This was because he wanted the company to concentrate on becoming profitable again after a period of decline. These programs did not resurface.
I have no favouritism towards Bill Gates or any business person, but where the veneration of Jobs comes from is beyond my grasp. I don’t wake up every day and thank Adi Dassler for my shoes or Levi Strauss for my jeans, and they were pioneers in their fields.
Neither do I thank Rupert Murdoch for bringing me Premier League soccer every weekend. BSkyB innovate. They bring us Premier League coverage in new ways every week, giving us more access. Sky have directly empowered British football through their coverage, innovative branding and inventive market penetration, indirectly leading to the exponential improvement in quality of these leagues and, by proxy, our enjoyment of them.
Jobs was an innovator, but so is Jonathan Ive who has contributed just as much if not more to what supposedly justifies Jobs’ sanctity now: Apple’s innovation, invention and technological vision or, sleekly designed iPhones that are updated every couple of months rendering what they replace obsolete and the most depreciable consumer good since toilet paper.
I have no bad will whatsoever to Steve Jobs and I take no pleasure in his death. I feel bad for his wife who is, according to many sources, a nice person. I feel bad for his family and those who counted him as a friend.
The painful Twittering of millions of people in mourning over a megalomaniac business man does raise my ire though. Why this particular genius? Why not the others, the ones that aren’t the heads of multinational corporations?
A cult of personality rears its head now. Jobs may have been a genius, but he was also a man who wore denim jeans, turtle neck jumpers and (probably) endearingly tattered converse.
Jobs was his own best marketing tool. The sudden fall in Apple’s share price upon news of his death is as much a testament to that as it is to his capacity for invention.
The design team is still there. The people who developed five generations of iPhone in the space of four years – each shinier than the last – are still at Apple. So don’t worry.
The problem for us is that the same lovely face isn’t there to put the new product in our hands anymore. The ‘alternative’ guy – the lesser evil to Bill gates or some soulless Japanese technology company – is not there to keep us loyal.
But it isn’t Fairtrade iPods and iCoffee that we’ve been filling up on. It has always been the ‘alternative’ value of Apple, the Steve Jobs factor even when we don’t see him.
This tragedy means that now we have this vacancy in our lives, a lack of an intermediary between the product and our money. We’re lamenting it. The thing we associated with “innovation” and “invention,” is gone. And all we have is product, pure product, pure Apple.
And only now do we realise that the thing we worshipped all along, the thing we pay tribute to now, only ever hid our worship of the product, the consumer good that is Apple, in all its ‘alternative’ glory.
Child
Child
Placenta drips a slow three four
one two, under an exhaled three four
one two, and an inhaled
second let go for a second
three four, unhindered.
The mother in a bin, cumulus done,
sharp shark gills puffing out
and reading back in, an
exalted three four, to a drum,
baiting him in like kicking
against the naval one two,
commanding the rain outside
in. Smacking a smack one hundred
times three four,
on a wet pane to bring
him soft beat and mushy rice
from a small paddy on steps,
or a little office of cubes,
down in the grove of willows.
They swing with the cold gale,
but scrape up helpless as if a
cliff were giving out or crying out,
giving one to Waterhouse’s implicit,
the necessary but unfortunate.
Treble trembles under, and
a high string guts through the
man as placenta drips from his brow
and an unwieldy growth from his
belly, four four, threatens all
for the wave one two, could
take, beyond the wings
of a sprightly lemon lady.
Love’s Theme or, The Jar or, Sisyphus
“Small Paddy.”
“Water?”
“Small drop.”
Two glasses. Seared like a pan of cider on a high heat. Necked by a large grey stone with a drinking hole and a separate mouth to create noise, permanent distraction from the permanent slurp. An old grey stone digeridoo that drank gold and spouted shite from the ropes until blown over them and it all stops.
“Do you see you there, I can tell you’re a man after me own heart.”
And he’d collapse on the bar and shout holy jaysus mother. He would. No luck yet, he’s only searing. And the pints were two, and the pints were too big for her hands. And I winked with one eye as I winked with the other, and said it’d be alright because there were two of us and two pints and that I’d get the next ones, which meant that there’d of course be next ones. And in this dark you wouldn’t know what could happen if that pink little cheek came near me. I’d bite it off in sweet love, like a maniacal butterfly, and there’d be nothing left and it’d be mine forever. I’d eat it up, or put it in a jar and admire it when I was old and searing cider in a pan for Dave and me, or just for Dave because I’d hardly get that far. He’s eighty but he’s going up, and I’m a quarter that and I’m going off, by the look of me.
Six pints of cider at the table and now I have Arthur in front of me telling me I never was such a bold boy as when I was sober. I’m more calculated then he says, like a sober calculator, and he doesn’t trust technology. It might be Arthur’s influence but I swear I’m sitting across from several women all staring at me in mild disgust and I blink and they’re gone so I decide to go home but not before a -
“Small Paddy.”
“Water?”
“A drop.”
- and a pint for the road. One for me and one for herself there with the small hands that’d fit in mine so well if only they reached across the table. Sure, to have it that way she’d need fierce long arms and the hands wouldn’t look so well. Imagine the hand of a child on the arms of a tall man, no, not at all at all. That would be too much. We’ll leave it there because he tells a story or a song, and that is about a young woman stricken by a suspicious growth on her wireless internet box. Her service provider tells her that it is nothing to worry about. It is fine madam, nothing to worry about. I know, I know it doesn’t seem like anything to worry about but there’s one on the back of the screen now. Is it a flat screen? Yes. Well there you go, that’s normal madam. But no, you don’t know, there’s one on the return key, and I think some of the other keys are springing up. Okay madam, just relax, we’ll send somebody out within three to five days, and they’ll have a look at it all. And a man arrived the next week and he found dark little lumps all over her body and her fingers stuck in her ears and her curled into a ball and she was dead but the internet connection was still functional.
Kettle Poisoning
Kettle Poisoning
I tried to stand up straight, as high as I could. There was an awful weight on my shoulders though, metaphorically speaking, and the ongoing task of improving my posture moment by moment proved quite difficult, even more than usual. I shook out my shoulders and arms, loosening myself, only for the irksome downward pressure to fall upon me once again when I settled. I found myself frustrated, not because of the anxious tension I could feel physically, that did not bother me as such, but because of my inability to stand straight and right at such a moment. I concentrated.
While I did not know very much about the clear contents of the unmarked plastic bottle in my hand, I trusted Anthony, who knew about this sort of thing. He said that he had used it before for similar pursuits. I did not ask him any more questions as he gave me a look that told me not to. He is such a character like that.
So I poured it into the kettle, gazing out through the large bay window that lit the kitchen as I did so, out into the little garden behind the house. I was a little worried that I didn’t feel particularly bad about him. Should I not have naturally occurring human empathy? I did not know him, a good man maybe, but I did not know him nor wish to know him. I could only think that a face, or even a name, would dull my resolve.
Having done the deed, I walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway and out the front door, shutting it behind me. I left the key back under the mat, where I had found it earlier, careful to leave everything as everything should be left. I felt that I had finished him. He was not dead yet, but I had planted the poison, and it was only a matter of time. I still felt no guilt, and slowly strolled away assuming that I never would.
Linus Spacehead and Target
Linus Spacehead and Target
There was no movement on the street. Everything was bathed in the orange half-light radiated by the street lamps. Linus sat stationary behind the wheel of his unmarked car, which itself sat stationary about thirty yards from the junction that sees Cyprus Avenue cross Green Dolphin Street. His left hand was tense, stuck to the top of the steering wheel. Tucked inside his pants, his right hand was wrapped around his gun, the tips of his fingers tickling his testicles.
“Target exiting The Squatty Roo alone. Target walking slowly east on Green Dolphin Street. Over.”
The ear piece hummed incessantly when there were no transmissions coming through. The chatty kid that does the electronics told him that it was the last one he had left after the budget cuts that central had enforced.
“Aw dang Spacehead, they bleedin’ me. You know I ain’t got shit else. These fools down in Central, they tell me do this and do that, but do it all with no damn money. Gotta learn them some shit about what we doin’.”
“That really is terrible. I was wondering if you could please make it work so that it doesn’t ring like that? I would really appreciate it.”
“I’ll try man, but you ain’t know what they leavin’ me with up in here. I ain’t got no damn tools.”
“Thanks kid. I really hate noises. I get migraines, you know, like really bad headaches. I don’t think I’d be able to get the job done with a migraine.”
“Target approaching crossroads of Cyprus and Green Dolphin. Prepare to engage Target, Spacehead. Over.”
Linus had been sitting in the car for more than two hours, humming different tunes from radio and television advertisements to keep himself amused. It seemed so long ago now that he had been trying to remember the jingle from the toilet paper ad with all the little puppies. They run around a lovely house in a dreamy suburbia, dragging toilet paper everywhere. Needless to say, the family that lives there are very unimpressed when they arrive home. You can’t stay mad at little dogs though, so as soon as one of the young children cracks a smile at the paper’s softness on his face, the rest of the family all have a nice laugh about the situation. Linus expects that they bought quite a lot of this brand of toilet paper after the incident, but also a gate device to keep the dogs from going upstairs.
“Target turning south onto Green Dolphin. Spacehead, prepare to engage Target. Over.”
Officer Linus Spacehead locked his right hand on the handle of his gun, his index finger around the trigger. He focused his eyes in the poor light, fixing his gaze upon Target. He matches the description given to him by The Chief earlier in the day. Written on a beer mat, it was to the point.
“About three and a half feet tall. Tight blonde hair and blue eyes. Could be wearing an eye patch.”
“Target nearing your position, Spacehead. Engage Target. Over.”
The throbbing in his head was getting worse, but Linus knew that once he had killed the little fellow then he would not have to listen to the ear piece. He would drive home, picking up Chinese food on the way. His cat, Escargot, would curl up beside him. Escargot loved watching the blue comedies that played late on television. So did Linus. They were made for each other.
“BANG!”
Linus shouted as he shot his gun, firing a bullet into the side of the little man’s head. It was very quick. He reached out the window, aimed, and then pulled the trigger. The little man toppled over with the force of the shot and was dead.
Fig 23.1: Escargot, Linus' cat.
Old Patsy in her Tiny Flat
- Happy Valentine’s Day!
Old Patsy in her Tiny Flat
“It would be very sweet of you to come along,” she says, “but I am afraid that I would not be able to hear you speak. Yes, the walls are screaming very loudly again today.” Her voice is delicate, not far from crumbling.
Paddy sits on a three-legged wooden stool beside a yellow door that is itself gathering as much dust as the trinkets that litter the shelves and cabinets of her small living room. Silver roots betray the crimson product that she has prefered for a number of years. In truth, her hair has fallen into a rather unfortunate state of disrepair recently. It hangs down listlessly, partly covering bright blue eyes, completely covering the thin black pencilled brows that are refreshed every morning with an ever shortening 8B.
“Of course not, don’t be silly. You take it easy, pet… That’s right, yes. Yes, and I’ll see you some time soon.”
She pouts after she puts the phone back on the hook, like a young girl posing for her school picture, idly thinking of the boy who sits near her in class, the one who always shares his chocolate bar with her at lunch. He is such a nice boy.
“Okay, Patsy. Don’t worry. Say ‘prunes,’ and you’ll be fine.” The photographer smiles at her before retreating behind his clunky photographic apparatus. Patsy is careful not to move, even going so far as to hold her breath to preserve the pose engineered for her by the delicate hands of the working artist. She has been holding her breath for nearly a minute now, since his forefinger softly brushed the nape of her neck and then lingered just behind her ear. She thinks of chocolate and, from a smiling start, does as she is advised.
“Prunes,” whispers Paddy. “Prunes, pruh-pruuune, pruuunes.” She picks at the cracked paint on the door, tearing off a shard of failing yellow. She examines it suspiciously only for it to crumble as she passes it through her wrinkled fingers. Remnants of pink nail polish from months past speckle nails that have been unchecked since, nails extending an inch from her digits.
The room is very small with no windows. There are two doors, the yellow one that Paddy is currently picking at, and another blue one, in a similar state of disrepair. A wingback armchair covered in plain beige material faces a table that hosts a tiny television. Shelves, bookcases and cabinets close in, heaving with sea shells and rock candy from twenty years ago, chipped china saucers, plates and cups, and picture frames bearing the uneasy faces of people who do not call anymore. That is, if they could call. Paddy had cut the cord that connected the phone to the little box on the moaning magnolia wall. It was around the same time that a note was pushed under the yellow door.
“You have not paid rent or maintenance for the past three months. It would be best for you to leave as soon as possible.” On that day, Paddy locked the latch on the yellow door. Nobody had disturbed her since.
“Come on now, Patsy. Stop doing that with your hands. It won’t look good in your picture.” The photographer walks towards her again, smiling in a deliberate attempt to calm her. She appears very nervous to him, wringing her hands like a damp cloth that will not dry. He kneels down in front of her and takes her tiny hands into his. He looks up from her knees, directly into her eyes.
“Don’t worry, its only a picture. Just smile and say ‘prunes.’ You’ll be fine, trust me.” He places her left hand onto the grey skirt that covers her crossed knees, and her right hand upon her left, smiling again reassuringly before letting her go. He slowly walks behind her and brushes a stray wisp of golden hair behind her ear. Patsy takes a breath and he caresses the nape of her neck again, slowly tracing the contours down her shoulder. The rough skin of his calloused fingers finds the hollow inside her collar-bone and she begins to wring her hands once again, squeezing her fingers and trying desperately to pull them off.
“Patsy. Patsy.”
The blue door is open, just a crack of a few inches. Paddy cannot see what might be inside. She does not remember having crossed that threshold before.
He moved around and took her hands in hers once more. He did not smile this time, but looked directly into her trembling eyes. He spoke slowly and deliberately while placing her hands back upon her knee.
“Stop that, stop that with your hands, Patsy. Please. Come on.”
Trying to pull her fingers from her hands, Paddy stands from her stool. She walks towards the blue door at the other side of the room. Behind her, she can make out a distant banging from outside, perhaps people screaming her name. The walls wail at her and she begins to cry heavy tears.
Patsy cries too. The photographer touches her cheek and says that she is a good girl, that her picture would end up looking great. Her wet cheeks allow a smile. Mum and Dad will be happy with a good picture. She thinks of Michael, who she sits beside at lunch time, and the tears fall harder because she is dirty now.
The blue door is wide open. Paddy brushes the hair from her eyes but still cannot see anything further than the threshold. She walks into the blackness and turns around to close the door. It shuts with a heavy thud. There is only the sound of the latch locking from the other side.
Fig 22.1: Some prunes displayed in a pleasant way.
Lord Beresford
Lord Beresford
A famed explorer of the depths of the Amazon and its tributaries in his younger years, Lord Beresford’s life changed forever when he came into contact with what he found to be an immediately fascinating and eventually profitable tribe of wild Amerindians. Meeting them, he learned that over a period of only a few years, their collective number had dwindled from several hundred to only a couple of dozen. After careful medical analysis of the recently deceased, a member of Lord Beresford’s travelling party, one Henry Longfellow, discovered that these people were being destroyed from the inside by a vicious parasite. While the source of the parasite could not be ascertained, its effects upon its victims were particularly interesting. It appeared that the parasite, a tiny worm in the early stages, lodged itself in the intestines of its host. Once settled, the worm grew, feeding from the nutrients that were provided by the basic diet enjoyed by this particular Amerindian group. Eventually, the worm would become so large that it would rupture the intestinal tract of the human it inhabited causing fatal internal bleeding, or the host would fall ill, malnourished, dying due to the presence of the parasitic worm. In either case, the worm would soon die with its home, with nothing left to live from. Further investigation would lead Beresford and his party to a rather novel business venture.
Performing an autopsy on one of the deceased children from the tribe, young Longfellow grasped in his hand the cause of death, a large and rather unsightly worm, gazing at it in blank curiosity. There was no discernable face or mouth, no top nor bottom, no back nor front. It was only a long cylindrical mass, several inches around and almost a foot in length. The worms fed through some kind of nutrient absorption and thus had no need for a mouth, eyes, ears, or any other trivial features. Discarding the dead parasite in the dying embers of the fire behind him, Longfellow continued to hack away enthusiastically at the corpse out of pure curiosity. However, within only a minute or two, a divine smell tickled his nostrils and he raised his head from his work. Indeed, the scent aroused the interest of the remainder of the camp and Lord Beresford himself entered the clearing between their tents in only knee high white socks and silk shorts, it was very warm of course, and with an inquisitive smile stretched across his lean cheeks As he spoke, the dark pencil moustache that shadowed his upper lip writhed, just as Longfellow imagined a worm inside a poor chap might.
“Longfellow,” Lord Beresford began with a hearty howl of middle-England’s finest laughter. “What do we have here, Longfellow? Our supper wasn’t enough for you? What in the name of the Queen’s English are you cooking up? It smells as fine as the southern depths of my dear Emily, bless her heart.”
“Well, Lord Beresford,” replied Longfellow nervously through his little pygmy face, “I don’t really know, to tell you the truth. I was just having a look at this young man here, with a little incision here and a bit of a poke there, you know. I extracted the parasite and tossed it over my shoulder. I think it is cooking, Lord Beresford, the worm, that is.”
“Ah, Longfellow, I daresay that you may have stumbled across something a little special, if that lovely scent is anything to go by.” He turned and looked at the other men, his right hand cradling his testicles through his shorts and his left gesturing towards the fire.
“McMuddleford.”
A man mountain stepped forward.
“Lord Beresford?”
“I hope you are as hungry as I am, McMuddleford. You are going to try this lovely worm!”
Fortunately for Lawrence McMuddleford, the worm tasted as pleasantly as it smelled. It was a divine cuisine born from the bloated, starved bellies of the tribe. Indeed, so succulent was the murderous little parasite that an idea came to Lord Beresford within moments of his own first bite. Not a single member of his travelling party had fallen to the worm since they had began their journey through the Amazonian forests and, considering that it had taken such a toll upon the native population, the distinguished leader of the group surmised that, for whatever reason, the parasite could not penetrate those with white skin or, perhaps, those with class distinction. Mass production of the worm in the heart of the Amazon would be a risky business but, with so many willing and able Amerindians to farm across the reaches of the land, Lord Beresford’s worms could become quite an industry.
Snow
If anybody is still waiting for the final part of the Green Forest Blues series (Part 1 and Part 2 are already up), it’s on a break due to economic developments in Ireland. This is a story called Snow.
Snow
Paul was sick of chasing her. Had the pursuit been a literal endeavour, on a round track, his feet would be raw and the blood of his toils would be marked upon the ground, running continuously. As it were, there were no physical marks upon his body. Instead he felt heavy and as if he were slowly melting.
Of course, he was still dancing. He stared across the haze of the room, making sure to move his arms and legs in time with the pulse of everybody else, a pulse that he resented as it battered his chest. She was dancing with somebody else, or everybody else, and the pit of his stomach kept leaping up and trying to escape through his mouth. However, stoic as always, Paul maintained a sickening decorum. Halting the painful movement of his appendages to a beat that he could not engage with, his breathing became difficult. The beat was crushing his chest now and the door looked like a safe option.
The hallway was littered with snakes. Young ladies and gents flirted and laughed, standing and slouching against the walls. Negotiating the serpent pit was daunting but suddenly made easier as the front door swung open. All of the movement stopped around him. Outside the house there was a velvet blanket of white. Snowflakes drifted down from the night sky.
Paul drifted through the seemingly frozen crowd, buoyed by the pure white on black beauty of the snow against the night. As he came closer he saw a female figure in the blackness, standing upon the whiteness. There was not a single footprint around her. There she was, wearing her white dress and black tights, atop black heels. Snow gave way underfoot as Paul traversed the threshold, his first step sinking deep. He continued to move out to her. Her eyes were alight and she smiled.
Touching her hands, lifting them from her side. Paul held on so tightly. His arms now around her waist; he clutched her. He did not let go. They waltzed over the snow. There was no music but the sound of their breathing. Her breath was soft. Snow kept falling. Beneath their feet, everything was undisturbed. He pressed his lips against hers. She pressed her lips against his. They halted their dance. She clung to him as they kissed. She pulled herself more tightly to him. She rested her face on his chest. The snow stopped falling. Flakes held in mid-air, and everything stood still. A cat watched from a window.
The snow began to fall once again. She moved away. Now Paul was fixed on the spot. She took a step backwards. The snow crunched beneath her heel. She engaged Paul’s eyes. The look told him something that he did not understand. Her eyelids fell shut and her head bowed. She turned on her heel like a dainty carousel. Paul did not move as she walked away, leaving heavy red heel-toe prints in the whiteness. He followed the red drops as she disappeared into the blackness.
He was heavier than before. He raised his right hand adagio. The cold of his fingertips seared at the open flesh of the hole in his chest. He closed his eyes. The blood dripped down his body, saturating him. His black clothing fell towards an increasingly intense shade in the meager luminescence offered by the streetlights. Feelings began to fade until all that remained was the cold and a resigned helplessness. Paul melted.
The cat watched. Paul’s knees gave way and his body crumpled to the ground.
