Posted tagged ‘ManicDDaily elephants’

No iPad 2 or Phone….

March 12, 2011

Interest in my household in the iPad 2

As an avid user of the Brushes painting app on the iPhone 4, I have waited eagerly for the iPad 2.  (Finally, I could make little “paintings” without the constant zoom.)

I’m not normally a gadget-freak, but I really have been bitten by this painting app, so I was set to buy yesterday, launch day, March 11.

I’d reviewed the differences between wireless and 3G, the various gigabites, the types of dock.

My only point of indecision was whether to order online or go to an actual store (completely uncharacteristic of me), so I could get the stupid thing sooner.

Then I woke up Friday, as we all did, to news of the Japanese earthquake.  My consumerist zeal crumpled so fast I didn’t even have time to be embarrassed of myself.  How could I think of anything but the news, the wave, the reactor, the discipline and indominability of the Japanese people?

And yet, and yet–as the day moved on, I called Apple–not to actually place an order–I still didn’t feel up to that–but to ask more questions.  Shipping times were up to two or three weeks by then.

Two to three weeks!

I checked out the lines at the stores.   I even resorted, repeatedly,  to Twitter trying to get current info.

I thought of getting up at 5 this morning and going to tbe Fifth Avenue flagship store.  (I didn’t, which was just as well, since they were sold out of the model I wanted.)

In the midst of all this –how could I think of buying stuff in the face of the nuclear reactor explosion– I spilled tea on my iPhone.

It was only for a moment, it wasn’t boiling, but… yikes.

My addiction stared me in the face.  As did the price tag of a new phone.

How could I even think of pencils and paper?  Paint?  An iPad 2?

Heat blowers, rice bowls, more heat blowers…. it seems to be working….

Aahhh…..

Dancing in the Dark (Pink Elephants)

March 10, 2011

Followers of this blog may notice that I’ve descended into the world of elephants and iPhone art over the last few months.  (Those who disagree with my views on art and politics may consider this an ascension.)

I genuinely like elephants!  (I’m guessing you’ve noticed.)

I’m also having a hard time writing blogs lately.  Part of the problem is that the news feels almost as grim to me as the weather.  The outbreaks of protest and democracy in the Middle East are pretty amazing, but there still seems to be a pall over much of the world, or, over this country at least–bifurcated clouds of threat and slog.

Of course, there’s always poetry!  Fiction!  Important loves (besides elephants.)  However, in the face of a world of publishing which seems increasingly fragmented –divided between an impossibly crowded field of micro-sellers and a few celebrity blockbusters–even these have, for the moment, lost some of their glint/promise/appeal.

I tell myself: change happens!  Transitions are messy!   Dispiriting confusion is part of the mix!

Yes.

And too, there are elephants.

Which, when they are not stampeding, have a certain timeless sweetness.

In my book;  on my iPhone screen; dancing, pinkly, through a (temporarily, I hope) darkened mind.

(PS – the elephant book is 1 Mississippi; the poetry is Going On Somewhere. Both are available on Amazon.  Check them out!)

Old dog, night walk

March 10, 2011

My old dog, increasingly blind,

My old dog Pearl is increasingly blind, especially in darkness.  The leash tends to provide reassurance rather than restraint.  Sometimes, I find myself completely leading her on a walk, as if I were her seeing eye person.  I have to be careful to avoid the bottoms of park benches, the sides of steps.  (She frequently veers to one side, which leads her into such obstacles.)

Other times, scent takes over and she, with canine persistence, pulls me along, avidly reading a kind of olefactory hieroglyphic.  I never am sure of what she actually sees, only that she knows exactly where she wants to be.

Belated Happy Birthday Michelangelo Buonarroti! (With Elephant)

March 7, 2011

He'd be 535 today. You'll have to imagine the candles (and elephant.)

 

Errr…. actually that was yesterday (March 6th)….  I mean, the day before yesterday….    (Time flies at 535.)

Charlie Sheen- Some people just don’t listen to their guardian elephant.

March 7, 2011

“Waiter, What’s this… ‘not a fly’… doing in my soup?”

March 5, 2011

"I think, ma'am, it's the backstroke."

Have a nice weekend with good soup and better elephants!

If you have time, check out Going on Somewhere and 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson (and BackStroke Books) on Amazon.    (And buy a copy!!!)

Gogol’s “Diary of a Mad…. Elephant?”

March 5, 2011

Not quite Geoffrey Rush at BAM

iPad 2! Me Too! (Abashed.) With Elephant.

March 2, 2011

I am enough of a child of the Sixties to hate to think of myself as an avid consumer.   I never had a dishwasher until my fifties (and the old one I now use leaves a dried seedy residue that I try to convince myself is at least heated through.)

I have never ever had a microwave.

Forget about a GPS;  one window on my second-hand car sometimes falls off.

High def TV?  My daughter did not know that Big Bird was yellow until age five.

My Birkenstocks are peeling.

And yet… and yet… today I found myself chomping at the bit (ha!) for a new electronic gadget.

I tell myself it’s all about art.  Followers of this blog will know that I have devoted the last couple of months to pictures made on an iPhone that has been entrusted into my care.

I will be so happy not to have to zoom in and out anymore.

But hey!  I have pencils, watercolor, paper, on which I could draw and paint to heart’s content without zooming one inch.

Yes, it’s very silly, childish, materialistic, irrational.

March 11th!

Dissing Teachers- A Long Tradition (With Elephant)

March 2, 2011

The Death of Socrates by Jean-Louis David (with ManicDdaily)

Society has often been unfair to teachers.   (But the current scapegoating is ridiculous.)

Not Much of a Moviegoer – Can I blame it on the computer?

February 27, 2011

Not Me Of Late

As followers of this blog know, I have spent the last several days posting images of little (or big) elephants inserted into stills from past Academy Award winning movies or current contestants.  I have to confess that I am much more into elephants than Oscars.  I haven’t actually seen many movies this year and I don’t know that I’ll even watch the awards tonight, or not for more than a short snatch.

It’s not that I don’t like movies or even awards shows.  Time just feels very short to me, and in our digital world, I find myself increasingly impatient with entertainment that I can’t control–speed up, browse through, dip into as I please.   (Even with an old-fashioned book, I can flip through/scan the boring parts–but a movie in a theater, or a tv show, without a TIVO, must be sat through.)

ADHD is mainly supposed to be a disease of children, but it also seems to becoming an ailment of rushing adults.

Some (i.e. my husband) blame it all on computers.

Computers certainly make it easier to entertain oneself in fragmented snatches.  But I really don’t think that we can blame them for the frantic quality of many of our lives.  The rigors of making a living today, and then of making a life once one has (more or less, for the moment at least) secured that living, seem  to make rushing almost mandatory.

Of course, one can take the point of view that it’s all process, and that whatever one does (job, commute, shopping, cooking, cleaning) should be slowly savored;  that each activity should be granted an equal sense of possibility.  (Even movie awards shows.)  My problem is that I am just not that enlightened.

So I rush, scan, multi-task.  And in the midst of it, draw little elephants.

Could be worse.