Correspondences
August 9, 2002
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Burrow into The Gay Blade’s enclave. The Spork Boards
You’ll pardon The Gay Blade if he doesn’t linger.
Fresh off the westbound boxcar that returned him to San Francisco after his Macworld Expo/New York-inspired season in postal hell, this road-raddled implement has already wreathed his weary loins in a figurative Speedo of poesy and hashish fumes, the smoother to jackknife into the roiling sea of humanity preparing to celebrate this week’s 181st birthday of Charles Baudelaire, godfather of French Symbolist soul.
Between the paisley smoking jacket (allegedly crafted from the shed skin of Edgar Allan Poe); the absinthe-heavy ankle flask wrought in the likeness of jackal-headed Anubis; and the anatomically correct, inflatable naugahyde replicas of the Brothers Verlaine (Paul and Tom); this rakish Blade fancies himself the overstuffed avatar of luxe, calme et volupté.
Ainsi qu’un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange/Le sein martyrisé d’une antique catin/Le Couteau vole au passage un plaisir clandestin/Qu’il presse bien fort comme une vieille orange! (Literally: "The Blade is coming up, so you’d better get this party started!")
Sed non satiata
And RE flowers of evil: Apple’s devilish scheme to replace its free iTools suite of online services with a paid version dubbed .Mac has provoked a ghastly chorus of shrieks from those doomed souls clinging desperately to the Mac.com addresses they thought had been issued them free and clear for eternity. Nevertheless, the move has apparently borne surprising fruit for .Mac’s marketing magisters.
Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Blade’s sources report that Apple’s semi-captive audience has lined up to shell out for .Mac subscriptions: While the company had projected an iTools-to-.Mac conversion rate of perhaps one in 10, upwards of 45 percent of current Mac.com denizens have paid the $50 first-year subscription deal for existing customers. (Then, as with all good vices, the price goes up.)
The Blade will keep his ears pricked for boasts about .Mac’s popularity when Apple unclosets its new Power Mac towers August 13.
Le trou de rat est un temple où de vivants piliers/Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles/L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles/Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers. Join the party with a Mac tip to The NMR Report, and a symbolic mole rat could be yours!