Friday, October 21, 2005

NEW RELIGION

We have discovered a new religion on our return from the US.

Walking down Regent Street on my birthday singing an apposite Beatles song ("When I get older, when I ...") we passed a very large entrance to a brightly lit hall. To satisfy our curiosity we went in and saw many people wearing black in casual styles, often with a bag or two draped on their shoulder. Most were looking at a picture with a moving display and looks of rapture on their faces. We noticed that their were wires attached to these pictures and many of them had labels beginning with the letter "i". It is uncertain what the letter stands for, but innocent, indolent, intuitive, iconoclastic, interesting, intranced, affluent, yuppie...oops...came to mind.

A broad glass-stepped stairway led us upstairs, where there were little coloured packets attached to a wire and someone with a headset was describing a large display. Some people in the seating in front of the display were listening to him but most had opened file boxes with typewriter keys on their laps and for some reason the words "wi-fi hostpot" or similar came to our minds in a vision. Nobody sang, nobody spoke to us and we were unable to understand why so few people were listening to the preacher, nor why the hymn books were so unusual. We became aware that we were probably aliens because of our great age - or was it the other way round - and left quietly to enjoy a Thai meal in Maddox Street.

If anyone can explain this strange phenomenon we would be pleased to hear from you and will reward you with an apple and a full version of the Beatles song.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A strange cult indeed, but far better than the dreadful insipid cult that has people cluttering their houses with huge ugly grey plastic boxes, and spending hours staring at a screen, clicking through endless gobbledigook messages that disrupt you from ever actually doing anything!

Simon Baty said...

Another interesting part of this cult (I am a member so I should know) is that they walk around in public in a bit of trance, with white wires dangling from their ears. it's particularly good for people like me who don't get to worship at the church of Apple, since we only have licensed resellers and not Apple stores (I mean churches) in our country. I'm generally listening to music thru my white wires, but who knows perhaps there is a subliminal message behind it saying "Apple is good! down with Microsoft!" I have that Beatles song in my iTunes/ iPod by the way, so thanks but I have it already. And blimey, you are that age aren't you?

Anonymous said...

Well if you could tell us the exact time on your birthday, we might be able to pinpoint the relevant sermon from http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/regentstreet/month/200510.html

Any particular type of apple that you're offering?

Gerry
(not really anonymous, but the comments box isn't working properly today!)

Anonymous said...

Well, Apple are selling a lifestyle and Regent House must be the Briitsh zenith. But they will have to look at the robustness of their i-music boxes which seem to fall apart readily. I know what Gordon means about PC work horse but our PC is black, runs like the wind and has XP. We also have access to some very good free software e.g. Google's excellent Picasa 2 photo processor and album, AVG's virus checker and Zone Alarm's firewall. Not that I love Microsoft though - when will they next come up with original software?

Glad that Si's retro journey has taken him to the Beatles: have you gone back a bit further and tried the Everly Brothers?

Gerry - you have to click the 'other' Identity bullet before publishing - the Apple will be a white plastic cut-out, and you deserve two of these. They even make money out of telling you how their simple progs work.

Anonymous said...

Ah - an interesting blog-bug and possibly unique to Windoze. When I comment using my Win98 PC at home, the identity options work fine. When I do the same from work (NT), it doesn't matter if I press other - it defaults to Anonymous. I thought it might be a security feature at work such as disabling the javascript. But it's intermittent, so that's not the answer. Let's see what happens now. I'll press 'Other'.
I bet all you Apple users are feeling really smug now!