Post by Dan on Mar 16, 2010 14:55:45 GMT -8
It is a formality. It is a hoop to jump through, and like anyone with half a brain, we hate to be made to perform tricks for an audience.
I stare at the glowing screen, the blue white light casting reassuring shadows on my face and hands, while everything else is a washed out gray. Do you need bright colors and helpful drop down menus to help you talk to your machine? Its like trying to talk to someone underwater, all that stuff between my brain and the beautiful bytes. Pare it down, to the littlest barrier we can build. Its not inside my brain...yet.
So, ok, what we're looking for here. Where does he live. You can do alot to someone if you know where thier home is. If you know who thier kin are, where thier buttons are, pull here, push there. Damn. Well at least he's not stupid... too stupid. He's not listed. not by his or his sister's name.
So out into the meat space we go. Eyes on the street aren't as good as eyes in the sky most of the time, but some times, sometimes, they catch the little scurrying things that the cameras miss.
You seen this guy, or how about her? Flashing pictures around, ears to the ground, spread around some of that good stuff from up north to grease the palms and jog the memories. Finally, a locale.
Back to the blissful balm of the quiet hum of the hard drive hard at work. Look through the records, who lives there. Greenpeace holds the lease, should have known, should have known. Smack my forehead with the palm of a hand warm from the transferred heat of the keyboard. Why didn't I think to look there first? Anyway, it hardly matters now. Now we have him. Look through the sky eyes, look through the eyes in the buildings around, the cameras in traffic lights and ATM machines are so helpful. And I can confirm that it is them.
A new process, open an order. I am tempted to send them a dolphin. We aren't far from the coast here, there are porpoises in the sound. But although the irony would be astounding, I cannot justify the treatment to a marine mammal, to put it through that for my own entertainment. Not wyrmy thank Gaia.
Boxes. Huge ones, made of course from recycled compostable materials. Each one filled to the brim with those lovely eco-friendly corn starch packing peanuts, the 100% non plastic or styrofoam thingies that tingle on your tongue when you taste them as your saliva dissolves the organic foam. Lovingly packed inside each of these 6 huge corn starch packing kernel filled boxes is nestled a tiny toy.
In one, a squeaky dolphin bath toy wrapped in a little model tuna net, another a snow globe with the melted remains of a snowman floating forlornly inside, a chia pet in the shape of a mushroom cloud, a miniature earth wrapped in saran wrap, a universal video game controller, and a gumby-like green alien that promised to glow in the dark.
And then look at the return address labels, the order placements, the money trail, follow it all you want, because it only points where I want it to.
Consider my hoop jumped.