"My adventure did feel like time travel into the past, especially when the G.P.S. began flashing near Yosemite that we were "entering an area where turn-by-turn guidance cannot be provided.""
Isn't Dowd's irony or sarcasm or whatever you want to call it absolutely blissful? She is poking fun at our dependence on technology and how unimaginable it now is to go on an adventure without the aid of technology-aided orientation. Get it?
It's subtle I know, but there it is. After I read the column, I was overcome by a rapid-fire succession of questions. To give you some background (if you haven't read the column yet), Maureen Dowd takes her readers west through San Francisco on an expedition to pan for gold, an activity that has apparently experienced something of a renaissance as our recession has deepened. Let me break that down again. Maureen Dowd, a New York Times op-ed columnist, hops on a plane from New York City to San Francisco, then goes to Yosemite with her GPS to pan for gold for a couple of hours, all so that she can reflect in 850 words on how the literal search for gold captures the state of the economy and our national psyche at the same time. Fool's gold. Otherwise known as pyrite as we are fortunate enough to learn. It's symbolic of our times.
So back to the questions that raced through my mind. How much does Maureen Dowd get paid? Did the NYTimes really fly her out to San Francisco just so that she could write this column? Did she fly first-class? Is there really a recession? Has the price of stock in The New York Times Company really fallen 90% in the last five years? Did the company lose $58 million in 2008 or is Google Finance just lying to me?
What the hell is going on here?
And, finally, how do I get her job?
1 comment:
keep writing like John Grogan in the movie "Marley & Me", then you will get the job. haha.
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