‘My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots’

I find this article-review hilarious. From The Guardian -

It is astounding how quickly you get used to technological change. For instance, within the space of 18 months, I have gone from regarding wireless broadband as an outlandish novelty to considering it my God-given right. Cables appal me – they belong to the stone age – alongside electric typewriters, fax machines, video recorders, pagers and the plough.

But there is one device I just can’t get comfortable with – my mobile phone. I’m not some medieval yeoman, infuriated by mobiles full stop. Just this particular model. The trouble started the afternoon someone from Orange rang me up to say, “Hey, valued customer – do you want a free phone?” At first I wasn’t interested, but he went on and on about how popular and great the Samsung E900 was, then promised me free texts at weekends for life if I said yes. So I gave in.

Iroha uta

(Moved from the ‘Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto‘ post)

As flowers are brilliant but inevitably fall,
who could remain constant in our world?
Today let us transcend the high mountain of transience,
and there will be no more shallow dreaming, no more drunkenness.

This very well may be a detail that results due to the wording used in the translation, but for the purposes of analysis, I shall [momentarily] treat the translation as if it was an original. While the last two lines seem very much Buddhist-spiritual, I am intrigued by the possible meanings of the first two lines -

As flowers are brilliant but inevitably fall,
who could remain constant in our world?