NationStates Jolt Archive

How very strange...
Nevertheless...that's commitment right there.

Edit: It's my thread now buddy.

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/1673/autumnxb3.png

After about seven hours and as many six-packs, the computer guy has transferred everything from my old computer to my new, state-of-the-racket computer. The whole shebang is programmed, fine-tuned, and ready to go. The computer guy stands back, burps, and smiles.

I look over from the couch at the new 19-inch analog TFT-LCD flat-screen monitor delivering an 800-to-1 contrast ratio, 260 cd/m2 brightness, 1280 x 1024 resolution, 170/170-degree viewing angle, and a scanning frequency of 30–81 kHz horizontal and 56–75 Hz vertical, or so I'm told.

What I see are the green hills, blue sky, and stratocumulus and cirrus clouds of the Napa County bitmap landscape called Bliss, the Microsoft Windows XP default desktop wallpaper. It looks like an invitation to suicide on a Sunday afternoon.

"Can you change that thing?"

The computer guy goes into the settings. I look again and see a rustic path carpeted with beautiful autumn leaves from big old maple trees that bow, lush and dreamy, overhead. That's more like it. And it's also the beginning of a certain madness.

So begins the fascinating journey of reporter Nick Tosches to discover the location of one of the most elusive yet ubiquitous images in computing history. The image in question is a standard Windows XP desktop background, and so evocative is it that finding its origins becomes the primary goal of this globetrotting reporter.

I go to Jersey City, I go to Paris, I go to the Arabian Peninsula, I come back home.

I sit on the couch and stare at that rustic path and those big old maple trees. By now I know the name of this particular wallpaper or background or whatever it is: Autumn. Moving to the desk and gazing more closely, I see a vague, dark, summoning something at the end of the path. A cabin? A covered bridge? A barn? I want to be there, for real, on that path, under those maples, moving slowly toward that dark, summoning something.

I return to Paris, go from there to Tokyo, from there to Milan and Lake Como, then back here. I'm tired of everything, everywhere. I want only to go to Autumn.

How hard could it be?

It's a lead-pipe cinch, I figure. I'm a good detective. I've found opium dens in Vientiane; been granted interviews by cardinals, mafiosi, and sheikhs; discovered the meaning of "half-and-half" in the old song "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee"; conned the Vatican into bestowing a doctorate on me so that I could gain access to hiddenmost archives; deciphered the cryptic message Ezra Pound scrawled in his own copy of the Cantos while in the bughouse; tracked down and interviewed Phil Spector's first wife, long presumed dead; charted my way to the sacred stone of the Great Mother, in Cyprus; gotten Charlotte Rampling's cell-phone number; even come close to understanding the second page of my Con Ed bill. Finding out where a picture was taken—a picture plastered on millions of computer screens—seems a shot away.

What fools we mortals be.

Read on (http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/features/2007/02/autumn200702?printable=true&currentPage=all), if you're interested. It's one of the most enthralling articles I've seen in a long while...

That's a nice story. :p

That was really nice... thanks for posting it.

That was really nice... thanks for posting it.
No problem... I really liked it myself, too. Not sure why, though. There's something mysterious/beautiful/evocative about the whole journey that really got to me, which is strange when you consider how trivial the image actually is.