iPhool

Last week I was gifted an iPhone after naysaying the idea.  I crabbed the day a microwave came into the household: my pots are good enough; a food processor: there are knives in the drawer; a VCR: we need this why?  Well, I went from a gadgetphobic to having too many, including the machine that would make a breakfast sandwich till a circuit inside frizzled.  Pared down the population to breadmaker, yogurtmaker, mini food processor, a Kitchen Aid mixer, the microwave and a coffeemaker.  Oh, and a toaster oven.  And a bean grinder.  I use them all, intermittently.

I writhed at the idea of a laptop, but was nuisanced beyond therapy with the infiltration of my computer tower by sleazy infections and worms.  Went to a Mac, not looking back, love the thing.  Own an older version of the iPod shuffle, and now an iPhone.  Well nice, it's a phone, I have a Tracfone, the pay-as-you-go simple device and what do I need this newfangly hipster phone for?  It would be fun, but.

So it happened that one of the most hipster loves I know is upgrading himself to a iPhone 4, and so sent me his iPhone 3GS.  He actually said welcome to the 21st century, and after today I know he is right.  I spent two hours fiddling with apps, sharing music, and programming the thing and it holds almost as much as the laptop currently has in its file banks.  It is genuinely a minicomputer and I am flabbered at the tiny geniuses who live inside its sleek, black case.

Apps for reading barcodes, for taking pictures of an item for identification, a sleep app that plays ambient music, the weather channel, and groupon are now installed into this small miracle.  I won't ever get lost again, as long as I am charged up.  In case of revolution, I am ready.  If Wegman's has samples of crab dip, I will be there.  Already, I am a snob (not really, but if I am meowing about it too much, feel free to get the spray bottle and give me a squirt).

The world has sped up, shrunk, and opened for business.  It will be interesting to see the social impact upon the next fifteen years and if this will create new stratifications of status.  In the meantime, I am going to the gas stove to cook up some frozen broccoli, which was an innovation of my early childhood.  Television, tv dinners, Bird's eye frozen vegetables.  Every Atomic Age Mom had those in her apron pockets, and these products were expected to lead into untold leisure time, since cooking from scratch would become a thing of the past.  Laundry wouldn't take two days, one for washing, one for ironing.  Mom would just strap on a jetpack and pick up the kids from school.  We would come home to tv trays and hot foil dinners to watch Ernie Kovacs or General Electric Theater.  Concentrated orange juice.  Pot pies.  Fizzies.  For heaven's sake, we were kings.

Now, just as my family tried one of those plastic films you plastered over the television screen to add color to the black and white, (green on the bottom, brown in the middle, and blue on the top, I think...did nothing for Ed Sullivan) and realized it was far from what was expected, so might it be said of my graduation from a pocket cellphone used for emergencies and ordering fish fries to a smartphone.  I am giddy at least for another few hours until bedtime, when everything will close down, and little machines will be plugged in for a recharge.

There is a rumored snow storm on the way at the end of this sunny day.  I want to change the fish tank before then and have supper.  Take a look at the assignments for class.  See if I can figure out how to set the iPhone to play ambient music for sleeping without the thing going all night till it's daid.  Sleep well, all, the ears of the world listen for the soft sounds of breathing, as each time zone finds its own bedtime.  Goodnight eastern seaboard, goodnight Mississippi basin, goodnight monoliths in Utah and all the living things that draw together for the evening.  Goodnight Pacific, goodnight Tasmanian Sea; goodnight to near, goodnight to far.  Moon be still; paws and feather, leaf and foot.  You, too.  Love.