iPanic

Did anybody else notice that when Barack Obama led Michelle onto the dance stage at the Inaugural Ball, except for the onlookers holding news cameras, pretty much everyone else in the room was holding up an iPhone or iDroid to take their picture? The picture of that from the back of the room was flabbergasting… and a little depressing.

You see, I don’t own an iPhone. I tried an iDroid when they first came out, but when the twenty-something goth girl at the iDroid store suggested I come to iDroid school, I put it back in the box, stuck the box up on the high shelf in my bedroom closet, and asked for a dumb phone. I still use my dumb phone. The only time it bothers me is everyday, all day, when I see everyone else on the planet using their iPhone or iDroid.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with novel writing, the sole purpose of this blog, the topic from which I have vowed not to stray until the novel is written? Good question, I’m sure there’s a way to tie it in. Sure, here’s a way. Research is essential when writing a novel, and what better way to do research than to google at will on any topic, at any time, from any place. Yeah, I’d kind of like to be able to do that, I’ll admit it.

Now back to bitching about iPhones. It’s getting to be so bad, when I close my eyes, all I see is a finger “sliding to unlock” and a voice saying, “just wait a second here…” I mean come on, why do you have to slide to unlock, isn’t that really the same thing as the phone always being unlocked? Except that there’s an extra step? I don’t get it, why the slide to unlock?

And why is an iPhone still a phone? I don’t get that either. It’s a flat rectangle for God’s sake, does anyone else think it just looks dumb to be holding a flat rectangle up to the side of your head? Or worse yet, holding it out in front of you like a tiny rectangular platter? I don’t know, call me strange, but at least the flip phone looked kind of like something meant to connect an ear to a mouth. And the phone function is such a tiny portion of what you can do on an iPhone, why even bother?

I just feel obligated to try and resist at least a little bit longer. I don’t even know why. It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t know what the principle is, but I’m sure there is one. I’m trying to hold out until everyone else on the planet is using an iPad or mini-pad. Didn’t that used to mean something else? It’s so hard to keep up. I don’t know, there was something about that Obama moment, I kind of iPanicked.