Siri & Me
I finally got an iPhone. Mind you, I didn’t get the trendy new iPhone 5 – the only model I could afford without hitting the lottery was a creaky old iPhone 4s. This means I will have to make do with a severely antiquated phone that lost its status as most advanced technology in the world nearly three weeks ago.
I had to replace my old smartphone, Kierkegaard, because his battery died, and it was going to cost me more to replace the battery than to get the new phone. Besides, Kierkegaard kept pushing me over my data plan by sending me an endless stream of text messages going on and on about stuff like “…truth as subjectivity,” or “…the fluidity of social identities” – sometimes in Danish. I figured it was time to move on, before I snapped and went all Hegelian on him.
My new iPhone is pretty nice. No, let me be slightly more precise – this thing is the greatest material addition to my life since the day I discovered beer and barbecued ribs.
When I was a kid I had a sort-of girlfriend called Catnip Catie. Her name came from the fact that she always kept her personal supply of Whacky Wonder Weed hidden in her cat’s toys. Mind you, this was back in the olden days, before you could get a Prescription for legal Whacky Wonder Weed to treat your case of Restless Leg Syndrome.
The other day I dropped off my son’s little bike at the church rummage sale.
As we Americans work our way through Summer in this great land, a time marked by metric tons of bratwurst, watermelon, beer, and tepid potato salad, our children are facing a terror that most of us adults have blissfully forgotten. This is because we have spent years trying to methodically stamp out all memory of it.