This is the question on my mind.

I went past the Apple & ATT stores in downtown SF (very close to my apartment) on Friday night and Saturday. Apple had a line so long I couldn’t see the end of it (outside the store), and ATT sold out phones early.

While the lines outside the store suck, it’s really fun to walk past them and be overheard saying, “I can’t believe they ran out of phones again!”.

Is this a truly great phone, or it just another fashion statement? Why so much buzz?

With Apple, the answer is probably again both.

I think the lines are a combination of true enthusiasts (developers who are writing applications for the iPhone store, and power users) and people overrun with loopy excitement for a product for which they would be hard-pressed to name 7 unique features.

So what is my attraction?

I’ve asked myself this question and really drilled myself. The phone is expensive (via monthly charges), and most of my “required” features (Exchange sync, web, GPS, etc.) are available on other phones (surprisingly, the Samsung Instinct doesn’t sync with Exchange’s calendar - information I got from a Sprint salesman and found many user reviews online claiming the same).

What it comes down to for me has a lot to do with the iPhone App Store. The “open market” nature of the store (developers get 70% of the revenue from sales of their applications), the quality of the SDK (developers, like the ones at Pandora, report that iPhone’s SDK is just superb), that the value of the experience of the phone will grow over time as the community of developers embraces it.

So I was talking to a woman tonight while we were working on a very frustrating project, and she said about one of the contributors, “this work is so bad it sucks my dick!”.

Let’s imagine the first person who thought that something was so bad that it was as though their dick was sucked.

Right.

Only women say this.

When she’s feeling her worst,
the only comfort she wants
is to be told everything will be OK.

I’ve learned to tell her this,
even though I know it’s a lie.

If I am ever beside her on her deathbed,
and I tell her that,
I fear she’ll leave this world with the realization
that the lifetime of comfort
that gave her a sacred sense of home,
was nothing but an illusion.

The only thing worse than death that can happen
(when you are high),
is you believing you possess infinite wisdom
you are compelled to prophet.

You lose your voice never shutting up with the fantastical delusions
we should hear only from childrens’ writers.

The saddest part about it
is that this is the most enlightened you will ever feel.

Your religion is based on all your have learned
When you were not in reality.

Another from Zeitgeist on 6/29/08 (yea, we were banging them out that day, huh?).

Theme: T. Rex
Word Count: 17

T. Rex
Alive, nothing had more strength.
Now we dig to find your fossil,
We burn you into gas.