TKOG Who sells her first-born son to Steve Jobs, no questions asked

Yesterday’s Secret Society of List Addicts: grotesquely overplayed trends I think it’s time to put to bed. Q&A Winners: were supposed to be announced yesterday. I know. I suck. I need to figure out an equitable way to pick, though, because I’ve been driving myself nuts with guilt. As per uzh.

NTKOG #201: The kind of shrill corporate whore whose eyes fill with cartoon dollar signs at the mere mention of this season’s It Item.

I am: indifferent to most technology. As long as I have 24/7 access to my three email accounts, of course.

I am not: into conspicuous consumption. AT ALL. Hell, I’m barely into normal consumption. (Barter economy for the win.)

The Scene: The Apple Store on Boylston at 6:50AM on 4G Thursday. Sister and I rolled out of a cab, bleary-eyed, and were confronted with a line that was already THREE BLOCKS LONG. And that was just for people who managed to get reservations in the twelve hours the Apple site allowed them.

Dramatic reenactment of the shorter of the two lines at the Apple Store this morning. (Sadly, my reals pics are stuck on my old iPhone, which no longer has internet access. Lack of foresight!)

At exactly 7, the Apple Store doors burst open (to the song of a seraphic chorus, natch) and the line surged forward several feet. “Sweet!” we grinned, “We won’t even be late for work!”

Then the line promptly stopped moving and stayed that way for three and a half hours. Now that’s more like it.

Fortunately, those evil geniuses at Apple took great care of us, and employees ran the whole length of the two (two!) several-block lines non-stop, offering bottles of water, sprays of sunscreen, coffee, iced teas, Popsicles, crackers, fruit snacks, and two varieties of cupcake from the awesome local Kickass Cupcakes.

Turns out most people think 8am is a trifle early to eat three mini-cupcakes. And that is most people’s loss.

By the time Sister and I had reached the front of the line, nearly four hours later, I felt a certain closeness to the poor schmucks who had been standing ahead of and behind us. They’d heard us discuss high school gossip, Sister’s boyfriend, and the trickier points of kosher eating. We had discussed, in fact, everything but the iPhone. After all those hours, I didn’t care about the phone anymore. By the time we neared the end of the line, it felt as though we were going to stand there forever, as though waiting in this line was the point of the line itself. It was almost zen.

Then I ran upstairs and spent $350 in about ten minutes. Suck on that, Buddhism dudes!

The Verdict: I’m ambivalent. On the one hand, there’s this:

I don't think I need to tell you on what device I took this picture. (Nice quality, eh?)

On the other: I’m not the girl with the cool phone. Being the girl with the cool phone is antithetical to my very nature. I rocked a non-smart flip phone until December aught-eight; even then, I felt disgusted with myself to the point of constant self-berating that we live in a world where people starve to death every day yet I owned a phone that could take up to fifteen seconds of grainy video footage.

Plus, I didn’t even know about one-tenth of the iPhone 4G’s new features until after I’d plunked down the cash. So, yeah, I probably wouldn’t do this again. But if you’re going to let yourself get caught up in the hype of one tech-innovation every few years, let me tell you, this wasn’t a bad one to choose.

Tagged as: apple, guess it's ramen for me tonight, i think the contract i signed this morning means that steve jobs is entitled to hollow out my skull and use it as an ashtray whensoever he wishes, iPhone 4G, mac person (by circumstance more than by choice), open letter to Jason H. at the Boylston Apple store: I'm going to marry you. You don't know it but I'm going to marry you., seriously the new iphone is fucking awesome, spending this much money makes me feel like an awful person, yes i totally just spent a third of a month's rent in one shot