I’m at the mall. I’m about 40 or 50 deep in the line. So, I’ll be an annoying gadget whore all weekend.

I have electricity, a computer and music. Truth is, if I don’t get some writing done in the next couple of hours, I’m a giant douche.

A little Apple/Silicon Valley trivia. Palo Alto is actually home to two, count ’em two, Apple stores (and an AT&T store).

Celebrity tech bloggers and web gods are in full force down the street at downtown Palo Alto, with Robert Scoble at the front of the line. Rumor has it that CNN will be filming from there around 6 p.m. Pacific.

But, here at the Stanford Mall, home of the second Apple “mini” store, a few folks have been showing up here, refugees from the other store. Apparently the blazing sun unbroken by the roofed walkways and dappled gardens of this mall, coupled with being 200 deep despite sleeping on the street last night, was a bit much for a few.

I’m hard by Starbucks, which keeps walking free samples up and down the line, and the restrooms. Could definitely be worse.

It’s summer at work. There’s a lot of writing going on and strategic planning, but there’s definitely a lull in what I do to get the paychecks rolling into the bank account.

Benefits and downtime equal why the fuck not try to get an iPhone tomorrow? For me, it’s not so much the hype as the hope for a combo-PDA-internet toy thingie that tops all 912 of my previous attempts at convergence and digital completion. Syncing with a Mac has been a holy grail or something more mysterious and unattainable.’

I’ve used versions of the Missing Sync, Palm, Handspring, Apple’s own Sync, Motorola and all sorts of products from phone companies with cables and Bluetooth and whatever. No joy. Or brief joy and then not enough.

Boring and geeky. Really, I do know it. My gadgeteering is freakish. Plus, I was an early Mac user thanks to an office where I first used Word and Excel in the ’80s. Although, I couldn’t afford one of my own until the 90s.

Point is that it’s summer, and we live in a part of the country that is just mild and mellow and sunshining most all the time. We also live an easy bike ride or walk to one of the most stylish outdoor malls of high end boutique comfort I’ve ever strolled. It’s very un-mallish in it’s cozy strolling design. It’s the site of Apple’s first, and flagship, mini-store.

I’m counting on the store’s mini-tinyness to keep the throngs (if throngs there be) from thronging. Better yet the student-types from the ‘hood are off for the summer doubtless splitting atoms and taking over the world as summer interns. Betterer yet, there’s a French Bakery, Starbuck’s, a gourmet grocery shop with great, affordable-for-the-neighborhood produce and a fruit smoothie place. The coup de grace, well-maintained toilets.

Throw in the fact that I should be able to pick up some WiFi skipping between Apple and Starbucks.

Since Steve Jobs like to boast about revolutionary, I’ll chronicle the occasion. I have verious sized digital cameras and my video camera plugged in for re-charging right now, so I can decide what I need in the morning

It’ll be total anti-climax, pointless circus or geek heaven. What it won’t be is “historic,” as the hype machine might have one believe. It is just a computing device afterall.

Interesting evening. A small crew took a co-worker out to dinner on occasion of her upcoming nuptials.

Here’s the chicken/egg thing I haven’t figured out for myself. I have no interest in having a wedding and doing the wedding thing and partying the wedding style. Is the unlikelihood of my having such a fete a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The bride was worrying about her mom getting offended at the likely shenanigans gotten p to by both her old college friends and the groom’s. A bullet I have dodged on several fronts. Although, to Pat’s credit, she was always pretty hip to excusing herself before any shit went down from which she would wish to be excused.

Completely unrelated, apart from coming up in conversation, it’s inevitable that I will always have a freakish side of not fitting in a crowd. Still and all, sometimes I really don’t understand other folks either.

Towhit, the topic of the iPhone (and my serious iPhone jones) came up. I know I am plugged in, wired, gadgeted and automated to a fucking farethewell, and the rest of the universe ain’t. I totally acknowledge my extreme ways in the world of the web.

But, how has that world so seriously passed by the educated folks with whom I work? Here, in 2000 and 7, I gotta say I accept not everyone would take a day off to buy a goddamn cell phone. Good fucking idea really, to know queue up for consumer goods. How, though, can you not have learned anything about it, if as the NYTimes reports, 11,000 articles have been written?

I dunno. I think among the curses of my personality (and the pleasures of my company with M. who’s my match) is I consume information and need to know what’s going on in the world. The whole magic computer thing, helps that out mightily.

I was just reading this wonderful news story about a coach and his 16-year-old bride. Jesus christ if I had a teenage athlete daughter in Hicksville looking to train with the big dumb goofy Coach of Hicksville, I’d get the hell out of Dodge and somewhere near a Swiss, convent-run boarding school.

The article got me rocking a pretty reactionary mood. Something like, there ought to be a law where pubescent girls are put on islands away from the menfolks until they are pre-menopausal.

The best thing about those kind of news stories with the advent of the world wide web are the comments. Any fuckwad with a half-brain believing in love gets to believe in love, eternal, everlasting and entirely creeped out.

One guy wrote:

I think that he showed terrible abuse of power in an authoritative position….however, with that being said, I’m a 40 year old male that is involved with a 17 year old female, we’ve been together for a year…it’s a great relationship, the communication is great, there is minimal generation gaps, and I don’t even come close to manipulating, controlling, or sheltering her from life, or acting as a father figure…I am highly successful in my business…while rocky at first, her parents are openly supportive of it…she’s living a normal life, on her way to college then law school….she’s mature and wise beyond her years….my point in this, is it can happen…..and happen succesfully

Apart from the complete lack of awareness on the how to and what for of the ellipsis, um, just “Ew.” Yeah, I’m going out on a limb and judging one of my peers.

I work with some very bright, very mature recent college graduates. Young men and women in their early twenties who are quite poised and interesting. There are all sorts of topics pon which we can talk, levels on which we can relate, blah fucking blah.

But, at the end of the day, they are HALF MY FUCKING AGE. Half. I am much closer in age to their parents than I am to them. They are starting out on their life paths, deciding on grad school or travel or regular working. Nothing about their lives is or should be set yet.

On the remotest, outside chance there was a non-creepy moment where we transcended frienship and considered a deeper relationship, I would be playing from a deck with more cards. No doubt. And, my deck would have the potential for high level predatory lechery. My deck would have 20 more years’ worth of acquired knowledge and experience.

And, if I was a regular person in my 40s, I’d think, “WHOA, Fucking, whoa, I don’t want to be Chester the Molester.” If I don’t feel that twinge, I am Chester the Molester. It ain’t love, it’s statutory.

Barely after midnight, in bed, in clean sheets no less, I’m veritably bursting with pride. Foolish, arrogant and boastful pride, of course, but something.

This weekend not only did I juggle, including meeting some new folks and passing clubs enough to remember what I forget and that it’s a bit like riding a bike, I also managed to get in along walk and a charity vintage car show with M. And miracle of miracles do some writing. I may even have the first draft of a chapter adequate for a book proposal or bonfire.

Even more significantly, I got some laundry done. Our sheets were wrinkle-free on our bed, stiff and firm with a horridly long-lived accretion of filth. No more, all is fresh and tidy. (Note to self, using the gray sheets just makes one oblivious to dirt.)

I can’t do laundry and not think of Dot of dotdwyer.com. A talented and accomplished actress and comedienne, no doubt, but a stellar laundress wise in the field. I always fold now as I remove the items from the dryer, thanks to her counsel.

The only thing I haven’t yet accomplished is the one email about campaign2008.wordpress.com but that’s what worktime is for. OK not really, but I do get breaks more or less.

God, I am an accomplisher.

I admit it. I want an iPhone. And, there really isn’t anything to stop me from getting one.

Fact is, I have used a whole bunch of PDAs, cell phones, music players and convergence devices and all that over the years. I loves me my gadgets. I also tend to use all of the bells and whistles. I customize, set settings, use every kind of photo, contact list, notepad, alarm clock, calendar, wallpaper, ringtone function that can be keyed in or computer sync’ed.

Ultimately, I also get comfortable with limitations. I mean no gadget yet has replaced the battery-operated, Japanese vibrator.

One thing that has always blown when I’ve worked toward convergence, though, is that I favor the Macintosh computers and to date PC-syncing has been ahead. Even the universal Palm with it’s own language, and the old-school Handspring organizers, which I dug before Palm ditched everything but the Treo, all worked, as does my current (sickly) Sidekick. They just lacked that certain je ne c’est pas of native integration.

Shiny and new could be my gadget solution. Or another toy I will figure out, work through, use to its fullest for a couple of years and then figure something else out.

Whilst thinking through all of this hyper-rationalization for a consumer goods jones, I spotted one in the real world. The web is all sorts of full of rumors about folks eyeing them in the hands of testers littering Silicon Valley, mostly at restaurants.

Sure ‘nough, they’re in my neighborhood in the wild, just like the rumor sites claim. A tableful of people (well the dudes at the table not the womenfolk they were accompanying) were passing it about and surfing the web and pressing shiny virtual buttons.

Right there it was, two tables away as they waited for their gourmet burgers and fries in Palo Alto, as M. and I finished ours. I had to wipe the drool from my chin, straighten up and go home.

I admit it. I want an iPhone. And, there really isn’t anything to stop me from getting one.

Fact is, I have used a whole bunch of PDAs, cell phones, music players and convergence devices and all that over the years. I loves me my gadgets. I also tend to use all of the bells and whistles. I customize, set settings, use every kind of photo, contact list, notepad, alarm clock, calendar, wallpaper, ringtone function that can be keyed in or computer sync’ed.

Ultimately, I also get comfortable with limitations. I mean no gadget yet has replaced the battery-operated, Japanese vibrator.

One thing that has always blown when I’ve worked toward convergence, though, is that I favor the Macintosh computers and to date PC-syncing has been ahead. Even the universal Palm with it’s own language, and the old-school Handspring organizers, which I dug before Palm ditched everything but the Treo, all worked. They just lacked that certain je ne c’est pas of native integration.

Shiny and new could be my gadget solution. Or another toy I will figure out, work through, use to its fullest for a couple of years and then figure something else out.

Whilst thinking through all of this hyper-rationalization for a consumer goods jones, I spotted one in the real world. The web is all sorts of full of rumors about folks eyeing them in the hands of testers littering Silicon Valley, mostly at restaurants.

Sure ‘nough, they’re in my neighborhood in the wild, just like the rumor sites claim. A tableful of people (well the dudes at the table not the womenfolk they were accompanying) were passing it about and surfing the web and pressing shiny virtual buttons.

Right there it was, two tables away as they waited for their gourmet burgers and fries in Palo Alto, as M. and I finished ours. I had to wipe drool of my chin, straighten up and go home.

I’m not sure if they would want this announcement, but it is the web and this is how these things worth.

Please check out this newly born weblog and help its nascent self to beingness: http://campaign2008.wordpress.com/

The creators are largely responsible, hugely so really, for my left-slanted political self. It’s amazing the indoctrination powers one can have while reading a child Make Way for Ducklings and bringing her into the Public Garden.

Lately, I just have been considering myself a complete and total creative failure. I might be right, but I think in fairness, I should rationally think the jury’s not out yet.

The writing is slower, harder, lonlier than I want it to be. Which then, of course, begs the question, why the fuck bother? It’s a stupid kind of masochism, really. The sun is shining there are wonderful things to do, people to make fun of, diversions of a thousand score.

So, yeah, I’m just an asshole who thinks I have something more to contribute. Delusional, that’s what I’d call that.

My mood’s a bit more cheery though after one little trick, one small pathetic gesture, one desperate boost to despair or the sinking feeling of fraudulence. I re-formatted.

So where I once thought I had one half-assed, half-written, wholly crappy chapter coming in at 5 pages, lo and fucking behold it now stands at 11 double-spaced. Thank all dieties and powers in the universe for white space.

The words still suck. But the space in between, the air, the light, gorgeous.