iWanna iPhone

Well, I'll take one from you if you're giving it away. I'm certainly not gonna fork out the $500 to $600 dollars they cost - let alone the 2 year contract required. (We usually get the cheapest possible cell plan, you know...the one with a free phone.) Anyhow, today's Rocketboom got me interested in the arrival of Apple's iPhone. They go on sale tomorrow night at 6 PM, and people in NY have been in line since Monday. Just plain crazy. Anyhow, it got me wondering what was going on here in Chicago. Apparently, there was no line at the Michigan Ave. store this morning. There are five locations within about half an hour of our apartment in Rogers Park, so it seems that no one felt the need to start standing in line on Monday. Even so, according to one forum over at MacRumors, there are people planning to wait in line tonight, whether there's a need for it or not (at the time of this posting, there were 72 messages in the thread and at least 2 people staying out overnight). There are even moms offering to stand in line for those of us who actually have to go to work during the day. But whatever ends up happening in the next 29 hours, one thing is certain: Apple knows how to create a marketing frenzy.

And on a completely different note, here's an article by literary theorist Terry Eagleton on how Mikhail Bakhtin liked to - among other things - use his theoretical manuscripts to roll cigarettes.

In other news...

How do you stay informed? To begin with, I'd like to say that I'm not particularly well informed. Unless you're talking about ninjas. Or very small newts. Or perhaps about the people outside my window who are playing their acoustic guitar and yelling impromtu song lyrics. Other than those things, I'm pretty uninformed, but I thought I might pass along a few news pages that I've come across lately. I generally don't check in on CNN or FOXNEWS or whatever other big news pages people read. They seems a little depressing...or maybe it's sterile. I like to hear human responses to what's going on...usually humorous human responses. So, I came across The Morning News about five years ago. They have the daily headlines on the right-hand side of the page, and they often make me chuckle. They're on vacation or something right now, though. So the news is old and dry. I came across another interesting page a few weeks ago. It's called Arts & Letters Daily. It's put out by some academic types, but the links are on diverse topics. Also, they have a whole slew of interesting links to check out. I also subscribe to flavorpill. They send out emails once a week with current happenings and whatever. But since I scoff at the idea of staying out later than about 9:30 at night, I tend not to go to the events they talk about. Yet, they do have a weekly world news page that is interesting. It's called Activate, and it hits the high points of what's going on. Finally, here's a few other pages I'm still not sure will make it into my daily surfing or not: Rocketboom and First Things. And now you've read about a few places I like...so what am I missing? What do you read?