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.