Remember When Smartphone Protectors Weren’t A Cottage Industry?

A few weeks ago I did my patriotic duty and upgraded to an iPhone 5. At a third of an inch shorter and nearly one ounce heavier, my iPhone 4 was like something out of the Middle Ages.

“Do you want to get an iPhone protector, sir?” the salesperson asked me as our dealings were drawing to a close and our teams of lawyers were shaking hands. He waved his hand over a display.

“These go for $38 apiece, but if you buy one now as part of your upgrade, I can probably give one to you for, oh…” he scratched his chin “…how does $30 sound?”

I looked over the display. “Do you have any in blue?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Just black, pink, and leopard.”

“I was really hoping to get something in blue.”

“You should stop hoping.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” I said, and started to sign the reams of paperwork that go with the upgrade.

“Sir, are you really going to leave the store unprotected?” the salesperson asked. “It’s dangerous out there. If something happened to your new phone…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence, but looked down at the ground and faintly shook his head from side to side, pondering the consequences.

I went with the leopard case. It was sleek and thin and was particularly effective against Vervet monkeys. The peace of mind was invaluable…until I saw the protector my sister-in-law had obtained for her iPhone 5. Hers had been custom-made by a company called OtterBox. The protector had three main components to it: an inner shield, a clear covering for the glass face, and a hard plastic outer shell that could withstand being dropped or burned at the stake for heresy.

I have never dropped or scratched a cell phone but the very sight of the OtterBox got me thinking. What if I did drop my iPhone? What if I threw it? Sartre says that we are condemned to be free. With the terrifying freedom to throw my iPhone, how could I go another moment without an OtterBox? I stayed home for a few days with a “family emergency” and safeguarded my iPhone with the cheap protector until the custom-made OtterBox arrived—blue—delivered by an otter that balanced a ball on its nose while I signed the receipt.

As I clicked the hard outer shell closed I felt my worries lift like a morning mist. At last I could safely take my iPhone out into the world, and to celebrate I let my iPhone sit on the edge of a table for half an hour.

That night I had a terrible dream. It was still the Cold War, and the Soviet Union had discovered my iPhone 5 to be part of a secret operation to take photographs of nuclear warheads and put them on Instagram. I watched helpless as my iPhone was crushed under the treads of a Red Army tank. Even the OtterBox could not stop the guts of my iPhone from running blue through the streets of Leningrad. I awoke in a sweat and, after wiping my hand to prevent smudging, held my iPhone close. When would we feel safe?

I located a man in my town who had designed the craft that the space program sent to Mars. He told me all about it while I stood in his trailer. With a home equity loan I commissioned him to build me an iPhone protector that could enter the Earth’s atmosphere at 33,000 miles per hour, slam into the ground somewhere in Russia, and still give me push notifications on Manti Te’o’s draft status. He found an old tank on Craig’s List, cut holes for the headphones and power cord, and painted it blue.

It is a little strange driving around the neighborhood in my blue iPhone protector tank. The kids point and stare and street parking is next to impossible. But at night I sleep the sleep of the innocent knowing that nothing can damage my iPhone 5. I do not care that I cannot touch the screen to make a call. I never got good reception anyway.

Posted on 28 February 2013 by Mark Kaplowitz 19

Remember When There Were No Zip Cars?

I walked out my front door one Sunday morning to pick the newspaper up off my driveway, and I accidentally stepped on one of those zip cars. It hurt. The little, boxy car put a few sharp indentations into the soft fleshy part of my foot, and I was placed on my crab-soccer team’s injured reserve list for the next three games. That would teach me to walk outside barefoot.

At the time of the incident, I screamed in agony, and the zip car zipped away. I hopped after it, but the car slipped down a rabbit hole, and the next thing I knew I was sitting at a little round table, trying to remember whether I was supposed to go with “drink me” or “eat me.”

What a nifty idea—cars that you can rent ad hoc and drive up blades of grass like the characters in Antz. In Paris you can rent a bicycle like this, which in French is called a “velo” or “le bicycle.” The program has proved so popular that they are now considering a re-creation of the Napoleonic Wars on bicycles instead of horses, and of the Franco-Prussian War, where instead of starving Paris the Prussians will hoard all the bicycle pumps.

What else could use the “zip” concept? I think zip boats are the next zip thing. You could instantly rent a boat anytime you had the urge to sail somewhere, hopefully with Captain Ron at the helm, or put on a white suit and do a drug deal in the middle of the Indian Ocean, or you are rummaging through your parents’ attic and find an old map that obviously leads to One-Eyed Willie’s treasure and the chance to save your family’s home from foreclosure.

Even if you don’t live right next to a large body of water, the zip boats would still be useful. You could rent the zip boat, host a barbecue on it, and tell all the people you work with that you had a party “on the boat” on Saturday and that the reason you didn’t invite them was because you couldn’t find them on Facebook.

I also like the idea of zip big screen televisions that could be rented for special television moments like the Super Bowl, or the season finale of The Real Housewives of Scythia. There would be kiosks for all the latest forms of technology: LCD…plasma…ambient particles of Axe body spray that congregate in clouds above large cities.

I can imagine even zip lawyers. They could all stand in a line tethered to the metal rental stations, and dressed in varied interpretations of the term “business casual.” Pop in $15,000 (credit card reader available) and the zip lawyer would be yours to sue whomever you wanted. You would be able to commence a lawsuit against an individual or corporation of your choosing, ask them to photocopy all their bank statements and receipts and mail them to you, and then make them sit in a room at a long table for seven straight hours on a work day, and ask them questions about things they don’t remember.

The only problem would be that you would not be able to return the lawyer to just any kiosk. For wherever you tried to return the lawyer, you would keep getting told that it was the wrong kiosk, that you had to go to a different kiosk. And by the time you found the right one, there would be another $15,000 worth of charges to your credit card.

Posted on 10 September 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When There Were No Interactive Graphics?

You may recall that about a year ago we ran a post here titled, “Remember When There Were No “TIPS” Jars?” It was a pretty terrible piece and I forgot about it almost as soon as I published it. Well, about a month ago I received an email from someone who had prepared an interactive graphic on tipping for an organization known as the Hospitality Management Schools. She had come across the tipping post, and wondered if I could take a look at the interactive graphic on tipping, and see if perhaps it would be of use to my readers.

My first thought was that I was not sure if anything posted here is of use to my readers. But after a month of procrastination, two follow up emails, and a very bad dream in which I found myself inside an interactive graphic that showed my recurring dreams by subject in high school, I finally checked out the tipping site. And if you check it out, I think you’ll come to the same conclusion I did: the graphic is much more valuable than the static text you find here.

What did we do before we had these nifty interactive graphics? We had to imagine the characters and figures moving. Back during the oil embargo of the early 1970s, people had to imagine the reduction in the production of oil and the corresponding increase in gas prices and pants bottoms. Back during the Plague, people had to imagine the increase in rainfall and corresponding graphic of corpses piled atop a wooden cart being pushed by Eric Idle, yelling, “Bring out yer dead!” Back during the Roman Empire, the emperors would have had to imagine a little arrow along a timeline that could be pushed with a corresponding red splotch growing all around the Mediterranean Sea.

I wish there had been an interactive graphics website when I was taking chemistry. There would have been a red stick figure for the acid and a blue stick figure for the base, and they would join hands and become salt and water and a polypropylene bottle to hold the water.

An interactive graphic would have become really handy when we were reading Hamlet in English class. The landing page would have stick figures of all the main characters—Hamlet, Ophelia, the joking friend who always comes in through the kitchen door—and clicking on each one would start an animation of their gruesome death without the effort of parsing through the lines of “What ho, Sirrah?” and “S’blood” and “Methinks this play hath much movie logik.”

If you search for interactive graphics, you are likely to find graphics on topics in economics or history or something else that isn’t going to make you the life of any party on this planet. What they need are more interactive graphics about the practical side of life. Like an interactive graphic on mowing the lawn. There would be buttons showing different sizes of lawn, and a corresponding meter showing the day in the week in which the mower of the household would start being asked if he was going to mow the lawn that weekend.

Or an interactive graphic showing the Nielsen rating of Keeping Up With the Kardashians on the X-axis, and the number of people who can place the Civil War in the correct half-century on the Y-axis. Or demonstrating how to politely take a seat in the middle of row at a crowded movie that has already started. Or on how to keep an open syrup bottle from making all the adjacent containers sticky.

But I guess tipping is as important a practical activity as there can be. Few things in life cause me more stress than how much to tip the various folks who through conscious effort make my life more pleasant. The interactive graphic dispelled every question I could ever have. In fact, I was so engrossed in the educational animation that I forgot to go out to a restaurant, get a pedicure, or have a café au lait sculpted by my town’s most celebrated barista.

Posted on 9 July 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 5

Remember When You Didn’t Have to Worry About Online Tracking?

I recently read an article about how companies track Internet searches to aid in marketing of products and rejection of credit applications. It is certainly easy to see what banks will do with credit applicants who search for “do I have to pay my mortgage,” or what life insurers will do with policy applicants who search for “skyscrapers that let you bungee jump.”

But Internet searches do not always fall into such neat categories. What will companies make of someone who searches for how long mayonnaise can stay on the counter before it can no longer be served to his in-laws? Or who trolls YouTube for the opening credits to the 1980s cartoon “He-Man and Masters of the Universe”? Or who wants to know if Marilyn Manson is really the same guy who played Paul Pfeiffer on “The Wonder Years”? (For the record, he is not.)

I can see the corporate scientists in the laboratory now. There is a monitor showing me sitting at my computer, searching for the video of “The King Is Half-Undressed,” the hit single by the 1990s pop band, Jellyfish.

“What is he looking at?” asks the Google overlord to his underling at the monitor.

“Well, sir, he’s watching a Jellyfish video.”

“Like one of those squishy things at the beach?”

“No, sir. Jellyfish the West Coast pop band that, true to its name, was short lived yet influential.”

“What’s with all the tambourines? Every member of the band has a tambourine. There’s even a tambourine coming out of that guy’s head.”

“I think it’s supposed to be a conceptual video, sir. How shall we proceed?”

“Charge him an extra three points on his mortgage,” says the overlord, taking a sip from his coffee mug that says “World’s Best Dad” and shifting focus to a monitor focused on someone searching for videos of people falling down the stairs.

What will health insurance companies make of my visits to the Internet Movie Database, where I’ve analyzed the career paths of the actors who starred on the Nickelodeon sketch-comedy show “You Can’t Do That On Television”? Perhaps they will call it a pre-existing condition, and raise my co-pays for hospital stays and prescriptions for green slime.

Perhaps this is all for the better. Perhaps online search tracking will enable companies to bring us better products. Perhaps one day I’ll finally come home to a cat that plays the piano.

A positive use of online tracking would be to tell us what our friends have been searching for. Then we would know what to buy them for their birthdays. Maybe one day I’ll sign in to Facebook and get a reminder that it’s so-and-so’s birthday, along with a note that so-and-so is really interested in action figures that don’t melt in the microwave.

Of course, the real issue with online tracking is privacy. No one wants to go through cyberspace labeled as someone who likes hats and pictures of skin diseases. And I’m sorry, but it is no one’s business if you need to know how much Jennifer Aniston spent on cereal last month.

So I’m confident that Congress will move heaven and earth to pass an online privacy law that will be thousands of pages long and will do absolutely nothing to stop online tracking. But maybe the law will make the companies at least tell us why we’re suddenly being sent samples of mayonnaise that do not need to be refrigerated.

Posted on 19 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 2

Remember When the Police Couldn’t Track You With Your Cellphone?

Note: A brief glossary follows this post, Mom and Dad. MK

I just read an article about how a number of local police officials are tracking cellphones, often without warrants or Hollywood scripts.

I wonder what the police would think if they tracked my cellphone. “Okay, he’s in the embroidered washcloth section of Target. Let’s move!” Would they have to fill out a separate report for every call I made?

Tuesday, 5:39 p.m. Call to “wife” from supermarket. Asks whether they already have enough “potatoes” and if he needs to pick up a vegetable. Subject reports that he does not care for “peas” and would rather have another starch. “Wife” states that subject needs to learn to like vegetables.

I wonder if what the police mean by “tracking.” Is it just phone calls and traveling? Or does it include other uses of the cell phone? Right now I bet there is a prosecutor somewhere putting together a case where the principal evidence is going to be the defendant’s time playing Angry Birds. “And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, did the defendant,” he says, pointing to the defendant—who in turn points at himself with a “who, me?” expression and then looks around the courtroom as if the prosecutor meant someone else—“did this defendant just happen to toss multiple giant birds at the deceased’s head until her skull caved in like flimsy two-dimensional shelters?

“Or was this a premeditated crime, performed in cold blood, immediately after the undisputed nine hours the defendant spent playing Angry Birds on his Android, known as a ‘Droid in street lingo? I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that the facts speak for themselves.”

Perhaps new crimes will have to be invented. Like second-degree lying to your friends about prior engagements. One day soon we’ll open the paper and read that, “Ms. Smith, of Sycamore Terrace, was arrested early yesterday morning when it was discovered, according to filed court documents, that she had told her “friends” on her Facebook app that she was too sick to attend a birthday dinner, but in fact was really watching an episode from the first season of “Game of Thrones” on an HBO app. Ms. Smith’s attorney could not be reached for comment.”

Most likely, however, this is more about local police trying to protect the good citizens than about an invasion of privacy. If there is an intruder in your home, brandishing a kitchen knife and wearing that ghost mask from “Scream,” of course the first thing you are going to do is text your best friend about it. Murderer in my home. TTYL 🙂

Just think of the possibilities. With cellphone tracking, cops will be able to go undercover, offering iPhone users free downloads of jailbroken apps—that is, apps not available at the Apple iPhone app store—and then arresting them as soon as they enter their passwords and start the download. Even Miranda rights could be transmitted via push notifications to save time.

Of course, it will only be a matter of time before the cellphone users and app-designers wise up and figure out ways to block the police tracking. There will be apps that will make the police think the user is in one place when in fact the user is in another place. A text will go out, “Big shipment at the docks! Bring ca$$$$$$h!” and the police will run to the docks, sirens blaring, while the user is at home downloading pirated movies.

But maybe the user won’t matter by that point. Maybe we’ll just put the cellphone on trial. It will sit at the defense, with its lawyer, and a pitcher of water in case it gets thirsty. And if convicted it will go to cellphone jail, where it will download court cases to work on its appeal…and wait for its user to jailbreak it.

Glossary

App: Short for “application,” a software program loaded onto a smartphone.

Smartphone: Those cellphones that people keep taking out and dragging their fingers across while you are trying to talk to them.

Angry Birds: An app for a smartphone; a video game where the user must calibrate a slingshot’s speed and angle to launch large irate birds at comatose pigs in stacked hut-like structures. Points are earned by smashing the structures and annihilating the pigs.

Push notifications: Oy. Don’t worry about it. Just one step at a time.

Posted on 2 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 6

Remember When People Didn’t Have Cameras in Their Cell Phones?

Gisele Bündchen’s classy retort to an even classier heckle as she left Lucas Oil Stadium last Sunday night, and Rob Gronkowski’s NKOTB impersonation at the Patriots’ post-Super Bowl non-party, are, by now, news as ancient as Julius Caesar’s decision to go for it on fourth-and-one when he was trailing the Teutons by only a field goal. But if I may add to the over-analysis of these off-the-field distractions, I’d say that the question should not be whether they should have done what they did, or not. Instead, the question should be: If people did not have cameras on their cell phones, are we even having this conversation?

I remember the days when you could fight with someone eating spaghetti on the subway without worrying that someone might be taking a video for posterity. One day, in second grade, spaghetti was on the menu. I wasn’t feeling the Italian cuisine that afternoon, and opted for a piece of pink construction paper instead. I told a story while we dined and accidentally shot out a morsel of paper onto a classmate’s spaghetti, piled in the corner section of the divided Styrofoam plate. I tried to buy her silence with some crayons, but she stood on principle and reported me to the closest member of that enigmatic sorority known as the lunch ladies. Exiled to the front of the cafeteria, a punishment neither cruel nor unusual in those days, I wondered if anyone would ever forget what had happened.

How different would my life have been if someone had captured my shame on a cell phone? I picture myself at a job interview, and the interviewer says to me, “Well, Mark, you’ve got impeccable credentials, the skills we need, and everyone on the hiring committee was impressed by your work with Shrinky Dinks.” I smile and say, “Oh, thanks,” as if I was not expecting this praise. “All that’s left is a quick check,” the interviewer says as he punches the keyboard, “to see there are any comprising videos of you. Company policy, you understand, and I’m sure a mere formality for a candidate of your caliber. We really can’t wait to welcome you aboar—”

He frowns at something on the screen. “What’s this about a spaghetti incident?” he asks, and the next thing I know I’m back on Monster.com, looking for something that requires primate insurance.

But who cares about the person whose gaffe is captured for all time? What really matters is the audience. I can’t remember how I spent my time before I could spend sunny afternoons watching a slow loris holding an umbrella, or a report on the phenomenon known as planking, something I wish my grandparents were alive to see, so they would know that fighting World War II was worth it.

In the introduction to the Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library 1985 edition of The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Padraic Colum writes, “In the place where the storyteller was the coming of night was marked as it was not in towns nor in modern houses….There had been a rhythm of the day and now there was a rhythm of the night….He was a storyteller because he was attuned to this rhythm and had in his memory the often repeated incidents that would fit it.”

Even in modern times, people used to be attuned to this rhythm of the day and rhythm of the night (especially after DeBarge released their 1985 hit “Rhythm of the Night”). People would have to use their language skills to recreate, for example, a drunk wedding speech, or a clawing fight over the last copy of Soap Opera Digest at the supermarket checkout.

And all too often their storytelling abilities would come up short. They would see the bored faces of their audience, the eyes scanning the background for celebrities, even celebrities washed up from reality shows of washed up celebrities, and would see that their language skills could not compete with video. And they would resort to that phrase, that phrase we used to hear all time but not anymore, a phrase no longer needed in a world where story-worthy human shame can be captured by hand-held telephones, and history-changing retorts by supermodels and subway skirmishes can be relived again and again by anyone with an Internet connection and a cushy job; in short, a phrase that even I resorted to when mere words were not enough: Guess you had to be there.

Posted on 9 February 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 6

Remember When You Could Buy Things Without Being Asked to Write a Review?

The other day I used a smart phone to buy movie tickets through Fandango. I have never found it so convenient to buy the tickets and pick them up in plenty of time to sit through the half-hour of coming attractions, commercials, celebrity pleas for charity, and animated robot warning moviegoers to turn off their cell phones or trade them in for a small popcorn from the lobby. And the movie I saw, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Special Effects and Marketing, was really quite good, and I thought I might even see it again once my ears stopped ringing.

But upon arriving home and sitting down to a hearty meal of cookies in the shape of Christmas trees, and sprinkled with coarse green sugar granules, a text message appeared on my smart phone, which occupied the other place setting at the table. It was a message from the Fandango application:

“How did you like Sherlock Holmes? Click here to go to Fandango and be your own reviewer!”

I politely declined the invitation to write a review for this Fandango, feigning a prior commitment to review movies on another website. But the following morning, I was greeted with yet another text message from Fandango:

“It has been 12 hours since you saw Sherlock Holmes. Surely by now you’ve formed an opinion. Click here to write your own review!”

Again, I opted not to write a review, and figured that Fandango would get the hint. But I figured wrong, for two days later there was yet another text message from Fandango, reminding me that it had been three days since I saw Sherlock Holmes, and that if I did not write a review soon the movie would no longer be fresh in my mind and I would risk being influenced by the review of others.

Since when did it become customary to ask someone to review something they just bought? Fandango is not the only one. It seems like every time I buy something online I am immediately asked to rate it, participate in a survey, or post my own review. Not only do I have to pay money for the product and transmit my credit card information into the ether, but I have homework on top. Isn’t the fact that I bought the darn thing enough to show that I liked it? And if I really like the product, I will buy from the same vendor again. That is, if I’m not too busy taking a survey.

I know what the answer will be: to obtain marketing research. But why do the evil corporations need me to participate in a survey to obtain marketing research? Isn’t that why they implanted that chip in my brain while I was getting my wisdom teeth pulled?

Before long, all purchases will be followed by offers to rate, survey, and review. We will buy milk and be asked to rate the milk on the milk-producer’s website, or to like the milk’s Facebook page. “Follow your 1% Non-Homogenized Milk on Twitter, and don’t miss any news!”

One might be able to support the reviewability of products if the reviews were helpful. But the reviews leave me more confused than I was in the beginning. I’ll look at the Amazon reviews for a digital camera. One review will give the camera five out of five stars, and proclaim that it is “the best camera for pictures of people holding drinks in their hands.” And another review, of the same camera, will give it only one star, and state that it is “the worst camera I’ve ever used; my family looks just as ugly as before.” One reviewer will hate the camera because the viewfinder shakes too much. Another will say, “Love that shaking!”

I suppose that some people like the reviews and surveys and ratings. They like being a part of the collective consciousness of a Blu-Ray player or restaurant or toilet plunger. Perhaps it is more than just market research. Perhaps this new source of information—the consumer—is a new branch of literature, and will give us the same insight into the human condition as novels, poetry, and that song where you take someone’s name and add those “bo-banana-rama” lyrics to it. Perhaps I’ve gotten this all wrong.

But this discussion will have to be tabled for another day. For there is a man at my door, wearing a Fandango shirt, and holding a baseball bat. And he does not look happy.

Posted on 30 December 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 8

Remember When You Couldn’t Buy Things Online?

When I send my mental archivist for some good ol’ Christmas memories from my childhood, she brings me back not caroling or egg nog or chestnuts warming on a hot plate that we picked up from QVC for three easy payments of $19.95, but rather images of long lines at Macy’s and Sears and a store called “A&S,” which I think stood for Aimless & Shameless.

My mother would drag my brother and I throughout the mall for the annual drag-a-thon, lugging a 30-gallon paper shopping bag with twisted rope handles that held our winter coats. All that shopping, and the only shopping bag I remember is the bag with the coats.

And even more than waiting in line, I remember the carpets of those legendary department stores, beige and not too rough when you lay your face upon it, being mindful of the fallen staples and people walking around with sugar plum fairies and God knows what else dancing in their heads. For following your mother around while she did her Christmas shopping was exhausting, particularly when we were not being energized by our usual line-up of televised cartoons and sit-coms.

One of the perks of being a kid is that you can lay down on the carpet of a department store and no one calls the security guard. But it’s only department stores that seem to share this understanding. The Metropolitan Museum of Art…not so much.

But waiting in long mega-lines that wrap around Saturn is, of course, part of my memories of shopping in physical stores with my physical legs and physical wallet. I remember arriving at Macy’s one time with the intention of getting only a gift-card. It was late afternoon and the tension level was at least a Code Orange. I asked a security guard where the gift cards were, and he pointed to the register. The gift cards were indeed at the register, and leading up to the register was one of the aforementioned mega-lines. I asked the same security guard if it was really okay that I just step in front of all these people who had been waiting not-so-patiently, and he again pointed at the register, which I interpreted as a “yes.”

So I walked up to the register and grabbed a card, and started to address the cashier, and the man at the front of the line, holding four very large shopping bags bursting at the seams, said something to me that I cannot print here.

“No, it’s okay,” I said, waiving him off, “I’m just getting a gift card.”

When I got out the hospital I decided that it was perhaps time to do my shopping online.

My early forays into online consumerism were not success stories. I ordered a black faux-leather swivel desk chair so I could pretend I was Dr. Evil. But they sent me a burgundy chair instead. I’m doubt you’ve tried it, but it is very hard to look evil in a burgundy chair. So I called up the online merchant and they said to put the chair outside my apartment and that it would be picked-up and replaced with the chair I ordered.

I did what they said and they sent me a new chair. Unfortunately, the new chair was burgundy, too, and they had forgotten to pick up the old one. So now I had had two burgundy chairs in my apartment, neither one of which I could use. It looked like I was running a furniture store.

I’ve become much more adept and sophisticated since then. Last year, I ordered for my wife a digital camera. I typed in “digital camera” and the search engine returned so many results that I had to order more RAM for my computer to hold all the results. Luckily for me, that too was available online.

When I was finally able to view the results I saw that I didn’t know very much about digital cameras. Before I started my online search, I had thought that the only choice I had to make was the color. Apparently the color is the last choice you have to make.

The choices come in layers. First, what kind of a camera did I want? There was a “Point & Shoot,” a “Compact System,” and a “Digital SLR.” I looked around for a “Takes Pictures” kind of digital camera but I guess they had that one on backorder.

The second layer of choice is whether you want a standard, long-zoom, touch-screen, or waterproof camera. I was hoping to find one that could be dropped from the viewing gallery of any of the world’s great museums and still work…but again that option was not listed.

Then the third and, at least for me and my eyeballs, final layer of choices were the specifications. Megapixels, optical zoom, digital zoom, auto flash. There was even something called “burst shooting” which I had thought was available only with machine guns.

I downloaded all of the specifications of the different cameras into a spreadsheet and compared them. For days and nights I pored over the spreadsheets like an economist, trying to find the digital camera that would give my beloved the most Pareto-efficient picture possible along with a cute carrying case. Most of the data fit neatly into linear models, except for the option that allowed a photograph to be directly uploaded to Facebook without exercise of judgment.

Soon it was December 20, the last day for guaranteed Christmas Eve delivery while still getting the Super Savings shipping discount. My hands were shaking too much to type so I called up the store directly. And when I was I asked what I wanted to buy, I said, “A digital camera.”

“Oh, great, sir. We have plenty of those. What kind of digital camera would you like?”

This was it. The moment of truth. The moment when I put to use the superior knowledge that could be gained only from online shopping. I took a deep breath.

“Um, a pink one,” I said.

Happy Online Shopping, Everyone!

Posted on 12 December 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 22

Remember Old Fashioned Hand Dryers?

People debate evolution as it pertains to life on Earth, but there is no questioning evolution as it pertains to the hand dryers found in the restrooms of schools, restaurants, and rest areas off the New Jersey Turnpike. Hanging on the wall of some biology classroom there is a chart showing a slimy amphibious hand dryer crawling out of the primordial soup, a few matzoh balls still clinging to its metal chassis, and its fins and crank evolving into feet and a blower.

Yes, kids, the hand dryers that populate my sepia-toned memories of public school boys’ rooms in the 1980s have unadorned metal cranks that rolled out brown paper towel that could do anything except dry one’s hands. We would wet the paper towels and wrap them around our foreheads in imitation of the pop starlets of the day. One time my grandfather asked me why I was doing this, and I told him it was because the paper towels were not good for drying.

“Ah, you kids today are so spoiled,” he said. “I remember when we had to dry our hands on dried animal skins. Sometimes our hands would come away filthier than before, with grime and dried blood. Have you ever gone out to dinner at a five-star restaurant with the parents of the girl you’re dating, and come back from the restroom with dried animal blood on your hands?”

Mixed in with the lavatory tin lizzies were electric hand dryers. This marvelous invention was a white fixture with a stunted chrome proboscis and circular button by which one could trigger the stream of lukewarm air. The circular button looked at if it had once looked magnificent dressed in a shiny chrome finish. But that finish had been worn off by thousands of wet hands, forearms, elbows, and even feet banging the button. Did anyone ever gently push that circular once-chrome button instead of banging it? It was an unspoken that only real washroom users made a fist and pounded it into the button to start the dryer, like the Fonz starting the jukebox at Arnold’s.

The really funny thing about those old hand dryers is the word “dryer.” I don’t remember ever getting my hands dry on the first time through, or even the second. I would have to stand there for a good ten minutes, banging away the last flecks of chrome off that poor battered circular button while a line of irate men with wet hands formed behind me.

That would never happen today. Those hand dryers from the Industrial Revolution have been replaced by turbo-speed hand dryers that blow the skin right off your hands. And you don’t have to bang any buttons, either. The dryers are triggered by infrared sensors that can see wet hands before them as well as Taliban commandos in the Afghanistani night.

The configurations of the hand dryers are different, too. Instead of blowing air straight down, I’ve seen dryers that are folded over, and you place your hands inside a crease and the turbo-speed hot air dries your hands from both sides. In the future you’ll place your hands inside a teleportation chamber. The wet hands will be transported to a galaxy far, far away, where a swarm of miniature winged drier-fairies, that fly about your hands and dry them, not unlike the people that work at car washes. Once dry, your hands are teleported back to the chamber in the rest room. And you won’t find it strange at all that your hands are missing. Due to the principles of special relativity, no earth-time passes at all while your hands are being dried light years away.

The circular chrome buttons are a thing of the past. Somewhere in a junkyard there is a giant pile of circular chrome buttons from old-fashioned hand dryers. Families bring their children to play on the piles, and on the way home, perhaps at the obligatory stop off at McDonald’s, the children ask the parents how the piles got there.

And the parents smile, and maybe tell the children the truth, that technology changed so that people could have drier hands, and the circular chrome buttons had to sent out to pasture. But more likely they’ll tell their children that the chrome buttons got lonely, sitting all alone in this restroom or that, and congregate to one place where they could be together. Forever.

Posted on 28 November 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 16

Remember When You Didn’t Have to Worry About Identity Theft?

Note: It was exactly one year ago that I came up with the idea of starting a blog where each post would begin “Remember When” and would discuss another technological change, pop culture death, or safety scheme by which I chart my age, much like the rings of a tree. Metaphysics tells us that time is an illusion. If that’s true, than it is one of the funnier illusions out there. I hope that my meager efforts here have at least pointed that out, and I sincerely thank everyone who has been patient enough to read these efforts, and those kind enough to say something nice.

The 21st Century has midwifed a number of routines into my life. There is the routine for organizing my garbage into categories of biodegradability. And there is a routine for corralling the power cords and chargers into a pile that can be seen from space. But the routine that has had the greatest effect on my life is the routine of annihilating each and every slip of printed material that contains my social security number, address, or name.

When I was first put on notice that “[t]hou shalt not steal,” I pictured thieves taking loaves of bread, or a misguided youth absconding with someone else’s bicycle, or a particular sibling eating another particular sibling’s Halloween candy without permission and shamelessly leaving a pile of wrappers underneath the sofa. I never pictured crystal meth addicts diving through dumpsters in search of credit card statements and receipts.

But I picture it now.

My first shredder was advertised as being able to shred six sheets at a time. It cost $25, fit neatly underneath my desk, and worked fine for about two days. Then I tried to shred one of those credit card offers, around three inches thick, and the poor shredder seized up somewhere around the gummy adhesive for the fake card with “Your Name” on it.

The second shredder cost $50, was a stronger and shinier model, and was able to handle ten sheets at a time, plus credit cards, compact discs, and fresh mozzarella. And it would have worked out fine had I been able to keep up with all the identity-theft worthy correspondence that arrived in my mailbox. All I would have had to do was quit my job and spend sixteen hours a day shredding. But life being what it is, I let the junk mail pile up beside the shredder, another pile among piles.

My wife, of course, got sick of seeing all of the paper piling up, and would just tear the pages in half and throw them in the trash along with the chicken bones. Tearing the pages in half! You may as well FedEx your identifying information directly to the identity thieves. So I would find myself picking through the trash, like a cat, pulling out the halves of the documents with my name and scraping off congealed chicken grease.

Then I would take the stained halves of personal documents and put them in the shredder. The first few pages would go through all right, and I would relax a bit, but then the congealed chicken grease would clog up the blades and the shredder would seize up with a mechanical cough. The halves that I was shredding would protrude from the shredders locked-jaw like Steve Buscemi’s legs at the end of Fargo.

In addition, the halves and other documents that I did not get to place into the shredder are left in a pile, a pile that my wife later re-throws in the garbage, triggering another retrieval by yours truly, another ad hoc lecture by yours truly about the identity thieves lurking just outside the windows, and another trip by yours truly to the customer service line at Staples.

They say that third time’s a charm, and that is certainly true with respect to the shredders in my life. Sure, shredder number three set me back $200, takes up half of the basement, and when in use makes the house shake and lights dim. But it handles thirty sheets at a time, even those thick envelopes full of credit card offers and those airline promotions that look like real airline tickets to everyone except TSA workers. The blades are titanium and are arranged in a criss-cross pattern that virtually pulverizes whatever I run through them, including the large electric bill I’ve been getting every month.

And the poor, poor identity thieves are left with nothing but a cloud of paper molecules…and whatever they can find on the Internet.

Posted on 11 October 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 16