On Smartphones

As more and more of my friends adopt smartphone technology, I have to tell you there are certain things that just change forever. It's like losing your virginity all over again. You're never going to get back that innocence.

• You will never poop the same way again. I don't know if you'll spend more time in their playing Angry Birds or if you'll just start looking forward to every daytime poop as another opportunity to check your non-work email, but damn it, the first day you don't take your smartphone into the can with you is the first day you realize you feel truly naked and violated.
  
• You will never have to have an argument over facts that lasts more than three minutes. Did something happen or didn't it? Which 1980s dancing movie starred Kevin Bacon and which starred Patrick Swayze? Anger and worry are forever banished. You now have the ability to settle any bet or asinine claim within seconds of remembering you have gained this superpower.
  
• For that matter, you're done having to remember things forever. Birthdays? Phone numbers? These are paltry examples. You no longer need to remember anything other than how to work your phone and Google. Think of a phone as a direct conduit to the entire internet, the internet then functioning as external memory for your puny meat brain. This past weekend I looked up several songs for artist and/or lyrics, local weather in two different counties, the plot summary for Showgirls, about a half dozen YouTube videos, world news and a recipe for meringue. You are no longer limited to only knowing only those things you actually know.
  
• You're fucked for texting. Once you see entire text conversations laid out like chat logs, you're in for a medium-sized nightmare spike in text frequency. I've received (and sent, I must admit) nothing but a question mark because i left it off the end of the previous text. Aside from how awful I must imagine it must be to get an extra text for nothing but electronically superfluous punctuation, you have to pay for that. Jeeze, I went a little heavy one month and had to cut myself off, meanwhile my friend's got unlimited texting so she's sending me four one-line texts in response to my one four-liner. I was having a fit. Ended up just going to the store and beefing up my contract. Now I'm a complete asshole about how many texts I'll send. I'd have written this very entry via 160 character texts if I didn't hate updating with limited mobile functionality and weak HTML skills.
  
• You'll have a hell of a lot more to do in traffic. It's like pooping, but a lot more satisfying.