Birding & Tweeting

It happened. I can't say that I wasn't warned. I somehow thought that I'd be the exception, but ho no, not so. It all started earlier in the week, when I bought a Droid. Seemed harmless enough, right? Smart phones are ubiquitous these days, and I'm a responsible adult. It's not like I'm the type of person to get addicted to these techno-gadgets, after all. Right??

Oh baby. This has been the slipperiest slope of my life. I even oiled the soles of my feet so that I could slide all the faster. Better than sex is all I can say, this Droid thing. Which is a good thing because...well, never mind. Even the screen saver blows my mind. It's like taking Ecstasy and falling in love with the whole of humanity for the first time. I honestly think that the goodness and intelligence of the human race, as well as the summation of our achievements as a modern civilization, have been condensed to fit in the palm of our hands in the form of the Droid.

Okay, so after flipping out over the screen saver for a couple of days (it's a pond, folks! It has leaves floating around, and when you touch the screen, the water ripples!), I started checking out the apps. Omg. Have I already used the Ecstasy metaphor? Dang, I did. The apps make me positively weepy. I was at the bar a few nights ago, app surfing, and the guy next to me told me about an app with bird calls. He said his wife's a birder, and she puts the phone near the window, plays the bird calls, and the birds come and hang out on their windowsill. Oh man, I went through a pile of bar napkins over that one. It's funny, I thought, that tears of joy make the same mess as tears of sorrow. (Remind me to tweet that...)

After a few days of timid app surfing, I thought, to heck with it. If I'm going to get all tech'd out, I might's well throw in the towel and go all the way. So with a combination of great pride, deep humiliation, and untethered tech-lust, I executed a perfect swan dive into the abyss, and this is what happened as a result:

- I now have a Twitter account. My desired username was taken for some odd reason (are there really two Meg Hitchcocks in the world??), so Peggy Peanut it is. (Many thanks to my late grandmother who coined the name many years ago, adding a few years onto my therapy). I'm amazed at the deeply philosophical tweets I've been receiving. Twitter isn't just a bunch of girls who tweet about the new shoes they're about to buy, are in the process of buying, have just bought, and are now wearing. There are things equally riveting on Twitter.

- I'm reading my first novel on Kindle for Droid. I absolutely love it, which surprises me, as I've always been such a bibliophile. Ink and pulp are so first-half-of-2010. I used to carry a book everywhere I went, a form of security, but now all I need is my Droid. Perfect for the L train during rush hour. And when I go to a bar to have a beer and read my book? Instead of looking like a dork, I now look like a hipster. Or at least the mom of a hipster.

- I'm now one of those obnoxious persons (the 'obliviot') who walks down the street holding her Droid twelve inches from her face, bumping into people and creating minor havoc with her self-absorption.

- I've been text messaging for some time, but with a few pokes of my index finger, I doubled my text allotment. So if the tweeting is slow, I can revert to texting, and back again. Just trying to think ahead a little, as the long winter's a'comin', and it can get lonely here in the monastery.

- I'm downloading games faster than I can play them. I figure if I ever get stranded on a desert isle, I'm set for life. As long as there's an outlet.

- The only thing that I haven't quite figgered out is the phone app. There seems to be some kind of bug in the design, because while I'm talking, my cheek presses buttons and I end up disconnecting the call. But hey, no complaints here. After all, I can't expect a smart phone to do everything.

So there ya go. You might not be hearing from me for a while. Or actually, you might be hearing from me more often, since I can blog from my Droid. As far as my art goes....well, it was a good run. I'll try to fit it in. Nah, just kidding - in fact, I'm going to be in a show next weekend, if you're around. It's at Famous Accountants, here in Brooklyn. A group show called 'Tunneling', curated by Will Pappenheimer. I'll have 5 of my text pieces in the show.

Gotta run - my Droid is calling me. Have a great weekend, and don't forget to tweet me.