iLaurie

As most of the free world by now knows, I am the happy owner of an iPhone. I'm not usually the sort of person that has to have the latest and greatest gadgets nor do I own any other Apple products. But I've been jonesing hard for an iPhone since the thing came out. I'm surprised Jersey Boy didn't suffocated me in my sleep just to get me to stop yammering about it for two solid years. Hell, six months in, I wanted to kill me.

I've been to iTunes and downloaded and used some cool applications. I pulled in some of my photos and music; I've bookmarked my favorite Internet sites. I've used the iPod, I've sent text mesasges, I've Facebooked, and (get this) I've even made some phone calls. I'm pleased to say that this iPhone thing is everything that I'd hoped it would be and more.

Yes, there are many, many terrific cell phones out there and yours is probably much better/more powerful/advanced than my iPhone but...can your cell phone be operated by a drunken chimp? Because that's the cell phone demographic I'm in. Like a neanderthal communicating by the use of iconic pictures on the wall of a cave, I too, have a heavy dependence on the use of icons. When I want to text someone, I don't want to have to deal with anything more complicated than poking my finger at a picture.

Complimentary neanderthal-style grunting, of course, is strictly optional.

Speaking of Neanderthals, since when did they become pronounced ne-ander-talls? What happened to the "h" in there? Granted, I spent most of my life mispronouncing "Orangutans," "Orangutangs" as if they were apes made out of a manufactured "orange juice like" breakfast drink designed for the purpose of space travel - but this stuff with the neanderthals is different. My best guess is that someone really smart dropped the "h" and now everyone else has decided to follow suit.

Of course, the great and simultaneously infuriating thing about the English language is that words evolve; pronunciations and meanings change over time. I recently saw an ad chastising kids for employing the word, "gay" as a negative description of things. It reminded me of my grandmother who wasn't pleased that homosexual people usurped the meaning of "gay" for themselves. My grandmother wasn't homophobic; she was once a flapper and was "gay" in the archaic definition. She took issue with people using a word she identified with and turning it into something she could no longer identify with personally. It would be like a group of Chinese basket weavers in France suddenly deciding to call themselves "Californians." I'd think, "Whoa, wait a just a second now..." I'm not Chinese, I don't know how to weave baskets, and I have never been to France.

Of course, none of us own words. No one gets to be the ultimate authority on their usage based on their personal preferences. Majority always rules. Sure, people can try to influence language usage but at the end of the day we're all just gay neanderthals poking at pictures of orangutans.