Oppan Gangnam Style!
iPhone 5: Review
I am trembling. It has been
several days since I last took a shower, and my most recent hot meal was a
frozen burrito that fell on the sidewalk and cooked itself to perfection. I
clutch a wad of crumpled bills close to my chest, willing myself to breath
slowly. I am low on supplies, and what little is left must be saved.
My boss is in line, some fourteen
people behind me. He hasn’t seen me. If he does, he won’t talk- officially
speaking, I am attending the birth of my firstborn son and he is at his
cousin’s funeral (Phlegm Cancer kills over 7 invented relatives every year).
Unofficially, however, it is a much different story. Except his cousin really
is dead, but from driving a Jeep off a mountain and into a Children’s Hospital.
Men with rifles appear on the
rooftops around us. It is nearly time. I shiver with anticipation, and feel an
uneasy quiet fall over the crowd. Somewhere, far beneath the ground in the
darkness and fire where the world was forged, I hear the steady cadence of a
drum begin to beat. Perhaps ‘hear’ is not right. I feel it, down to my bones.
A flash! An explosion of colour
blinds the assembled crowd, sending a small Cessna careening from the sky and
into a nearby duck pond where it bursts into flames. Circus animals begin to
parade past, led by men outfitted in the finest silks and rarest jewellery. At
one point, I am certain I see the Hope Diamond affixed to a Mime’s face. The
drum beats ever louder. A choir begins to chant, layering voices upon voices. A
baby begins to cry, frightened, and is silenced with a gag soaked in tears.
The line begins to move and the
crescendo peaks. The silence is deafening. A beat. A scream from the crowd.
“I GOT ONE!”
Chaos erupts. In a month’s time,
everybody will have one, but for now the fool at the front of the line is about
to be physically assaulted for the small cardboard box in his hand. The wise
gods of Capitalism smile upon us. After what feels like eons, I reach the front
of the line. A slightly overweight boy of 19 scratches his pimples.
“How many gigs and what colour
bro?” he asks.
I grab him by the shoulder with
my right hand.
“16 gigs in black, my friend!”
“NO TOUCHING” yells a man with a
very large gun.
I shove my crumpled wad of cash
into the boy’s asthmatic chest and snatch my prize from his grip with a snarl.
I don’t remember asking for a case or a product protection plan, but as I
collapse outside the store blinded by tears, I hear them clatter to the ground.
I wipe my eyes. This is the moment I have whipped myself into a frenzy for- the
defining moment not only of my own insignificant life but that of my equally
wasted generation.
I crack open the box and remove
the iPhone 5 from its elegant prison.
Words fail me.
I am taken aback for what feels
like hours, until my breath returns and I turn it on. It has cost me everything
to get to this moment.
My new iPhone 5 flickers to life,
and the euphoria slips away. Functionally, this phone is nearly
indistinguishable from the 4S I threw at a homeless man on the way here. It is
a very nice phone, there can be no doubt, but the haze has cleared from my eyes
and I can no longer tell what had me so worked up. I accidentally step in
elephant poop, which confirms that I did not hallucinate the elephants.
Anxiety wells up inside me. I
felt whole for fifteen precious seconds, and now I am empty again. I
immediately log on to Twitter to register my distress and begin speculating
about the iPhone 5S.
No doubt, this time it will truly
be the phone that I have waited my whole life to be disappointed by.
