This past weekend I popped into my local Apple store to ask a few questions about the new iPhone. Particularly that if I wanted to get my hands on one, would I have to come early and stand in line. Here is what they told me:

Each store is still uncertain as to how many they will actually have. So they could all get a few metric tons of iPhones, or fewer. They don’t know yet and won’t know until the middle of next week.

Whether or not they have enough iPhones to make it the whole weekend has yet to be seen. That depends on demand. But the Apple store employee I talked to (who was there for the first iPhone launch) said they may not get their next iPhone shipment until the next week. So if they all sell out on Friday, it could be a few days before they get more in.

For the last iPhone launch, they did not go on sale until 6PM EST. The Apple stores closed at 4PM, then reopened at 6 and only sold iPhones after 6. They do not know yet if that will be the same, or if they will be available as soon as doors open.

UPDATE: new rumor, reported by MacLife, reports that Apple is preferring putting them on sale at 8AM. I suspect that means a few people will be taking sick days on July 11 to stand in line.

James and I might be among the line-standers. If anyone is interested in forming a small posse to stand together at the Columbus, Ohio store, let us know. We can have a Llama’s met up.

This weekend I traveled up to Cleveland with my 8-year old son to see a Cleveland Indians game. While sitting there watching the Tribe get trounced by the Reds, I wondered if there will come a day when ballpark seats will need to be made 8-inches wider. I couldn’t help but notice how many people there were not just over-weight, but grossly so.

At what point will we stop encouraging people to loose weight overall and just start making everything bigger?

I will say though, that the irony was not lost on me seeing some rather obese women wearing Indians jersey’s that said “SIZEMORE” on the back.

A U.S. House Resolution that experts say amounts to an act of war against Iran is quickly gaining speed. H.CON.RES 362 calls on the president to stop shipments of refined petroleum products from reaching Iran and to impose “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran.”

The resolution has attracted more than 205 cosponsors despite the fact that the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reports: “We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely.”

Should we be at all surprised that this administration and Congress are once again ignoring key elements of an intelligence report?

It frustrates me when I”m hanging out with friends and they seem to be more preoccupied with TXTing people who couldn’t bother to show up instead of talking to the friends that are actually there.

David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, authors of the e-mail etiquette guide Send, suggest this rule for TXTing: Are you in a situation in which it would be rude for you to be doing a crossword puzzle? If the answer is yes, then stop texting.

Two weeks ago, rapper Kanye West was booed at Bonnaroo before and after his show began nearly two hours late. Since then, many have criticized West for being an egomaniac who didn’t give his all in the 4:26am performance. Yesterday, West responded in a blog on his web site.

“Never say I didn’t give my all! This shows no matter how hard you try to be good at something there will be people there to lie about you and bring you down … I’m fucking hurt by this one. Bonnaroo should have released a statement in my defense … [Note: I've removed the ALL CAPS from West's original post.]

For full disclosure purposes, aside from one or two tracks, I’m not a big Kanye West fan. Despite my preference for other hip-hop artists, however, I can honestly say that West appeared to give his all in his Bonnaroo performance. But the problem was not so much the quality of or effort behind his performance. It was that he never addressed what was clearly a major issue.

What does that mean? I’m not suggesting that West should have apologized for events that may or may not have been entirely his fault (Pearl Jam went long and West’s stage took an inordinate amount of time to construct). What I am suggesting, however, is that he would have done well to acknowledge the fans who stuck around to see him.

Bonnaroo is a four-day music festival where performances begin around noon. The ‘day’ West performed, many people, including myself, had been watching shows for more than 12 hours. During each performance, from Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings and Gogol Bordello to Ozomatli and Lupe Fiasco, each artist addressed the crowd and the sheer awesomeness of the entire festival. (Anyone who’s been to Bonnaroo knows that someone can merely yell Bonnaroo and nearly everyone within shouting distance will respond with a hearty “woo!” signifying the beauty of the event.)

Despite all this and despite knowing that the audience had waited for him for nearly two hours, Kanye decided not to break the theatrical wall of his crashed spaceship. While he may have given his all in the performance, he failed to demonstrate, as he wrote in his blog, that he does this all for the fans. Had he said, “Thank you for staying up with me, Bonnaroo” or something similar, the boo birds would have likely stopped, the glow sticks would have ceased flying on stage, and the audience would have been able to focus on a relatively dynamic, one-person performance.

Unfortunately, West did nothing to dissuade people’s frustration with being made to wait for nearly two hours. Maybe the delay wasn’t his fault and maybe everyone had a choice to stay or leave, but the failure to recognize the situation as such meant that people didn’t leave the show saying, “Jesus Walks brought the house down.” Instead, they walked back to their tents at dawn saying, “I can’t believe I waited two hours for that”, “That spaceship thing was wack”, and “He really is an egomaniac”; all of which had nothing to do with his effort and everything to do with his brand.

Doubting the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, many states are rejecting the program that the Bush administration claims slows teen sexual activity. Not only is participation down 40 percent over two years, recent studies show that abstinence-only program participants have as many sexual partners as nonparticipants.

Wouldn’t a critical-thinking Congress see dwindling participation, lack of empirical evidence of any type of success, and studies demonstrating an actual lack of effectiveness as signals to not only reduce abstinence-only funding, but to abolish the entire program in favor of more comprehensive sex education? Or is Congress too focused on appearing to obey alleged Biblical teachings that it can’t wrap its collective minds around reality?

James Dobson is accusing Sen. Barak Obama of “distorting” the bible and saying that he also makes “fruitcake” interpretations of the constitution.

Let’s review a few things that James Dobson has said in the past:

Exhibit A: Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL, caught making sexual passes at pages. Dobson said, “As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a — sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages … By midafternoon yesterday, a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages. It is the first plausible thing I’ve heard in seven days…”

According to Dr. Dobson, when a Republican is caught being a closeted homosexual pedophile, it’s just a joke. I mean, really, what’s a little gay sex between a man and an under aged kid if we all can’t laugh about it?

Exhibit B: Spongebob Squarepants is shown holding hands with Big Bird in a video about tolerance. James Dobson called it, “shocking homosexual brainwashing.” But if Big Bird were a Republican, it would just be a joke.

Exhibit C: Colorado Right to Life tells James Dobson to stuff it. Personally, I think they are both wrong, but it’s just fun when one far right-wingnut calls another out for not being Jesus-enough.

Exhibit D: Dobson encourages father’s to shower with their sons. “He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.” Maybe that’s all Mark Foley was trying to do.

Exhibit E: Dobson believes that gay marriage is worse that Al-Queda. “There is no issue today that is more significant to our culture than the defense of the family. Not even the war on terror eclipses it.”

Exhibit F is for fuck off. I could go on all day but I have a life.

The Chinese government has fired twelve officials for dereliction of duty and misuse of supplies following the May Sichuan earthquake. How many United States government officials were sacked after their disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina, a much smaller natural phenomenon?

On July 11, I plan on being one of the Llama’s in line to get a new iPhone 3G. Yep, I’m gonna do it.

I was interested in a few facts about the new iPhone, including that you will now have to activate your phone in the store before you leave. With the previous model, you picked up the phone and out the door you went, activating it the next time you plugged it into iTunes. It’ll make that line take that much longer.

But that’s beside the point.

Over the weekend I was looking for the additional back that came with my Samsung Blackjack. It comes with a smaller, thinner back, and a larger back to handle the larger battery. I couldn’t find the thinner back. Then a thought crossed my mind, “it doesn’t matter, in two weeks I’ll have a new iPhone.”

Later that same day, I dropped my phone when I was getting out of my Jeep. As it hit the pavement, I watched the battery spring out like a jack-in-the-box. Before I could freak out, I thought, “it doesn’t matter, in two weeks I’ll have a new iPhone.”

Then it dawned on me: I wonder how much carnage I can put my Samsung Blackjack through before I get my new iPhone, and it still work?

Game on.

This morning, I tried my first test: Down the stairs like a slinky. Result, nary a scratch. Again, the battery did a Greg Louganis (Wikipedia it, kids) across the floor, but it didn’t seem to inflict any damage.

Any suggestions on what I can do to my phone in the meantime? Here are the only rules, it must be something that could actually happen to a cellphone in real life. Because, clearly, I could smack it with a hammer or toss it off the roof of my house to kill it. I’m talking actual mis-haps, here.

Suggest away. I’ll try em all.

‘Hurl’ is the latest ‘reality’ TV program that has commentators in a tizzy. But I’m a bit confused about this misplaced outrage. While it’s possibly the most puerile and physically disgusting reality show to hit the airwaves, it’s not as destructive as the litany of programs imploring viewers to marvel and snicker at much deeper anguish.

Certainly it is more damaging to encourage wanna-be stars and attention whores to lie and cheat their way to a new mate or massive bankroll than it is to drive these same people to puke. The latter experience is mildly embarrassing and could serve as an interesting story at a party someday. The former, however, not only damages viewers’ expectations of relationships and life, it also creates long term misgivings about the participants’ character.

In the end, who would you trust more: the woman who threw up after drinking a half-gallon of milk and being spun in circles or the man who created an alliance, feigned loyalty, hurt several faux friends, and ended up being removed from of a house lies?