Iphone ushers in world peace, confers instant transcendental enlightenment

A little comic relief:

Have you heard of the iPhone? Have you heard of, say, oxygen? Duh. Of course you have. Fact is, not only has the entire universe heard of this glorious and eminently distracting gizmo, but anticipation for the damnable thing is apparently running so scaldingly high for its now-official June 29 release date that Apple is rumored to be downplaying the rollout just a bit.

It’s true. Apple PR is apparently actually being forced to manage expectations so there’s not some sort of titanic weeping backlash when those 3 million iPhones finally hit the streets and everyone goes, Hey, what the hell, you mean it’s only a cell phone and an iPod and a Web browser and an e-mail program and a digital camera and an IM client and photo library and a movie player in one gorgeous tiny gizmo the size of a tin of Altoids?

That’s it? That’s all it does? You mean it does not confer instant transcendental enlightenment? It does not make my skin look younger and more supple? It will not make my wife want to deliver more enthusiastic oral sex or make my kids actually want to speak to me or perhaps get Israel and Palestine to stop hating on each other and it won’t help us all numb the savage karmic pain of the fact that our president remains a childish hell-born imbecile?

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Maybe this time such a distraction can be healthy. Maybe this time it’s a good form of anticipation, the kind of sheer unadulterated consumerist nirvana that actually lifts you out of this brutal spiritual stasis and allows you a glimpse of a world sans scowls and warmongering and incessant error messages.