Well, I’ve got an iPhone. I was going to write this blog post on it, but then I decided it was crazy enough spending three hours in line — I don’t need to spend another three hunting and pecking. Overall the experience of getting the phone was all right — it was the first time I’ve waited in line like that for a new product, and it was “only” from 4pm – 7pm (when the fifty people ahead of me had finally gone through and bought theirs). I waited at an AT&T store, and managed to get the last 8GB model they had (actually, fellow line-waiter and Portland blogger Mary Wheeler snagged it for me, as her sales person had it in-hand at the moment we both walked in). The thirty people behind us had to settle for 4GB units, I suppose.

I’m sure there’ll be fourteen million iPhone reviews on the web tomorrow (or heck, right now), so I won’t bore you with that. Instead, I’ll treat you to a blurry picture of what the Mental Floss web site looks like on the iPhone — quite nice, actually! It’s impossible to see from the photo, but the text is very legible, and of course turning the phone sideways gives you more horizontal real estate.

And here’s some launch-day trivia for you: San Francisco and New York Apple Stores have not sold out yet, two sites have already taken it apart (here’s the second), a gallery of iPhone lines around the country, iPhone is now available for sale online (with a two-four week wait), and the strangest bit of iPhone news: Philadelphia mayor John F. Street camped out for an iPhone and garnered a lot of media attention for it.

I’m visiting my parents, so naturally if I feel ill I must turn to the apothecary products that have lurked in their cupboard since I graduated high school. Growing up, there was no ailment that could not be remedied by a swift and hearty administration of Vicks VapoRub and a shot of Pepto-Bismol. Surely, within days of being home, I felt ill; I suspected the very ferric water was not being completely reformed by the stealthy Brita, so it was in the spirit of nostalgia and also, to a degree, desperation, that I called upon the curative powers of the Bis. It was not as comforting as I remembered, so I began to wonder how on earth people might have attempted to improve upon the base, chalky taste (i.e. Bismuth subsalicylate) that renders Pepto-Bismol the over-the-counter equivalent of a milquetoast. Of course, as we’ve covered before, we all know about the wonderful world of Pepto-Bismol ice cream, but I was hoping that wasn’t the end of the line…
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In yesterday’s new feature The Analogist, I mentioned Luna 15, the Soviet spacecraft which crashed into the Moon while Neil & Buzz were there. This sounded made up, but it actually happened.

Let’s use that as a jumping off point for another pick-up game of Show Off Your Smarts. This week’s episode focuses on space trivia. Impress us with your knowledge.

There have been some great modern reinterpretations of classical music over the years — I’m sure David could chime in here with some pertinent examples, but Wendy Carlos’ Mooged-out versions of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, famously featured in A Clockwork Orange come to mind — but until recently, none of them were performed by friends of mine. He goes by many aliases, but his fans call him Dr. Zoltan Obelisk, and his most recent musical offering is Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s “Sonata No. 8,” played in a hardcore/death metal style. I find this pretty hypnotizing, and all the more impressive when you compare it to someone actually playing a bit of the sonata (after the jump). (Try to ignore the odd message to the right of Prokofiev’s picture; it’s difficult to parse in a short space.) In any case — thoughts? Reactions? Rock ‘n’ roll?

And an excerpt from the original:
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Regarding the coinage contest from last week: I promise to pick 3 winners really, really soon! Just give me a couple days to catch up after jury duty. Meanwhile, there was an interesting article in yesterday’s Telegraph on the straightening of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which has been moved 18 centimeters to keep it from collapse. In the article, there were the following words spelled as I spell them here:

centimetre, civilisation realised and tonne

British spellings have always fascinated me and I’ll embarrassingly admit to you loyal readers that during a particularly pretentious couple years while in college, I actually used theatre over theater, colour over color and obnoxiously pronounced schedule, shedule. (Give me a break, folks! I was only 19 at the time and having difficulty finding my writer’s voice.)
So how is it that we Americans have a bunch of words that are spelled differently than our cousins on the other side of the pond? Easy, English spelling was exactly standardiZED when we won our independence from Britain. It took dictionaries to set the standards on both sides of the Atlantic and, surprise-surprise, our dictionaries and Britain’s developed differently. Noah Webster is credited with a lot of our spellings, publishing his first dictionary in the 1820s.
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InternJason has created a dynamite wikipedia quiz for everyone to play. Is Superman more important than Batman in this bizarre realm? Does Paul McCartney weild a larger online profile than his bandmate John Lennon? Click here to take it immediately, and be sure to report your scores below.

New feature here. We’ll see how it goes.

I love my sister but she’s the worst. When I was nine, I fell out of our treehouse and broke my collarbone. Angry at the attention I was getting, she jumped from the same treehouse and broke both legs (she still walks with a limp). I’m getting married next month. She’s bound to pull something and I want to warn people. What’s a good analogy for our relationship?

– Kate
(City Withheld), Texas

Your sibling rivalry reminds me of the space race. Did you know that while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were traipsing around the lunar surface, a Soviet spacecraft – Luna 15, at right – slammed into the Moon? Sounds like something your sister might do if you were an astronaut and she ran a rival nation’s space program. This will work especially well if your friends are still harboring Cold War resentment.

I tried and failed to get a former colleague a job with my new company. He was passed over for a less experienced guy with “more potential.” People raved about this guy like he was the iPhone. But after months of lackluster work, he was caught trying to steal a scanner. After a tearful admission to HR, he was escorted out by the rent-a-cops that patrol our office park. A more humiliating fate I cannot imagine. I feel so vindicated. What parallels this clown’s fall from grace?

– Theresa
Atlanta, Georgia
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Over the years, a significant portion of my friends have been helpless to resist the charms of New Zealand. The ones who returned only did so due to capitalist obligations from which they could not be released. But! It was still within their power to spread the Zealand pollen stateside, and a watchful tourist’s LCD seems to be an encounter with the Maori people–specifically, Maori healers who invoke a technique called Te Oomai Reia. From what I’ve read, it appears similar to Reiki (the transfer of energy) and Rolfing (the fascia releasing blocked energy & memories, how sobbing is likely), but people I know who’ve experienced a Maori healing say it verges on exorcism. As in, you might want to bring an EMF field tester and an infrared camera with you. A popular Maori healing site concurs–the blockages will be extricated; their method draws from “bush medicine” designed “for healing and removal of negative entities from a person’s energy” via restoring cellular memory to its original, harmonious state. The process will employ the healer’s hands, elbows, and feet in movements that include “soothing, stroking, kneading, friction, vibration, tapping and pouncing.” Pouncing. Well, I’ll have to say I’d be game. I’ve been riveted by Maori culture ever since the excellent ‘94 film, Once Were Warriors. Has anyone ever experienced a Maori healing?

With the launch of Apple’s iPhone just one day away (okay: 1 day, 8 hours, 48 minutes, 10 seconds according to iphonecountdown.com), global phone-hysteria levels are at an all-time high. We’re here to guide you through the mountains of coverage with pre-screened links to the most interesting bits.

Apple’s press embargo on iPhone reviews was lifted Tuesday at 6pm, leading to a web-wide case of iPhone Mania: as reviews from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Newsweek hit the web, millions of iPhone fans clicked madly from one article to the next. Don’t have the time (or energy) to read all four pieces of phone-related journalism? Check out Gizmodo’s iPhone Review Matrix, which condenses the reviews into a handy chart.

For the past week, Apple has steadily posted additional iPhone information, apparently in an attempt to keep the iPhone faithful supplied with new videos and web content every day. Some highlights: the iPhone Guided Tour is a 24-minute video showing many of the phone’s features, including tantalizing close-ups of a real live iPhone (gasp!) operated by a spokesmodel in a strangely Steve Jobs-esque outfit. If that’s not enough geekery for you, check out the iPhone Activation & Sync video whose most exciting fact is: you don’t activate the phone at the store — instead you take it home, plug it into your Mac or PC, and activate it through iTunes (and yes, you can even transfer an existing phone number to AT&T service from within iTunes). But wait, there’s more! If you still haven’t downloaded enough iPhone videos, turn your gaze to the iPhone keyboard demo, which shows you how to go from hunt-and-peck to two-thumb-typing-ninja in just a few short days.

Because I know this still isn’t enough for some of us, I’ll throw in links to Get Ready for iPhone, a guide to what you should be doing now in order to get up and running Friday night. You may have heard about Greg Packer, the professional line-sitter who’s first in line for an iPhone at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store (he has a blog about it), but perhaps more interesting is David Clayman, who is documenting the experience of being second in line. Madness or awesomeness? You decide.

Finally, I leave you with the iPhone rate plans. The short version: sixty bucks a month minimum, two-year contract required. Start checking under the couch cushions while you browse the AT&T Coverage Viewer and find a store where you can spend your Friday waiting for the phone. And if you’re not getting a real iPhone, try making your own out of paper.

You guys are either going to love this or roll your eyes, but when I heard about it, I couldn’t NOT post about it.

DoMyStuff.com is a relatively new site that enables you to outsource simple chores, errands, or projects. Need a closet organized? A website revamped, your lawn mowed, a pint of milk picked up? Join DoMyStuff and let people bid on the job. It’s really that simple. Check out some of the posts expiring this morning. One of my favorites has a women trying to score some Oprah tix:

I have been wanting to go the Oprah Winfrey Show now for years but it’s impossible to get tickets. Her new season will start taping in August and I would like to attend with 4 other people…so a total of 5 tickets.

I’m not sure I’m lazy enough to post, but it’s been entertaining, if nothing else, sifting through the gigs. Although, hmm, now that I think about it some more, maybe I should find someone to do my _floss blogging for me…