Is it just me or did all the laptops people are sporting in Starbucks these days get suddenly very tiny? I mean, like, overnight. I went into a Starbucks on Boyslton with Itchy yesterday, and at first I was like, why are there all these accountants in here crunching numbers on their pocket calculators? On closer inspection, I saw that they were actually very tiny laptops.

I think those people all probably work for laptop companies, and this is real-life product placement. they’re probably paid to go sit in Starbucks with their stupid little designer laptops so that the more impressionable among us (like the ones who go to Starbucks) will catch the meme. I definitely want one now.

I read a couple years ago how this Japanese designer who had designed disposable mobile phones made of paper was working on a laptop along the same lines. (Exploring some links, I see that the big year of the paper phone was 2001, with the BBC projecting paper laptops would be here by ‘06.) Call me old-fashioned, but I’m still waiting for the fold-up car (Trabants were basically made of cardboard, and could almost fit in your pocket, but not quite).

There was an obnoxious guy on a green line train I was taking from Park to Arlington the other day at rush hour, who was taking up two seats, all spread out–almost lying down–and if it weren’t for the fact that he had a brand new iBook in his lap I’d have thought by the looks of him that he was a bum or a meth head, or something.

Sometimes you feel sorry for those guys, but it’s funny: you never feel sorry for someone with an iBook.

Speaking of books. Check out my new concept novel, here. Tell me what you think.