Please bear with this brief post, which I’m writing via iPhone from my roost at the girl and the fig. I’ve downloaded a new app to facilitate this potential rival to my recent spate of twittering (are we not amazed by the recent surge in verbs?) and am, presently, quite satisfied. Of course, that might be the pinto of Anchor Steam talking — or Texting (verb check) as the case may be. I dread that this device might someday obviate my reporter’s notebook. Why take a note when one can just as easily post? I maintain a rather romantic notion that the thoughts I capture in the notebook ferment there until I call upon them again, whereupon they have matured, deepened and generally become more writerly (at least in the context to which they are transplanted). Not true. I rarely, if ever, return to a notebook for more than a phone number. In fact, it’s priniciple use is as a prop to remind others that I’m an accredited member of the media — especially snarky waiters, who most regularly see it when plucked with a sigh from my inside coat pocket (always left) and laid on the table next to my poison pen while on restaurant reviews. The iPhone doesn’t have the same effect as a prop. When placed on a table it merely looks as if I’m expecting a call that never comes (like some hi-tech metanym for my agent). I’ll stop here. Being the lone man at the bar Texting to his blog is beginning to seem a little too geekish a pose. Back to the notebook — at least there’s cultural precedence for that pose.