I just put the Vignette camera app on my new smart phone. It’s really fun to add all the funky effects to make it look like—gasp!—film. I expect apps like this will dislodge a smart phone-powered avalanche of arty photos that look like they were taken with an old Diana or Holga camera. I never had one of these when I was a kid, although I believe my little brother, always on the cutting edge, and freer with money than I was, had some kind of cheap camera bought from an ad in the back of a comic book. I remember he was a superstar for a while, because he had a camera, and took arty photos (even at 9 years old, he was a creative genius). I was jealous, fit to beat the band.

But now I’ve got a smart phone, and I’m going to be playing with the camera function like I’m in my second childhood. (Crazily, when I first wrote this post, I kept writing “phone” instead of “camera.” Since we all now take photos with our phones, will the word camera drop from our vocabulary?)

I love my DroidX, although I don’t like the name. It sounds like a robot. Who wants a robot except for testosterone-flushed young male gamers? I’d rather have a puppy. I expect I’m more the type for an iPhone, but there was the AT&T issue. So far, Verizon has been expensive but great.

So my droid is known as the blue puppy (it’s dressed in a blue silicon case, until Otter box finally starts making Droid cases). Then I think I’ll call it the gray dog.

Man. Can I waste a lot of time on this phone, and I don’t even play video games!