Lately I've been spending a considerable portion of my (considerable) brainpower trying to decide whether or not I want to get an iPhone. Well, of course I want an iPhone -- I'm an elitist poseur so that kind of goes without saying. It might be more accurately phrased this way: I've been trying to decide if going through the hassle and expense of getting an iPhone would be worth it.

On the plus side, I will no longer have iPhone envy when the cooler, more popular nerds whip out their touchscreen darlings. Additionally, I'd be able to use that Visual Voicemail thing, which is good because I hate voicemail (sorry Scott Jones). I'd also be able to use the internet to satiate my thirst for random information without having to involve ChaCha (sorry Scott Jones). Plus, thanks to that iPhone app store and the thriving community of developers, I'd be able to do things like blog, Facebook (that's a verb, right?) and get Magic 8 ball-style fortunes whenever and wherever I am.

On the flip side, I will need to spend $175 to get out of my Sprint contract. Then I'll need to actually find a store with iPhones in stock, pay $199 for one, plus $35 to activate a new AT&T account -- and fork over the first month's service fees, which are a minimum of $69.99 ... plus another $20 for unlimited text messages, which I've been using a lot of recently. Total short term investment of around $500 and another two grand or so in service fees over the course of my contract.

Meanwhile, I could make the decision to slip into a Samsung Instinct, which I could get for less than the iPhone (although I might have to whine about it to Sprint to make that happen since I'm already their customer). Then I'd get a reasonable facsimile of much of the iPhone goodness, plus turn-by-turn GPS. (What I wouldn't get are the apps or the good internet experience.) And not only could I probably get the phone on the cheap, but I could also slide into a plan that would get me all the same wiz-bang features of that $90 iPhone plan for about $55.

So the question is should I shell out a ton more money to have what I would really want or shell out much less to get some of the things that I want on a better deal? Typically, I'd say go for broke (I'm kind of an all-or-nothing guy) but I'm not even really sure I'd use all that stuff I want from the iPhone. I mean, is $2500 really worth it to occasionally update my Facebook profile while taking a shit?

Hmmm....

Readers of this blog know I think being offensive and edgy is a pretty good way of making people notice your message in a cluttered advertising environment full of consumers who simply tune out any message that doesn't grab them. So it is with some interest that I read about this controversy over a Snickers ad which tries to do just that.

The ad in question features Mr. T -- the beloved tough guy with gold chains from the 80's -- using a gatling gun to fire Snickers bars at an "effeminate" racewalker. (Racewalking is walking really fast while wearing sweatbands and track pants.) As he's pelting the walker, T admonishes him to "get some nuts!"

Anyway this has both the gay-rights people and the racewalking community all in a tizzy and they convinced the Snickers people to pull the ad. While I make no comment about about whether or not this ad goes too far (I admit it might and that my "offend first, ask questions later" strategy might not be the best) I will note it's been years since I imagined biting into a Snickers, piercing the chocolate shell, crunching through the satisfying peanuts and landing safely in a bed of caramel goodness ... but this has inspired me to do so.

So the other day, I'm reading about this new Gossip Girl campaign that uses quotes from its detractors as the blurbs. Most notable, perhaps, is an ad which uses a quote from the Parents Television Council -- "Mind-blowingly inappropriate" -- as the headline over a photo a young couple laying in bed, obviously post coitus. The message is clear: the CW is flaunting Gossip Girl's ability to offend the PTC. This, of course, is brilliant.

After all, the PTC is well-known to me. Some years ago, when professional wrestling was experiencing a surge in popularity thanks to abandoning the kid-friendly aspects of its product, the PTC got in on the act, publicly decrying the new "adult" content and calling for advertisers to boycott the programing. And while wrestling basically added dick jokes, gratuitous T&A and sloppy "garbage" violence instead of ramping up the storytelling and tackling more adult themes, it worked. Ratings were up.

On WWE programming, the PTC was openly mocked by the introduction of a group of fictional quasi-fascist media police it called the RTC -- "the Right to Censor" (naturally, the RTC was beaten and humiliated by every anti-authority character on the WWE roster). Best-selling author and former WWE wrestler Mick Foley even devoted a solid 20% of his second book to discrediting the PTC's allegations.

So imagine my surprise to read today that the WWE is now going to aim for TV-PG ratings in hopes of attracting younger viewers. True, they didn't do it because of PTC pressure but it kind of makes the WWE seem like it was only drinking the "edgy" Kool-Aid because it was profitable at the time.

So yesterday I attended this 25th anniversary screening of WarGames -- you know, the one where a young Matthew Broderick accidentally almost sets off World War III. Before the film, they showed this 'DVD special feature'-style documentary about the movie at the beginning -- but this Wired article covers the same ground and is more interesting. (It also includes the same groan-inducing preview of the straight-to-DVD "reimagining".)

Anyway, the most notable thing about the screening is that for about 15 minutes, the movie stopped and displayed a Windows Active Desktop error -- which is totally fitting for a movie about early hacker culture.

But what really has me thinking is that people seem to be nostalgic for the oppressive fear of the Cold War. I mean, you've got this little WarGames event and on the horizon is the big screen version of Watchmen, which purposefully retains the books paranoia-soaked 80's environment even though an earlier draft of the script set it in the modern day.

Maybe it's that times were simpler back then. I mean, sure, there was the constant fear of nuclear annihilation. But at least the bad guys were another organized, official nation with uniforms and stuff. Maybe Heath Ledger's Joker is still rattling around in my head, but there's something a lot more scary about pure chaos than ordered conflict.

Anyway when do we get the straight-to-DVD remake of Red Dawn?

Well, as I am recovering from two very late nights out I wanted to give you the heads-up that my Dark Knight review has been posted over at Wakeup Naptown. It's even spoiler-free ... unless you count revealing this is one of the best sequels ever as a spoiler.

The countdown to The Dark Knight is almost at zero. The level of hype and merchandizing reminds me of the run-up to the 1989 Batman picture.

In celebration, last night I ordered that "Gotham City Pizza" from Dominos. There's really nothing special about it -- it's just a regular Dominos pizza with extra pepperoni. Would it be too much to ask that the pepperonis be shaped like bats? Mine didn't even come in that sweet black box they show on the commercials.

Still, I'm pumped. People are talking posthumous Oscar® nod for Heath Ledger's performance. People are also saying the movie is about 30 minutes too long. At 12:01 tonight, we'll see. We'll see.