Lots of people getting really, really upset with Apple here in the i-lineup: most of the folks who haven’t purchased an elusive iPad are still waiting to get in – and the stores opened more than an hour ago!

A little boy behind me looks like he’s getting ready to cry. Way to go, Jobs.

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I just saw this bit in one of the kabillion iPad-related stories I’ve been reading since 5 a.m., here in the i-lineup. It got me and a couple other guys laughing. It also got them to stop talking about operating systems, however briefly.

“…Late-night TV comic Stephen Colbert proved as much earlier this week, skewering our gadget-obsessed zeitgeist as he pulled the world’s most coveted computer from beneath his faux news desk and proceeded to use his iPad as a blade, slicing and dicing a tray of tomatoes into a pulpy mass, all with a triumphant grin that would make grill-shilling George Foreman blush.

“Never mind how I got it,” Colbert said of his rarer than rare electronic prize. “I had two kidneys … Luckily there is an app that filters urine…”

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Some people near me in the iPad line-up outside the Apple store are talking about the different types of fibre optic cables.

Pause.

You know, I think no jury would convict me for what I am thinking about doing right now.

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Okay, now they are talking about the many uses of the “F1” key.

Fortunately, I am in the United States, so I can readily purchase a firearm to shoot myself with.

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A guy from Burlington just showed up with a knapsack with solar panels on it.

Pray for me.

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I’m in a line-up with about 20 hardcore Apple nuts at the Galleria Mall in Buffalo. There are actually two line-ups – one for losers like me, who didn’t “reserve” an iPad, and one line-up for losers who did.

A guy beside me, an engineer, asked a guy in the reserved line why he was lined up three hours before the store opens, and the guy shrugged and said: “Now we’re guaranteed guaranteed.”

I have fully, completely stepped into The Land of the Nerdlings. God help me.

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So this kid at the Apple store in Buffalo looks at me like I’m crazy – crazy – when I say I don’t want to line up at 2 a.m.

As my daughter says: “Dad, it’s just an oversized Touch. Get a grip.”

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Here it is, folks! The iQueue paid off!

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• Who’s winning? Well, no one, actually.  As I told the Globe’s lovely and charming Gloria yesterday, the Harper Reformatories can’t get anywhere near majority territory – and the margin, still, is more or less the margin of error.  If folks are feeling good, it’s because of the weather.  Not what’s happening, or not happening, in Ottawa.
• Which leader leads? I don’t put much stock in online-only polls: they sacrifice random sampling, and therefore accuracy, for lower costs for the pollster.  That said, Ignatieff clearly needs to address the fundamentals, here – and, in particular, with women voters.  Losing further ground with Canadian women would be very, very unhelpful.
• The Google Rule: Too many politicos, of all stripes, do the kind of stupid stuff “Happy Fingers” Guergis’ staff did.  They’ve been doing it for a long time, in fact.  In the digital age, however, it’s very risky behaviour – because a one-second Google search will tend to expose you.
• Coulter’s cabal: Gerry Caplan pens an important column about how assorted extremists who – as Jim Keegstra, Ernst Zundel and assorted others did before them – profess to be preoccupied with “free speech,” when their main preoccupation is the freedom to propagate hate against pretty much everyone else.  Worth reading.
• The Creba verdict: The tragic death of this young woman didn’t just change Toronto, as the Star headline suggests – it changed the country. After that terrible day, my friends at Ipsos subsequently showed, Stephen Harper took the lead over Paul Martin – and he never looked back, ending 13 years of Liberal rule.  The income trust issue was not what defeated the Liberal government – it was law and order.  And if the issue is law and order, conservatives always tend to win.
• Happy iPad weekend! My kids will be in Ottawa this weekend – so I will be road-tripping Stateside, to line up and purchase Apple’s latest gadget for me and one of my many lawyers.  Watch this here web site for regular updates and W@AL instalments about my quest.  I’m betting I won’t get one – but it’ll be entertaining to try.
• Finally, from my friend Rachel, currently in France – the definition of redundancy:

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About 95 per cent of you weren’t fooled for a minute.  Some who who were – people I know! – were sucked in, hook, line and sinker.  Shame, Mr. Speaker, shame!

Anyway, if you still need me to show my bona fides, I can report that CBC’s elves passed along Iggy with Strombo.  Don’t have the embed code, only the link.

Ha!  Gotcha!

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