I touch what?

Applications. Who comes up with them? Who are these people, holed up in their darkened offices, shunning their families, not eating, peering at a computer screen, trying to figure out how to convince iTouch and iPhone users (oh, let's not forget iPad) that they desperately need a portable way to smash zombies, or compete against Twitter friends for most productivity, or transform a rectangular mini-computer into an umbrella?

Today, I did a little search for an iTouch application that might help me write poetry on the go. Why I wanted to write poetry on the go, I don't know. Why I thought this poetry, having been written on the go, would have any art or relevancy... search me. But it seemed like a good idea at the time, and at the very least, afforded me an opportunity to peek into the minds of these application creators. I found an application that would let me take the words from all the Shakespearean sonnets, turn them into refrigerator magnets, and write my own poetry with them. I found another application that transforms famous poems into meditative visual spirals that you can watch trickle across your screen. There's another one, this one you have to pay for, that gives you access to the work of self-published amateur poets across the country. Fun. Have you ever looked at the work on poetry.com? Go ahead. Right now. Go take a look. Go to "Search" and read the poems listed under the "Drugs" tag. And then come back here, and tell me in a comment on this entry that you would pay for an application that gives you access to the works of self-published amateur poets across the country. I dare you.

When I was looking for this holy grail of a poetry writing application, all I wanted was -- I have no idea. I was looking for some magical application that would somehow break through my writer's block and inspire me to write the poetry I used to write in college, like the French poem that wn mean herb garden and 2 miniature snail statues. I wanted to find an application that would act as a better version of my brain. One that would know exactly what I'm feeling, and how I string words together, and how I view the world, and parse it into a few choice sentences and phrases, and just... do it for me. And there. That's the vulnerability the application gods are hovered over, in their darkened offices, waiting to prey on. The moment where us iUsers flip over, and start to rely on our portable electronic devices more than on ourselves, and look to our new pantheon of near-sighted isolationist demi-gods for the answers to why our lives don't work, and why we're not the people we always thought we were meant to be.

That last part? I plagiarized that from my newest application: iSoapbox. A bargain at only $3.99.

Incidentally, there's another "what's hot" application that allows you to create music by hitting leaves with stones, and stones with leaves. This is supposed to relax you.