I almost thought infone might be real.

They just had a commercial for infone, a lower case service that lets you call 'em anytime and they answer you capitalist research questions. "I need a hot tub dealer here in Albuquerque." "I'm lost in Denver and this guy told me to fuck myself. How do I do that?" "What's gramma's number?"

It's a subscription service. The good thing is that it can be your appointment tracker and a bunch of other stuff. Then again, so could a PDA. In fact, it's 411 and a PDA, but you pay monthly. I would just use Google or Anywho, but I guess that's because I can read.

Point is: there's a commercial where a woman says "there's this book I've been looking for for a year. I'm in Boston, three hours 'till my flight. I call... I get the book, I catch my plane."

I am here to call that bluff.

Logan Airport is within the city limits of Boston, but it's not what you'd call close to antiquarian booksellers. Even if I'm generous and say the woman found the book on her first or second call, she'd have to:

1. Leave the airport,
2. Take the Blue Line to Government Center, then any inbound Green train to the outbound Red Line (books are Cambridge, let's face it),
3. Walk to the store (let's even give her the benefit of a store near a T stop, like McEntyre & Moore or Harvard Book Store, instead of something in Inman Square);
4. Get back to the airport;
5. Go back through security.

Even if I'm polite and assume the store was Commonwealth Books, which is on Boylston across from the Common, she'd still have to hustle. She'd also have to find a book dealer not caught up in his own shit too much to sell. This is Boston; that's tough.

Maggie made the point to me that the woman in the commercial didn't say she was at the airport already -- just that she had three hours before her flight. Good point! It'd still be tough.

( Geek question under this link. )

-and they stole that theme tune from the Bosstones, Dante