The pursuit of app-iness

If there’s an app for that, I wish someone would show me where.

A few weeks ago I became the proud owner of my first smartphone. That’s barely enough time to begin calling it a “mobile device” like all the other smartphone snobs do, but sufficient time to determine that the pocket-size computer/entertainment center can’t solve all my problems.

Granted, it comes pretty close. My phone came with about 50 preinstalled “apps” – what the snobs call applications. There are apps for news, weather, Facebook, maps, music, Twitter, photo archiving, YouTube, stock quotes and Google. I’ve got an app to turn my phone into a voice recorder, television, library, radio, camcorder and flashlight. One app lets me plan car trips which, incidentally, is an app I’ll never, EVER use while driving, just like I never send text messages when I’m behind the wheel.

Android makes living a sn-app

Cough, cough.

Another app in my smartphone lets me chart GPS coordinates, so I can no longer claim I don’t know where we keep the household cleaning supplies (in the house). Still another app allows me to rent movies from Blockbuster, which might be a challenge since practically every Blockbuster has a large “For Lease” sign in the front window.

If all those gigabytes of information designed to make life easier aren’t enough, I’ve even got an app to add more apps. A lime green R2-D2 lookalike named Android (snobs drop the “An”) has thousands available that he/she/it is peddling.

They’ve thought of almost everything. Perusing the app store I’ve come across a marijuana encyclopedia, phlebotomy certification exam study guide, do-it-yourself Catholic confessional and Morse Code trainer, for all those times I use a telegraph machine.

If I want eBooks and documents read to me I can install Katja, the Russian voice app. I can add Fake Call Me, an app that gets users “out of awkward situations by giving yourself a fake call”; or Metal Detector, which apparently converts a smartphone user into an agent of the Transportation Security Administration, minus professional groping skills. Or even download Pocket Girlfriend, although I don’t want any female – real or imagined – getting that close to my wallet and car keys.

All those apps probably meet some important need for someone else but not me. If I could find them, I would immediately download apps that perform the following functions:

* Identifies the frozen bricks of whatever they are in the refrigerator freezer. Are they beef? Ham? Venison? Jeffrey Dahmer leftovers? I’d like to be able to take phone photos of the objects in question and then have the app compare the images against a database of frozen food pictures, and offer possible matches. I might find the stuff is edible, if I’d consumed it seven years ago.

* Alerts me to gas price increases and decreases before they happen. A couple of years ago I could count on prices dropping on Tuesdays and going up on Thursdays. Now on a single day they can fall six cents a gallon when the Dow Jones Industrial Average opens sharply lower, rise nine cents a few hours later after we bomb a fruit stand in the Middle East, come down a nickel 45 minutes later on news OPEC can’t agree on oil production cutbacks and then soar a quarter for no apparent reason other than I pulled my car up to the pump. And then, as soon as I’ve paid for my gas and left, the price plummets 50 cents.

* Wakes me when I fall asleep in front of the television. Far too often these days I nod off sometime during the 11 p.m. news and wake up as Jimmy Fallon is telling the studio audience goodnight. Certainly an app could be developed that picks up clues I’m catching unintended Z’s: the senseless mumbling, the jackhammer sounds blaring from my nasal passages and the pool of saliva collecting on the armrest. The app developer could add a snooze button for business conferences.

* Stops me from making fashion faux pas. Okay, I know stripes and plaids don’t go together and that you should never wear white athletic socks with a suit. But what about a polka dot necktie with an Argyle sweater? Sneakers with an Oxford shirt? Pastels after Labor Day? Corduroy BEFORE Labor Day? I’m not expecting to walk out the front door looking like a GQ cover model – just not a cover model for Mad. As an added bonus, I’d like the app to set the record straight on how far above the top of my shoes the pants legs can go before they’re considered “flood waters.”

Steely Dan lyrics always leave me reelin'

* Translates bizarre pop music lyrics. I’ve loved Steely Dan for years, but I couldn’t explain the lyrical musings of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker if I tried. I have no idea what it is Steely Dan wants “Jack” to “do again.” If I’m “Reelin’ In The Years” do I use a fishing pole? And in “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” wouldn’t it make more sense to write the number down in an address book than “send it off in a letter to yourself”? Then there’s the Beatles in their later years. I’m completely lost when listening to “Come Together.” “He got joo-joo eyeball”? “He bag production/He got walrus gumboot”? “He one spinal cracker”? I need either an electronic lyric dictionary, or a hit of acid.

* Kicks me off when I spend too much time browsing the app store. 

I doubt Android would take too kindly to me limiting my app shopping. I’d probably need one more app: One that lets me remove a plate from the back of Android and then yank a few wires to disable him/her/it.