"Mommy -- the little DKos iPhone app Santa brought me won't wake up!"
Long ago, when I was zero in Kos years, there was only one way for me to keep up with the flood of news and diaries; that was to sit down at my computer in England, and conjure the great rivers of information to appear before me, after their arduous traverse of the myriad wires and cables between me and the Kos Hive Mind (which resided everywhere and nowhere at once -- which is to say, somewhere near San Francisco).
Time passed.
Barack Obama was elected; or, as my colleagues in the UK said, "BARE-ick Oh-BARM-ur". People were pleased; I was elated -- I could stop pretending to be Canadian, at long last. And somewhere inside a vast shopping mall in Southampton, a Genius in a blue t-shirt delivered into my hands a thing; it was nothing less than FREEDOM from wires.
Young Brit in blue, with your gleaming silver Macbook (half again the price in the UK) -- you changed my life! Untethered, I could access the Daily Kos from nearly anyplace I liked, including airplanes in flight. I grew dependent.
When I returned to an America full of hope and change, I needed a new mo-bile phone. To whom else should I turn, but the Genius of the Mall?
My Precious.
You were followed by others of your kind. And by your larger and more powerful siblings, iPad the First, iPad the Two, and iPad the New.
And sometime during those heady years of compromising our hopes for health care into little nubbins of bitterness and near-failure, there appeared a Little App -- a Little App for reading the Daily Kos River of Insight and Invective, up-to-the-minute (though without comments and recs). Still, we became addicted, didn't we, Precious?
At the Starbucks drive-through (wifi in the car!). Waiting for airplanes. Sitting in the doctor's office. In a boring meeting. In a chair at the DMV. In the Upper School theater, waiting for the second act of the holiday pageant. With my unlimited data plan, no place was beyond the reach of the Kos Hive Mind.
But recently, something has changed.
Except for one small comment, I see no mention of it.
Little App has been my friend for so long, but lately -- no matter how much I poke it with a stick -- it just lies there.
Please, Santa -- if you love me at all, fix my Little App!