So THAT’S Why I Care About My iPhone More Than My Internal Organs

The Irish Mexican Buddha that is Louis C.K. was on Conan last night to answer some of life’s greatest mysteries including why I scream for a priest every time my iPhone battery drops into the red zone (aka gets its period) when I’m nowhere near a charger. Louis C.K. started off his Ode to No Smartphones by saying that he’s never going to buy his kids one, because he thinks they make children meaner. I don’t know about that. Smartphones weren’t everywhere when I was in school and all those kids were still piece of shit assholes. Louis C.K. then went on to say that most of us think of our smartphones as the conjoined twin we never want to part from (my iPhone is the Lori to my George), because if we stop looking at it for a second, we’ll realize that we’re all alone. Gawker transcribed Louis C.K.’s words of wisdom:

You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty—forever empty. That knowledge that it’s all for nothing and that you’re alone. It’s down there.

And sometimes when things clear away, you’re not watching anything, you’re in your car, and you start going, ‘oh no, here it comes. That I’m alone.’ It’s starts to visit on you. Just this sadness. Life is tremendously sad, just by being in it…

That’s why we text and drive. I look around, pretty much 100 percent of the people driving are texting. And they’re killing, everybody’s murdering each other with their cars. But people are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own because they don’t want to be alone for a second because it’s so hard.

Those are the truest of true words I’ve read today and that’s saying a lot since I started my morning by reading an e-mail with the subject “What an asshole!” and a link to a Goopy Paltrow story. It’s true. Whenever I’m at a party and nobody’s talking to me and there’s no cat in the room for me to awkwardly pet, I just pull out my iPhone and spend time with it. It has to hang out with me, because I own it and it can never leave me. But Louis C.K.’s words inspired me. For two nights this week, I won’t fall asleep while holding onto my iPhone like it’s my beating heart. Okay, two is kind of crazy. I’ll only let it for go one night this week. I want to wean off slowly. I don’t want to die!