A break from the thrills and excitements of Gallipolis.

For some men, owning and playing with gadgets seems to be as much fun as sex. I suspect that for some it serves as a substitute. Industrial designers know this, and have begun to make gadgets that look like the yearn to be fondled and caressed. There’s even a term for this school of design: it’s known as “high touch” (as contrasted with “high tech”). A company called Frog Designs is one of the masters of the style.

I have a tortured and ambivalent relationship with gadgets because I lust after them but hate to spend money. I attempt to cope with this by feverishly reading gadget catalogs while telling myself that I should wait for the next version of every item. The only exception to my gadget lust is anything that has to do with golf.

I would propose a theory: the Brookstone Herrington, and Sharper Image catalog (and there are dozens of others) are gadget pornography. Airlines oblige gadget heads by including gadget porn in every seat pocket for guys like me to look at, and any airports host the retail arms of these mail-order companies. By the way, I highly recommend the massage recliner chair at the Sharper Image in Logan’s USAir terminal.

Let me apologize here to most of the women in the audience who are wondering why I’ve crossed the line into complete incoherence. Maybe it would help to give some examples. This year’s two principal gadgets of desire are the Motorola StarTac and the Palm Pilot (The Apple iMac and the Volkswagen New Beetle are, in my book, honorary runners-up).

the Motorola StarTac is a cell phone that is cuter than a pink talking bunny with a lisp and fits in a shirt pocket. Cell phone users know that the smaller your cell phone is, the cooler you are. Yes, I realize that this is the first time in human history when men have bragged “mine is smaller than yours.”

Why haven’t I bought one? Well, I came REALLY close this fall, but y’know, it’s an analog phone, not digital. The next generation of StarTacs will be digital or maybe both. And maybe smaller, though I’m told it’s already hard to dial with those tiny keys.

The Palm Pilot is a personal organizer, one of those things that holds names, addresss, phone numbers, appointments etc. These devices have been around for years, but the Pilot is the first one that actually makes sense. It comes with a “cradle” that is wired to your PC. When you return from a road trip you snap it into the cradle and the Pilot “hot synches” with your desktop computer’s calendar, notepad, address book, etc. It fits in a shirt pocket, too.

Why haven’t I bought one? Well, I came REALLY close this winter, but then I found out about the Palm Pilot VII, due out in a few months. It is so cool — it has a little pop-up antenna. You can get email and surf the web through a wireless network as you walk. It knows your location based on the wireless network, and can show you up a local map or weather forecast wherever you are. Wow. Of course, when the Palm VII ships, I’ll convince myself to lust after the next version which will have color or 3d graphics or be small enough to clip to my sunglasses.

If you are a true gadget head, size matters a lot, since you’ll have a lot of these things to carry around. “It fits in a shirt pocket” is really a theoretical statement for some people, since their shirt pockets were long ago pre-empted by another gadget. I had a student a few weeks ago who carried:

1) a Palm Pilot,

2) an alphanumeric pager, and

3) a Cell Phone.

Really. He wore these on his belt, not in his pocket, though I predict that fishermen’s vests will become acceptable business attire very soon. Hey, I just had an idea! Im going to wait for a device that combines the functionality of a Palm Pilot, a Cell Phone and an Alphanumeric pager and fits in my shirt pocket.

The gadget equivalent of orgasm is having the person in the next seat stare at your device, sheepishly ask about it, and eventually betray deep envy. The exclamations “wow!” or “cool!” must be exchanged. I’ve been both the envier and the envious in this scenario (I think this is a good time to drop the sexual metaphor, OK?) — envied while riding on an Amtrak train with one of the first Macintosh Powerbook Duos (I was riding Amtrak in part because they have AC power and planes don’t) and envious last month of the guy with the recordable CD minidisk player

Wow, that minidisk player was cool. It combined the best features of a tape recorder and a CD Walkman. But I think I’ll wait for one that fits in my shirt pocket.

Tomorrow: wrapup of Gallipolis and Gadgets. Then a pause of a week or so, followed by my trip to Atlanta, why travel is sexy, life in Skyland, expense accounts and others.