Better than becoming "An hero" I guess.

Let's face it, most are becoming techno junkies now, even us oldies. I like nothing better than to relax on a warm sunny beach for a week or two, but the prospect of being off-line for this length of time is getting too fearful to contemplate.

I suppose I'll just have to get dongled up this summer.

Well, the usual rule is that the sentence should make sense either with or without whatever is enclosed by the brackets. The fact that the article changes depending on the phonetics of the next word makes that impossible here, so the use of either "a" or "an" is going to be inelegant. I suppose I should have either chosen different words so that both started with either consonants or vowels, or chosen to structure the sentence in some completely different way. Probably the latter.

The question of whether I should have used "and" rather than a comma between "twenties" and "male" can be left for another day.

Shove the brackets one word right thus

A customer (early twenties, male)...

simples.

Good! More of the wondrous joys of the real world for the rest of us to enjoy, unsullied by the presence of these virtual wastrels. Tweet this, a**hole! (sound of two well-spent 12-gauge cartridges bouncing on the ground).

llater,

llamas

Oh Michael, I'm sorry. I didn't even key in to any grammatical or otherwise issues in the posted article. In this case, "An here" was a reference to an entry in the Encyclopaedia Dramatica. Specifically to Mitchell Henderson who killed himself over losing his iPod.

Can't remember if we can inline links so I'll just post them directly

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/An_hero
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Mitchell_Henderson

Welcome to the future. You wouldn't go out onto the street naked either.

Welcome to the future. You wouldn't go out onto the street naked either.

Hold on. I was hoping that was the future.

Richard, sadly, that's never as good an idea as it might seem. For one, far too much of the world is a cold place. For two, the average person is not the sort of thing you generally want to see naked.

no doubt some curmudgeons will point out how this demonstrates the depravity of our disgustingly individualistic, atomised culture, lack of spiritual and moral seriousness, need for young people to be made to get outdoors and join the armed forces, etc.

It's not unusual for me to get a text from a friend with the name of the pub they're in, and then use Google Maps to navigate to them. It's pretty much Rainbows End but without the contact lenses.

Nothing new here. Same shit, different technology. I remember some people in the "OK Yah" Yuppie Eighties, who simply couldn't 'operate' without their precious Filofaxes. Comfort blankets for bloody spoilt grown-ups.