Who Dis?
I'm never the first person to buy the latest and greatest piece of gadgety wizardry. I like my movies well hyped, but when it comes to things I have to integrate into my daily life, all the gizmos and whatsits that promise convenience and only deliver unnecessary complication, I'm generally nonplussed. I don't have an MP3 player. I never had a PDA. Newest, smallest, fastest, sleekest? Not impressed. I don't have that kind of fetishized reaction to shiny plastic gewgaws. Not since a SaladShooter™ killed my dad.

But I am married to a woman who works in the fancy-pants tech field, which means every so often, I get some scary spousal pressure to put out... lots of unecessary money to pay for some newfangled thingamagoober. To "support the industry." She says she does it all the time and I'm not pulling my weight. I always come back with "they don't put silicon chips of any kind in a double-headed rotating vibrator. You don't even know the difference between electronics and mechanicals!" and by then she's usually on the other side of a locked door, humming the same monotone sound she always hums in there. Honestly I don't know how she has the lung capacity to keep it going as long as she does.

Anyway, long story short, she made me buy a new cell phone. It was free (as part of a contract renewal), so I relented.

Still, I don't really see what the problem was with my old phone. It made calls. It received calls. The end. I've never texted in my life. In fact, just back in that last sentence was the first time I've ever used "text" as a verb. They have yet to invent the cell phone that will play 8-tracks, so they're useless to me as music players. And as for cameras, well, we all know cell phone picture taker people are the absolute worst kind of people in the whole wide world. If you ever end up in prison, tell them you're a pedophile before you tell them you a cell phone picture snapper. Sure, they'll still rape you and kill you, but at least they won't make pruno in your hollowed-out corpse afterward. Keep some dignity.

I even liked the way my old phone looked:

That's Grandpa holding it. See, no picture-phone mode, so I had to take this one myself with a whole separate apparatus. Yes, Grandpa is trying to shave with it. It's embarrassing, but it's either that or I would find him screaming into it, pleading for an airstrike against the Krauts advancing on Bastogne. Poor crazy old fucker. He just relives it over and over and over. I never should have introduced him to Call of Duty 2.

I know, it was a little bulky, but I could use it as a blunt instrument in a pinch. Or, you know, if the mood just struck me. And you're thinking "there's no way you could fit that in your pocket" to which I say you are clearly not being creative enough in your choice of pants.

By way of contrast, here's a closeup picture of the keypad/workstation-area of my new phone:



Crazy, right? The manual is not measured in pages, it's measured in feet of thickness. I'm not allowed to use it on planes, not because of the outside chance it might interfere with the instrumentation, but because it comes with the capability to actually fly the plane. And caller ID.

Here's a picture of it from a bit further back:



I'm not going to lie to you, storage and portability are challenges. Battery life is a fucking joke. And the guy we had to hire to operate it is expensive AND a condescending prick. You know how IT guys are.

I know, it's totally counter-intuitive to go bigger, but look, that's just how I roll. I won't be dictated to by fads or trends. I'm wearing velvet pants and a cape right now. That should tell you everything you need to know about me.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.9


Pops

Labels: errantry

- posted by Pops @ 9:28 AM