One with whom I live just reported that we're getting new cellular phones, which, by the way, always sounded like phones embedded in one's cells, something nano-technology apparently has in store for us, even though phone companies no longer seem to have stores. It was also reported to me that "you're getting the biggest buttons they have," meaning the buttons on the phone. I suffer from Homer Simpson's Syndrome, whereby when I hit a phone-button with one of my thick fingers, I hit three buttons at once. For whom are these phones made, anyway? Barbie? It takes me the better part of a day to construct and send a text message. Smoke-signals would be faster.
When it was reported to what we used to call THE phone company that I used 15 minutes of calling per month on my cell phone, the person from the company was incredulous. "Did you say FIFTEEN?!" Hey, that's 30 seconds a day. In Sweden, that would make you a real gas-bag. I don't like talking on the phone.
I'm also getting a blue-tooth, I've been advised. This is great, especially because I have no idea what one is. All I know is that it's associated with a thing you wear on the side of your head--something like Uhura wore in the original Star Trek. It looks like a big beetle, and I think it's quite a fashion statement.
I already have a blue tooth. Thanks to Raymond Cervantes, who hit me in the mouth with his elbow when we were going after a rebound in high school, one of my large, saber-tooth-cat front teeth is discolored; it's also dead. It's the original blue tooth. I can't receive calls on it, but so what?
The proliferation of phone-technology is most amusing, especially since, when I was young, our family was on a "party line," which sounds quite festive but which actually meant that we shared a phone line with two other families. One effect was that sometimes, when you picked up the phone to make a call, Sophie from the Yuba River Inn would be on there talking. It was considered bad form to a) listen in [did you hear that, Congress, Bush, Homeland Security, and Tele-Kom companies?] and b) talk too long. Of course it took forever to dial a number back then--because you used a dial. I think they should provide cell phones with dials because it's harder to make a mistake when you can lock your finger in that hole and spin the wheel. I think cell phones with little dialing-wheels would be more aesthetically interesting, too. People might rethink whether they actually need to make that call, and they could get their minutes down to 15 or fewer per month.
I'd like now to leap to a proposal: I think there should be an international text-a-poem day. We already have write-a-novel-in-a-month and write a blog-entry-every-day-for-a month, so why not a text-a-poem day? Everybody with access to a cell phone would simply text-message a short poem, which they could write or which they could borrow from someone else. Above the globe, where there used to be ozone, there'd now be poems flying around. I think the phenomenon known as "good vibes" would ensue, and Uhura, wearing her Blue-Tooth, could link up the Universal Translator. Keep thinking about those good vibrations.
