23rd Do It Yourself Post

My phone is a __________.

Deceit

John would like to get Mary better. They are taking a class together right now, and John thinks he would like to hang out with Mary another time. Unfortunately, John is male and Mary is female, which presents a language barrier. He has tried finding her on Facebook, but alas, she doesn't have an account. What he would like is her phone number, so they can keep in touch after the semester is over. The problem is that if he asks the simple question, "Can I have your phone number," Mary will probably interpret it as "I think you are attractive—would you like to go on a date sometime?" That is not what John wants to ask. (Actually it is, but he's afraid to ask it.)

So John resorts to subterfuge. He asks for everyone to exchange phone numbers in his study group, just in case he's late and he needs to call someone. Not that he's going to be late. He just wants to be safe. Then, he thinks of an excuse to call her. An hour before class, he finds that he doesn't know what the homework assignment is. So he shoots a text over to Mary: "did you catch what the homework assignment was for today?" She texts back: "Yeah, but it's kind of long." So he calls, chats for a minute, gets the assignment, and voila! The two have exchanged phone numbers.

FCN BC08 - N: "i like you"

I received a text message from an anonymous sender. It made it's point simply:

"i like you"

An acute sense of joy swept through my gizzard. Yes sir, somewhere out there in the big, cellular world, someone, who hopefully was a girl, liked me.

So I quickly replied with an equally short message:

"thanks who is this"

I figure I'll do the whole "I-am-too-cool-to-care-what-anyone-thinks-so-will-just-nod-in-your-general-direction-to-let-you-know-I-have-noticed-you" thing. That's what tough guys do, isn't it? You care by not caring. Yeah.

After a few minutes I received a reply:

"haha this is michelle jk itz a jok"

Oh.

But at least Michelle cared enough to play a prank on me. She must like me a tiny bit. Maybe a tad? Who is Michelle? And what's with the z anyway?

And frankly, I can't afford to let something like this bother me. It takes a lot to get girls to like you. Yes sir, good ol' fashioned work. True, I don't get why she thinks tricking me is funny. Maybe if I pretend like I don't care, she will like me more. So I'll do the whole "I-am-too-jock-to-care-what-anyone-thinks-so-will-just-nod-in-your-general-direction-to-let-you-know-I-have-noticed-you" thing. I can be a good sport. Literally.

"lol np"

Sent. So I sit and wait. I'm not sure what I hope she will say. But maybe it will make me feel better. Besides, if she actually replies, that means she actually cares enough to send me three messages out of her 850 texts a day. Not including replies.

So eventually my phone buzzes.

"ya my friendz took my phn"

My phone buzzes again. Apparently it's the second half of the message.

"they sent you that msg srry ttyl"

It's bad to find out a love text is actually a joke on you. It's even worse to realize the wasted minute count paid by yours truly is a prank on someone else. Yes sir, life is tough.

Seriously, I should feel sorry for myself. Besides, doing the whole "I-am-too-emo-to-care-what-anyone-thinks-so-will-just-nod-in-your-general-direction-to-let-you-know-I-have-noticed-you" thing is amazingly self-gratifying. Self-pity is all the rage. And everyone knows chicks dig emo guys.

Faithful iPhone few

The topic of our in-class discussion was highly controversial: We were hashing out the role of race in today's political scene and trying hard to avoid stepping on any of the hair trigger explosives littering the topic area while remaining relevant and interesting. For some students, this was a germane and current subject. For others, myself included, this was a key part of the course's participation grade.

"We don't call Asian students 'yellow' or Native American people 'red.' Why should we call ourselves 'black?' It's a superficial label that is actually demeaning to our culture and race. That's why we don't like the word 'black.' I am from Moundou, Chad -- well my family is; I was born in Dallas. My family is from Africa and we are African-Americans. That's what we want to be called. Not 'black.'" LaFawnduh, the class' only minority student, was making her attempt at an A in participation. I wanted to ask about "African-Americans" from the Carribean, maybe check and see if Usain Bolt wanted to be called an "African-American," but thought better of it. I am white; asking a question like that would be tantamount to interrogating a woman about her fashion. I was out of my league.

The rest of the class seemed to feel this way and an awkward pause formed over the room. That's when Blake, a poorly adjusted derelict who sits in the back of class, asks mind-numbingly dumb questions and has the face of a Halo addict, made his presence known with an impossibly loud snicker that sounded as if it escaped accidentally despite his intense will to avoid the expulsion. Everyone in the room turned partially to get a better look at Blake, who had gone unnoticed through the first part of the discussion. Blake's face was flushed with effort - presumably because he had been trying hard to avoid laughter - and more blood rushed to his face at his public embarrassment.

"Sorry," Blake apologized but offered no explanation for his stifled laugh.

A few minutes later, I got my chance to participate. "I think black candidates should paint themselves white to fool voters. They could apply some of that skin lacquer like what Marcel Marceau used. Just daub it on really thick like primer. Or all the white candidates could paint themselves black like Robert Downy Jr. in Tropic Thunder. If they did it throughout the electoral season, no voters would be the wiser and we could just evaluate the candidates on their merits and not worry about skin color. Maybe that is Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream."

The class sat still in a sort of stunned silence. Then Blake snickered again. This time I'd been watching. His attention was not occupied by class at all. Far from it, he was responding to something on his iPhone which he had hidden behind the binding of his notebook. Blake's utterance ignited the rest of the class and my participation score was saved by a few seconds of polite laughter.

After class, I asked Blake what he was reading on his iPhone. His response both surprised me and made my afternoon: "Funny Class Notes."

This class nerd and total derelict was laughing in class because of something I or one of my fellow contributors had written. He was reading my blog!

And he was laughing at the contents.

And he didn't feel a need to explain what FCN was - he only had to mention the name of the site.

And by laughing inadvertently, Blake had become a human, Mr. Pickles-esque advertisement for FCN. He was an FCN evangelist!

I didn't tell Blake the role I played in his mirth, but maybe, if he keeps reading this in class, we'll have another special moment in the future.

Oh yes, and Blake may very be our as of yet unidentified twelfth reader. Thanks for reading, Blake!

A Bottled Devil

I am sleeping deeply in all the blessed oblivion I have earned by long, late hours of watching movies. My dreams are as captivating as they are surreal; they even have butterflies in them. My blankets are warm, my mattress is soft, and my pillow is just cushy enough. In a word, I am in paradise.

Suddenly, every ounce of serenity is gone. In a magnificent jolt, my toes go taut, my hair raises, and my eyes spring wide open. On the table, not a foot from my bed, is a shrieking ghoul that I am powerless to stop. Shriek! Brinnnnngggg! It’s the kind of high-pitched cross between a wildcat’s scream and the cranking of broken machinery that every diabolical two-year-old longs for. It sounds exactly like (forgive me, gentle readers) a bottled devil.

Perhaps you have heard such phones. Sometimes, on more peaceful occasions, I like to daydream about maniac geniuses who sit around in antiseptic, sound-proof labs and concoct rings. I am sure there are some humane, intelligent, sensitive creatures among them. They are the ones who make sissy rings like “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (Try saying that three times fast. Heck, try saying it one time slow!) or “Für Elise.” But there are other brawny giants who grin evil smiles through broken teeth, pull their ear-muffs tighter, and apply themselves gustily to creating instruments of torture.

“Well Todd, what do you think of this one?”

“I don’t know Bill. The little white rat in the box can still walk. Why don’t you add a few more jolts of that really dissonant tone?”

“Great idea. The fella can’t even open its eyes anymore!” Todd's evil laugh sits dead in the air like an insensitive remark.

You would think, in a day when cell phones are ubiquitous and new ring tones rarely cost more than seventy dollars or so apiece, that there would be no need to endure such aural agonies. After all, there's always a sissy tone available. But that, dear reader, would be an underestimation of human innovation. There are raving lunatics in the world who find every misery they deserve and heap it upon not only themselves, but their friends as well. They connive in back rooms and plot methods to torture the human ear. Yes, these misanthropes are a wretched lot, and you should do your best to avoid us. Yes, us.

Take, for example, me and a recent conference: I attend a conference with my parents and friends. The friends decide to do uncool things. The parents leave to watch boring workshops. I go to look at exciting vendor displays. The friends wouldn’t notice if I got eaten by a vendor monster, but the parents like to keep in touch. They call to check on me. I, having carefully set the phone’s mode to “normal,” ought to hear the ringer, but I don’t. They call again, I miss the call, and they conclude that I have been eaten by a vendor monster. Pretty soon I hear my name on the loudspeakers, on the list of casualties. Apparently, I am dead to the public address announcer.

So I do what any moron would do. I scroll through my ringtones and choose the loudest, most obnoxious ring I can find, one of those metallic nightmares that sound like a phone from the thirties. (People in the thirties must have been rather deaf, both as a cause and an effect of such ringtones.) Now when my phone rings, I feel like the frazzled executive in Spiderman 3 whose wife had a secretary vibrate his desk with a buzzer every time he got excited. A call comes in and—Brinnggg!—there is a bottled devil in my own pocket. I smile nonchalantly and check the caller ID. My friends gape wide-eyed and smooth their hair back down from its newly acquired upright posture. At this point, my friends would notice if I got eaten by a vendor monster. In fact, they would probably hold a party of celebration—provided the phone got eaten as well.

Allo?

On July 1, 2008, California will join most of Europe in banning cellular phone handsets in cars. This is one of many areas of the law where California has become more European. The move comes at a time when communication gizmos are multiplying faster than the Jolie-Pitt family and tech-savvy consumers are working overtime to keep up with the innovations. Now we'll have to leave those fancy innovations in the glove compartment and install the cyborg earpieces over our pinnas.

I'm upset about the ban because I won't be able to use my new handset in my car. I got this nifty little communication gadget from the phone company a few weeks ago and have completely fallen in love with it. It's a flexible wire designed to drape over your hand with a microphone attachment for your pinky finger and a speaker over the thumb. You can purchase the wires in different lengths for smaller or larger hands so that the attachment fits snugly against your skin. As the salesman at the phone shop told me, there is nothing worse than a loosely moored phone.

The wire for the mic and speaker attach to a hub, which is about an inch thick and has a five line LCD screen with a green backlight reminiscent of early DOS computers. Most users like to keep the phone on their left hand, but I prefer the model oriented for the right, since it lets me look like the guy in the promotional material. The phone is almost impossible to misplace because as long as you have your hand, you'll have your phone.


Cingular is in talks with Hwang Woo-Suk, a South Korean biomedical scientist, to develop a microchip which can house all the phone's information. A keypad will be placed on the back of the user's hand, but no other changes will be made. I have volunteered for an experimental installation with Woo-Suk and could be experiencing the bliss of total connectivity as soon as next year.

I'm really happy with my flex phone and was looking forward to using it in my car this summer. Instead I'll have to pull it off quickly when I'm pulled over and tell the patrolman that I was just faking a phone with a hang loose symbol. Honest, officer, who talks into their hand? If only Tatum O'Neal had such creativity.

Jack, Jack, Jane, Jane, Jeremy, Jeremy...

This post is a warning to my good friend Nick who is about to leave for law school: Keep reading FCN, buddy, or we'll have even more stories about you.

The other day a personal friend and coworker (same person) was chatting on his phone with all the innocence of a twenty-two year old male. Posterity will never know the exact nature of this young man's conversation, but history can rest assured that the content was as pure as the driven snow. He was talking about nothing prurient, obscene or in any way degrading. The writer of Philippians would have loved to listen in on the conversation. My coworker wouldn't even have minded his mother eavesdropping; in fact, he probably even gave his mom the transcript after the fact.

At the conclusion of this pure conversation, my coworker shut his flip phone. It might now be appropriate to mention that my friend uses a Cingular brand telephone. While FCN hasn't been contacted by any phone company to do a product endorsement, we are not terribly big fans of the Cingular brand. We believe the company's national motto should be "more dropped calls than any other network" or "we charge for the static" or "fewer bars in more places." We believe AT&T, a picture of corporate responsibility, was corrupted by its merger with Cingular; we believe that the folks at Cingular regularly eavesdrop on conversations just for kicks. Incidentally, we also use Cingular as our cellular service provider, but that's another story.

Somehow, when my friend shut his flip phone, the top part of the phone (the one holding the earpiece and monitor) detached from the mouthpiece and keypad portion. The separation was soundless and quick, like a Las Vegas divorce, but it left the phone quite dead. My friend showed me the remains of the device that had once been the conveyor of so many pure ideas and warned me not to touch the exposed wires for fear of electrocution.

The next day at work, my coworker arrived with a phone that looked exactly like his old one, only it was connected again. I asked what had become of the old phone and my friend replied that he had "borrowed" his brother's and left his broken device in the trash. My friend told me how he was able to receive calls on the new phone because he had transferred his old SIM card to the new phone, leaving his brother's SIM card, I imagine, in the trash.

Then my friend made a comment that ruined my day and the next three hours of my life.

"The only bad thing is that I lost all of my telephone numbers; they were stored on the phone and went down with the ship," he said with a grim expression.

His words completed a circuit in my mind and a little light bulb went off. (That was a figurative attempt to match my friend's "down with the ship" line). What if my phone, a flip device lovingly named "black magic," suffered a severing fate similar to its cousin? What if I lost all the precious numbers of all the girls who'd never returned my calls?

I stopped what I was doing, putting the love letter I was writing aside, and opened up my phone.

When I first received Black Magic, I'd familiarized myself with all its meager features. I learned how to take pictures, send text messages and tinker with the operating system. I even suffered an embarrassing episode wherein I locked up my device and had to get a new SIM card from the Cingular store. I consider my adventures well paid tuition, because I knew exactly where to go with this problem.

I navigated quickly to the settings menu and selected the "Address Book" menu. There, I asked that all my contacts, currently saved to the phone, be moved to the SIM card. It took several minutes (more of a reflection on the quality of the phone than the number of friends I have) but eventually my entire address book was on the SIM card.

That's when it hit me like a head-on collision with a locomotive: What if my SIM card were to become corrupted?

SIM card corruption is genetic in my family. My father has had two cards go Nixon on him and I already wrote about my experiences. The threat of SIM corruption is so real that I always set my phone down gently and sometimes wrap bubble wrap around it before I slide it into my pocket. This practice never fails to get stares from my friends, but I take consolation in knowing that my equipment will last longer; you can never be too sure about SIM cards, and I'm pretty big on protection.

To answer this fear of SIM corruption, I copied my entire address book back to the phone, while keeping the originals entries intact. Then, satisfied that my addresses were protected, I opened my contacts list to examine the results. What I saw there turned my satisfied glee into tepid concern:

Jack

Jack

Jane

Jane

Jeremy

Jeremy

The imbecilic phone had duplicated all my contacts! Now I had to thumb through twice the number of contacts to get to the name I wanted to dial. This inconvenience would be a serious crimp to my Cool, Calm and Collected approach to phone use. I didn't want to be another converse clad nerd who has to spend several minutes with his keypad to call his best friend. I liked the ease of push button calling and glide-like navigation through names; I felt that by ruining my phone, I had ruined my life, or at least my social life.

I ended up fixing the address book by tediously removing the duplicative listings on the way up to a friends' house in the mountains. Driving while using my phone's keypad through bubble wrap was an experience that, while comic, is not fondly remembered.

Part the Fourth: She has a 'crush' on you

This post is way, way overdue. I don't know why I delayed so long in writing it; maybe some youthful pride was welling in my bosom and I thought I could assuage it by putting off the inevitable. The faithful FCN few had to know sometime; I couldn't keep my secret forever. The moment would come, my embarrassment would be known by all and the lack of sympathy would be palpable. As part owner of this blog, I know how it works and I know I deprived you all by not being forthright about it in the first place, but, heck, better late then never, right?

My love life is your love life and, like most communal things, it is pitiful. As always, any tips or advice are appreciated. Condemning and criticizing words will be read, but are not appreciated. Please comment accordingly.

A month ago, I was “dumped” by a young woman who once told her friends she had a crush on me. Now I am trying to get her back... but I am getting way, way ahead of myself.

Luce and I met at a small place by the movie theater during finals week and I my vocal analysis was right on: Blonde through and through. Energetic is probably the best word to describe her and she was very outgoing. She had my picture on her phone and had set it as her wallpaper. She looked athletic and she told me she played tennis for our school. Luce told me she grew up in the Bay Area but went to college in the valley to get away from the city. Our conversation was comfortable and I enjoyed letting her do the talking.

Her favorite color is magenta which is a perversion of purple. She is claustrophobic and can't stand dogs. Her brother is in med school and she has a sister in the military. She misses both terribly. She has had too many sports injuries to count and likes to dye her hair different colors so she wasn't always blonde. She hates using the computer and loves the outdoors.

That's when it hit me like a frog's tongue on a fly: Was this the same “shy” girl who wouldn't approach me in person and sent her friends as emissaries instead? I must have stiffened physically because Luce stopped midway through a sentence on the merits of charging the net to ask what the matter was. I pursed my lips, glanced suspiciously from left to right, depressed my eyebrow and leaned forward. I took a deep breath and looked her in the eye for a second.

“Nothing...You were saying?”

Our conversation continued after a moments hesitation and I used the guise of interest to develop my theory. This couldn't possibly be the “real” Luce. The real Luce was quiet, sat in the back of the cafeteria and had Hispanic friends who used their mother's cell phones. The girl in front of me was a bubbly blonde who probably went to parties just to energize them. The girl in front of me was the star of the tennis team, not the outcast.

“So, what's your real name?” I bluntly changed the subject, deciding to use surprise to my advantage.

Luce smiled, obviously a lot more used to social dweebs than she let on. “Lucy, but my friends call me Luce. Why?”

Why indeed. My suspicion was beginning to look vaguely ridiculous and my hold on conversational authority was leaving me like so many lemmings. In retrospect, my curiosity was poorly conceived. Why...did I always have to make a fool of myself in two-way social interactions? Why...was I the one who got left holding the cheese? Why...was Luce looking at me like that?

Oh yes, her question. I answered with a joke that seemed to recover most of the ground my gaff had lost, but the rest of our interaction was without the comfort we shared early in the date.

Maybe that's because I spent less time listening and more time thinking about this whole sordid episode. Luce, tennis, the cafeteria, the cell phone picture, me. It didn't fit. Something was wrong. What kind of girl approaches a guy with expressions of affection before establishing any sort of relationship?

I decided the best course of action was the blunt one, so I continued bludgeoning our conversation around by asking the above to Luce.

“What kind of girl approaches a guy with expressions of affection before establishing any sort of relationship? I mean...what kind of girl...” I let my thoughts trail off like the curator in Night At The Museum and used descriptive hand motions to convey my confusion.

“You weren't going to ask, so I did.” Luce seemed so calm. How did she know I wasn't going to ask? Maybe I was thinking about it and just biding my time. And what did it matter anyhow? So this was an epistemological question, not one of romance and passion? I was a bet, a wager she placed with her friends? What about the proper role of...?

My thoughts were interrupted by Luce who stood up quickly. “You know what? You're just a pretty face. I try to get to know you and you just sit there dumbly and then try to lecture me on...” I think she “humphed” there, but the crack of her palm against my cheek made the memory fuzzy.

When I cleared my vision and mustered the courage to peek up from beneath my arms, I saw her Tundra zip out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

I got a few stares as I paid the bill and exited myself. But nobody saw as I sobbed softly in the front seat of my car. How could I have messed that up? Things were going so well! We were clicking!

That's what I get for focusing on the method, not the content. And she ordered the second most expensive item on the menu!

Maybe she was playing hard to get, as if it wasn't hard enough to get her for the first date. Or maybe I'm just an empty visage with nothing to offer the fairer gender.

I think you're supposed to call your date back the next day and follow up, say it was a great evening and lie about what an awesome time you had. Well, it's been a month and I haven't called her back. I have her number and sometimes I look at it like the man in the “maybe” lottery add.

You know what? I think I'll give her a call and see how she's doing. Maybe she has an opening this week and we can catch a tennis game or something. Now if only I can find my cell phone.

Part the Second: She has a ‘crush’ on you

If you haven’t read FCN’s account of the traumatizing experience I had with a young woman at the campus canteen a couple quarters of a moon ago, please take the time to read it because it is an important backdrop for today’s post.

No, I am serious about this. You can always push your browser’s back button or, if you are using Opera, Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, create a new tab and view the page concurrently with this one. Simply push your mouse’s middle button or click normally while holding the ctrl button (Option on a Mac). Or you can right click the above link and press “Open in New Window.” Whatever your style is, get it done now because I won’t keep typing until you are caught up on my love life.

OK. Now that you are up to speed, I can tell you what happened yesterday morning. I had just finished a heady discussion of the properties of water in my science class (why do these things always follow science?) and was enjoying the light breeze in my face as I walked across the street to do a little lunch hour purchasing (note the difference between shopping and purchasing).

As I walked, minding my innocence, on a concrete sidewalk, I passed a couple of Hispanic girls, who looked completely self absorbed. As is my custom when I pass anyone, but especially young women, I smiled and nodded my head.

Instead of walking on, engrossed in their Ipod or cellular phone conversation, as most people do, these young women stopped. One of the girls, who I later found out was named Samantha, asked “you’re the guy who had his picture taken on the cell phone, right?”

So now the whole world knew about Lindsey’s pink mobile? Maybe the FCN readership is bigger than I imagined.

Did this mean my photo was circulating around? Was it the desktop image of every perverted female in town? Did the picture turn out ok? Did the crumbs on my teeth show through?

“Yes, a young woman took my picture a week or so ago. I believe her name was Lindsey,” I smiled, but couldn’t hold the curiosity out of my features.

The girls giggled and looked at one another with an expression I will never understand. “Well, our friend wants your phone number.”

Here we go again. First my picture, then my number. Those are both online, you know. Why doesn't this girl come out of the woodwork and meet me personally? Does the girl really exist or is this a vast conspiracy perpetuated by the campus females to trip me up?

Why would a collection of girls exert any effort to trip me up?

Alas, beauty is stronger then the intellect and I succumbed, entering my digits into Samantha’s mobile for, I was told, later transmission to the mystery crush.

In order to unravel as much of the mystery as possible, I decided to keep asking questions. “So,” I asked, “what’s the name of this girl, the one who has the crush on me?” Tact was never my strong point.

“Luce,” came the answer. At least I think it’s spelled that way. It could have been “Loose.”

“Okay,” I continued my inquiry, “where do you guys hang out? Maybe I could swing a visit and say hi sometime.” Maybe.

“Oh, Luce doesn’t go to school here anymore. She’s working…” Samantha’s voice trailed off, leaving an awkward silence.

To this point, I’d forgotten to stop smiling and my face was beginning to feel tight; I relaxed my features.

And so the conversation with Samantha and her unnamed friend concluded. We exchanged inconsequential pleasantries and parted ways leaving me with only a little more data about the girl with the mystery crush. I’d given out my phone number – a bargaining chip, my brother had informed me, in the relationship scene – and was still perplexed about the entire situation.

Questions, old and new, plagued the rest of my purchase-driven excursion. Was this some kind of conspiracy to get Luce and me to go out? Did Luce really exist or is there a band of young women desperate for my attention? How could a girl who doesn’t go to school know me well enough to establish a crush? Why was the text on Samantha’s cellular set to Spanish? And, perhaps most haunting, when will the crazy collegiate women attack me again?