Have Phone, Will Babble

Tuesday June 24th, 2008 - Lake Villa, IL

I needed to get a new phone today because Jerry Agar spilled his Coke all over my other one in the car last week on the way to Zanies and shorted out all the circuits. He felt badly about it but it‘s not that big of a deal. I know he didn’t do it on purpose and actually I was probably about due for a new one anyway. It took some running around but it’s all fixed.

It’s always funny to see the look on the kid’s face when I buy a new phone or computer. It’s only been a couple of years at the most but they look at the old one like it’s a Model T or some ancient artifact from the original King Tut expedition. The workers all gather for a gawk, point and fondle session like a group of monkeys with a shiny object at the zoo.

The kid today scrunched up his face and said ‘We sure don’t make THOSE anymore.’ It started the chain reaction and everyone else had to come look at it too and then at me like I was trying to pawn off an old candlestick phone like Andy Griffith used in Mayberry.

I realized I wasn’t going to get what I wanted which is just a plain old regular telephone so I looked around at the options. Wow. I felt like Fred Flintstone looking at cars that had real brakes and knew my feet wouldn’t have to put up with all the wear and tear anymore.

There really have been a lot of improvements since last time I bought a phone. I am still not ready for a blackberry or a boysenberry or a dingleberry quite yet but I did make a big upswing from the plain old phone I did have. This one has a few of the bells and whistles.

It’s got a camera which I’ve never had before and said I never wanted but as long as it’s there I might as well learn how to use it. Maybe I can take a picture of every crowd I work and have them give me the finger or something. Maybe they can just sit there and I would start uploading them on my website so people can see what it’s like from my viewpoint.

The whole technology train is not going to stop any time soon and it would behoove an old dog like me to hop on and hobo my way down the road a little. I’m too far behind and if I stay where I am I’ll be out of the game altogether. I need to learn more about all of the things that are growing so I can at least have a shot at hitting a trend that’s on the way up.

I’ve got such a long way to go and so many things I want to do and it feels like I’m in as slow a motion as I can be without standing still. Last week at Zanies with Jerry’s Kidders was a priority and I’m glad we did it but that also let the Uranus project totally sit and rot.

Time gets away but it gets away from everyone. I wonder if George Carlin did all of the things he really wanted to do? He was very prolific and considered a stunning success by a vast majority of the public but only he can answer if he was happy with his life’s effort.

I for one am not happy with mine at the moment. I’ve farted around with a lot of project ideas for years and none of them are really anything that’s worth mentioning. They’re not setting the world on fire or Uranus either. Time to restart myself. Have phone will babble.