Don't bother calling me

So the other day I decided it was time to upgrade my cell phone. The one I had pissed me off because the receiver volume on it was horrible and unless you were standing in an empty elevator, in the middle of the night, you couldn’t barely make out anything the person on the other line was saying. On top of that, it just wasn’t sexy enough for me. Being Simon Drasle, I need a cell phone that is as sexy as I am.

The first problem I encountered, however, was that the selection phones I could actually choose from was going to be limited. I could buy a phone from the company I already have service with, but they only allow you to get a discounted price once a year, and it hadn’t been a year since I bought my last phone.

Like they’re my parents trying to control my phone buying habits. Who gives a crap how long it has been, just give me the freakin’ sale price now, you’re trying to sell phones, right? There’s no way I’m paying full retail price when I already have service with you, forget that. So my only other option was to buy an unlocked phone, which is pretty much none of the cool phones.

Sure, I could always drop the reliable service with the local company I have now since there is no contract and get sucked into a 2-year contract with some provider that drops every other call just for a salacious phone that makes me make me feel like I’m important. But at this point in my life, I just don’t feel I’m ready to take that step since the only person that calls me is my Grandma, on Thursdays, when she hasn’t had a chance to read my blog.

I already knew what I wanted to get anyway. The cinder block-style phone that Zack Morris used to rock; it was just a matter of finding it. 7 hours of meticulous searching later, I was convinced that they only sell it in Canada or something. So now I was definitely disheartened, I mean had no idea where to go from there and I knew nothing about cell phones, besides the one I had sucked and the one I wanted was only available in exotic countries.

Then I recalled seeing Bob Saget with some kind of phone called BlackBerry. Well hey, Bob is a big baller, and I’d like to be a big baller, so it was settled. Then I remembered that whenever Sags used the phone it looked like he was talking into a TI-87. Then I went and found out the freakin’ things cost like $500!

Who in the heck is going to pay $500 for an accounting machine that makes phone calls? I’d be forced to invest in a man purse just to carry the thing around with me in public. It’s counterproductive. The +1 to my cool rating for owning something so high-tech would be negated by the -2 for walking around with an effeminate carry-all and a portable fax machine.

BlackBerry was completely out of the question. But even though I had absolutely no idea what phone I was going to get, I did know I was purchasing a Bluetooth headset with it because I saw a guy at the mall with one once, and they are awesome. Then I remembered that when the guy started talking, I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me, or someone on the phone.

It turned out, he was talking on the phone, but by the time I realized it, I had already awkwardly acknowledged his presence. Which forced him to complete the awkward exchange with an equally awkward acknowledgement. So he knew that I thought that he thought that I thought he was talking to me. And I felt like he owed me an apology for thinking that I thought that he thought that I thought that he thought that I thought that he thought that I thought -- basically I wanted to punch him in the face at this point.

“Guy with Bluetooth in public” has officially replaced “Guy pretending like he is talking on his cell phone in public” as the unofficial mascot for Enzyte. Even if Bluetooth’s weren’t the most obnoxious inventions ever invented and a surging cause of black eyes, I don’t understand the necessity of saving yourself the strain of holding a 2-ounce piece of plastic to your ear through the duration of a 3-minute conversation. Whatever, I still needed a new phone. So I decided I should be smart, actually do some research, and choose a phone based solely on appearance.

I ended up getting the vowel-challenged SLVR. I could have cared less about the mp3 player capabilities and video camera, I just wanted a small, inoffensive phone. Yeah, well it turns out the SLVR’s audibility is actually frickin’ worse than the Nokia 6102 I already have. Seriously, why is it that the more crap they throw onto a phone, the worse it works as an actual phone?

It’s amazing, you’d think that would be the first priority, but apparently there must be some sect of people more worried about playing their favorite Ashlee Simpson songs with their phone than communicating with other people. So how come my mp3 player can’t make clear phone calls? The phone obviously went back, but I’m still here without a phone that doesn’t suck. To be continued??