Who do I still think I am??

This one's about two tin cans and a string.

30DBC PROMPT: "Invalid Item" 

** Image ID #1987816 Unavailable **

Good afternoon folks! Looks like a quiet Saturday at Andre's...I hope Lyn's a Witchy Woman took care of the recent bee infestation I've been spreading rumors hearing about. Seems like there hasn't been too many people stopping by since my man came by to try and put the bees in their trap  .

No new prompts either...I get it that I was a few days out already when I posted about Magical Musical Monday on what turned into Whatever Works Wednesday for me, but there's still a few days left in April to make something happen. And since I just found out that there's not gonna be an official "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  in May, that just leaves the door open for extended hijinks. What say you, Brother Nature ?

Because I have nothing else of interest or importance to add currently, I'll be moving on then...

BCF PROMPT: "Do you have a cellphone? Has it actually made your life easier, or harder? Are you addicted to your cell phone? Studies indicate that adults are more dependent on their cell phones and social media than teens...do you think this is true?"

[Full disclosure: Years ago I worked for a local consumer electronics retail company that had an exclusivity agreement with a major cellular provided, and I ran their flagship locations cellular department. Of course, that was like, 10 years (or more) ago, so what I'll have to say about that probably means little now.]

I have a cell phone...like pretty much anyone who isn't in preschool these days. I was one of the first of my friends to get one, and once I started living on my own it became the most reliable way of keeping in touch with anyone. Why should I pay for landline phone service if I was barely home to begin with, when I had this thing I could carry around with me? I could ditch my pager and its need to make sure I always had quarters on me so I could stop and make a call at the nearest pay phone. Made sense to me.

And like everything else, the cell phone evolved. I remember getting one of the first phones in the area that was capable of ringtones and text messages. I was trying to explain it to DMFM when we were roommates...it was a Sunday afternoon, and one of my co-workers from another location sent me a message offering to meet up for dinner at a restaurant across town. DMFM was there, witnessing my messaging, but couldn't believe it until we actually showed up at the restaurant and there was my co-worker. We don't get many of those "a-haaaaa" moments very often anymore with technology...probably because we now expect it to do things that were impossible a few years prior.

Because I was a phone geek and I held the position I did, I always had the latest, greatest, coolest phone. Until I no longer worked for that company, and really didn't care about a phone being more than something I could communicate with. And once I got a new job, I upgraded my phone because I think that's become a natural tendency...more money, better phone. It happened to be one of the first with mobile internet, which was awesome because nobody else I knew could write a blog entry without having to get out of bed. It was incredible. It was a Windows-based, pre-Android gadget that slid up to expose a keyboard, and that thing was amazing. I even had a picture of a certain gorgeous WDC member who shall remain nameless on my home screen (she was the person I talked to the most, so it was ok), and to this day it was still the best phone I've ever had by far when it came to internet usage...until it fell out of my pocket as I was closing a car door.

Then I switched over to a Blackberry, which was fun...until it was time to upgrade and downsize my bill; luckily I was able to get another Blackberry through a different provider. All the things it could do! Great price on a small, pocket-sized flip phone with unlimited talk, text and data. The thing was a champ. Until I went batshit crazy and lost everything...the perfect girl, the steady if not well-paying job, the life. Hard to say what I miss the most...not the job, because I would've lost it anyway due to the company scaling back management positions; the girl, well, I'll never find someone who cared for me the way she did, and I'm ok with that because I really don't need to be in another relationship; the service I got from my last Blackberry though...impeccable. I still use it to take pictures on occasion, even though I've got a 10MP Sony camera that takes better pics. Maybe I'm just used to the feel and the way it works...I'm not very receptive to change.

My phone now? Worst phone ever. It's one of those free ones (it pisses me off when people call them "Obama Phones"...it was George W. Bush that actually signed whatever law it was allocating the funding for these phones in the first place) with 250 minutes a month. And it sends/receives texts. And that's it. No internet, no pictures, no bullshit. Which sorta makes it worthless, in my opinion. I rarely make calls, I hardly text anyone, the phone itself sits on silent 99% of the time, and it's my alarm clock for the days I need to wake up more than anything else. It gets left at home most of the time I do manage to go anywhere. And there've been instances when I've hoped or wanted it to work when it hasn't, but the company that supplied it doesn't want to hear about that. I ain't mad...I'm just sayin' this product sucks, but then again it's free and I shouldn't expect great things.

It's no joke that adults are so much more reliant on cell phones than teens. It's a generational thing, I'm convinced. People older than me didn't have much and they wanted to make sure their kids could have more. And we got that, and it's cool, but it was more than we bargained for, and could probably care less. Kids these days...they're sick of social networking because it's all they know, and to an extent I'm guessing they're feeling more trapped by having a cell phone "as a necessity" than actually being able to go out and being kids. Personally, I rely on the internet over anything, which is probably comparable to someone like my dad having access to cable TV thirty years ago. He could sit in front of the tube and zone out for hours...at least I can learn something from the internet once in awhile, and do it without the constrictions of a programming guide or time slots. With the internet, I could pretty much live without a cell phone. I'm a pretty bad keep-in-toucher as it is and sitting around while trying to make conversation is one of my least favorite things to do. Could that change? Maybe, but there's no incentive in it for me to do so.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

I don't even have a witty intro to this...mere words would just do this video an injustice.

One by one I'll knock ya out.

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

20: I didn't realize it until today, but one of my favorite albums turned 20 (20!!) yesterday...I must still be of the age where things being around for twenty years are a big deal. Blur's "Parklife" was released on April 25, 1994...I swear, it doesn't feel that old. It didn't occur to me until I was reading this article about Britpop's place in music history  . Oasis may have been the more popular band in America, but Blur (strictly from a music standpoint) was the more interesting of the two.

Strange things tend to happen when I throw my support publicly behind a team in any sport- strange things like losing- but this has to be the weirdest thing I've seen in quite some time. Teams collapse in the playoffs all the time, but St. Louis losing this year after being considered by some as the favorites to win the Stanley Cup would be considered a pretty big upset, and I'm pretty sure this is the first time in the history of ever a team's posted lines like this in consecutive years.

Photo courtesy of http://www.facebook.com/TSN

Congrats to Prosperous Snow celebrating (3rd place), Charlie ~ (2nd place), and Cobe (1st place) for winning March's "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" !! Still makes me a little sad that there's not gonna be an official round in May, or that no one as of yet has signed on to take over for the lovely and talented Emily .

I don't think I've got anything else to add...I made the mistake of taking a bit of a break halfway through this entry because I was starving, which led to me overeating, and that led to me taking a nap, and I mention that only because when I woke up roughly 1/8th of what I'd written was rendered useless and dated by the time I came back to this (and the nap kinda killed my momentum). At least I remembered to save what I had written up to the point I decided to eat . Peace, so many people, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!