shiny.

If you’ve tried to call me in the last few weeks, you probably haven’t gotten ahold of me. Why? Because my cell phone is a piece of crap.

• I can’t get into my voicemail. At all. Even from land lines.
• I have a talk time of one minute before either:
  • The battery goes ploink.
  • The call goes ploink.
  • Both go ploink.
• The buttons don’t work with the headset.
• It’s not sold in this country anymore, so getting a battery is more expensive than most phones now on the market.
• “We can’t fix that, we don’t sell that one anymore.”

My phone had a few screws loose, but it didn’t seem to affect anything so I used it for more than a year with it rattling about. I had them fixed when I was in Dallas. The guy returned the phone to me and said, “you must keep this in your pocket.”

“Yes, I do. How did you know?” I asked.

“The phone was full of lint,” he responded.

Apparently, the phone lint made my phone work, because it sure as hell isn’t working now. My phone must be like the Quantum Improbability Drive from Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Anyone else remember hunting for lint to make things work?

I should just throw this fucker into the dryer and forget about cool electric pheromones.