November 17, 2009; Two Men and a Phone

Sometimes you can just watch them and not believe your eyes.

You can make suppositions about the dynamics of a given relationship by the way a couple deals with technology. For instance, my ex-owner, Frank, could get his daughter to buy him damn near anything because she knew nothing about technology and he knew just a little bit. He convinced her that he needed a Blu-ray player because his eyes were going and that he needed a better quality picture to be able to watch his movies. What his daughter didn't know is that he had read somewhere that the porn industry was going to switch to Blu-ray and there was nothing so terribly wrong with his eyes. So, basically, Frank got his Blu-ray for his Blue Balls. Frank would see an ad or read an article about some new gadget and he would get it and they would just all pile up around the apartment. The only low-tech thing he had was me.

Even at the puppy mill and the pound there was always some young geek trying to impress some chick way out of his league with his new mp3 player or his new cellular and you could tell if he had an iota of a chance if the chick was vaguely fascinated. (Most were not...like Frank's daughter they were mostly interested in how much skin they could expose and how high they could hike their skin-tight pants up into their snatches.)

Then we have the Mooks. I have pretty much sensed that Mook A is the technoid and Mook B the tech-tard. Every time B wants to watch a movie, for instance, A has to re-explain how the three remotes work. So it was damn odd when, three days ago, B came home with a brand new iPhone. This was not his style at all, especially since his hobby seems to be losing his cels all over creation. Moreover, he had been working for two days at getting the fucking thing and had bounced from one phone store to another getting a different story from each of them and another six different stories from his phone company about whether or not he would be able to upgrade from his current cel plan. So it was somewhat of a miracle when Mook A and I came out of the bathroom from changing his appliance and there was B with an iPhone box and about 80,000 gadgets for the thing spread out all over the kitchen table.

Though the idiot phone was supposed to be able to communicate with B's computer...well, it wasn't. That's when A was drafted to help even though it was clear (to me, at least) that he was choking with envy that B had this wondrous little toy and he did not (being unemployed and desperately poor and all). Whenever B asked a question (in the most weak, shaky and subservient little voice you've ever heard—think Minnie Mouse on a meth low) B would bellow, "Giveitgiveitgiveit! Give...it...to...me!!!" Then A would fiddle about—only impressing B with the fiddling and not fooling me at all—and pronounce, "I do not know why you can't take two minutes to do this and this instead of dragging me into your tech problems every fucking time. Have you never heard of a manual or even the tech help you're paying for!" At this B quailed and dared to say, "Why are you yelling at me?" To which A exploded, "HOW MANY TIMES AND WITH HOW MANY FUCKING COMPUTERS AND ANSWERING MACHINES AND CEL PHONES AND IPODS AND COFFEE-FUCKING-MACHINES HAVE WE BEEN THROUGH THIS!!! YOU BUY THE FUCKING MACHINE ALREADY LOADED WITH FRENCH FROM FRANCE AND WITH FRENCH FROM FRANCE MANUALS AND IT HAS ALL THESE ASSHOLE TECHNICAL TERMS EVEN A FUCKING FROG DOESN'T UNDERSTAND INSTEAD OF GETTING THE MACHINE IN ENGLISH SO I CAN UNDERSTAND AND HELP YOU OUT!!! CALL TECH HELP IF THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO DO EVERY FUCKING TIME!!!" At this point, despite the opera calling tech help always represents, B would rather do just that instead of getting another shit-storm from A.

It took hours, but the problems were solved and this is when, my friends, the dynamic shifts from the dominant "tech-savvy" person to the previously slavish techno-tard who, after all, owns the actual coveted object. It was clear, for the rest of the day, that B was delighting in showing A all the wondrous things that the iPhone could do (and it is a great toy).

Late that night, the real winner of the war was declared, though, without B even knowing it. As B slept, music from his iPhone drifting into his dreams, A was alone in the living room re-programming B's ratty cast-off cel phone.

From the bedroom there were the strains of The Police's Greatest Hits, from the other the sad beep-beep-beeps of a little machine which might—one day!—be able to make phone calls...and that's all.