what's your ringtone?
Let me begin at the beginning.
I hate cell phones. I've always hated cell phones. I have one...because it was "issued" to me at work. One day one of my cohorts was late for a meeting. Nobody could find him, so the boss decided we all needed cell phones. The guy who caused this was ecstatic. "This is so cool! They're giving me a phone!" Yeah, but you're paying...just not in cash. They pay for the phone. They pay the monthly bill. They call it a perk. I call it a leash. A 24 f'ing hour a day leash.
I liked the idea of getting away from work. I liked the idea of not being a few buttons on a phone away, all day, every day. I could see the advantage of having one if you were stranded somewhere and your car broke down and there wasn't a pay phone anywhere. For as many times as that excuse is used for buying one, I can honestly say none of the minutes my cell phone has spent in active conversation was in a situation remotely resembling that one. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
I don't see the necessity of having the world at your fingertips when they are in active control of a steering wheel. I hate being around people in traffic who assume their driving skill is adequate while talking on a phone. Listen to me, America. It's NOT! You aren't that good. You are never that good. Hang up and drive.
It is with that background that I appraoch my cell phone. I don't want it. I will tolerate it, but I won't go gaga over it. I don't care how many things it can do. I don't care if it could spit nickels and make waffles, all I want it to to is make phone calls..and I would prefer it didn't even do that, but that's beyond my control. So when I got my phone, the second in what I assume will be a succession of upgrades paid for by the company, I picked a ring noise from the list provided and never gave it a second thought....until Sunday.
Sure, I've heard of ringtones. I've heard various versions. One woman in the office alternates between Led Zepplin and Star Wars. The youngster changes them faster than he changes his underwear. I just figured it was something some people do to amuse themselves. I didn't care enough to take the time to look for one.
So I went to the poor excuse for a football game Sunday. For you that have never been, the people who run that sort of thing try to come up with ways to entertain the people in the stadium while the fans at home are catching the latest Budweiser commercial. Since we aren't seeing the commercial, we're sitting with our collective thumbs up our ass until the network decides to allow the game to resume. Such is the power of television in the NFL. To alleviate that situation, various amusement attempts cross the jumbotron. One of them Sunday was an interview trip through the Jaguar locker room asking the immortal question...
What's your ringtone?
All of them had answers. All of them could sing the damn song that is their ringtone. One guy took the opportunity to recite all the lyrics to I Like Big Butts. That part was actually pretty impressive. The bigger question, though, was obvious. Am I that far behind the pop culture world? Has my disdain for that phone pushed me into the world of crotchity old farts? All of a sudden, I'm feeling a bit left out.
I hate cell phones. I've always hated cell phones. I have one...because it was "issued" to me at work. One day one of my cohorts was late for a meeting. Nobody could find him, so the boss decided we all needed cell phones. The guy who caused this was ecstatic. "This is so cool! They're giving me a phone!" Yeah, but you're paying...just not in cash. They pay for the phone. They pay the monthly bill. They call it a perk. I call it a leash. A 24 f'ing hour a day leash.
I liked the idea of getting away from work. I liked the idea of not being a few buttons on a phone away, all day, every day. I could see the advantage of having one if you were stranded somewhere and your car broke down and there wasn't a pay phone anywhere. For as many times as that excuse is used for buying one, I can honestly say none of the minutes my cell phone has spent in active conversation was in a situation remotely resembling that one. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
I don't see the necessity of having the world at your fingertips when they are in active control of a steering wheel. I hate being around people in traffic who assume their driving skill is adequate while talking on a phone. Listen to me, America. It's NOT! You aren't that good. You are never that good. Hang up and drive.
It is with that background that I appraoch my cell phone. I don't want it. I will tolerate it, but I won't go gaga over it. I don't care how many things it can do. I don't care if it could spit nickels and make waffles, all I want it to to is make phone calls..and I would prefer it didn't even do that, but that's beyond my control. So when I got my phone, the second in what I assume will be a succession of upgrades paid for by the company, I picked a ring noise from the list provided and never gave it a second thought....until Sunday.
Sure, I've heard of ringtones. I've heard various versions. One woman in the office alternates between Led Zepplin and Star Wars. The youngster changes them faster than he changes his underwear. I just figured it was something some people do to amuse themselves. I didn't care enough to take the time to look for one.
So I went to the poor excuse for a football game Sunday. For you that have never been, the people who run that sort of thing try to come up with ways to entertain the people in the stadium while the fans at home are catching the latest Budweiser commercial. Since we aren't seeing the commercial, we're sitting with our collective thumbs up our ass until the network decides to allow the game to resume. Such is the power of television in the NFL. To alleviate that situation, various amusement attempts cross the jumbotron. One of them Sunday was an interview trip through the Jaguar locker room asking the immortal question...
What's your ringtone?
All of them had answers. All of them could sing the damn song that is their ringtone. One guy took the opportunity to recite all the lyrics to I Like Big Butts. That part was actually pretty impressive. The bigger question, though, was obvious. Am I that far behind the pop culture world? Has my disdain for that phone pushed me into the world of crotchity old farts? All of a sudden, I'm feeling a bit left out.
John put this out here at 8:42 AM
4 Comments:
LOLOL John. It's cause we're in our forties. I ALSO use one of the ringtones that came with the phone, and I ALSO sometimes feel completely out of the loop, especially when someone else's phone rings and I recognize the song. Now, granted, mostly I just recognize that there's NO WAY the song came with the phone and whatever I'm hearing is probably so popular that the issue of my not recognizing has something to do with my "old fogeyness" on a level I'm not ready to deal with (think: Gwen Stefani or Gnarles Barkley, etc.) But I feel your pain. I am stuck between feeling like my cell phone is a TOOL, not a TOY, and why should I spend $$ to download a special ringtone for something I don't need?? Of course, this somehow negates (or at least conflicts with) the fact that I DID DOWNLOAD Yahtzee onto my phone so I could play it while waiting for my children or while sitting in airports, etc.
Now, having said all that, I'm thinking about downloading "It's All Been Done" by the Barenaked Ladies as my ringtone because given my personal situation right now, you know, it HAS all be done. I could use the humor.
:-)
On the subject of Gwen Stefani, why is it all these newer "artists" feel the need to inject their name into their songs? You hear a Ludicrous "song" or one Gwen sings, and their name is all over the place in the lyrics. I can't see Eric Clapton ever singing "Clapton got the beat that make yo booty go SMACK."
Shit. If my booty go smack, I might JUST put it in a song.
Point taken, but I know if I ever sing that John got the beat that make yo booty do anything, a) I get smacked and b) it'll never make it to top 40 radio.
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