5 posts tagged “cellphones”

Harry Mount’s column in The Daily Telegraph was a great laugh:

I once saw [Heather Mills] walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and was staggered by the height of her cheekbones and the depth of the groove beneath them.
   But when she opens her mouth—and keeps it open for 11 minutes, as she did outside the High Court—the spell is broken. You forget the cheekbones and drown in the ocean of self-pity pouring out of that pretty mouth.
   During the French state visit, clever Carla Bruni rarely broke the spell by talking. She realised, like the old pro supermodel she is, that all she has to do is look good and say nothing. …
   The real difference between them, though, is in what they say—or don’t say. The answer for Heather Mills in future is to do what John Galliano did with Carla Bruni's cinched Dior outfit—belt up.

   Thinking that was all that Mr Mount had to offer, I was pleasantly surprised by the final segment in his column:

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry claims that mobile phone addiction is a mental illness.
   I’m afraid the illness is incurable; it’s related to an addiction that's been around for ever—the addiction to self.
   People aren’t addicted to the phones themselves. They’re addicted to the attention they get from other people via their phones. Obsessive phoners send texts purely in the hope that they’ll get one back. They don’t ring people from the train to find anything out; only to get other people to listen to them saying nothing of any importance. Why is it that the person on the train is always doing the talking, and never the listening?

   I knew there was a reason I didn’t use cellphones.

Thank goodness, someone who agrees with me.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/07/ten-reasons-to-.html

Cellphones are irrelevant.
   I agree, there are some exceptions: I think kids should have them for emergencies. Ditto for doctors. I see no problem about a car phone for emergencies. But as a business tool, I have always gone without them. Sure, I occasionally take one out of town, and a very small circle of people know that number, but it is a treat, not a habit.
   If cellphones disappeared today, it would not alter my life. I still have my calling card for pay phones.
   Plus, with the radiation slowly taking out sperm, I will be the only remaining male in New Zealand who is fertile by 2012.
   God bless Simon Young for the link.

Foreign-ad time for our non-Kiwi readers. I thought I had already blogged about this, but that must have been the first time I was in 2007, not after my accident in 2040 where I woke up and it was 33 years before.
   This is not as funny or as witty as the Lift and Tui commercials I posted before, but it just gets you through sheer cheek, cuteness and the ‘Aw’ factor.
   People diss Telecom New Zealand for using cuddly animals, but this time, I think it works. I am waiting for some lobby group to say this will encourage cellphone use at a young age and for these puppets to be put into the same class as Joe Camel.
   The ram is priceless.

Un pub pour l’équivalent de France Télécom en Nouvelle-Zélande. La compagnie s’est servi les vrai animaux dans les années 80 et 90, mais l’industrie n’a pas acclamé cela publicités. Le nouveau pub a pour vedette les animaux d’appartement, avec plus d’humour.

Firing an email off to Vodafone, after they told me via text (sic):

From 17May we're improving our systems for u.There may be delays in bills, plan changes & balances.See vodafone.co.nz/changes or the letter to yr biz next week

   Now, I respect the right of people to use cells. Secondly, I believe cellphones are necessarily evils in emergencies, or for those parents who want to be reached by their children. I, personally, have found them useful in courting. But I do not see any necessity for them in any other context, certainly not for my working environment when I am in my city.
   But do not send me coded messages that I have to decipher! Thus:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Two things, both related.
   I know you’ve some changes ahead with your system upgrade. But you don’t need to text me [number censored] about it. Unless you are prepared to text in English (you know, where the pronoun is you, not U; where there are spaces after full stops—that crazy stuff which makes messages comprehensible). 
   But to be really honest, I’d just rather not hear from you through a cellphone at all, when your letter of the 11th does the same job.
   If you could, please just keep me on your paper mailing list. I detest cellphones, and I see them only as an occasional evil where I am forced to make calls when travelling. The last thing I want is for a cellphone to be an advertising medium, when I do not permit that with my regular telephone.
   Secondly, I note that when you texted me with news of this system change, I could not reply or see your number. Please can you modify my settings accordingly? I have no wish for people to know my number, otherwise they will begin replying to or calling me on it.
   I have been told by your people that putting 0197 in front of numbers will hide mine, but I have tried this with text messages, and none of them will go through.
   If it's at all possible, a blanket hiding of my number to all and sundry would be ideal, please. I could find no setting on the phone to do this, so I assume this is done on your end.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Jack Yan

   If email wasn’t full of spam that could be filtered out, then I would have suggested they email me with changes, but I doubt I would receive their messages.

[Cross-posted] This edition of the Letter is less on branding, and more on the week that was, beginning with my reminiscences about 9-11 and my 30 years in New Zealand, which I commemorate today.

0.00 Welcome
0.19 9-11 and the summer of ’01 in New York
3.11 At Wellington Fashion Festival, September 12, 2001
3.41 Visiting Ground Zero on September 11, 2005
5.51 I hate cellphones
8.16 New Zealand Post’s $80 million postal codes do not work
9.16 Don Brash’s alleged affair
10.33 My 30th anniversary of arriving in New Zealand
12.01 A proud New Zealander
13.03 Closing

Please download or listen to this edition of the Letter at the Internet Archive in various formats.