12 July 2006
An email: would I, fabulous and frankly stunningly attractive O2 customer that I am, care to patronise their measly operation for another twelve months by renewing my contract in exchange for a nice new phone? I choose a little black one with a button on the side that flips the top open, so I can pretend to scan the room for alien life forms in an authorititve Star Trek fashion. My unrestrained joy at owning a shiny new gadget is tempered a little too early however by the realisation that I'd have to re-spell every single one of my not inconsiderable collection of unique and gratifyingly rude custom swear words that I had spent the past year so patiently teaching my old phone. Not being one for instruction manuals, I push every button in the hope that one will miraculously lead me to the text message dictionary where I may turn this annoyance around and spend a pleasant and strangely satisfying hour at work entering them one by one and trying not to snort tea out of my nose when the boss is in the room. But instead of the dictionary, what I get is a list of text message templates, twenty pre-written messages for the short of time, the fat of finger or both.
This list has obviously been compiled with someone quite different to me in mind. The first ten are all business related and will undoubtably make whoever sends them sound really quite clever and important, and possibly so in demand that they're the kind of person that strides everywhere with a meaningful expression and a tie so causally flipped over their shoulder that they're obviously too busy to correct. "I will be in a meeting until ___. I will call you at ___". "Please note, the conference call starts at ___". "I am currently busy and cannot be disturbed. Please call after ___". The second ten are more generic, the please calls, the thank yous, the late arriver's plea for clemency. And then, sitting quietly at number twenty, my favourite of them all.
"I love you too".
How perfect. How so very thoughtful of someone, that now when you have recieved a declaration of love you do not even have to go to the trouble of tapping out a four word response yourself. Wiith a mere touch of the finger your own sincere and deeply felt emotions can wing their way to your unsuspecting beloved without you even having to take your other hand off your keyboard / pint / sales report / other woman. If you're one of those people who really must disrespect that glorious noun with such a parroted, cheap phrase, Nokia should at least make you go to the effort of debasing it yourself.
I stare at my phone for a bit before erasing the template and replacing it with a slowly and carefully typed PIMHOLE.
You forgot to mention the amusing detail of the vibrate function making it sound like a sustained trouser trumpet fanfare when the device is left on flat surfaces.
Because lets face it, wit and wordplay are all very well, but you can't beat a fart joke.
posted by D | 12 July 2006*mutter*
Pempslider.
posted by Jack | 12 July 2006fantastic.
posted by lostboy | 12 July 2006Thank you Jarvis.
posted by PD | 12 July 2006You obviously have never owned an LG phone. Those insidious little bastards delete the custom dictionary at random! (averages every 3 - 6 weeks)
Robot love... the future hardly seems bright, or even a tinsy bit romantic as technology once again sucks the sentiment out of old skool human interaction!
Imagine if in 'Pride and Prejudice' Darcy just sent Miss Bennett a txt fresh from Nokia's pre-set templates just stoically stating those three 'cherished' words. Sure, the novel would have been a lighter read, but hardly the heart-rendering tale it stands as today!
posted by Sarah Parry | 12 July 2006There's something terribly sad about the idea of having an abbreviated text button to input "I love you too."
posted by looby | 12 July 2006The mind boggles.
Mind you, I went for a star trekky impressive phone last time around (a Samsung though, not a Nokia), only to find that it may look fantastic, but its reception and audio quality is absolutely crap.
Good job 99.9% of my mobile communication is by text, no?
posted by Pewari Naan | 13 July 2006Qu'est-ce c'est qu'un pimhole?
My colleagues want this word, but we need to be sure of its correct usage when applying it, so to speak, to each other.
'You're a pimhole' might suffice, but seems half-hearted when faced with the creative potential of a lovely sweary new word.
Or indeed it might be a verb and then what fools we would look...
posted by jo | 13 July 2006Pleased to provide you with both etymology and an example of correct usage.
posted by Jack | 13 July 2006Have you tried avially smuctating it? That usually gets rid of all the standard phrases. Although I would advise doing it on a Tidymans carpet, otherwise you'll never get the stains out.
posted by control | 14 July 2006How slow do yoi have to be for it to be quicker to use a template than bang out a quick "I love you to, freckles"
posted by Adrian | 20 July 2006