You aren’t as important as your phone thinks you are.

I have a badly outdated flip-phone that is held together with duct tape and prayers.

It’s all I need.

Phones are like weightlifting gloves: 98% of the people who use them have no use for them other than appearance. Guys put on weightlifting gloves so they can look hardcore while they move puny weights around.

It’s the same thing with fancy phones.

Fancy phones allow people to display how very important they are. And that they can pay $80 a month to update their facebook status from a public restroom.

So I'm protesting fancy phones, at least until I can afford one.

Football season is coming to an end. And so is my reason to continue living.

Football is like soccer, except things happen.

Football is a man’s game, whereas soccer players act like delicate 9-year-old girls. If a football player is pushed, he pushes back. If a soccer player gets pushed, he whips up some tears—to the delight of fans. Soccer teams actually recruit new players on the basis of their ability to cry on cue. Or so I’ve heard.

And baseball? The most impressive feat in baseball is a no-hitter. That’s right: nothing happens and people can’t shut up about it.

Stuff does happen in basketball. Guys score constantly. How excited can you be when a guy adds two points to 50? To 100? Not very. The only reason to watch basketball is Blake Griffin, and it’s obvious that guy is really a football player.

Am I on the air?

The worst thing about talk radio is that they take phone calls. The guy who calls a talk radio show in the middle of the afternoon is a guy with nothing better to do. I don’t care about that guy’s opinion on Hugo Chavez.

Call me crazy, but I’d rather hear the opinion of an expert than that of Dave in Topeka.

And why does every call begin with: “Hi, how are you?”

Can’t the call screeners say, “Before you ask, I want you to know that Dianne Rehm and her guests are just fine. So don’t ask. And thank ME for taking your call, not THEM.”

Recently I heard a guy call NPR and say that he thought that “humans are basically a selfish species.” Compared to… the generosity displayed by cheetahs? The outreach programs championed by zebras? These are the kinds of insights you get from talk-radio callers.

The only people with more self-important and less informed opinions are bloggers.

Christmas Break Revelations

I am back from Christmas break, and I’m quite a bit less enthusiastic about starting a new semester than I had hoped. Christmas break was not a total bust, however. I came to several important realizations:

1)There is nothing as tired as laments about how Christmas used to be pure.
2)I can wrap the hell out of a present. The trick, I found, is cutting the paper in a straight line (using a contraption called scissors). Also no duct tape.
3)Who thought deodorant gift packs were a good idea?
4)New Years is WAY better now that I’m married. I never wanted to go out and party when I was single, but I felt obligated. (Flip side: Valentines).