mnkjdrweoi-00000---7777dfkjnd3

Hey, sorry for that weird text you just got from me that just contained random letters, symbols, and numbers.

Or that pocket-call where you got to hear my car's turn-signal clicking for three uninterrupted minutes while I chatted inanely with my wife and/or practiced singing the Lord Chancellor's "Nightmare Song."

See, I got this great phone-- well, actually, it's not that great. It's a Motorola Q and, with its auxiliary battery, it weighs approximately seven pounds-- BUT, it has a full QWERTY keyboard, which I've been pining after for a while. Pining so loudly and incessantly, as I learned to do as the youngest of three children, that my father, in order to shut me the fuck up, gave me his old phone-- the size of a small aircraft carrier.

I've nicknamed it "The U.S.S. George Washington."

Anyway, it doesn't exactly have a QWERTY keyboard. It more has a WERTY keyboard. The Q key and, hence, the exclamation mark, is a little fussy. So fussy, in fact, that you almost have to stand on it with both feet in order to make a Q or a q or a ! appear in a text message. If you get a text from me with a Q, you know I've worked very hard to give it to you, so be appropriately grateful.

Because this thing is more gargantuan than any of the other seventeen cellular telephones I've owned since my first one in 2002, I have no case large enough to carry the fucking thing, and having it in my pocket is a little like walking around with a small safe. So I went to Radio Shack, because nobody else does anymore, and they sold me a vinyl (Volkswagen used to call it "Leatherette") case for the phone to wear on my hip, which exacerbates the asymmetry of my body. The phone barely fits in this enormous holstery thing and, unfortunately, whenever I walk, or sit, or stand, or drive, the phone makes bleep blop bloop noises and I know it's sending incoherent text messages to my friends, enemies and Pol Pot's step-niece, Eunice.

I don't know how to lock the keyboard, so this is going to keep happening, I suspect, until I'm eligible for a legitimate upgrade, in March.

So, until then, enjoy hearing from me on an increased basis, even if it just amounts to a load of horseshit, even more smelly and indecipherable than usual.

34u84y8fdsFFFFf (notice the distinct lack of Q, q, and !)