What? We're Just Socializing

I have a strong dislike for texting, emailing or web surfing at a table, not that I haven't been guilty myself of uploading a picture of a decadent meal, but I will always alert my table mates that I am about to. There's something very anti-social about sitting across from someone and showing yourself to be too busy to give them your full attention. Nonetheless, I see this scene played out fairly often lately.

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Original Cézanne painting from here.

Just Say No to Texting at Lunch

Your lack of social graces is embarrassing.
Put it in your pocket or purse, please.

Everyone I know has some form of smart phone. I'm still stuck in 2005 with my little Motorola phone that...wait for it...makes and receives phone calls. (And also takes pictures and sends and receives texts. I can even update to Twitter and Facebook on it, but that's not good enough!)

Verizon and AT&T and Sprint and who knows who else are all bent on convincing me that I need their EXCLUSIVE Blackberry. (They all have an EXCLUSIVE Blackberry.) Forget about the iPhone. Apple is bent on convincing me that the future has come and gone and I've been left on the communications tarmac, like the last man on earth who missed the last flight to the moon as the coming apocalypse is about to blow my technologically-retarded ass away. But I'm not sure I want to go the smart phone route. Most people I know who own these things can't stop sending emails at meetings and meals or holding the device while they're driving, going, "Look, that little circle on the map is us! And it shows where we are! Is that cool, or what?" They didn't nickname it Crackberry for nothing.

OK, truth is I'm jealous. I could probably get a lot more done with a cool phone. And when I get one, I'm almost convinced that it will be an EXCLUSIVE Blackberry deal from AT&T.

All that to introduce this: a pretty funny commercial, well-written, well-produced from some carrier offering an EXCLUSIVE Blackberry deal.

I Can't Get Enough of This

I'm a huge fan of the oddly juxtaposed. That's why I get such a kick out of my own creation "Sweet Soul Alabama"

I don't know what it is about this spot, but it cracks me up every time I see it.