A twelve-key rectangular array of thoughts on phones:
1 Stieg Larsson, author of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and two other Girl novels, died in 2004, eleven years prior to his ill-fated move from Sweden to Las Vegas, where he would pen the widely-panned novel “The Girl with the Leopard-Print Phone.” I read it, and I can attest that it’s a good thing it was never written.
2 If you are a data-lean phone user looking for a cheap upgrade from your flip-phones, I highly recommend Consumer Cellular. We pay $47 a month (no contract) for two Moto phones ($80 each) sharing 750 minutes and 500 MB data, which is more than enough for our needs. Consumer Cellular uses the AT&T network: while not as well-regarded as Verizon’s network, it has been good enough for us. I hate paying big bucks for anything, especially once a month. Always suspicious of subscriptions.
3 Here’s another recommendation. We still need a landline — cell service is spotty in our mountain area — so we endure the usual array of annoying dinner-hour surveys and spam calls. If you too have a landline, I recommend NoMoRoBo: this service intercepts robocalls and telemarketers on its blacklist and hangs up on them before the first ring. Best of all, the service is free for residental users. We have been using it for many months, and NoMoRoBo has not blocked a single false positive (a call that is not spam).
4 On a more serious tone: the terrorists who attacked the Paris restaurants and bars, soccer game and concert hall last November coordinated their actions via burner phones, one-time-use prepaid phones that cost about €30 ($35) each. The fact that one needed a passport to sign up for those phones did little to impede ready-to-die resident extremists. One thought that comes to mind: a deposit on cellphone service — say €600, refunded in €50 monthly installments — might make acts of terror more costly to coordinate, more traceable, maybe rarer. Maybe I’m dreaming.
5 I did not know this and rather embarrassed that I did not: our unit of sound intensity, the decibel, was named after Alexander Graham Bell, generally credited with inventing the telephone. Here I thought it had been named after the Liberty Bell or some other noisy or gargantuan bell. But that would make too much sense.
6 No matter what you read or hear elsewhere, accept this as true: Trader Joe’s wines taste cheaper than they are. I have sampled their Velvet Moon Cabernet Sauvignon and their Andean Moon Malbec, both of which sell for $6 here. Each of these tastes like every last molecule of tannin was filtered out and replaced with pomegranate extract. What does this have to do with phones? Only this: if you are thinking of calling Trader Joe’s customer feedback line to complain about the wines, forget it, because it doesn’t exist. Just like those tannins.
7 Hello, art lovers. Here’s a little quiz. Which of these 20th-century telephone-themed works was created first — Lobster Telephone by Salvador Dali, Le Téléphone II by Tamara Lempicka, or Telephone by Morton Livingston Schamberg? Click thumbnails to view larger versions. Answer revealed below.
 Dali |
 Lempicka |
 Schamberg |
The Dali work was completed in 1936, the Lempicka painting in 1930, and the Schamberg painting in 1916, forty years after Alexander Graham Bell uttered his now-famous words, “Mr. Watson, stay there, I want to text you.”
8 Oops, sorry, wrong number. I meant 9.
9 Number Nine, 
Number Nine, Number Nine…
Only one Beatles song (No Reply) features the word telephone in its lyrics. Four others mention phone, and nineteen include the word call. By comparison, the word love is found in 98 of their recordings and you in 186. Credit The Internet Beatles Album.
* Having arrived at the star key, I should act naturally and pay tribute to Ringo Starr (see photograph above). You know, it don’t come easy but I couldn’t let this pass me by.
0 Help us crack this phone. Hey, go pound sand. Really, help us crack this phone, it’s a national security issue. Sure, you say everything is a national security issue, but we have customers to consider. Damn you, Apple. We’re cool. [Long pause.] You still want us to hack that phone? No, we’re cool. Got someone else. Talk to you later. Wait a minute… how did you do it? No, really, it’s cool. Next time.
Apple vs. FBI: when auras of invincibility meet.
# Most agree that the tones generated by telephone keypads (click the link to play the tones) are artificial and annoying. Nonetheless, some of those two-pitch tones are more pleasing to the ear than others. What explains this? To put it simply, or not so simply, as Drs. Bowling and Purves of the Universities of Vienna and Duke, respectively, put it:
In light of present evidence, the most plausible explanation for consonance and related tonal phenomenology is an evolved attraction to the harmonic series that characterize conspecific vocalizations, based on the biological importance of social sound signals.
Sounds good to me, but I’d like to hear from you. Text AGREE to 28801 if you agree, or AGREE to 28802 if you do not. Data rates may apply.
