cowperthwait | lies, evasion, spin, circumspection and cleverly veiled hype

not acceptable

Oh, look. Now I can copy and paste on my iPhone. I will use this earthshattering technological innovation to repeat "I am unimpressed. unimpressed. unimpressed. unimpressed. unimpressed." ad infinitum whilst waiting for my e-mail finally to load across a connection slower than a Bush twin.

AT&T, you can suck it.

So they're announcing all this cool shit to make iPhones as functional as my five-year-old CDMA phone. Also, a smarter IM webappletgadget from the Swede's people at Meebo.

Oh, look. Marcus is famous now:




In my phone I already carry around basically that same photo:




It's a good picture. Johnson should get royalties for this.

It's pornography at its best. It's picture, movement, music. It's basically like watching a TV clip.

—10-year-old Victor Delgado, who has an eye for the good stuff, but has no idea how it ended up on his new cellphone [WINK-TV]

There was a time when I'd hold an online funeral for each of my deceased mobile phones. Call me a sentimentalist.

This weekend, however, when my first-gen iMadouchebag shuffled off its mortal coil, I was super busy. I scrambled to the first Apple Store that could squeeze me in, offered only token resistance to their psychomanipulative upsell, and went on my merry way back to work in possession of a new black model. (Isn't silver so 2007? Ugh.)

The transition wasn't flawless, though. After connecting God Device Redux to my computer, the phone stopped connecting to the network in 3G mode — it would only connect in EDGE. Bummer, dude.

This morning, I spent close to a half-hour on the phone with AT&T customer support. An admirably nice woman recited back the list of locations from which I'd made phone calls this weekend (creepy!), asked me to yank my SIM card, started talking scary talk about reformatting, or maybe returning to the Apple Store ... it was mounting up to be an Ordeal. I ended up having to terminate the call because I was going to be late for a meeting.

Tonight, I sat down to call customer support again, but this time I got transferred to someone at Apple. He was equally friendly, but cheerily abrupt. He cut off my my anxious stammering to ask if I'd double-checked that 3G was turned on:


this feature is hereby rechristened the DCS: Dumbass Cowp Switch.

Oh.

I thanked the man for making my day, apologized for wasting his time, thanked the man again for making my day, and offered to marry him (he demurred).

Boy, that was easy. Apple's so great.

Cowperthwait at the office


For a good time, meet with the new client when your phone isn't set to vibrate mode and your ringtone is still set to The Most Unwanted Music: The Ringtone. Trust me.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE:

WHEREAS Komar & Melamid and David Soldier's The Most Unwanted Music is indescribably awesome, and

WHEREAS it should be imposed upon shared with the whole world, and

WHEREAS today is Labor Day,

THEREFORE you should set The Most Unwanted Music, The Ringtone, Labor Day Edition to trumpet across the land, or at least across your apartment / office / MUNI Metro car, each time you receive a telephone call today, until your roommates / colleagues / fellow passengers stab you to death with shivs made from belt buckles, because they are that jealous of you for having the very coolest ringtone ever. Yes, this is how it works.

		hey-everybody-its-labor-day.m4a AAC
		Labor-Day.m4r iPhone ringtone

Update: Maroon staffers, unclear on the concept of caching, took their post down and replaced it with something lamer, but still hilariously wrong. Cowards.


And here I'd gotten all excited because Barry texted me that he'd picked Gerald Ford. I'm so confused now! Oh noes.

The Obama campaign text messaged the candidate's Veep choice to anyone who signed up for the alert: "Obama chooses Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley as vice Presidential Nominee."...

Daley, who endorsed Obama back in 2006 when it still looked like Clinton's race, helped legitimize the campaign.

This may come as a surprise to many, since Daley wasn't widely mentioned as a potential VP pick.

—Chicago Maroon

Wonkette’s associate editor — me! — has received his text message from Barack Obama before anyone else and can exclusively report that Minnesota’s Walter Mondale, who may or may not be alive, will become America’s second black vice president.

—EXCLUSIVE: BARACK OBAMA PICKS WALTER MONDALE FOR VEEP, Wonkette


Backgrounder:
"Low-level fuckery"

iiiiiiiiiiiBroke it.


what we have here is a failure to communicate

For the past three days I'd already been marching around the house barking "we'll do it live!" to staffers and unsuspecting deliveryboys. Now comes Bill O'Reilly Flips Out — the Dance Remix. We'll do it- we'll do it- we'll do it- LIVE. (NSFW language...)

BEIJING - A Chinese news agency says a spurned Chinese wife set fire to more than 400 cell phones owned by her and her husband after he walked out on their marriage....

Did you know you're not allowed to use profanity in messages to Verizon Wireless subscribers? I didn't. Darn!

I'm trying to be a responsible battery user. To that end, I want my phone to charge fully before I turn it back on.

But I'm also trying to be a sated food-consumer. I've really got a bee in my bonnet about ordering some delivery right about now, since I'm effing starved, and, by the time it's delivered, it'll be fully an hour from now, and I'll be yet hungrier.

So my search is underway for a decent Hyde Park eatery that can process my order entirely online. If they need a callback number, that's easy — I can give them my Grand Central, and forward that to Gizmo… whatever; anyway, it can be done… — I just don't want to make outgoing calls right now, yet I really want something to eeeeeat.

As seen on FARK.com




I clicked for the offer, but alas found no such thing. I'm almost disappointed enough to get the FTC involved — I had just started to get excited by this.