Well, I am here to report that LG is doing the important work. They are making gold cell phones to launch Hollywood’s blockbuster season. Rejoice public! The Iron Man phone is here! Complete with radioactive tumor causing powers!

Ah, look at it. It just reeks of superhero-dom. Stinks of it really. It’s got a solid 18 Karat gold battery cover, and it can fly, and it can save the world, and defeat the commies, and hook up with hotties, and beat up your dad. That’s right. LG has made a phone that can beat up your dad.

Now let’s examine the choice of gold for cellphone construction. Gold is a soft metal, so soft that you can leave teeth marks in it. It is however, stronger than aluminum foil, which was the previously chosen material. LG executives wanted to give Iron Man phone owners the chance to wrap up their lunch leftovers after they were full.

Seriously though, shouldn’t the phone be stronger than gold. Isn’t Iron Man supposed to be at least somewhat strong? I haven’t seen the flick yet, but I’m assuming, from what I know about superheroes, that soft and mailable is not part of Iron Man’s skill set. Now, platinum would have been hot. Iron a tad heavy, but at least sightly more fitting. Adamantium would have mixed up comic book heroes, but at least it would have been un-breakable. But gold? I don’t know. If I was carrying my $1,500 gold cellphone in my pocket with my keys, and whipped it out at any one of the many celebrity functions I go to only to see the word “medeco” imprinted on the back, I’d be pissed.

I’d pit my old Motorola StarTac against the LG Iron Man phone in a cage match any day. That thing was amazing. I used to throw that phone on the ground at bars as a trick to get drinks. I once submerged that thing in a NYC puddle for 60 seconds. It still worked. Dried it out in the oven, disinfected it with some Purel, and bam, it still worked. My StarTac would bitch slap this glitzy, pansy, life coach, dream catcher wanna be, aroma therapy, pilates doin’, Paris Hilton chillin with, bullshit phone.

No wait, let’s pit the Iron Man phone against a modern current phone. Maybe we should put the Iron Man phone up against the Sonim XP1.

This phone can’t even be beaten by a German elephant. Now thats a tough phone.

Or a lightweight Euro car for that matter.

But maybe I’m being too judgmental. The Iron Man phone is simply a PR stunt. A glorified eBay auction. A blog blip. Or is it a couple bags of blow for the Iron Man himself? Here he is, showing it off to his dealer. That’ll getcha high, Bobby!

No no. I jest. Robert Downey Jr. Is really an incredible actor, and a very good guy. But the joke had to be made.

But I like this, cellphone companies should make phones for every movie. Imagine the Motorola JUNO phone. It has only extremely hip, folk ring tones, and is decorated with a bedazzler. Or the Nokia, There Will be Blood phone. It’s a drill and a soulless bastard all in one. Or even the Inconvenient Truth phone by Samsung. It basically a tree with a blue tooth ear piece.

I guess as long as there are massive blockbuster films, and products to place in them, we will never be free of the retardedly over priced PR stunt product, but I sure hope no one actually thinks this thing is important.

Check out the Sonim here

- Captain Cellfish
AKA Iron Woman

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Okay, so that title may fall under the umbrella of, “If you needed to warn me about that, I shouldn’t be a parent” statements. But don’t let my stupid title fool you, iPhones actually contain more toxic chemicals than any other major brand of cellphone out there. (Check out Good Clean Tech’s article on the subject) So much so, that Greenpeace has decided the whales can wait, it’s Mr. Jobs (a.k.a. Colonel Earth Poison) they’re going after now.

Here are the facts as Techcrunch reported them:

“The iPhone contains toxic brominated compounds, (brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVCs. Two of the “phthalate plasticisers” found at high levels in the iPhone headphone cable are classified in Europe as ‘toxic to reproduction, category 2′ and are banned from use in all toys or childcare articles sold in Europe.”

It also turns out that you can’t remove the battery to recycle it, and it looks like the Center for Environmental Health is getting ready to take legal action against Apple.

As a consumer, the phrase “toxic to reproduction” is not something I want associated with a product I put up against my face approximately 48 times a day. So tech hipsters beware. If you are quitting smoking and that oral fixation is nagging the crap out of you, do your best not to chew on your iPhone headphone cables. Your ovaries will applaud. (Applauding Ovaries is, by the way, the name of the Captain’s debut folk album, dropping this holiday season)

So here’s the thing. Apple does such a great job of being so sleek, and modern, and cool, and arty, and edgy, and friendly, and downright neat. They make their customers feel like they are in a non-exclusive club of blue jean wearing, clean-cut hippies, who are not ashamed to say that they still smoke a little pot when watching a good movie. It’s a club made up of the coolest college professors, the most talented graphic designers, and the all the fun people they hang out with. Yes, Apple is the new way, the calm, non-aggressive, liberal way. Feel the love. I myself, am a recent convert, and my new iMac was such a joy to unpack, that I could feel the hairs on my arms stand up as I opened the box. It was like a first date, that I knew would end with some heavy petting. Oooga! Electric!

I mean, come on, their product line is just so sweet.

Take my teenage brother as an example. He acts as if he’s been indoctrinated into some kind of cult when it comes to Mac. The kid’s got no less than 23 YouTube videos praising all things Mac and his Mac life. Check out his page here. My parents are considering an intervention. But this young lad’s story is not unique. For him and many others Mac is the new porn.

I have no problem with that. (The porn actors guild is pissed, but what can you do?) Leopard is just plain hot. So go ahead, enslave the youth, redefine technology. I’ll be cheering you on all the way. But here’s what I do have a problem with. A company that looks this good, acts this friendly, and has legions of young hipsters on their knees at the alter of Jobs, should not destroy the environment. They should save it.

I want so badly for apple to be the good guys. I want Justin Long to environmentally bitch slap the dorky PC guy into a conservationist 21st century. Out with the old, polluting ways, in with the new… Polluting ways?

Come on now Apple, be better than that. We know you mass produce your products in slave like sweat shop conditions. (We hate to overlook it, but we’re not given an alternative) We know you need flame retardants to keep these bad boys from blowing off people’s ears, but can’t you just use some slightly less toxic ones? Can’t we root for at least one company to lead the planet in a new direction? Crikey Apple, where the hell are the good guys? I thought for sure, you were them.

These iPhone batteries of yours are gonna be rotting away, un-recycled for centuries, spilling high powered lithium into the ground, creating a race of super newts that can play clarinet, write celebrity blogs, and work as telemarketers. Let me tell you, that will really suck.

Apple, I beg of you, please be better. Shave .0003 cents off your profit margin. Pay your factory workers a wage that will move them up a few tax brackets, from desperately impoverished, to totally destitute. Make your phones less toxic. Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson, have all changed their manufacturing policies to make greener phones, why can’t you?…

Oh wait, I know why. You’re American.

That’s cool, I forgot. Don’t worry about it then.

You see, since this nation was founded, America has had a, “the best defense is an ass kicking offense” policy in effect (hey, it’s working for the New England Patriots), so why change for the environment? Well, it looks like we won’t, so this is how it’s gonna go down.

One day, very soon the environment is gonna really get pissed off, and wreak some, no-joke havoc on the world. That’s when President Obamillery Guiliromney will turn to the 24/7, FOX, streaming, oval office news-feed and say, “Mother Earth has F-d with the wrong planet!” Finally we’ll be able to do what we do best. Play a little, with-us-or-against-us offense. We’ll kick old mama nature’s ass so hard she’ll wish she’d never created us.

So here’s looking forward to that day. I’ll be gnawing on my iPhone cables, annihilating my sperm and praying for my OS Leopard, Time Machine feature to take me back to the 90’s.

I pose this question to you, my readers. What does Apple’s “i” stand for? iGnorant, iMpoverished, iNsane…

Please send me your suggestions. In the meantime I will be using the cellphone my parents gave me for my birthday.

Viva la Revulsion!

- Captain Cellfish
Bronze Medalist, 2002 Seal Clubbing Championships

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Well, here it is.

The Captain has discovered that T9 predictive text (the software that governs text messaging functions for almost all cellphones) has some major programming issues.

We’ve all had the experience of trying to type a text message and the phone doesn’t recognize a friend’s name. How could it? Why would it? (My cellphone does not know my friend Kenji, and I don’t blame it) Now, some of us have gone a step further and come to the realization that our cellphones don’t recognize slang words (wassup, homey, aiight, see ya, etc…). Even fewer of us know, that when it comes to cursing, our cellphones are just plain square. Which is odd, because the cellphone industry does everything it can to make us think our phones are the hippest things since retro tee-shirts (see Motorola Razr 2… A weapon?), yet for some reason the text messaging software remains downright Puritanical.

This got me thinking… Who decided exactly what words the T9 predictive text software would recognize, and which words it would remain ignorant of? Who decided what I can, and cannot text to my friends, family, and enemies? And while I know it is still possible to spell out the words letter by letter, it is a real pain in the ass. So, in effect, the cellphone industry, through the T9 software, has censored me (or at the very least made it nearly impossible for me to speak freely).

So I decided to I spend my morning testing the T9 system on my Verizon Samsung, and I am here to report some very interesting/frightening/ridiculous findings.

Here’s how my study worked. First I tried to type the desired word, then I cycled through the options, if it never arrived at my word I made a note of it. (In some cases, my phone wouldn’t even let me attempt to finish the word).

Study 1. Standard Name Calling

Notable findings:

1. The word “Chubi” really should be the new “Bitch” (my brother-in-law pointed this one out to me). This is how you would use it in a sentence, “Stop acting like such a Chubi and come drinking with me till we passout on some church steps, and embarrass our wives!”
2. “Whore” is not recognized but “hooker” and “prostitute” are. Is one better than the other? And what’s with the denial of Shakespearean synonyms?
3. Is “bastard” even a bad word? Some of my best friends are bastards. (Here’s where my puritanical complaints begin)

Study 2. Exclamations

Notable Findings:

1. I know religion is always a contentious issue, but am I not allowed to type “goddamn?” What would James Brown say?
2. The cellphone company knows that I am well over 18 so how come I can’t drop the occasional F-Bomb if the feeling strikes me?

Study 3. Bodily Functions

Notable Findings:

1. Since when is “crap” a bad word? (I think you can even say it on Nickelodeon)
2. They make “fart” just way too difficult to type. I need that word always at my finger tips.
3. How come I can text urinate and I can’t text defecate? (The only way to talk about #2 is by typing “poop”) (which ain’t so bad if you ask me).

Study 4. Body Parts (now here’s where it gets really interesting)

Notable Findings:

1. How come you can type “Vagina” and not “Penis?” These are both technical, medical terms, neither of which should be (or are) offensive to anyone. Maybe it’s just me, but there is something slightly sexist going on here. It feels a lot like how male nudity gets you a stronger film rating than female nudity.
(The, It’s-okay-to-see-a-little-Hoo-hah-as-long-as-you-don’t-see-any-Dong-dong principle)
2. If I was a feline, I would be insulted, outraged, and up in arms about the fact that if a friend wanted to call me a “pussy” they would only be able to call me a young dog. Cats of the world rise up and take to the streets!

So there it is… The definitive T9 predictive text, censorship study. What have we learned? Well, frankly, I’ve learned that I might have a bit too much time on my hands (don’t tell my employers). I have also learned that while some of this is kind of silly, (try texting “Man-gina” sometime and watch your phone freak-out) there are maybe just a few cultural issues here. I am not claiming that T9 or Nuance the company that just bought the software for $265 million has any real bias, but there are some things they might want to examine.

I, for one, am kind of sick of having corporations tell me what I can and cannot say. Now I know that you can add words to the phone’s dictionary, but that is a real pain in the assime (T9 - asshole). I say open up your dictionaries and let the public decide what they want to write. Make the under 18 dictionary a bit tamer, and then get rid of this Amish software you’ve forced on us! I ask you my wonderful blogging public to go forth and spread the word. Try these words out on your own phones. Then write and link back to me any inane, ridiculous, or just ducking (T9 F$@king) offensive glitches you find in their program. It’s time we tell those Chubies out there that we will not abide!Here are some other stories I found of people who have battled, and in one case won, the fight against predictive text.

Man’s phone prefers one sibling over the other
Digital Host’s Sanguine Penguin
Commuter Writes Book Using Cellphone

Viva la revulsion!

- Captain Cellfish
Runner-Up, 2nd Grade Spelling Bee

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