Mobile Mumps & Cellphone Syphilis… Coming to an ear hole near you!

Yes my friends, that’s right. As these little devices in our hands get more and more powerful the little maggot hackers of the world can’t seem to help themselves. It’s official, we have Cellphone viruses now.

Here is picture of a little cell phone virus that I caught while talking to a friend of mine in Thailand.

Nasty litter bugger. Started text messaging all my friends setting up drinks that I never even knew I was going to. Next thing I know all my friends are all drunk at the bar without me, and I’m chilling at home watching Re-Runs of Project Runway. That was a bullshit Tuesday.

Seriously, these things are out there and they are growing in numbers as viruses tend to do. So be careful where you stick that phone, pal. Gone are the days of chatting with loose women and shady dudes in the park in alleys. No sir! Not no more.

So far most of the viruses are pretty harmless, like little mobile herpes. Annoying little bugs that slow down your service to a crawl or erase your contacts, but the bad ones are out there lurking. There are viruses now that will start calling foreign countries and running your bill up as high as malaria runs up your fever. Or spying on your and your family. Yikes! Paging Dr. Orwell!

So what should you do to protect yourself?
Here are 5 handy dandy tips to keep yourself from becoming The Typhoid Mary of Mobile

1. Don’t take candy from strangers!
Well the same goes for ring tones, games, wallpapers, and videos. Make sure your ring tone site is legit, cause there are a bunch of scumbags out there. (psssst! BTW I know a great place to get ring tones for free. I work there. We’re called Cellfish.com)

2. Watch for suspicious attachments to text messages
If you don’t know who it’s from, and it has an attachment, beware! You’ve been warned.

3. Get cell phone anti-virus software
You think I’m nuts? Well Symantic has the software, so do with that info as you wish. Sure Larium makes you hallucinate, but it keeps you from dying as well.

4. Watch your phone carefully
If it starts to slow down or act weird, don’t blame it on sun spots. Pull out the battery, back up your contacts immediately, and go get the damn anti-virus software I just told you get in point #3. (Check out how to back up your contacts at Dumb Little Man) If your coverage just blows, don’t go dousing your handset in rubbing alcohol. It probably means your carrier just fell asleep at the switch again.

5. Practice Safe Cellphoning
The good people at Skins Mobile have come up with a truly revolutionary concept. The phone condom. Check it out in actual, real life demonstrations.

And thank you very much Nancy for that wonderful demonstration! Really solid work there. I feel like I’m back in 6th grade getting the quick “special hug” discussion.

Here’s a pretty good post from Cell Phone Guider that tells you what to do if you do have a Cell phone virus.

Okay y’all. Class dismissed.

Oh, and a quick message to all those pud-stickers who are making these viruses out there… Why?… Can’t you do something useful with your amazing computing skills. For instance, why not put up “My Little Pony” videos on the Al Qaeda beheading video sites, or transfer Halliburton’s funds into the Mississippi public school system. Don’t attack my phone. That’s like the whackest thing you could do with your time. Smoke some pot and play halo 3, I don’t care. Fold your mother’s laundry (it’s the least you could do after living in her house for 42 years). Just do something else.

Viva La Revulsion!

- Captain Cellfish
School Nurse
St. Agatha’s School for Ailing Donkeys

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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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