Consumption Junction

I'm back. I have a summer cold, so I'm not feeling great and was not in the mood to blog yesterday. Everything tastes like cotton balls, you know? But the headache and sinus pain has subsided.

One of the things I had to do in Rhode Island was get a new cell phone. My old phone had horrible reception and did not work in my apartment at all. I didn't really mind this, since sometimes I like going off the map and being unreachable but it drove my father absolutely insane. He finally said the magic words, "Get a new phone. I'm begging you. I'll pay for it." Ding ding!

We went to the Cingular store and I told the greasy salesman, "I need a new phone that actually will allow me to make and receive phone calls. I don't care about games, texting, camera, video, whatever, just give me the phone with the best reception". The phone the salesman told me had the best reception in the whole store was a Nokia that also happens to be a Camera phone. We bought it. Although I have yet to read the manual (it is long and there are lots of diagrams and there is no witty dialogue!) I have figured out how to take low-quality grainy photos of my world and email them to myself. For example, here is a photo of my desk. Enjoy. And yes, the phone works everywhere I have tried it, including my apartment. So now if you call me and I don't pick up, it means that I am avoiding you.

It other consumer news I had this plan that once I moved into my apartment I would save up to buy a TV and get cable. My adventures dog- and house-sitting gave me access to cable for about five days and this is the conclusion I came to: television is crap. How many reality shows about Kathy Griffin do I really need to see? Answer: zero. So, I've decided not to get a TV. Instead, I think I'll join Netflix. Then I can rent all the great TV shows on DVD and unlimited movies, play them on my laptop and avoid paying for cable and the late fees I've been racking up at Video Edge, which is still the greatest Video Store ever. Has anyone had any experiences, good or bad, with Netflix? Any reccomendations on what I should rent first?

As far as what my brain is consuming, I'm reading Jonathan Ames' Wake Up, Sir! and I totally love it. The hero is Alan Blair, a young, neurotic alcoholic writer who is bewildered by the fact that he can't seem to stop drinking. He's supposed to be working on what is sure to be a horrible novel but his time is mostly taken up obsessing about his blood sugar and homosexuals. In short, Blair is the kind of guy you could meet in any given bar on any given night in Brooklyn with one exception: he has taken the money he received from a slip and fall settlement and hired himeself a personal Valet named Jeeves, who he proceeds to drag from his Aunt and Uncle's house in Montclair, NJ to an artists' colony in upstate New York. If this doesn't sound like a hilarious set up to you, then we are running in very different circles.