It's official - Apple owns me

The sheer depth of my dependence on handheld electronic devices was revealed to me recently. It was, to say the least, a disturbing incident. Not so much because of what actually happened but more so because of how I reacted to it.

There I was, late on a Sunday evening, getting ready for bed. I had just finished texting a friend, and was about to check my calendar, or the weather, or something on my iPhone, when this message popped up: "No SIM card installed". WTF? At first, I didn't pay much attention to it. I was in the midst of downloading updates to my Angry Birds app, and it didn't seem affected by this strange message. 

However, I sensed something was amiss. Again, the message popped up. Then, I noticed the name of my cellphone carrier had disappeared from the top left hand corner. OH HOLY JESUS WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY iPHONE! I then proceeded to check my settings and the phone was disabled. Can't make any calls without your cellphone carrier. 

This is when I started to freak out. What do I DO? Why isn't it working? I didn't do anything to it! What's happening? Why God, WHY? As I'm unraveling, my boyfriend is looking at me with some concern. "Why don't you call the carrier? They have 24/7 technical assistance." "They do?" I respond. "Yes" says my boyfriend. "Ok, yeah, that's a good idea. I should call them. I NEED to call them."

So, I call the cellphone carrier's tech support line, and was put in touch with a very friendly tech dude who walked me through what could be going wrong. 

He indicated that my SIM card may have gotten displaced or may have an error. He told me how to pop it out, give it a clean, readjust it and pop it back in. Once this was done, I turned on my phone again. I remember feeling like the heavens opened up and legions of angels took me into their arms. It worked. All was right with the world again.

Turns out it was a fairly simple problem, and if what I did that night hadn't worked, all I had to do was go to one of the carrier's stores and they would install a new SIM card. Problem solved. 

Once this was all over and I hung up the phone, my boyfriend was looking at me, with a hint of a smile. "What?" I say. "I don't think I've ever seen that look on your face before. It was all contorted" he says. "Oh, like that girl on the Bachelor, who made those clownish faces all the time? And it was really funny?" I say. "No", he says. "Like a serial killer." "Oh", I say.

The irony of this whole situation is that the feature of my iPhone that was momentarily disabled is the one I use the least, the actual phone part. But the idea that I could be cut off from my iPhone world was unbearable. I lost my shit. If I hadn't figured out what was going on immediately, I wouldn't have slept that night. Seriously. 

The degree of my dependence on this device is concerning. I suppose it was Apple's goal to make their products seem utterly indispensable to the smooth functioning of our daily lives. They have succeeded. I drank the kool-aid.  Why not just insert an Apple chip directly into my brain. Or have they already...

Zombies and pigs and spiders, oh my!

Lately, I've been obsessed with exploding cherries, pea shooters, lethal chili peppers, lily pads, sunflowers and zombies. Probably an indication of my sheer genius, you know, thinking outside the box.

Ok, no. I downloaded the Plants vs. Zombies app on my iPhone. This shit is awesome. You have to figure out how to kill an onslaught of zombies with plants that have different kinds of powers.

  I know, it looks super cool, right?

I've shifted to this game since I'm stuck on a certain level in Angry Birds, I can't figure it out and I refuse to buy the all-knowing eagle that would help me get to the next level. I'll find the solution myself, eventually. But I figured I needed to take a step back, assess the situation and kill some zombies. Besides, those green pigs can be so smug, with their crooked smiles and big, beady eyes. 

 Look at those green f*ckers. Just starin' at ya, like you're never gonna figure out how to topple that shit over and kill them. Pricks.

I've also been focused on not letting a spider eat my butterfly. Sounds dirty, right? Pervert. It's a new version (or maybe old, what do I know?) of Bejeweled, a puzzle game. 

My stepdaughter also got me onto Instagram - it's like Twitter but with photos instead of tweets, and it has all these cool photo editing tools so the pics you post make it look like you have the hippest effing life. It be dope, bitches. Here's the latest pic I posted:

I know, I could be a professional photographer. I have the inner eye, you know, the vision.

Sometimes, I wonder what my life was like pre-iPhone. What the hell did I do in my spare time? Read? Stay informed about current events? Try to be a responsible and engaged citizen? Bo-ring. 

I'm starting to realize there are endless possibilities for mindless distraction, and I can safely loaf in a myopic cocoon of my own creation, effectively ignoring my immediate surroundings. Who needs social skills anymore? I don't have to talk to anyone. I have my apps.

Besides, I post on Facebook, and Twitter, and Pinterest, and Instagram. It's not like I'm totally anti-social. I have friends, albeit virtual, but they feel real, sort of.

I coulda been a contender...

Last weekend, I went shopping with a gaggle of girls for a wedding dress for my dear friend G. We were also looking for some bridesmaid dresses, minus the diarrhea and projectile vomiting. So, I'm sitting in the back of the car with C. We're casually chatting when she mentions she's going to an information session for a local roller derby league. "Whaaaaaaa?!!" I say.

You see, ever since I saw the movie Whip It (not great, mediocre at best), I've had a fascination with roller derby. So when C. tells me this, I immediately say: "When, where, oh my god, oh my god, I am SO going!" And she's all like: "Really?!" and I'm all like: "Hells ya!" It was a sign from the Universe. My dreams of becoming a roller derby queen would finally come true. The path was being laid out before me.

The recruitment process is dubbed the Fresh Meat Program (loving it already), and it runs throughout the summer. Then, if you survive that, you get a shot at joining one of three teams in the league. I figured with my kickboxing background, I'd be a shoe-in. It's kinda like kickboxing, on roller skates. Psshh. No big. I can do that.

However, upon further research, I discovered that joining a roller derby league would spell the end of my yoga teaching career due to conflicting time commitments, and it's taken me over three years to build my current yoga client base. Damn you yoga, and your... your enlightenment and shit! Dream crusher.

I also Wiki'ed  roller derby. It was a fascinating read, especially the section titled Safety Concerns. And I quote: As roller derby is a contact sport, the risk of injury is non-trivial. Injuries range from common bruises and sprains to broken bones and concussions and beyond. Um, is "non-trivial" a euphemism for "you could get seriously f*cked up"? And what exactly lies beyond a concussion? Death? A permanent vegetative state?

I ultimately decided I couldn't give up my yoga teaching, which I've poured countless hours into, for an uncertain shot at a spot on a roller derby team. In a perfect world, there would be time to do everything that interests me. Alas, such is not the case, and sacrifices must be made. My roller derby aspirations will have to wait, for now.

I did, however, get distracted in the bridal shop by a black fascinator, and decided to take an "artsy" shot of myself. 

Those eyes are like black pools of deadness. Roller derby is my destiny. One day, one day...

Sluts and the Tree of Life

I can't decide whether Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn, is just another artsy wankfest or one of the most deeply moving films I've ever started to watch. I say started because the boyfriend was on the side of wankfest and could no longer tolerate watching it after the first half hour. I was still undecided and probably would have sat through the whole two hours and twenty minutes of the movie to find out. 

I was expecting to see a film about growing up in the fifties, with Brad Pitt as an overbearing, authoritarian father, and Sean Penn as the adult version of a son who still blames his dad for all his problems. However, we immediately find out that the family in question has lost a son at war (it looked like that event was set in the sixties, so I'm guessing Vietnam) at the tender age of 19. 

Then, the movie turns into a PBS special on how the earth and the first forms of life were created, then to dinosaurs, with a momma dinosaur looking for her son. Translation: the mother is forever looking for her lost (dead) son, even from the beginning of time. Deep.

Up to this point, the film was mostly filled with voice-overs of poetic lamenting. This was about where the boyfriend gave up. I have no idea what happened next, or if the movie shifted to actual dialogue and plot but I'm intrigued. I may have to go back to it. It's haunting me. I need to know whether there was a point to all that existential navel-gazing. 

Speaking of existential navel-gazing, what does it mean when a fat, conservative pig someone calls a woman a slut for requesting that birth control be part of her health plan? You may have heard that's exactly what Rush Limbaugh recently did on his radio show. 

Just when you think chicks are getting a break, making progress, someone says something so utterly backwards, it's wholeheartedly discouraging. Are women only supposed to have sex to make babies? If a woman uses contraception, implying she's just having sex for the "fun" of it, does that make her a slut?

What I find most offensive about people who utter such ignorant statements is that their own morals  are far from perfect, and they're usually the ones who are the most perverted and twisted behind closed doors, or struggling with their own sexuality. I mean, Rush has had four wives. I'm not judging, but if you want to throw stones, you better make sure your own house is in order. Or better yet, don't throw any at all.

It's sad to think this level of misogyny still permeates our culture. A statement like Rush's could be considered equivalent to making a woman wear a veil to "cover herself up". How dare we tempt men with our evil, seducing ways! How dare we have sex for the simple pleasure of it! How dare we demand the taxpayer cover the cost of our whoring!

When will this double-standard finally be abolished? The more women a guy sleeps with, the more he's admired. The more men a woman sleeps with, the more she's reviled. Are men that afraid of women who claim their sexuality and express it freely? It's not like we want to take over the world, we just want to get laid.

Besides, the ladies who do want to take over the world are considered "bitches", as opposed to men who are considered "ambitious". Frankly, all we really want is equality, to be treated with the same respect and dignity as men. 

I certainly don't advocate a "women take all" kind of philosophy in revenge of past and present oppression. Let's just share the pie and all try to get along. That way, everyone wins. Yin and yang, people. You need both, in equal measure.

Oscar redux. Yeah, it's a few days late. On purpose.

You know, Ryan Seacrest, you're a f*cking sourpuss. Sacha Baron Cohen made you more famous than you could ever be on your own in only a few seconds. So your Oscar outfit was messed up with fake ashes (or were they?). EVERYONE was talking about it the next day, and frankly, I would have been much more impressed with you had you smiled and gone along with it.

But no. Why? 'Cause you're a douchebag. Sacha Baron Cohen dwarfs you in intellect and originality. You're the vanilla to his Rocky Road, the flaccid to his hard-on, the wet noodle to his crispy bacon. You get the idea. Why not appreciate that he basically just put you on the map of super-stardom, if only momentarily, and ride the wave. You suck.

On another note,  Angelina Jolie's right leg seems to have eclipsed any other newsworthy bits from Oscar night. Frankly, it's a bit too skinny. There's very little shape to it.

Stick-like, at best.

Now THAT is a great leg. Long, shapely, even somewhat athletic, one might say. 

Thank you, Cindy Crawford

I mean, don't get me wrong, I know a vast percentage of the male, and female, populace lust after Angelina. It's clearly evident that she's attractive, and let's face it, we all suspect she has a touch of the crazy, which makes her that much more alluring. Because, obviously, that translates into freakish sex, and who doesn't want that?

Now that I'm on Twitter, I'm been privy to the new @AngiesRightLeg Twitter account which now has 45, 276 followers. I don't even want to think about how dumb the vast majority of people must be for this to have become such a phenomenon. Really? Some starlet's leg? We don't have anything else we could possibly obsess about? 

This will do wonders for young girls with eating disorders the world over. I hate people.