The story below is a work of fiction.
It’s come to this. Did everything humanly possible in my matchbox apartment that I could do: meals for the week, wiped everything down, swept corners like those marines in Aliens, swept them again, ironed anything fabric, cleaned my computer of dust and questionable downloads. My phone. I can’t change the ringtone to the one I want. Adjusting the call volume in my master settings plays a test song. Makes me feel good, like strutting down the street on a sunny day, quick fake fight with the neighborhood poor kids before they play in an open fire hydrant, letting the old widow shopkeep keep the change, pay respects to Buddha at the open shrine kinda feel good. But it’s not an actual ringtone, just there to test the volume. What the hell kind of world is it where this is a dilemma. Not even a dilemma because the dicks at Android Inc never considered someone might want to do this. We sent men to the moon to pee into craters solved malaria smallpox tuberculosis and Aaron Spelling finally died but there’s a bit of programming living on one section of a thin rectangle in my hand that I want to move or copy into another section of the thin rectangle in my hand but it’s not allowed. Would I get cancer or audited if I opened my phone up. I could call that one guy who knows audio tech for advice but then I’d have to listen to some story about a band I hate then go buy $40 of audio gear for a solution that might not work. No flying cars but we have nanomachines. Can I just hire some of those. They fight AIDS or something so why can’t they help set my ringtone. Is that even more dangerous. This is why Magic Johnson doesn’t call his kids any more; they cured his AIDS but he never wants to use his phone.
2 Comments
Technology angst. It never serves us; we always serve it.
The trick is to learn to let go of the things that don’t matter in the long run, like fun songs.