Phoning it in.

I recently got a new phone as a free upgrade, and, for the first week or so, I thought it was great. It had a keyboard that slid out the side. It ran microsoft office, for christ's sake. This was less medium-sized phone than very-small-indeed laptop, no?

No.

The first hint that something was amiss came with it's predictive text offerings. Now, I would expect a phone to offer me words in order of their ubiquity in everyday language as i ham-fistedly tap the very-small-indeed keyboard whilst writing a text. Not so the creators of this phone, who, for example, believe that the word 'at' is clearly far less useful than the word 'bu' , as that's what comes up every time i try to use that extremely useful relational preposition. In case you're reaching for your dictionaries, I'll save you the trouble: it means, roughly "bu; n. What you get when you choose your upgrade based entirely on what the most expensive thing you can get for nothing is, you tight(ham)fisted shitstick."

It gets worse. I always feel bad about the moment when a new phone, like a wide eyed seven year old, doesn't know the particularly nasty swear that you are trying to text to a close friend, and has to be taught it whilst weeping for it's lost innocence. When are the phone manufacturers going to forget all this p.c. nonsense and admit that far more people need to call their close friends and family 'utter shitflippers' than need to use the word 'licentious' and get on with it. Then our phones would arrive less like the aforementioned seven year olds and more like east london cabbies after a night on the old stella fightjuice.

Anyway, the point is that I wanted to record a particularly choice phrase that a friend had pulled out of the air in one of those moments of self conscious genius that make life worth living. I was complaining at the number of hours I worked for so little money, and he implied that being part of any great institution meant being treated like a menial, and not an individual. "If you tango with the man," he said, "You're going to get fistfucked." My phone understandably didn't recognise this particular verb and so, another innocent piece of it's soul lost to obscene oblivion, I typed it in manually.

But oh, how things turn out. There is a distinct possibility that the seven year old in my phone is called Damian and has oddly coloured eyes. For now it suggests this and many other inventive swears at every bloody opportunity, it's cursor blinking innocently, as if to say "Is this the word you want?" as if it is just really really trying to help in any way it can. And so I occasionally get less than socially appropriate messages such as: "hiya mum, only me. If you didn't manage to get fistfucked?... " or "Happy birthday, little man. hope you got wankladen?..." One wrong keypress could mean social leprosy.

The moral is this: even if it's a free upgrade, don't just go for the most expensive one.

PS we will ignore the fact that this is my first post in three months and just move on. get fistfucked.