Saturday, December 17, 2005

Retirement Party!!


This is a picture of my cell phone. It is being held up in front of an aerial photo of our farm. The antenna is crossing our ('it's bleeding me dry' 3/4 of a mile) lane. The little black square at the end of my lane is our farmstead. The little black dot in that black square is me, but you may not be able to see that. The black winding ribbon at the top is the Missouri River. I'll explain.
Today, I am getting a new phone. I am also getting a new cell phone company. One that has a tower right by town. I will be able to use a cell phone, well, where I am most of the time. Currently I must travel 25 miles to use my cell phone. It kind of defeats the purpose. Did I mention that I loathe my phone. I use it about 5 minutes a month. That's because it has never worked.
The cell phone pictured above has dropped so many calls over the last three years that it has changed my speech pattern. How, you ask? Well I will be talking, face to face, with someone and say something like, "so the only health care options, our county has, at least that make any sense are, hello, hello, are you there, hello, well @#$% @#%^%!!
I often hear the same thing from people I'm talking to. I'll say, "Hi Marilyn, I think I'm having a heart atta.." Marilyn interrupts with "Hello, hello, Cliff, your breaking up, hello Cliff, oh well, call me back".
Here's where you come in. Today I will be handed my new phone by my son from Lincoln and I need to do something with the old one. You will say "carefully recycle". Sorry, I just can't. I point to the black ribbon on the top of the map say, "how about the river". How do you know if you can throw a cell phone across a big river if you haven't tried it?? I don't know how wide the river is. I do know that neither of my son's can hit a golf ball across the river so it must be over 300 yd's across.
I'd like to see if an old farmer can throw 300 yards.
Another option would be to place it on the anvil in my shop and apply blunt force trauma to it. OR I could risk a ticket, get the old van up to 90 MPH and let it slip from hand, onto the road way. I am unwilling to do the last one. Next summer, it's likely some 'litter control group' would turn it into the sheriff, who would hold an investigation, and eventually bring it back to me with a smile, "SO Cliff, been missin this?
I need your help. What can I do for my phone's retirement party?

19 comments:

poopie said...

I vote for the river. A piece of junk deserves burial at sea ;)

EV said...

I'm thinking let Char "Glock" the no good, anvil the remains and THEN scatter what is left far and wide as a warning. Yep, works for me. ;-)

JUST A MOM said...

WOW Cliff that is a hard one, here we have boxes that you put your old cells in for women in need for emergencies ya know. But would you want to give them that one uummmm maybe not. OK WAIT you have hung onto this same phone that does not work for 3 years!???? MAN that in it's self is unbelievable,, you just might want to frame it and put it by your desk for proof, you really are way tooo calm. Had it been me,, the thing would have been in the river 2 years and 11 months and 3 weeks ago.

Jamie Dawn said...

Mike's idea gives you more than one way to send that phone to cell heaven, bit by bit. I like it.

You could always let the grandkids play with it for a day. It will surely be destroyed by day's end.

EV said...

Jamie Dawn: Bwahahahahahahahaha!!! That's the BEST yet. You deserve a prize.

Ralph said...

Cliff
If your cell phone coverage is like mine I have no doubt you could throw that phone across the river. Problem is it would land on a soft bed of weeds and would still be in "working" coondition. Let me place it under the tire of the corn trailer - the one I didn't ruin. That will fix it.
Ralph

Rachel said...

Cliff you certainly have been patient with the thing! Gotta agree with Just a Mom about that.

As for what to do with it.....do they still have outhouses in Nebraska anywhere? If you could find one and drop it in and then do your business on top of it that might make you feel better, and it'd be a great send off for it. It's highly doubtful anyone would find it in there!

Anonymous said...

I think you should turn the cell phone on. Put it in a vise and then see how many turns it takes before the phone quits working. You could start a pool with a $1 per guess.

Anonymous said...

Hi Cliff,

My advice is to make it suffer.

You don't want it to die too quickly with a mercy killing in the river.

I say you put it on your shop bench somewhere, or a concrete slab, and take a hammer to it. Start from one end and work your way across. Smash it to tiny bits, and take a picture of it when you're done. Make sure you are extra brutal to the logo of your current cell phone company.

Paul Nichols said...

Hey, you might want to check your MQ (Memory Quotient). Get your friend Char to blow it to smithereens. (Go read your Dec 6 post.)

Then when that is...hello? Hello? Cliff? Aw, *#&^*@)+?@!

Paul Nichols said...

By the way, I was wondering if you saw the Lewis and Clark team when they all passed by.

We missed 'em. I only work a few blocks from the Missouri.

Jim said...

You could save it. Twenty years from now it might be valuable like the first generation IBM computers.

Cliff said...

Well folks. I love all of these suggestions.
I can't single out one individual because this is obviously near and dear to the heart of many. I notice that several of you were apparently typing thru clenched teeth when you mentioned Glocking, the anvil, vices, pounding to little pieces, trap shooting, pooping on it, (I know the last one won't kill cameras..ask Ralph about that) driving over it with farm equipment, and of course burial at sea. I think John, who has, I'm sure, had more than his share of non functioning techy equipment, (it's what he does for a living) hit the tone I was looking for. Kind of the "we've got him down now lets kick the crap out of him mentality". THAT right there is what I needed. I'll make my final decision and do the deed. It will be as John said, no mercy killing, slow, brutal, and complete. Victory shall be mine, sayeth Cliff. It shall be smashed into little pieces, possibly dust, done! ....then I might poop on it.

Cheyenne said...

Can I bring my old broken down computer monitor down there and chuck it in your river? I don't have an anvil and I can't exactly accidentally run over it either.

EV said...

Cliff, this has been a funny post. "....then I might poop on it." LMAO

Peter said...

Cliff it sounds like your sons hit a mean golf ball, if they were to start say half a mile short of the river that would give them plenty of scope to drive the remnants into the river.

Dan said...

WAIT DAD! Before you smash it. I have the perfect answer for your revenge. You can even smash it afterwards. Here it is.... Put it in with the horny rooster. I'm thinking mental torture before physical. Besides, what would you hate worse, just being smashed, or being in a cage with an extremely lonely and aggresive feathered beast that is 10 times your size, and then smashed.

Idgie @ the "Dew" said...

Give it to the horses! They will flip it, toss it, stomp on it, chew it a little, lick it, snot on it and finally ignore it in the yard until they poop on it.

Perfect.

(I'll mail you mine while I'm at it for them too.)

bridgesitter said...

Well Cliff, I think a good strong adhesive compound applied to the back of the phone and then glued to the door of the building from which loins it was expelled might be a little pay back for your years of honest suffering. Perhaps enclose a little note too.