T9 Trouble

I think y'all can figure out where this is going, but I'll do it anyway. Text Messaging has become huge in today's society, especially among members of the younger generation. Who cares that it can be more expensive than phone calls! Who cares that it takes ten minutes to write six words! Passing notes in class has become a thing of the past. As a matter of fact, last night I exchanged about a dozen (twelve) texts with someone who was no more than half a dozen (six) feet away from me. In the wake of the rise of the texting phenomenon, phone companies had to come up with a way to make it more efficient. Enter T9, iTap, and all their other smelly brethren. Now you don't have to punch 4666444664 to get the word "going," or 866->6->666777->7776663 to type "tomorrow." (If you'll notice, I like to hit the right arrow to move the cursor to type a letter on the same number as the previous letter. The other standard option is to let the cursor move by itself just by waiting a couple of seconds. I tend to grow impatient.) Instead, you can just punch 46464 for "going" and 86667763 for "tomorrow." This so called "predictive text" thing is terrific! I just increased my productivity by over 100%! But here's the problem, and you all knew it was coming. Sometimes the same number combination can produce different words. For example, and this happens all the time, 63 can either be "me" or "of." Another words, you need to proofread your texts these days. Here are some other fun examples, courtesy of Wikipedia:
5477 = kiss or lips (can you imagine? I want to lips you on the lips. Ignore that last text. I meant I want to lips you on the kiss. Crap! Forget it, let's be shomer.
22737 = acres, bards, bares, barfs, baser, bases, caper, capes, cards, cares, cases.
This is a cool one: 76476633 can be either "Smirnoff" or "poisoned."
I know this will happen to me one day because I'm a loser: "Will you go out with of? I mean will you go out with me?"
"I am 735328464 you."
"What? You're selecting me? Hurrah!"
"Umm, no. Sorry, Schmutter, I'm rejecting you."

Don't you just love pop culture?

I was hanging out with a friend last night while she was writing a paper, and it occurred to me that no one really writes papers any more. Honestly, when was the last time any of you wrote a paper with a pen or pencil? I know I haven't since like 5th grade. I think people should start saying "I have a paper to compose and type." That is obviously completely ridiculous, but isn't that what this is all about?

For those of you not interested in sports, know this: the next paragraph, while not sports-related, will be an introduction to the subsequent paragraph, which will be about sports. Another words, if you don't want to read about sports, stop after this paragraph. Anyway, remember back in high school a teacher would occasionally schedule an exam, or give you an assignment, which the entire class deemed unfair? Inevitably everyone would come together and decide that the class would boycott the test/assignment, because the teacher can't just fail everybody. But this never worked because there were always those goody-goody teacher's pets (read: Schmutters) in the class who were too scared to pull it off.

(Here..here's the sports part.) Can you imagine what would happen if all the general managers got together and said "What if none of us gives Alex Rodriguez a decent offer? What if we all decide that we're not gonna pay him more than $10 million a year instead of the $30 million+ that he's expecting?" This obviously would never happen, because inevitably one GM would think "hey, if I can get everyone else to go along with this I can get A-Rod for $11 million..." but wouldn't it be cool? Don't get me wrong, I really couldn't give a crap about how much money Alex Rodriguez makes, although if Barry Zito can make $126 million for seven years, the Rodriguez probably "deserves" to make at least 30. But wouldn't it be amazing if the entire league really stuck it to Rodriguez's agent Scott Boras? Boras, the guy who makes GMs nationwide collapse in collective apoplexy whenever a client of his becomes a free agent. The guy who ignores Major League Baseball rules by announcing A-Rod's decision to invoke his opt-out clause during the World Series. I would really love it if he got screwed.

Remember last year when I said that I was indifferent about the Mets signing Moises Alou for $7.5 million for one year? I heard this morning that they picked up Alou's option for another year. Now, I have nothing against Moises Alou; he's a very good offensive player. But he's like 139 years old and he only played 87 games last year. I really think the Mets should have Carlos Beltran, Carlos Gomez, and Lastings Milledge as the starting outfielders. Last year, Alou and Shawn Green earned a combined $19.33 million. Gomez and Milledge made a combined $766,000. I think they're both ready to play full time. Meanwhile, the Mets could spend the extra $18.67 million on a number two or three starter and a middle reliever or two. They could even (gasp!) make a run at signing A-Rod (I don't want to deal with this right now. I want to see what develops and then decide how I feel about it). I think the Mets should give the young'uns a chance.

Happy All Vegan Day.