Why is my Sprint statement so much larger than other statements (grain of rice shown for scale)?

When I jumped online at the coffee shop this morning and racked my brain for something to write, Saint Qwerty, patron saint of blogging, sent his muse sashaying through the door. 

She was all attitude — cocked hips, pink pumps balancing legs shaped like elongated funnels, and a skirt that only barely made her underwear visible (click image to enlarge at your own risk).

Has business casual really gotten this formal? Perhaps it's just me, but this is certainly getting out of control.

After working in advertising for over a decade, I've never needed to wear much more than a thong and slippers. Only when we met with clients did our bosses make us throw on jeans, slip on sandals, grow a goatee, and tape on some nipple covers.

What happened? Where did we go wrong?

Fear not, for with a little effort and some scissors, we can make it all better. Let's get back to decency and use Saint Qwerty's offering as as a starting point.

Just ask yourself and respond yes to the following questions.

LADIES: Do I have way too much material above the hem line?
MEN: Do I have way too many buttons fastened on my shirt?

C'mon. Loosen up. Cut the skirt, unbutton that shirt, put more height underneath those pumps. This is Florida. We should embrace the warmth. Who cares if half our ass is showing. Get out there and show it.

Oh, and before you leave, would you be a doll and pick up that pencil off the floor?

That Pre-Thanksgiving Thanks was a lame entry. Truth is I hoped to convince any loggers-on that, despite it being Thanksgiving eve, I was still being a loyal blogger and posting for the amusement of my three readers (one of which is my wife).

Since my lame entry:

My wife and I prepared our first turkey despite the warnings of our relatives. When I began to carve, the bird was sporting that pinkish hue of undone-ness that would make anyone recoil and reminisce about the last e-coli outbreak. Back into the oven.

Two hours later, by the time the bird was fully cooked, we had only an hour before we had to leave a friends for a Thanksgiving evening. We carved and ate — commenting on the thing being a bit dry — and hoped our friends would forgive is for turning down their bird. If they have any Cuban blood in them, I said, they would make us eat until our torso burst and shot out our very own giblets.

The friends' gathering was uneventful, which is the way we like it on Thanksgiving. Nice pie, John.

On Friday morning, I decided to be a good holiday husband and accompany my wife for a little shopping. We woke up at 5am, fed our daughter, and headed out to Tallahassee Mall. Surprisingly, it was all but desolate. Nothing much to report other that in the shoe section, one man sat sleeping while his wife piled clothes onto his lap. Sure there were people in sweat pants toting purses full of fresh plastic, but it beared no resemblance to the mob scenes we've seen on CNN where it seems everyone takes out 364 days of frustration to get their hands on Tickle Me Elmo. What's the justification? I mean, it's not like Tyco introduced Tickle Me Salma Hayek. As we strolled through the rest of the mall, sleepy college-aged employees stood at withering attention at the entrance to their stores. One of them still looked drunk.

We headed to Governor's Square Mall shortly thereafter and hit Macy's. Same boring scenario, only here, Santa was set up and ready to pose for pictures with a boy of about four. We got in line behind the boy's mother. Santa's little helper, a woman of about 8o dressed as an elf, fiddled with the computer that was hard-wired to a camera. An error message displayed on the screen. She pushed on the screen with her finger when it was quite obvious from where I was standing that it needed a click of a mouse, which was stashed alongside the keyboard underneath the monitor on one of those hideaway drawers. When her finger failed her for about the fiftieth time, she decided to reboot.

My wife and I rolled our eyes at each other, so did the little boy's mother. By this time, Santa was running out of conversation. The list of what the little boy wanted was getting longer and longer. There's no way he'd ever be able to deliver. He'd need one whole sleigh for this one kid.

The reboot went smoothly until the error message appeared again. And again with the finger.

I asked Santa's little helped if I could take a picture. She said go right ahead. I asked the boy's mother if it would be alright if I took a photo of her son and emailed it to her. Bless you, she said, can I pay you?

"No, no, it's Black Friday," I said. "And I'm going to pass the savings on to you."

So I photographed the boy while his mother wrote her email address and gave it to my wife. Then it was our daughter's turn. Her first Santa. Her first beard. We put her on his lap, I snapped four shots, and my wife grabbed her before she realized this guy looked a little kooky. Don't get me wrong, he was a great looking Santa, but after being in this world for only six months, a sight like that is liable to push you over the edge.

By the time we got home, it was 10am. I emailed the boy's photo to his mother, who later responded, "Thank you so much, and have a blessed holiday season!"

It made getting up worth the effort, even if there was no Tickle Me Salma.

Being Thanksgiving Eve, I'd like to give thanks to things that aren't on the same tier as family, friends, and pharmaceuticals.

I've thought about this long and hard, and have come up with a short list I hope you'll find insightful. I'm pre-thankful for:

1. The grocery cart fetchers on Thankgiving Eve — for it is you who allow us to abandon our empty carts like used garbage, and still manage to smile and wave as we drive off. I wonder what you call people like us? Assholes is my guess.
2. Get Rich Buying Real Estate Infomercials — for you are the only thing that can get me to sleep after I've woken in the middle of the night for a glass of water only to be greeted by a Girls Gone Wild infomercial.
3. Sushi.
4. Garlic.
5. Steve Jobs and the entire Apple organization.
6. The mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

I sincerely hope the folks at Zune have more up their sleeve than the all but invisible television commercials promoting their supposed iPod-killer. In the commercials I've seen, the product seems as transparent as the logo — a matrix of thin lines that creates a Z. Depending on how you long you stare at the logo eyes, it can appear as though you're looking down at a Z from the Northwest, a neat little graphic trick. You don't have to squint however, to see that the Zune looks like the Apple iPod's wicked stepsister. 

Understandably, the Zune commercials travel far and away from Apple's human silhouettes against brightly colored backgrounds — images that are as simple and sleek as the iPod itself. Zune's creative departure is strategically sound. Using real people in "real" situations says it's a player for real people. That's where the all the Zune-y goodness stops.

One Zune commercial, Basement, takes the viewer inside what looks like a drugless salsa rave. DJs and onlookers bob their heads to the beat, diggin' the music, because after all, it is about the music — your music. Watch closely, because if you blink at any point throughout the spot, you may miss the Zune player. Once you begin to tire of the scene, the super comes up: welcome to the social. 

I'm assuming the folks at Zune are touting the player's ability to share music, but as social and open this player should be, the commercial actually made me feel cramped.

In anothe commercial, Picnic, friends and couples are gathered at a park. They're having  conversations with earplugs inserted, and Zune in hand. Perhaps it's part of the new multi-tasking generation that can walk, chew gum, and X-BOX simultaneously, but no one I know would tolerate this semblance of inattention. I can pretty much predict my wife would yank the earplugs from my ears.

Besides, based on Microsoft's ability to deliver pristine, glitch-free software, a music sharing scenario might go something like this:

"Hey man, could you beam over Rape Me?"

"I did."

"Well I didn't get it."

"There. I sent it again." 

"Gimme that thing!"

"Screw you dude! I am so out  of your social."

"Fine! Maybe if you'd download your patches you wouldn't be so — so stupid." 

Being an owner of three iPods myself, I can honestly say I've never wanted, or felt the need, to share my music — not even with my wife. It's such a personal choice that a social advertising approach seems counter-intuitive.

Before I bore you as much as the Zune commercials bored me, I will say that the commercials are beautifully shot and edited. They feel real, and I suspect the imagery connects with the 18-25 year old party scene. As real as they seem, they're far from feeling as special and different as the iPod commercials. 

Best of luck to Zune, but my money's still on the iPod. 

This morning was different. I actually felt a genuine urge to walk to my morning client meeting at Panera, the local carbo-loading hole. To some, urges like these come naturally, at least five times a week for 30 minutes per instance. I however, have not exercised with any regularity since my wife became pregnant. How long is that? Our daughter is now six months old. You do the calculus.

I should have checked the temperature. Like any man, I opened my front door, stuck my arm out, and predicted which jacket I would need to arrive safely.

You've lived in Boston, I said to myself, what your arm just felt is Aruba-ish compared to those Nor'easters dealt  by El Niño, global warming, and the avian flu meeting a high pressure system somewhere in the vicinity of Beijing.

I filled a travel mug with coffee, grabbed a PowerBar, slung my shoulder bag over my head and walked out.

We live on a dead end street, which makes mornings and evenings especially quiet. All I could hear besides my breath was the terrifying sound of squirrel clusters giving birth. There are so many of the rodents in these parts I suspect there will be a civil war soon (can’t wait to see my first nut cannon).

Rounding two corners was really the worst of the walk. It was so dark I couldn’t even remember why the hell I wanted to do this in the first place. Besides, in Tallahassee, one tends to feel as unattractive as back hair while traveling anywhere by foot. Drivers stare as they wiz by. A cop even slowed down and eyed me as if I’d just stolen the shoulder bag. In Boston, it’s the other way around. People sees you in a car and they wonder why you’re not out walking – regardless of the weather. It’s only 35! Put on your Birkenstocks and walk!

I really began to feel the extra 30 pounds to my name at about the three-quarter mark, not to mention the cold piercing my cheeks and rubbing pain onto the perimeter of my ears. The ten extra pounds of computer, charger, notebook, bag, and PowerBar didn’t help the situation.

I arrived at my destination in about 30 minutes, ordered a coffee and bagel, toasted, and logged on. Between sentences, I grabbed each bagel half and held them to my ears a’la Princess Lea. It took about three goes before I could feel the blood arriving at the lobe warming the rest of my upper extremities.

Curious, I checked the temperature: 35 degrees. Feels like 31. My arm-ometer had let me down. I’d let myself go. I used to walk at least this far in Boston twice every day. Home to work and back again. Didn’t even think about it.

Perhaps my little trek shall prove an enlightening part of this week.

Gotta go now. My coffee’s getting cold, and my client just pulled up. Kinda looking forward to my walk back home with my PowerBar at the ready.

I just can’t bring myself to type the letters “LOL” without feeling as though I’m cheating a friend out of something more clever. It’s also a little lazy to have that one arrow in our canned-email-response quiver that says, “I read what you sent, I laughed, and I need you to know about it, so here, look at these three letters and feel better about yourself.”

I’m wholeheartedly disenchanted with the trend — and if you couldn’t tell by the end of paragraph one, here’s an emoticon to prove it.

Do we honestly think our friends are that insecure that they desparately need to know you laughed at what they sent? And that there was a decibel level involved?

Come on. Are we not flesh, blood, soul, and maybe a few rat hairs from tainted hot dogs? Are we not capable of responses more human than acronyms like LOL and its many friends, and their evil cousins, the emoticons, can communicate? And honestly folks, everything can’t be that funny, or nostrils would have evolved as a more natural pathway for the expulsion of milk.

To move us toward a less acronymic, emoticonic world, I offer a simple, baby step approach to reclaiming our emotions. It’s an easy way to explore your true emotions while still using your own thought processes. Just be honest with yourself. Search deep inside, or on the surface if you’re in Hollywood, and simply type out your actual emotion and (now this is the tricky part) keep only the first letter of each word. For example:

1. oh grow up = OGU
2. you’ve got too much time on your hands = YGTMTOYH
3. i don’t find your emails very funny = IDFYeVF (note the lower case e for email — subjective)

At first, friends and colleagues will be confused, but they’ll catch on. Eventually we’ll all be back to our old honest selves, leaving the entire word for all to see. Raw, pure, electronic emotions. Oprah would be proud.

After a long weekend spent with my daughter and visiting parents (the crazy Cuban kind), my wife away on business, and no internet connection to speak of, I decided to start today with a  retreat to my nearest wi-fi hot spot, a local Panera franchise (I highly recommend the bread).

I'd been sans-Internet since Wednesday afternoon when download speeds dropped to an anti-blazing 47k/sec as opposed to the usual 6Mb/s. If you're not familiar with this kind of jargon, suffice it to say that it would be more efficient to receive web site pages via fax. 

After calling in my complaint, Comcast set up an appointment for Friday. Fortunately for me, a Comcast technician who was in the area Thursday night managed to stop in around 6:30pm. He tested the line and confirmed my suspicion — something was definitely not right. He actually said, "Your upload and download speeds are out of whack."

"Well," I said, "can you get them back into whack?" 

He cocked his head — that sad, confused puppy look. After briefly introducing his tiny computer-sized tools to my computer, he admitted he couldn't fix the problem. He then said that his supervisor had my name and address and would contact me Friday. He apologized, and I bid him adieu.

Had I any supervisorial power whatsoever, I would have demoted him to plain ol' "nician" right then and there, as he did nothing "tech" that I could gather other than wear a belt with little screwdrivers, tiny wirecutters and of course, that chirping Nextel phone that transmitted helpless cries to his supervisor.

Minutes later, download speeds had deteriorated to nil. My umbilical cord to the world was in danger of becoming as useful to me as the dead parrot to John Cleese.

I should say that this had been about the tenth time my household had suffered such extraneous downtimes due to Comcast.

So I called Embarq on Thursday afternoon and asked them how quickly they could have me switched to DSL. They set a service start date for Monday, 6pm. On Friday afternoon, my Embarq modem was at my doorstep. On Monday morning, an Embarq technician arrived to hook up the DSL, beating their own setup time by about nine hours.

That same afternoon, Comcast called to see if I was still having trouble with my service. I asked if they'd had a technician come out to my house. They said no, not to their knowledge, to which I responded, "Then what do you think?"

They couldn't have been more indifferent when I broke the news about Embarq. They responded with concern — concern about getting their modem back so that I wouldn't be charged the monthly rental fee (a fee which is non-existent at Embarq).

So I'm up and running again. Not spinting, running. Yes it's true that DSL is slower, but after six hours of uninterrupted service, I'd say my parrot is alive and well.

Comcast Hi-Speed Internet is the reason I have been unable to blog on for the past day or so. It's taken about an hour to login and type this much. Even the repair guy who came over was baffled by the sheer lack of speed. Tomorrow, his supervisor will take a crack at fixing the bug on the line. It's like watching Carl Lewis after smoking a pound of weed. Until the slow wears off, I'll wait patiently. Either way, I'll be back soon — or Monday, perhaps, when I'll have switched to Embarq. Cheers.