.... an alien in my cell phone ....

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cell phones ....

ahhhhh ....

the wonders of technology ...

now ....

every nincompoop has one ...

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freedom ....

to be free ...

of those ancient corded monstrosities ...

from the antique black candle stick telephones ...

to the colorful ma bell styles that came in ....

sand stone to avocado ....

the old wooden box wall phones ....

had hand cranks on the sides ....

i think the hand cranks are coming back in style ....

they are so eco-friendly ...

power-up .....

crank, crank, crank,crank ......

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i was in chicago, illinois area...

touring the frank lloyd houses in oak park ...

i'm standing in the middle of a side street ...

in front of one of his ground breaking houses ...

designed back at the turn of the 20th century ...

his houses harkened the age of modern design ....

when my cell starts to ring ....

it's my brother who lives in california ...

he's standing on the beach by the ocean ...

he's surprised that we're in chicago ...

we go on an talk about nothing in particular ...

not so long ago ...

this would be an unthinkable event ...

now, it's common place ....

connected, yet, so disconnected ...

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kids no-a-days think ...

they were born with one in their hands ..

you can tell by the way ...

their left hand is permanently misshapen ...

to the form of a cell phone ...

their thumbs like hammers ...

banging out text after text ...

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i was some where ...

these two young people ...

were standinding next to each other ...

each talking on their cell phone ...

i walk by ....

as their conversation paused ...

i commented to them ...

that they could actually talk ...

directly to each other ...

they looked at me ...

dumbstruck ...

turned to each other ...

seeing each holding their cells ...

then, they started laughing at themselves ...

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at one time ....

if you saw a person walking ...

down the street talking to themselves ...

they had some kind of mental problem ...

now ...

their talking into a blue tooth device ...

that's been surgically implanted ...

by their wireless carrier ...

it's free with a two year contract ....

but wait, there's still more ...

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recently ...

a woman was kicked off an am track train ...

for talking for sixteen hours ...

annoying every other passenger on that train ...

that's incredible ...

not that she was annoying ...

but, that her battery lasted that long ...

all i want to know ...

is what type cell phone she had ...

so i too ...

can talk endlessly ...

don't tell your kids the model ...

they'll want one ...

unfortunately ...

she had absolutely no time to play any games on it ...

or send naked pictures of herself ...

but then ...

one has to do things in order of importance ...

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yes ....

these cell phones are now part of our lives ...

one more thing you have to keep track of ...

heaven forbid that you should lose yours ...

and be totally alienated from the world ...

i lost mine in a movie theater at one time ...

i felt lost, too ...

had to go back the next day to find it ...

i wrote down my cell number on a piece of paper ...

when i got to the movie theater ...

i gave it to the ticket lady ...

asking her to call it ...

when i got inside the theater ...

while standing in the middle of that big empty space ...

a phone rang ...

luckily it was mine ...

who knows how many people loose their cells that way ...

on the way out ...

being so ecstatic to have found it ...

i greatly thanked the lady ...

and returned the flashlight she lent me ....

i now felt whole again ...

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running around the other day ...

i had to kill some time on the way to a show ...

so i planned to lollygag here and there on the way ...

i stopped at a very nice market in royal oak ...

they make their own sushi there ...

i bought a take out ....

went to my car ...

and sat in the back under the lift gate ...

eating and watch the world go by ...

my cell start making funny noises ..

thaT i have never heard before ...

i take it out of my back pocket ...

the little front screen has a message on it ...

//// fatal error \\\\\\

what ...

what was going on ...

never experienced this before ...

i shut off my cell ...

thinking this would reboot it ...

when it came back on ...

the little screen was white ..

not good ...

not only white ...

it also had these two black, slanted, almond shapes on it ...

it seemed they were peeking out at me ...

i had cracked the screen sitting on it ...

that image looked like ...

there was ...

.... an alien in my cell phone .....

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