my faithful little phone died quite unexpectedly last night.

i lost all my pictures, and almost all of my texts, most of which were of high sentimental value...and that, i think, is why Mom came home to me racing around the house in considerable distress. (i *can* go two weeks without phone contact, and do so every August, lol.)

one quick trip to AT&T later, i had a new phone.

Pros:

it's red.
it's not a smartphone.
i like the mp3 i picked for my alarm clock.
the camera appears to be better than my old phone.
it cost me $1.06 to upgrade.
it's not ginormously oversized.

Cons:

it's red.
i don't know how to answer it.
i don't know how to end calls.
it's probably much less durable than my old phone because it has a touchscreen.
it has a real slide-out keyboard that seriously slows me down, but the touchscreen texting is even slower.
if i'm taking a picture of myself, i can't see what i'm doing (my old phone had a tiny little mirror so you could frame things).
using the camera takes two hands and is awkward. in fact, doing anything with it takes two hands and is awkward.
it's not intuitive at all.
it's too big.
IT'S NOT MY PHONE AND I WANT MY PHONE BACK.

obviously, it has yet to win me over.

having a favorite picture as my wallpaper would probably help, but unless i take a picture of the Christmas tree or something, it could be months before that happens. it's just an impersonal gadget right now. its personality traits appear to be limited to being contrary and obstructive with occasional concessions (it let me switch text formats so i'm not stuck with those awful conversation bubbles) that still manage to be unsatisfactory (when i type, it's black-on-white like it should be; when i get a text, it's white on black, which makes me want to throw the phone).

we hates it.

it burns us.

i'm not very good at adapting to new tech devices. Newer! Better! Faster! holds no power over me. i like what i like, which is generally why i purchased it in the first place, and i don't understand why The Powers That Be insist that we all move in lockstep with whatever new thing/design comes along, whether it's whatever colors they think women ought to be wearing this year (a HUGE reason behind my preference for men's clothing) or phasing out perfectly good lower-tech phones for those of us that don't require the whole interwebs in our pocket but do like to text and take pictures.

they don't really care what we think, you see. they just want to make as much money as possible, which is why they try to make us believe that last seasons' clothes (phones, cars, etc) aren't trendy and should be tossed out. it's also why they don't really build things to last anymore, because there's no profit in quality merchandise that lasts for years and years.

stupid plastic society.

it's rough being a counter-culture dragon sometimes.