You win this round, ad men.

They've got me. I have no problem admitting it; the advertising has worked. When I first saw it, I didn't think I needed it. Now, I want it. I want an iPhone. I don't normally like trendy gadgets like this. I have never seen the need for a fancy cell phone, as I am using the Soviet Phone Mark II right now. I don't take pictures with my phone, because I'm not 13. I don't send text messages, because I'm not 13. I don't own an iPod, although I do like Apple's unconventional use of capitals in the middle of words. It reminds me of the Irish language. (For example, i mBéarla means in English, and I like it when a word starts with a non capital followed by a capital. It keeps me on my toes, lingually.)

So, this phone does pretty much everything a device this size can. It also looks cool and sexy. Apple products are frequently described as sexy, which is the sort of thing that you typically use to describe Hollywood actresses, not electronics. Can an iPod inspire the same physical response as Natalie Portman? Probably not. (Maybe, if you're talking about the post head shaving scene in V for Vendetta.) Isn't that a funny use of the word, though? It's almost universal. Read any review of a Power Mac, iPod or iPhone. You're going to see sexy come up somehow.

I also like the fact that the iPhone has no buttons. There really isn't anything more aggravating than improperly sized buttons. The Soviet Phone is doing ok, because the phone is gigantic (in cell phone world). A lot of free ones are too small, which is problematic, since when you are trying to push (or mash, for our Southern friends) the number 3, you'll actually get 236 on your tiny lcd screen. Apparently, iPhone's tiny keyboard when you're sending e-mails or text messages (will this phone turn me around on this, assuming I buy it?) is smart enough to figure out what you mean even though you might not necessarily hit the right keys. I think that Marlo may have been a little early looking for a $700 phone at the end of May.

We're all screaming

I can't remember if I've posted about ice cream before and what that tells me is that I'm not posting about ice cream enough. When I eat ice cream in, I typically like to go for something that reflects my personality: smart, simple, classy and delicious. So, naturally, it's something like vanilla with chocolate chips. Breyer's, in particular, is one chocolate chip variety of which I am particularly fond. Their chips are bigger, and I like that texture. The crunchiness amuses me.

When I go out, I insist on either M&Ms or peanut butter be in my ice cream in some form. I prefer full sized M&Ms to minis, but if that's all they've got I'll have to manage. I think that peanut butter is wildly underrated as a dessert flavoring. I feel like I'm doing my part now to tell you that next time you go to your local creamery establishment, you should say to the worker there, "Good sir, if you would please include some paste of the peanut in my frozen treat, I should be happy to leave you a generous gratuity." You can replace sir with madam if your server is a girl. Also, Kellogg, the cereal guy, invented peanut butter. Isn't that unusual?

Right now, though, I eating some Mayfield ice cream that is a brilliant variation on Neapolitan: chocolate and vanilla. Notice there is no strawberry. I know some of you are going to leave comments (please?) saying, "Strawberry ice cream is like being touched by the hand of God!" Strawberry ice cream is definitely good, and there is a time and a place for it. The thing is, that time is not right now and the place is not next to chocolate and vanilla. The best part about having a bowl of ice cream that has both chocolate and vanilla is there is no flavor remorse. You know how sometimes when you go to Steak 'n Shake or Stuckey's or where ever and you get a chocolate shake, but after you get it, you see the guy across the place with a vanilla one and wonder if you'd be happier with that? Well, you can do that between bites with this bowl of ice cream. It's monumental. It'd be like having a girlfriend who could alternate between Southern and Irish accents at will. It's almost enough to make me want to go back for a second bowl, but I don't want to weigh 300 pounds.

My accent is really boring

I was on my way to my car this afternoon, and a bug flew into my ear. This doesn't really have anything to do with what I'd like to write about in this post, but I feel that this event ought not be forgotten. To be clear, when I say it flew into my ear, I mean it nearly landed on my brain. It was in the entrance to the canal, and it sounded like a bee does in a cartoon. If it was an actual bee, I think I might have died. Has anyone ever heard of a documented case of a person stung by a bee in the ear canal and surviving? I sure haven't heard one.

I know I've touched on this subject before, but I am jealous of everyone (except New Yorkers, Bostonians and Chicagoans) who has a regional accent. I was watching the news, and one of the reporters was a Scotsman. That accent is awesome. There are a number of great accents, notably, all of them but those three I already mentioned. I am very aware of this, as a native Floridian, since I don't sound like I'm from anywhere. This is even more pronounced in South Carolina, where most folks talk like they are from South Carolina. It is a delightful accent to listen to, but I am marked as a foreigner immediately. Florida counts as foreign is some parts round here. Also, I don't drink sweet tea. There are connoisseurs of sweet tea around here like there are of wine and liquor other places. It's really quite something.

My roommate is from Wisconsin, and when he apologizes he sounds like he could sing for the Barenaked Ladies. My mom is from Michigan, but her northern affectations have been extinguished long ago. Her dad and some of her siblings, though, say things like ruuf and ruut instead of rewf and rewt for roof and root. They don't like it when I tell them they're doing it wrong.

I like to do voices every once in a while, and I think I do a couple of accents sufficiently for something like a comedy sketch, but if I were a spy that had to pass off as a German, I might be found out. Even though I'm in the land of the Southern folk, the South Carolina accent differs a little bit from region to region, so I don't think I could do a passably authentic Southern accent. It's a little troubling, because I think I'd like to be able to. I want to be like a lingual chameleon.

I decided to take a job that will keep me in South Carolina for a while, so maybe I'll get the chance to work on it. And hopefully I'll get to befriend an Australian so I can work on that too. So, until then, cheers, mate. And watch out for bees in your ear.

For it's root, root, root for whoever the hell they are.

I went to a Greenville Drive game tonight. They were playing against the Asheville Tourists. That is no lie. Tourists are the sort of people that those from my homeland consider like cockroaches made out of money - disgusting in every way except that they are made out of money. Yet Asheville, NC named a Single A baseball franchise after them. Great. The Drive are a farm team for the Boston Red Sox, and the stadium looked like a miniature Fenway Park. It was pretty neat, and everybody had Southern accents instead of Boston ones. Some of you may be thinking, "Well, that's sort of a lateral move, isn't it?" The answer is no, it isn't. A Southern accent is infinitely superior to a Boston one in every way. The Boston accent is like poop on a cracker.

One thing I remembered while sort of watching this baseball game is that I don't really understand the "Charge!" cheer. Or the wave, but let's do one thing at a time. The "Charge!" cheer, in my opinion, has no place in baseball or football games. It's merely a Pavlovian sound that elicits the same response wherever you go. The point of cheers is to psyche up your team so they'll perform better. If "Charge!" is universal, then it could be monkeys in the stands, rather than actual fans. Clemson has a cheer where they spell CLEMSON by sections around Death Valley. That is intimidating. If the PA system played the do-doo-do-doooo Charge! sound, sure it would be loud, but so what? Charge! can go to hell.