Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 12, 2020

Right now, many people need those phones more than ever.

BE THIS GUY: Especially in Europe – where phones on coffins are the only way loved ones get to hear their dearly departed receive Last Rites…

(DW.COM)

I could live without my phone for weeks or months: It’s nothing more to me than a convenience. But don’t you dare try to wean me from my computer! :)

Have I mentioned that I have a flip phone, and that I’m proud of it?

There are other things besides Facebook and Twitter that make the cell phone valuable:

Calendars, shopping lists, news, music, conversion tools, bus schedules, weather, ebooks, podcasts, banking & credit card apps, etc …

that is a narcissistic kind of love. the best kind

After starting freelancing from home, most days, I forget where my phone is! I prefer to work at my desktop and avoid phone calls because I have been going deaf progressively over the last 10 years or so and can barely manage face to face conversations – let alone phone calls. For the last 25 or so years, I have preferred a desktop, except for a short while when I worked for a tech major, who insisted on me using their “official” laptops.

So, the smartphone, after I left my last office job, has become less and less important over the years.

Believe me, Pig, your love is unrequited. The phone is only in it for the money…

Flip-Phone or Landline for talking … laptop for computing because I prefer the larger print which is way easier on the old eyes :-) … Croc Power !

I feel like there’s a disconnect when people start bragging about having a flip phone instead of a smartphone.

They’re not the same thing!

 

IF I only used my smartphone as a “telephone”, to make and receive calls, I think I’d rather have a flip phone or an old-fashioned “candy bar” phone… they’re easier to hold and talk on.

But I have a fantastic deal from Sprint… unlimited calls, texts and data (what you need for using the web and online apps) for $25 a month… as cheap as some flip phone plans.

 

So I use my smartphone at some point almost every day, as a computer, when I’m not near the bigger one.

A teeny, very portable computer, that also happens to make calls…. sometimes.

I don’t use it for that very often, cos I have a landline…. especially now, when I’m “sheltering in place.”

 

I can also make calls on my computer, with Hangouts… or I could use Skype, or another app.

Most people, even if they also do that, mostly use their computers for all sorts of other things, and only use the telecommunication apps as a side benefit.

 

They’d think it was ridiculous if somebody bragged, “I don’t need a computer, because I have a telephone for making calls”.

But that’s exactly what I hear when people say they have flip phones instead of smartphones…. “I don’t need a tiny pocket computer because I have a mobile telephone.”

 

If you don’t care to use the web, check your e-mail, text anyone, read an e-book, or use any of the services and apps people mention above, while you’re away from your bigger computer… waiting in line, lying in bed… whatever…

that’s fine.

But don’t tell me you have a flip phone instead.

I thought he was talking to Pigita.

Can’t live with them., can’t live without them. Sigh.

Given the level of tracking the gubmint is about to start conducting, using cellphones as the means of tracking, we’d all be much, much better off to leave the things out in a field somewhere.

Get a room? Get a Lexus!

(Did I mention that I have a hearing difficulty?)

have I mentioned that I have never owned a cellphone of any kind, and I am proud of it?

and think of the money I have saved over the last 20+ years . . .

Pastis is past it!

Cells, Internet, social media sites….bitter sweet…..

No phone. I still pretend it is by choice.

Be serious for a moment, I choose to have no phone even at a dollar a month? Sure, that is so true. Why do I get no offers on the bridge?

Get a room with a gnu

I’d rather be alone, and lonely be

Than be lonely, alone with thee

It’s a gadget. No more, no less. So I’m unimpressed when someone wishes to regale me with the features of their newest phone, flip or smart. At one time, people lined up to purchase the newest model automobile and would regale me with the car’s latest features such as power windows or disc brakes. I have a smart phone, and I estimate I actually use about 5% of its capabilities. I also have a home phone of which I use about 100% of it’s capabilities; making and receiving telephone calls. My smart phone is at least eight years old now, and my computer has lasted over a decade. But they still work, so I keep them and keep using them. I did have to replace my television when they went from analog to digital, so I shudder to think how old that TV is now. (Of course, I also remember when B&W TV was the norm, and color TV was a novelty.) My point, and I do have one as Ellen Degeneres says, is that they’re all gadgets. No more, no less.

Knew it. I just knew it

Remember when people said it was a totally crazy idea for Apple to consider making a cell phone?

I like my smart phone, but I don’t love my smart phone. I love my iPad.

There’s a very funny Nichols and May sketch featuring (obviously) a shrink and a patient, and one of the two characters brings up the subject of skipping a session or two because of a vacation, and the other is obviously unhappy about the whole thing and indeed as the conversation progresses lapses into something like hysteria, and it’s only then that it comes out that the drama queen is the therapist and the guy talking about skipping a session is her patient.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Pathetic is the right word.

i choose not to even have a phone.

As a cellphone Resistor, I can laugh at Pig, or appreciate Goat’s cheap joke.

I am not addicted. Sometimes being Way Too Old pays off….

Why did Pearls put me in a comic again?