YET ANOTHER WHEEZE

RICE PUDDING

A lifestyle and technology column by our reporter, Harry L. Geeseberger

(Harry reviews the Apple I-Phone 3G)

Hello all radio operators and ships at sea!
Recently, I was in town for a week, staying with my cousin Horace, and one day, his grandson Garth came by to visit. Hearing I had to write a review of the Apple I-Phone 3G, Garth kindly lent me his Apple I-Phone 3G for a few hours, making me swear that I wouldn't read his private text messages, whatever they are. Seeing as it was almost lunchtime, I decided to go out and headed over to Chamberlain Street where I remembered there was a great old diner. I just thought I'd pay a visit and see if there were any familiar faces to be found. So I'm walking towards the diner, looking at this Apple I-Phone 3G thing - which seems to have no buttons on it, by the way - and who do I see coming straight at me? None other Morty Buell! I hadn't seen Morty in nearly 25 years, not since his retirement from the Buick dealership. "Harry, you old so-and-so", he says, how ya' been? What's that thing you're holding, a calculator?" I told him it was an Apple I-Phone 3G, but he didn't seem very interested. So I said he should join me at the diner. "What diner? C'mon, Harry, that place was torn down years ago, it's an Applebee's now". So, I said let's go there for lunch and he agreed.
After we got seated I asked him how he'd been and he said he'd had two wives and three heart attacks since we last met. These days, he was married to a woman 20 years younger than him who has a lot of money from a car-accident lawsuit. Morty said she's not bad looking, but she still likes to wear the neck brace her lawyer sold her. "I think she thinks it's some sort of fashion statement", he quipped. But by the looks of his green and brown houndstooth sports jacket and pink shirt, Morty wouldn't know a fashion statement from a squashed frog. So we got the menus and ordered. I went for the cream of potato soup and chicken salad sandwich on a kaiser roll special and Morty got the chicken-fried steak club sandwich with a double order of French Fries and a diet Coke. "Morty", I said, "You've had three heart-attacks, what the hell are you ordering that kind of meal for?" He said when his wife's around, she won't let him eat anything but lettuce with mandarin oranges in steamed goat's yogurt and whole wheat tofu-crasin bars. She says that because of the neck brace, she can't really stand over a stove too much, and that's all the food she can remember how to make - because of the accident, he says. By the time our food came, just the thought of what Morty's at-home meals must be like was giving me cramps. He looked at his lunch like he was having heartburn already, and went for the salt shaker. Just then, he opened up his mouth wide and let out this long wheeze that sounded like the air rushing out of a leaky exercise ball a fat guy just sat on. His skin lost every trace of color and he pitched forward, his face landing right in his plate. "Morty", I say, as I reached across the table and lifted up his head, thoughtfully pulling a french fry out of his nostril, "Morty, are you OK?" I shook him, but no response, so I gently placed his head on top of his sandwich and felt in my pocket for the Apple I-Phone 3G. I looked for a button to turn the thing on and call 911, but couldn't find one. (I Should have listened more carefully to Garth when he was explaning to me how to use it.) By that time, a waitress had come over to see what was the matter and immediately shouted for someone to call an ambulance. I'm still looking for a way to get the Apple I-Phone 3G going when suddenly, a string of fart noises starts coming from it, loud enough so that everybody in the restaurant could hear. So I'm standing there, everybody's staring at me, Morty's face-first in his fried food, the waitstaff has all gathered around and the Apple I-Phone 3G is farting for all it's worth. Finally, one of the 12-year-old-looking waiters takes the phone from me and somehow manages to turn the thing off. He hands it back to me with a real judgemental look on his face. Nobody says a thing.
Eventually, an EMS crew arrives and takes Morty away and I think I heard one of the paramedics whisper into his walkie-talkie -"coming in with a DOA". So I figure, that's it for Morty, the fourth time was the charm. As the ambulance slowly drives away, I start walking out of Applebee's when a waitress comes up to me, waving the check at me and demanding I pay it. "What are you talking about?", I says, "My friend just keeled over and died and you expect me to pay a lousy check? We didn't even get to eat!"" Then, a man I take to be the manager strides towards me threateningly, coming at me in a way that made me instinctively put up my dukes, just like I did when I was the all-barracks boxing runner-up back in '44. I don't exactly remember everything that happened next, but I do recall being on the floor of Applebee's, and hearing that damned Apple I-Phone 3G farting away at me again.
The policeman who made me empty my pockets before locking me in the cell explained that my Apple I-Phone 3G had a feature on it called 'I-Fart', or something like that, and it was programmed to go off if the phone thought it had been stolen. Thinking phones! What next? Too bad I didn't get a chance to tell Morty about that. It was gonna be about 4 hours before Cousin Horace could get down to the cop shop to bail me out, and I was getting really hungry, not having had a chance to even open up my package of saltines at Applebee's. The policeman said that I had missed the prisoner's lunch, and since I wasn't officially sentenced yet, wasn't entitled to one anyway, but he did take five dollars out of my wallet and went to the canteen and bought me a something to eat. It was a chicken-fried steak club sandwich, and it really wasn't too bad.

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