B CRFL W YR TXT MSGS

For the ultimate in introverted passive aggression, you can't beat text messaging. Who knew the technology would become so indispensable to me?

But be careful. When too hastily thumbing a note to someone, it's far too easy to muddy the message with entirely the wrong word. If you can train your phone well enough, that word-suggestion feature can be handy — for proper nouns and unusual spellings, especially. I, on the other hand, still can't find the quotation marks or parentheses on my phone. There is little hope for me.

For instance, I can't really use those abominable abbreviations so common among nearly everyone younger than me. (The title of this post is somewhat misleading, then.) I have to teach my phone almost any abbreviation. It can backfire, though. I taught my phone the abbreviation "VM" for "voice mail."

Clever, eh?

Not when you're trying to type "to" ... a word that comes up, I have found, an awful damn lot.

There is some comfort at least in knowing that my phone expects something closer to Standard English from me.

Worse, I have somehow managed to program in some completely ridiculous substitutions. Whenever I type "at," the number 28 appears. Instead of "can," I get "226" — which is considerably less useful.

Often the effect is just comical. Once while thumbing out the word "pimp" I got "shop." (I forget the context. Does it matter?) Clicking through the substitutions was almost almost poetic:

Shop
Sins
Pins
Pimp

Here are a few more interesting accidental substitutions I have come across recently:

• Hate yields have


• Male: make


• Save: rate


• Season: reason


• Soon: room


• Note: move


• Go: in


• Fat: eat


• Doll: folk


• Brian: asian


• Home: good


• Stick: quick


• Saloon: salmon


• Kind: line


• Of: me


• If: he


• Mine: mind


• Much: ouch


• And my favorite... Pew: sex

Better Living Through Phrenology

Don't be so quick to ice that head wound. Build up enough subdermal scar tissue, and you might just change your personality!

	What I couldn't do with some clippers and a Sharpie. [ferris.edu]

My friend James would be quick to point out that this is actually a pretty lame misunderstanding of the lost medical science of which he is a practitioner. James is a bona fide Phrenologist. That means he can measure the bumps and indentations in your skull and, based on the readings, make certain educated guesses about your personality.

The motto of Phrenologists: "Know Yourself." A worthy pursuit, yes? Better be honest, though. The only way to cheat this test is to hit yourself in the head — and that's no fun for anyone. (Unless you're into that sort of thing.) I hesitate to think of the revelations that would result.

As one intrepid reporter from Twin Cities alternative weekly The Rake recently discovered, all the benefits of craniometric examination are yours to be had at the Science Museum of Minnesota in sleepy St. Paul.

You can see James giving this guy's dome a good once-over.

(Those benefits, we learn, incidentally, do not directly include improved sexual prowess. But of course one must always ask, mustn't one?)

The device James uses, a psychograph, is one of hundreds of items acquired by the formidable museum when it absorbed Minneapolis' Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, where James gave demonstrations, in 2002. (Why should Minneapolis have all the fun, right?)

As one of the few experts in the discipline, James was rightfully retained by the science museum.

Some call it quackery, some call it a pseudoscience (James calls it a weekend pastime), but phrenology still has its proponents. If not phrenology, this site certainly believes very strongly in itself.

So, the next time someone tells you that you ought to get your head examined, rest assured you have nothing to fear. James is a very nice guy. (And kinda cute.) And he handles his instrument with a gentle and expert hand.

Put down that mallet. No cheating!