So, I'm much happier with life since I bought a new cell phone, but it does entail one tedious task: copying over my phone book. (Verizon should have been able to copy the numbers over to my new phone in some magical electronic way, but the gods that rule such things did not look kindly on me yesterday, and so they were mysteriously unable to do so. Thus, I'm doing it manually.)

Copying over the numbers of my friends is going to be the easy part. When I scroll through the list, I'm struck by how many of the one hundred memory slots are taken up by entries with names like this:
ASSHOLE
ASSHOLE2
BUTTHEAD
DIPSHIT
DON'TANSWER
DON'TANWER2
DUMBASS
FLAKE
FLAKE2
JERK
NO WAY

Et cetera, on through the alphabet. Most of them are guys I never met – they're just time-wasting telephone pests. I've forgotten exactly what transgression many of them committed, but some of them stick in one's head.

SMOKINGWEIRDO, for example, is a guy who called me weekly for – I think – several years.
"Do you smoke?" he'd ask. "I want to do a scene with a Mistress who's smoking."
"No, I don't," I'd say. "But I'm fine with using cigarettes in a scene."
"No, no, you have to really smoke them – inhale them."
"No, I don't want to that."
"Oh, come now, you smoke, I know you smoke, every beautiful Mistress smokes. I'll bring you some really sexy French cigarettes."
"No, I really don't smoke…"
We went around and around for at least two different phone calls – me telling him I didn't smoke, him insisting that I should. Then he got programmed in and I never picked up when he called any more.

BADBOY is this guy who'd call up, and when I said "hello?", he'd say, "I've been a bad, bad boy – don't you wanna spank me?" Then he'd laugh like a crazy person and hang up. Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly amused with himself, he'd repeat his clever line one more time, and then hang up.

KINGCOUNTYJAIL speaks for itself. I cannot imagine the mindset of a man who thinks that a sex worker is going to take a collect call from anyone – let alone someone who's in jail, for chrissake. And to me – a dominatrix? I mean, come on guys, aren't you already having a pretty intense dominant/submissive experience? I think I'd feel a little inadequate after that...

NOENGLISH1, NOENGLISH2, and NOENGLISH3 have taught me that, apparently, Americans are not the only ones who raise our voices when we talk to foreigners because we think it'll make them understand what the hell we're saying.

YUCK! Is the guy who wants to talk about scat. And I don't mean jazz music.