Useful Phone Apps For Men

I admit it. I'm a sucker for gadgets and gimmicks. Cell phone companies and marketers know this, which is why they prey upon my lack of restraint. So when a commercial for the latest smart phone comes on, with all those glitzy apps that make Star Trek gadgets look like something out of the Flintstones, I revert to my inner child. Who knew a phone could do so many incredible things!

According to the new geek-speak, an app is short for an application. It seems the smarter we get, the fewer the syllables we are forced to shorten our words; a side effect from becoming too intelligent. I will admit that smart phones and their new apps can do many useful & wonderful things. They're like little mini handheld computers. The average pimple-faced teenager with his baggie jeans hanging down around his knees carries more technology around in his front pocket than NASA had to put a man on the moon.

A smart phone that can do my taxes, decipher what my wife meant, helps do the kids math homework, or mow the lawn; I'm impressed. Give me a smart phone app that remembers my wife's anniversary or takes out the trash in the fourth quarter when my wife demands. That's what I'm saying!

Why pay hundreds of dollars for new technology and expensive data plans that can only do low-tech chores that Wilma and Betty could do with just a dinosaur and a couple of pulleys? I just don't see it. I hate to play the spoiler but do we really need more overpriced gimmicks that don't really do anything useful?

Now that you got me going here, let me remind you about all those wonderful gimmicks of yester-year that have gone the way of the stegosaurus and the Studebaker. Where do I start? Remember those awful old eight-track players or have you forgotten the VCR's that everyone had to have but no one could operate just a few years ago? Extinct! Today they're taking up space in landfills while someone is living lavish like an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Fraudulent. The interviewer asks, "How did you get so wealthy?" He's sipping lemonade on his yacht while the butler wipes his mouth and he says, "I sold eight-track players!"

Anyone under forty must immediately pause and google to see what an eight-track player is..

What about those awful old computers with memory so low it could be counted on an abacus? You know, the ones with the old monitors the size of a Ford Pinto?

-another pause to google.

Don't blush! Take it like a man ...or a gender-neutral pansy! Yeah, you bought one too when it was the latest & greatest! Consumers are so stupid! They also bought those stereo systems the size of a piano that played vinyl records! Have we forgotten those cordless phones that weighed as much as a small refrigerator and had a range of ...ten feet! Who can forget those satellite dishes the size of a James Bond' evil villains ego-maniacal space conquest scheme. Let's face it. We see some fledgling new technology and get greedy for the latest new contraption and our I.Q. takes a nose dive.

Here's how it works. Rampant consumerism is driven by greed and what I can only describe as a gadget-oriented obsessive-compulsive mania - similar to a kleptomaniac that steals from himself. Which is why we feel compelled to rush out to buy the latest new technology on credit but before you can pay it off at that extravagant interest rate the greasy little clerk with the goatee sold you, Wa-la! It's already obsolete! By the time you make your last payment, you can only use it as a door stop or a paper weight.

Back to Really Useful Cell Phone Apps for Men; those new apps can do all kinds of nifty things like handle credit card transactions, scan bar codes, count calories, and track the pizza delivery boy while you lounge aorund on a soft couch in front of a T.V. the size of a Drive-thru movie screen while your brain turns to mush as you slowlly degenerate into a pastry-shaped zombie with glazed-over eyes. Congratulations, slug! A hundred years from now people will have evolved back into amobeas. So to help out the industry and in the interest of the consumer, I would like to propose apps for men that are actually useful.

Here they are;

• One that tells you how long your wife is going to be mad at you so you can know how long you have to sleep on the couch.
• This one alerts you that your mother-in-law is coming to visit before she actually shows up at your front door.
• Your wife is hungry but as usual she has no clue what she wants to eat but she expects you to know. This app tells her what it is she wants, letting you off the hook.
• She asks you the dreaded question; "Does this dress make my butt look huge?" It says, "Yes" so you don't have to.
• She wants to yak while the big game is on. It's the last quarter so this app acts like it's actually cares what she's saying so you don't have to. Meanwhile you get to finish the game in peace.
• She's fussing at you for something you did ten years ago. So your phone calls her phone to distract her while you sneak off to play golf with the guys.

These are apps that men really want. Not some really expensive data plan with some hi-tech phone that's so complicated an engineer can't use. The bottom line is that they are just after you're money! Why do we then buy those out-dated cell phones with data plans the size of a small mortgage only so they disintegrate before you can finish paying off the contract?

So the next time you walk into that hi-tech glittery showroom repository of super-cool new gadgets we call the cell phone store and that smooth-talking sales rep that suspiciously resembles the kid from the drive-thru burger place tries to put one over on you; tell him, "No way, punk!" And then hit him over the head with your eight-track player!