Blackberry Logic (Pretzels no longer free)

Arrived home late last night after spending a chilly week in Milwaukee.  I took my usual Friday commute on Northwest, leaving Milwaukee around 6pm for Minneapolis, then leaving Minneapolis at 9:45 to land in Seattle around 11:15.  It’s starting to be holiday travel time, but that’s one of the last flights out on Friday and the airport was pretty calm.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I’d been upgraded at the gate in Minneapolis.  I settled into my window seat and exchanged pleasantries with my seatmate, who was returning from Indianapolis. 


He showed me his Blackberry mother-ship communicator - I’d never really paid attention to them, and I had to acknowledge that some technology has passed me by, as it performs functions that I carry 3 or 4 different devices for.  He then proceeded to tell me this joke.  Usually, jokes go in one ear, I laugh, and then they head out the other ear and I can never remember them to relate again.  But this one was pretty good, I thought:



A fellow is sitting alone at a bar with his head resting on his right hand.  The bartender notices that he’s speaking animatedly right into his palm.  The bartender sidles a little closer to overhear, just as the fellow is saying, “OK, dear, I’ll be home in an hour or so.” 


The bartender approached him and asked him whom he was talking to.  The customer said he’d been talking to his wife on his cell phone.  He said he’d lost so many cell phones that, when he saw an ad offering to implant a phone in his hand, he answered it.  The bartender arched his eyebrows and was deciding not to sell him any more drinks, but the guy said, “here, look.” and opened his right palm to reveal a dialing pad.  “Tell me your home phone number.”


The bartender gave him a number and the customer punched it into his palm.  A moment later, he put his palm up to the bartender’s ear, and the bartender heard his wife’s voice answering the phone.  Amazed, he greeted her, told her he was just testing a phone, and the customer ended the call.  The bartender apologized for his skepticism, and comped him a drink.


Later, the bartender noticed that the customer had left for the men’s room some time ago and hadn’t returned.  Concerned, he headed for the men’s room to check on him.  Opening the door, he saw the customer stark naked, standing with his hands against the far wall with a roll of toilet paper jammed up his butt.  The bartender was aghast, and asked the customer who had so abused him and offered to call the police.


The customer waved him off and said, “No, man, I’m waiting for a fax.”


Later, as we started descending for Seattle, I gazed out the window looking northward.  Night had long ago fallen, but the sky was clear and the moonlight was so intense that its reflection off the snow-covered Cascades created a twilight in which details on the ground were clearly visible, if in a ghostly chiaroscuro.  Many valleys had clouds tamped down into them, and lights from the towns below created spots of incandescence in the cottony cloud cover.


The usual approach to Seatac airport in the winter, or whenever weather is bad, is from north to south.  Sitting on the right side of the plane, I was treated to what I consider the “money shot” for landing in Seattle, flying past my house near Greenlake, over Lake Union, past the Space Needle, past the glittering downtown with the black void of Elliott Bay for a backdrop, ferries floating on seeming nothingness out into Puget Sound.


It’s good to be home.