Vanity, Thy Name is Motorola

Today I have purchased the next in a long line of gadgets that far exceed any sane need I experience on any kind of regular basis. The Motorola V710. Judge me if you must. All I know is I can now take surreptitious pictures of my friends in compromising positions and sell sell sell. Awesome. I can fully engage with Shawn in a battle of the embarassing pictures. It's great to be a contender. Of course, the acquisition of this particular piece of equipment brings some liberal guilt with it. In my happy place, my personal ethos doesn't mold itself well around decadent consumption and conspicuous status symbols. So I feel kind of hypocritical. This is, by far, the flashiest thing that I have ever purchased for myself. But, I rationalize in the following way: it gets way more than 20 miles to the gallon.

In other news, Gardner has come and gone, leaving a wide and turbulent wake of despair and anguish. I feel a bit perturbed by at least one incident from Gardner's stay. From the Flagpole:

"INDIE ROCK KARAOKE" (Go Bar) If you're sick of "Baby Got Back," wear your Chucks and come on by. Every Thursday, 10 p.m.

Now, I consider myself something of a party gal. I like to have fun, cut loose, or, as my friend Adam says entirely too often, "Hop on the good foot and do the bad thing" or something along those lines. So the idea of karaoke, per se, does not bother me. So imagine my chagrin (and the crushing blow to my vanity) when I realized that I had stage fright and would not be able to convince myself to sing (I was planning on a stirring rendition of "Fight Test" by the ever-inventive Flaming Lips). Oh! The ineffable desperation that I felt! Gardner had traveled all the way from the Left Coast to visit his peeps in Athens and what do I do when the moment of truth arrives? Chicken out. No bones about it. Need I point out the irony of my song choice?

Gardner, on the other hand, did his part to keep the party going. His delivery of "Debaser" by The Pixies was really quite stirring.