The Literary Works of Socialist Dolphins, and the Political Affiliations of Sea Creatures

Modified from an image posted on http://www.hitech-dolphin.com/image-files/dolphin-ocean-picture.jpg. Used without permission; any cease and desist orders or other similar legal papers should be forwarded to thebigniceguy@live.com. I will read and comply with any such e-mails.

This is a Review Request; trust me, I could not make this up. Thanks, Caleb!

I have a certain routine as I go about my day. I wake up (progressively later and later, but that's neither here nor there), brush my teeth, head out to the kitchen, pour myself some cereal and orange juice (today it was ginger ale; what can I say, I was feeling adventurous), and then check the news and my e-mail.

I've done all that today, and it went rather well. Or at least it did until I checked my e-mail, and I got the message that has led to this very review request. I'd put it up here for your enjoyment, but the Blogger.com post editor seems to have trouble with copying and pasting text today, so whatever.

To make a long story short, today I've been tasked with reviewing the literary works of Socialist dolphins, and to write a segment on the political affiliations of sea creatures.

Literature has long been a passion of mine, and as such, I was rather suprised to discover that there was an entire subsection of literature that I had never even heard of before. I figured I'd Google "the literary works of socialist dolphins" and see what came up. Here are the top five results:

• "THE LIBERAL MANIFESTO; ITS CONTENTS DISSAPOINTING TO THE WHIGS. THE EGYPTIAN BLUNDER ACKNOWLEDGED-- JUSTICE TO IRELAND BUT NOT DISUNION-- STEAMERS IN COLLISION." An article in the New York Times, and yes, that whole thing was capitalized. I still don't know what it means.
• "Great God Pan: The Western Reader Archives. Read all about some of my favorite West Coast Books, an undiscovered cournicopia of dolphins, gold miners, weed dealers, pirates and elves..." Sounds maybe interesting, but not particularly political or anti-shark.
• "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum... Her books of poetry include Poems of Dedication (1946), The Edge of Being (1949), The Generous Days (1969), and Dolphins (1994)..." I got quite enough poetry in my Intro to Literature class, thanks.
• "For an English Republic: Worlds [sic] tallest man saves dolphins." British politics are apparently much more interesting than American politics, if some of these headlines are any indication.
• "JSTOR: The Place of 'Martin Salander' in Gottfried Keller's Evolution as a Prose Writer." Apparently you have to pay to read the rest of this article. Not that I really have any desire to.

Okay, so that didn't really work out. But what about the political affiliations of sea creatures? Well, as it turns out, Google didn't do much for me there either. I got a lot of links to how we can help save sea creatures by writing to our local congressmen but not much else. So here's what I think various sea creatures' political affiliations would be (and yes, I love bullet point lists):

• Dolphins: I've always figured that they'd be the sort of hippieish, free spirits of the oceans. They just want to have fun, maaaaan. They don't want the man puttin' them down, y'know?
• Sharks: If dolphin sentiment is alledgedly anti-shark (as I've learned from the e-mail Caleb sent me), then I suppose sharks would represent the more conservative side of things. They're for the war (if the undersea creatures are having one) and can't possibly play around like those stupid dolphins do when there's hunting to be done.
• Fish: These guys have got to be the moderates. They're eaten by both dolphins and sharks in the same way that moderates generally vote either one way or the other. I can't really think of fish as having a strong opinion, anyway.
• Octopi: The corrupted politicians of the ocean. They talk out of both sides of their wierd beak thing, and each of their eight tentacles is stuck in a different pie, so to speak. Though I guess it wouldn't be 'pie' in the ocean. What do octopi eat for desert?
• Walruses: The protestors. They park themselves in one place and don't move until they get what they want, whether it be more fish, less polar bears, or more representation in Undersea Parliment.

So, thanks again, Caleb, for this most interesting Review Request. Now, how on Earth am I gonna score this one...

The Rundown
UNSCOREABLE. I literally made most of that up just now. I can't give it a score. It was really fun to write, though.

The American Cockroach

While I was in college, I didn't really have to deal with bugs. Oh, sure, we had ants, but they're not really a big deal; just clean up after yourself and they'll realize that your dorm isn't a good place to score food. Even if they do come around, squish one under your thumb and the others'll soon realize that sticking around isn't the best idea.

Since I've come home, however, I've been dealing with, for me, the absolute worst kind of bug: the American cockroach, sometimes known as the palmetto bug. "Palmetto bug" is kind of a pretty name, though, so I'll be referring to them as cockroaches or roaches for the remainder of this review; we don't pull any punches here at Reviews of Everything Ever.

So, as I was saying, I've come home to a sort of cockroach infestation. Since my first night back, I have seen something like six or seven roaches and killed three or four of them. The exterminator came, only to inform us that, though the poison he'd used will be killing the roaches slowly, they'll be "crawling up the walls" trying to escape. Lovely. My most recent cockroach encounter, however, did not involve any sort of wall-crawling, fortunately. It was hardly an hour ago, in the bathroom. The thing scuttled beneath the sink and I haven't looked for it since.

What, you might ask, is my problem with cockroaches? Well, I have a few of them, actually. One is quite simply that they're not supposed to be in my house. It's almost a territorial instinct, left over from some evolutionary tract: this is my space, and you, Mr. Cockroach, are invading it. And I realize that there are plenty of other things, especially in a Florida house, that can wind up intruding: lizards, spiders, and what have you. The problem with roaches is that they're so much bigger than those other things. According to Wikipedia (which, I know, isn't a scholarly resource, but I'm not in school anymore), they can "grow to a length of 1" to [one and a half inches]." And they seem so wide, too, thanks to their broad exoskeleton and wings. I bet a lizard could fit inside the space a roach occupies just fine.

Another problem I have with them is that they're here to take my stuff. Eating my food, taking shelter in my house, drinking my water, using my space to store their eggs (oh, by the way, a female roach can have up to freaking 150 baby roaches!), et cetera. I like to think that, when it comes to a lot of other animal 'intruders', they're just kinda here by accident, and would rather be outside, given the chance. Not the roach. They're here to stay, since they're apparently incapable of building their own little shelter to keep warm in.

Yet another reason why I don't like roaches is that they don't really do anything other than hang around in peoples' houses. Unless I'm mistaken, the American cockroach doesn't really have any natural predators (other than my dog, who has eaten one or two on occasion, which is disgusting but whatever) so they don't contribute to the food chain, and the females don't pollinate or anything. So the most that could be said for them is that they contribute to the world's biodiversity, but why do they have to be so invasive while they do it?

Finally, they're just really creepy. I can't even pinpoint exactly what it is about roaches that makes them so wierd. All I know is that my mind starts setting off alarm bells as soon as I see one of the things. Maybe it's because their movement speed seems disproportionate to their size. Maybe it's because their black coloration and the almost mechanical way their legs work makes them seem soulless and robotic. Maybe it's the antennae. Who knows? In the end, they're just something that I want to get away from as soon as I get a glimpse of them. And I've been getting far too many glimpses lately.

The Rundown
Attractiveness: 0/10. Eww! Eww! Get the heck away from me!
Usefulness: 0/10. They eat my food, they stay at my house... They're like uninvited relatives, except really creepy and annoying!
Fun: 0/10. I personally cannot imagine any situation involving a cockroach being labeled "fun."
Respect for My Privacy: 0/10. My bathroom?! Are you serious?
Overall: 0/10. Well, I guess Windows Vista's customer service will be glad something scored lower than they did.

EDIT: By the way, the picture is public domain, hence the lack of legal jargon on the side.

The Samsung Blackjack

The sleek, highly-functional Samsung Blackjack. Mine looks quite like this, but it's red. Image obtained from CellPhoneDigest.net. Used without permission; any cease and desist orders or other legal requests should be forwarded to thebigniceguy@live.com. I will immediately respond to and comply with any such e-mails.

Before I begin my review, I would first like to apologize for missing the past three (four?) weeks of updates. Today is the last day of finals week here at USF, and I've been quite busy. As much as I love writing this blog, it does take a backseat to my academics.

Another thing I'd like to note is that my birthday was two days ago, and I am now nineteen. I tell you this not in the hopes of recieving any birthday accolades or gifts (believe me, I got enough Facebook birthday wall posts to last me for several years), but instead to say that for my nineteenth birthday, I recieved the very phone you see in the picture above this text-- unless you are blind; if that is the case, then I am very sorry because it's quite a good picture. This phone is called the Samsung Blackjack.

I suppose I should let you, the reader, know that my fascination with this phone comes partially from the fact that my past cell phone purchases have not exactly been all that flashy or recent. My last phone was a RAZR, and by that I mean the very first kind, and I can't even remember the model before that except to say that it didn't do much aside from call people. Which I'm perfectly fine with-- as a matter of fact, I used to scoff at people who bought phones very similar to the one I use now.

That, of course, was before I got mine. Now I simply can't stop messing with the thing-- it's almost like a miniature computer, complete with a Windows-based menu screen. (It even has a "Start" button like the one on the bottom-left of your desktop, unless you use a Mac or a Linux variant, in which case I am very sorry once again. If you are blind and you own a Mac, then I am very, very sorry.) Features on my Blackjack include cell phone standards such as text messaging and caller ID, but there are a number of features that I decidedly did not have on my RAZR:

• A calendar and a planner, that can remind me of appointments I've made.
• ActiveSync, which can "synchronize [my] device with a desktop computer," whatever that means; I haven't tested that out yet.
• The ability to access my e-mails and instant message people with AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, or Y! Messenger.
• A notepad.
• A task list which allows me to make note of things I need to do, and check them off when I've done them.
• A "smart converter," which can convert currency; length, weight, volume, and area measurements; and temperature.
• A world clock, which tells me what time it is all over the world.
• A suprisingly fast internet browser.
• A 2.0 megapixel camera, which is an upgrade from my RAZR though I'm not sure by how much.
• A PDF viewer.
• An RSS reader.

I could continue this list for several pages, but that would be a waste of both my and your time. Suffice it to say that the Blackjack has tons of useful features, and even the less-than-useful ones are still fun to mess around with.

The Blackjack also comes with a number of customization options, to make your phone feel a little more distinct. There are plenty of themes, wallpapers (of course, you can use any picture you've taken as a wallpaper in addition to the standard ones), and ringtones that come with the phone, and there's always the option to purchase new ones. If you get tired of what Samsung has to offer, you can also download themes and ringtones onto your phone from your computer, since the Blackjack can link up to any computer via USB.

Are there downsides to this awesome, awesome phone? Well, yes. For instance, while there's plenty of space to store songs on the phone, any ringtone can't be more than 300KB in size. Apparently the Blackjack is unable to simply select a 300KB portion of whatever song it is you want, though it shouldn't even have to do this, since the whole song is already on the phone anyway. Having to push three buttons to unlock the phone is also a little cumbersome, as is the fact that you have to hold down the lock button for several seconds before the phone will actually lock.

In the end, however, these minor nuances barely detract from the experience as a whole. Get a Blackjack if you can. It makes having a cell phone exciting again.

The Rundown
Style: 10/10. I'd get this phone again even if it were ugly; fortunately, however, it's very sleek and stylish.
Functionality: 10/10. Everything works just fine; the clarity I get with the camera is particularly impressive.
Ease of Use: 9/10. Unlocking and ringtone-setting are annoying; everything else is wonderful.
Extra Features: 10/10. Soooo many extra features...
Overall: 9.75/10. This phone makes even me want to organize and plan out my life. Impressive.

EDIT: As it turns out, I have a Samsung Blackjack II, so treat this post as a review of the Blackjack II, not the Blackjack.