I’ve taken the liberty to analyze the various sexual shenanigans we get ourselves into, and I think I’ve come onto something. I’m starting to think that our sexual partners closely resemble that of our cellular telephone devices. Think I’m full of s**t? Well read on, nonbeliever.

The Crap Nokia aka The One Night Stand

So you’re hovering over the frat house toilet seat, trying not to get an STI or pee on yourself, and your phone slips out of your back pocket and plops into the water. Suddenly, you’re out of a cell phone and you need one, STAT. Just like getting dumped or running into your ex, I would think of this as a rather desperate situation. So what do you do? You go for the next easy thing that comes along and satisfies your basic needs. Just like your friend’s gigantic Nokia phone with Snake and an antenna, a one night stand will be there for you when you need one thing and one thing only. You may use Mr. Nokia for a night or two, but you can bet you’ll toss that puppy as soon as something better comes along.

The Motorola Razor aka The Friend with Benefits

Like a good friend, the Razor will always be there waiting for you when you need it. Even though it came out, like, twelve years ago, you can always get this puppy in a pinch without feeling totally desperate. Back when it was new, you may have put it (or a great guy friend/hook up) on a pedestal. Now that it’s been around for a while, however, you recognize its shortcomings and appreciate it for its ability to satisfy your basic needs without becoming too attached. Plus, if you decide to upgrade and it won’t work out, you can count on the Razor guy to be around when you need him most.

Blackberry aka The New Relationship

When I got my blackberry, I couldn’t put it down for the life of me. I just kept playing with it incessantly, causing my roommate to constantly make fun of me for being addicted to my “crackberry.” Just like a blackberry, a new relationship can feel like an addiction of sorts, whether it’s an addiction to the person, the sex, or the way that you feel in their presence. And, unlike the Razor or the Crap Nokia, the Blackberry has the ability to satisfy many needs rather than just the basics. This is the kinda phone (or gent) that you’ll want to hold onto as long as it works and fits into your lifestyle.

iPhone aka The Lover

Now I’ve never had an iPhone, but I can imagine once you own one you’ll never want to have anything else. The iPhone can do pretty much anything. It comes with the basic features, but, over time, you can add more and more applications to tend to all areas of your life. Once you get one of these babies, you’re gonna hold onto it as long as you can. Seriously, would anybody think twice about trading in the Iphone for a janky Nokia, Razor, or even a Blackberry? Just like a great love, you wouldn’t sacrifice the one that satisfies all of your needs for one that can only temporarily fulfill the most basic of desires.

Have you found your iPhone or are you still hangin round with the Crap Nokia, waiting for something better to come along? Let me know what’s on your mind!

I’d like to take this opportunity (5:30pm on a Tuesday sitting in a Starbucks…) to thank the techie gods for these five technological innovations I can’t imagine my life without:

1) The Laptop – I wouldn’t even be here, sitting in this Starbucks at 5:30pm on a Tuesday if it weren’t for the laptop. Mine is a black MacBook. It’s light, sleek, fast, and now that I’ve got a new battery, it holds a five-hour charge. As a writer I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to have to write papers, even novels, on typewriters. Writing a page and then realizing that there was a spelling error? The horror! Being stuck in a home office or computer lab in order to use a desktop computer? Never again!

2) The Cell Phone – My current cell is a black Motorola Razr (it matches my laptop, which was an accident), and even though I can call, text, and surf (the very slow) Internet, I can’t wait until my plan is up in September so I can upgrade to a new phone. There are so many phones now with speedy Internet capabilities, music players, digital cameras, even video cameras, you often only need this one tiny piece of plastic to get you through your day.

3) TiVo – Very few people I know actually own a TiVo machine, but most have a digital video recorder and we can thank TiVo for that. Now I get to start my day with The Daily Show and a cup of coffee, instead of having to end my evening that way. I can skip through the commercials for dishwashing liquid while watching Good Eats on the Food Network. And I can re-watch the season finale of Lost to try and figure out what the hell is going on with that wacky island. I never want to be tied down to a programming schedule or (gasp!) a VHS tape-recorded show, again.

4) The iPod – The iPhone has a music player and the iPod Touch has Internet capabilities, but I’ll take a regular iPod (now called an “iPod classic” That was fast!) any day. My life is richer now that I can walk to the subway station in New York listening to Of Montreal, and when I get in my car in Los Angeles, I scroll through my iPod to find the perfect song to drive to the beach to (Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” is a personal, pop favorite). I now have a soundtrack to my life and I can’t imagine my life without it.

5) Bluetooth – This is both a physical thing and a magical data transmission thing. I’m thankful for both. Physical Bluetooth devices, like the earpiece I carry in my car, are a life saver for two reasons: 1) I won’t kill myself while driving, and 2) I won’t get a $50 ticket now that California has a new non-handheld cell phone law. And I’m thankful for the magical powers of Bluetooth that can’t be seen, which help me to get photos from my laptop to my cell phone and visa versa. Now embarrassing photos of my sister are always around to share at the next family reunion.

Since it’s not a physical thing, I didn’t include Facebook on this list, but I think it deserves an honorable mention. There’s no reason to ever fall out of touch with someone now. I’ve got friends on Facebook that I haven’t seen since I was eight, friends that I see almost every day, and even an ex-boyfriend (or two) so I know when he has a new girlfriend (Ouch! They look so happy together! What a douchebag!). (Editor’s Note: And we can happily stalk people without ever being discovered!) It’s both a blessing and a curse, but one that I could never do without.

[Photo courtesy of pcworld.com]