On hold with Washington Gas, and the muzak might melt my brain. Send help.

Yay, Bob!

My nephew told me he doesn't see the point of texting when you could just call. I was surprised because I thought These Kids Today were all about texting, but he does go his own way. I like it because you don't necessarily have to interrupt someone and make them answer, the text will hang out there until they are ready to look at it, same as e-mail (or voicemail, but I tend to babble into voicemail) or post-it notes.

Yay, Bob!

I need coffee. *looks down at mug* Oh.

I need moar coffee.

I like texting for short stuff, like meeting someone or confirming something. I rarely text to just chat.

Excellent news about Bob!

Yay bob!

And belated Yay for Allyson!

And {{}} for msbelle and mac and others who need them.

It is pouring here. Monsoon level pouring!

There was a blog posted I saw recently that had the header "Email, text, call if someone's dying, and for fuck's sake don't leave me a voicemail." That pretty nicely captures my sentiments on the matter.

For little things that aren't urgent, I find texting much more efficient than calling because you can just ask the question ("Did you remember to buy milk?") without wasting time on chit-chat.

[eta: And yes, I would MUCH rather get a text than a voicemail.]

Except at work, I almost never listen to my voicemail anyways. I just see that someone called and usually call them back. I guess I only listen to voicemail if it is someone I don't really want to talk to.

New research shows that chimps have sex toys:

The tool for sex, he explained, is a leaf. Ideally a dead leaf, because that makes the most noise when the chimp clips it with his hand or his mouth.

“Males basically have to attract and maintain the attention of females,” Dr. McGrew said. “One way to do this is leaf clipping. It makes a rasping sound. Imagine tearing a piece of paper that’s brittle or dry. The sound is nothing spectacular, but it’s distinctive.”

O.K., a distinctive sound. Where does the sex come in?

“The male will pluck a leaf, or a set of leaves, and sit so the female can see him. He spreads his legs so the female sees the erection, and he tears the leaf bit by bit down the midvein of the leaf, dropping the pieces as he detaches them. Sometimes he’ll do half a dozen leaves until she notices.”

And then?

“Presumably she sees the erection and puts two and two together, and if she’s interested, she’ll typically approach and present her back side, and then they’ll mate.”

My first reaction, as a chauvinistic human, was to dismiss the technology as laughably primitive — too crude to even qualify as a proper sex tool. But Dr. McGrew said it met anthropologists’ definition of a tool: “He’s using a portable object to obtain a goal. In this case, the goal is not food but mating.”