Considering my past experience, this is somewhat embarrassing to admit, but I haven’t gotten a text message since June 16th. So if anyone reading this has tried to text me, and I haven’t replied, it’s not because I’m a jerk, although that may be the case — I just literally am not getting SMS messages. Apparently, they’re getting eaten somewhere between “The New AT&T” and my phone. Two fruitless thirty-plus minute troubleshooting calls with their customer service have gone nowhere — the only thing I know is that it started happening when my phone’s network stopped reading “Cingular” and started reading “AT&T,” and that one of the technicians made an obscure reference to the point that I was an AT&T Wireless customer who switched to Cingular, and some of those customers (read: the longest and supposedly most loyal) are getting the shaft.

If there’s any bright side to this, the whole experience has made me a lot less likely to stand in line for an iPhone. But at this point, I’m forced to declare SMS Chapter 11 while I seek reparation for the problem. If you’ve sent me a message, I probably won’t be able to return it. Please go ahead and give me a call instead.

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I don’t have a videoblog, but here’s an episode anyway. Seen: The many creative people at Next New Networks. A bona-fide ATHF mooninite. The very nice people from Viral. Snow and ice dampen Valentine’s Day in Manhattan. And the art of Tony Matelli. Music, “words,” by Ohler. Download it here: hello mr ohler. Special thanks to Josh Leo.