Phone Sex

First they just beeped, and then they vibrated. Soon they started to sing like digital tree toads, chirping out barely recognizable ditties to amuse and amaze family and friends alike. Not long after, you could take pictures, access your email, go shopping online and catch the latest internet virus with one easy device that can only be operated by slim-fingered midgets with limitless patience and backup batteries. Yes, the cell phone, possibly the most overrated device of the modern age, and now an x-rated one to boot.

You can watch porn on your cell phone now, people...that's just not right.

Not that I'm against porn, mind you. No, sir. As long as it involves consenting adults engaging in whatever turns their fancy, porn can be good wholesome fun and an excellent distraction from things like work, family, sleep, and general nutrition as the case may be. An excellent source of employment for women who would otherwise be objectified and abused by men for absolutely no pay at all, and men whose only contribution to life seems to be their ability to fill out a large pair of underwear while imitating the mating call of a sick moose, porn is a multi-billion-dollar industry that rivals arms dealing for both revenue generation and ethics.

Despite the efforts of every parishioner, family group, women's rights activist and parent scared they might see those Polaroids of mommy and daddy playing cowboy at Christmas, porn is everywhere, thanks to the internet, and about as likely to be eradicated from this earth as the common cockroach. A two-year-old with an itchy finger and a mouse can find images of just about every contortion and activity imagined, all in high-resolution images or video, and with sound for those who don't want to miss any of that riveting dialogue along the way.

So why, I ask, why in the name of all that may not be good and holy, but at least plentiful and easy to access, would anyone in their right mind watch porn on their cell phone?

We are not talking about the widescreen experience here; the average cell phone has the grainy resolution of an old Atari game player at one-twentieth the size. And while I know there are still some seriously rabid fans of Pac Man out there, I can't see the value of curling up with your Nokia and a box of Kleenex to watch Linda Lovelace bounce around your video screen looking more like a little digitized video game goblin than the curvaceous porn pioneer from the seventies we all know and many a teenage boy has grown to love.

Forget the morality of it; it's just plain stupid.

Ah, but stupidity sells, does it not? Even Playboy has joined the portable porn playing fun, offering downloadable nudie pictures for your iPod Photo player, complete with cheesy soft porn music...the total, mobile erotic experience for the horny person on the go.

What happened to the good old magazine? Simple, safe, discreetly portable with the ready excuse of two short stories and a celebrity interview to explain all that rabid page turning in the bathroom, the magazine was every young lad's first serious post-puberty look at the naked form. Every house had them tucked away somewhere, leading to more than a few games of Let's Find Daddy's Playboy, which occasionally resulted in a few finds of Mommy's Playgirl and a whole set of inadequacy questions about body hair, organ size, and why all the men looked like the Marlboro Man. But the lasting problems were few, aside from some embarrassing explanations in the laundry room.

It was a rite of passage. An entire generation grew up thinking sex involved soft lenses and miles of drapery to roll around in. Now it'll be disturbing discussions over whether you're watching a grainy sex act or an excited badger having dinner.

If you're going to get into smut, at least know what you're looking at!

But with the mobile porn industry already taking up almost half of the world's wireless data traffic and growing by the day, and projected profits in the billions over the next few years, mobile sex is most likely here to stay, in all it's fuzzy, hard to decipher glory. So get used to it, and give that gentleman next to you a little extra space next time his cellular rings.

Ms Lovelace may be calling.