NOW WE THINK THEY’RE JUST SCREWIN’ WITH OUR HEAD

Cingular Wireless has had a pretty good year, crowing about the fact that it expects users to surpass 500 billion worth of minutes-of-use on its network for 2006. If true (We’ll have to take their word for it), it helps them make the argument that cell-phone users should switch to Cingular. But there were a few things buried in the release that raised an eyebrow or two, such as this: “In the past, Cingular announced the busiest calling day of the year, which historically had been Halloween…” (Ummm, really? We could have sworn it “traditionally” was Mother’s Day.) Or this, a list of what else folks could do for 500 billion minutes, besides talk: “Listen to the live version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" 45 billion times; Watch nine seasons of Seinfeld without commercials more than 132 million times; or, Sleep for 950 million consecutive years.” But then they conclude by telling us (and we quote verbatim), “Estimates based on available information, and uh, best guesses.” Well, we appreciate their honesty.