YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO BORROW MY PHONE

So my cell phone - a Samsung from Sprint PCS - survived its second plunge into a toilet bowl last night. The bowl was unused, thank God, and after only about 12 hours of drying it has turned on, given me its friendly little beep, and is now reminding me "Don't Panic," which my cellphones have always done.

Yes, it's gone into the drink twice, both times due to my insatiable desire to multitask - that is, to call home while taking a quick potty break at the studio. Both times the initial shock and disgust turned to joy after the phone was well washed out (cold water) and allowed to sit for a while.

Several years ago I spilled a beer into my Roland VS880 digital hard disk recorder, which wasn't a good thing. Off to a service center it went, and I was informed that beer is a far better thing to spill in a Roland VS880 than, say, fruit juice (which will get sticky and destroy the circuit boards pretty quickly) or soda (whose acid will eat right through the electronics). Since then I've stuck to beer around recording equipment, which has worked pretty well on many levels.

I can't really eliminate the toilet from my life, however, so I guess from now on it's "Potty time and talky time don't mix."