muckefuck | Where is my avocado flip phone?

Years ago now (1998? my memory gets so hazy) a friend of mine told me about seeing a man in the Loop yelling instructions to his broker--"No! Sell! SELL!!"--into a hot dog held to his ear. Since that moment, I've coveted a cell phone shaped like a food item. In fact, I think I may have even said something rash like I wouldn't get a cell phone until novelty models were available.

Well, where are they? I honestly expected that the market would be flooded by now with everything from Maxwell Smart shoe phones to Garfield dolls with pectoral keypads and articulated mouth speakers. But the closest I've seen to something like this are those refitted retro phones that are big enough to be useful for self-defence, which are apparently finally turning up among niche retailers in Chicago. This is a far cry from mobile phones shaped like SanRio characters at your local Target.

On a related note, we were trying to chronologise when our default assumption about a person apparently talking to no one flipped from "crazy person" to "headset/earpiece wearer". One of my co-workers suggests 2003/4, which sounds about right, but I find it impossible to feel certain.