Smarter than the average bear. The average stupid bear.

This just happened, like five minutes ago. I will blame it on fatigue, and stick to that story until my dying day.

I'm in the hotel, and knowing that it's time (well, really, past time) to go to bed, I pick up the phone to set my wake-up call. This seems like a great idea, until I realize that the phone has no dial tone. Annoyed, I hang up and try it again. Nothing. I do the old-school tapping of the switch a few times. Still nothing. Just because I haven't tried it yet, I say hello, as if there's someone on the other end just waiting for me to calm down enough to acknowledge them so they can try to sell me a set of encyclopedias. Shockingly, this also produces no results.

By this point I'm a little annoyed, so I do what any clear-thinking modern adult would do: I pick up my cell phone and call the front desk. When the front-desk person answers, I tell him who I am and what room I'm staying in, and inform him that my phone has no dial tone. I go on to tell him that I really don't care about the phone so much; all I'm really trying to do is get a wake-up call set up (if you've figured it out by now, please don't spoil it for the rest. Thanks). He pauses for a second, then tells me that sure, he can set a wake-up call for me, but he'd have to come up and knock on my door or something at the appointed time.

Because the phone, which I had just called to tell him about, does not work.

I am a genius. The facts don't lie (they're truthful that way, much like hips).

I will defend myelf in a very small way by saying that it did occur to me as he began his response what the issue was, but it really didn't matter. I had already asked for a wake-up call to a broken phone. A phone that was so broken I felt the need to go outside of the hotel communications network to tell him about. So I, being of the helpful sort, suggested that maybe I'd just set the alarm clock instead. That seemed to be functioning relatively normally. Of course, for all I know at this point it's really a jack-in-the-box, but I'll give it a shot.

And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, to maybe have someone fix the phone tomorrow. So I can get my wake-up call.