Nope. The mass of men no longer lead lives of quiet desperation.
Their desperation is now cacaphonously announced by means of a variety of ringtones and instantly followed by conversations about their desperate search for meaning in the grocery lists they make during the cinema and the yeast infections analyzed in grocery aisles and the familial backstabbing they do sitting next to your table at a restaurant.
It’s enough to make me hope that it’s true that excessive cell phone use causes lower sperm counts and head tumors just so those who are perpetually on the phone will have less chance of polluting the gene pool.
I’m glad to know that driving while talking on the cell phone is as dangerous as drunk driving for the same reason. I only wish there were a Mothers Against Talk Driving, although it seems that every mother I see is on the cell phone while driving her SUV. I’m still pissed at the b***h who backed out of her Nichols Hills Plaza space, barely missing me without even seeing me there, and sat crossways in the lot so no one could pass whilst she driveled on about whatever.
I recall well the era of the “bag phone.” I thought it spectacularly excessive at the time. “Hey, look at me! I’m so important I have to have a mobile phone!” At least I could understand how some physicians and even some lawyers and stockbrokers might actually justify such a thing on capitalist grounds, even if I was contemptuous of their greediness. Now, however, capitalism and technology have democratized the mobile phone to the point that grade schoolers carry the infernal items.
It is a lesson in the fact that just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD do something.
Have we as a society really thought about what we’re doing and whether it’s something we want in our everyday lives? Is this constant contact between teenagers really a good thing? Do I really WANT my office/boss to be able to contact me on vacation? Did you know that we have a new malady caused by cell phones: text thumb? (“Text thumb” is a repetitive motion injury caused by incessant text messaging between cell phones and is spreading like wildfire across the country. How should we regard an elective injury?)
I am neither a Luddite nor a curmudgeon. I simply believe that the unintended consequences of widespread cell phone use is one of the signs of the coming apocalypse. That’s all I’m saying.
Agreed, 100%.
Another sign of the coming apocalypse is the weird news you hear about people who STAND IN LINE OVERNIGHT for a motherfucking CHRISTMAS TOY for their brats at home.
Fights break out in these lines, and in at least one case, bandits tried to rob (or succeeded, I can’t remember) those standing in line, suspecting they’d have lots o’ Xmas cash with them.
STANDING IN LINE OVERNIGHT so you can buy a fucking Play Station, or whatever this year’s Tickle Me Elmo bullshit is.
Good thing I don’t have kids. They’d hate me.
Was with friends last night, one of whom brought her 14 year old daughter along. Yep, you guessed it: the kid’s mobile phone rang incessently. Mom said nothing. I would have said: If that fucking thing rings one more time, you’ll never see it again. Turn it the fuck OFF at dinner!
Good thing I don’t have kids. I’d hate them.
The midgets are behind all this, by the way…
Does this mean you won’t answer your phone anymore when you are having coffee with a friend?
That’s a trick question.
I don’t have any friends.
If I had friends, would I be blogging on a Saturday night? When I DO get a call on my cell phone, I’m all “Hey! Look at me! Look! See how important I am?”, even when it’s just the Salvation Army wanting to know if I’ll have anything for their truck when it comes through the neighborhood next Tuesday. I talk to that lady like she’s some big client in Timbuktu or London or something.
Listen to me. The Trojans failed to listen to Laocoon when he told them to leave that damn horse outside the gates, so you listen to me now. Cell phones are a trojan horse. It’s all part of the midget plot to pollute our civilisation; the idea is to soften us up for the kill. It has to be midgets. Why else would all the phones be getting smaller and smaller? See. It aaallllll fits together now, doesn’t it?
If you are zooming through the parking lot where a daycare is located, say, the Tucson Jewish Community Center, in your “it shouldn’t hurt to be a kid” minivan or gold-plated SUV while on your phone, “they” should automatically withdraw your golf-green and/or botox privileges.