I'd like to see this guy talk on his cell phone while smoking a cigarette.
Cell phones have ruined our society. No longer can we live in peace because these little do-it-all contraptions take up our every moment. At least if one get’s in a bad accident while talking on their cell phone, they can immediately call 911.
Four Times Dumb People Should Hang Up
Cycling
I live in a very flat part of Europe that has a ton of people who ride their bicycles. I am actually one of those people. It’s smart because we don’t have to spend 1 Euro 60 cent for a liter of gasoline. For you Americans, that is about $6.40 cents a gallon. Riding a bicycle is extremely intelligent.
What isn’t extremely intelligent is riding one’s bicycles while holding objects. Why are they on their cell phone anyhow? Don’t they know that they could get in an accident and hurt their last few, precious brain cells?
The other day while riding my bicycle I passed a guy who was not using either of his hands! He was talking on his cell phone with one hand and smoking a cigarette in the other!
I have one word for those who don’t use their hands when riding their bicycle: UNICYCLE.
Sure, I can talk. I'm just driving.
Driving
Where I live it is illegal to use a cell phone while driving an automobile. Mainly because it is deadly but should that really stop somebody from talking on their cell phone while driving?
Well…YEAH!
Last week I was riding with a man who was driving 190 kilometers per hour. That is 118 miles per hour! I would have been a little bit ticked off if he insisted on answering his cell phone.
I was extremely grateful that he didn’t kill me. I may have wet myself a little with the speed he was going but at least I didn’t die. Don’t worry about my briefs. I stuck them out the window and they dried in 2 minutes flat!
Ladies (maybe some weird men) do not apply your bat crap to your face. Please put the beer down but most importantly, while you’re driving do not talk on your cell phone!
I wish she'd pay attention to me.
With Friends
A few years ago I had to do an experiment for my sociology class. I was required to watch people at the mall for 4 hours straight and observe their behavior.
This was not the best assignment for somebody who has inattentive adhd or is it parathyroid disease? Not sure but my point is that I get bored easily like you are in the reading of this blog post.
What did I notice while observing people? A few things, allow me to share,
- They walked two-by-two.
- 75% had a cell phone in their hand and were using it.
- The person not using a cell phone has this expression on their face, “I came to the mall with a neglectful, self-absorbed idiot.”
I failed the class.
Lady, you're gonna have to get off your cell phone. Scholar Mel, who has inattentive adhd or parathyroid disease, we're not sure, can't concentrate on the movie.
Attending the Cinema
Hey you down there. Yeah, you! I can’t see the dang movie screen because of your gigantic cell phone screen. I can see what you are tweeting for crying out loud!
I just don’t understand people who insist on using their cell phone while attending a movie. Sure, they’re not speaking audibly into the mic but they might as well be shining a flash light every where.
For anybody who is from Europe you might think I am blessed because Twitter is pretty much non-existent here. But people still send text messages to each other.
Leave the crying baby at home, please turn off your cell phone and for the love of Pete please munch your popcorn and slurp your 120 oz Pepsi quietly! I’m trying to watch a movie.
Restaurants !!!
Don’t forget restaurants !
I often feel like throwing my food at folk chattering (loudly) on their cell phones when I’m trying to hear what my companion is saying.
One of these days I swear I’m going to take a megaphone with me just to make them realise how bloody annoying it is being assaulted by the sound of someone else’s conversation
Thanks for bringing up another “When not to use the cell phone” example.
Here’s another:
I hate when people use them on the train. Everybody and their mom is being quiet, just relaxing but then some women (sorry ladies) is speaking loud enough for everybody in the train car to hear her.
Train ride, just like restaurant experience, ruined.
One time I’m glad to hear a cell convo is hearing someone, particularly women fuss someone out loudly. It’s like reality TV on a budget.
The one thing I hate when going to a kids’ movie is all the damn kids there. There was a young child crying during The Smurfs. Some kids are too younf to enjoy sitting an hr and a half and it’s a lot to ask of a 3 year old so don’t bring her!
Ah, you’re a glass is half-full type of person.
The problem with listening to the reality tv cell phone conversation is that it is not in my mother tongue. Though, if I eavesdrop, this may be good practice for my language learning.
The Smurf’s movie looks great from what I could tell from the trailers. And yes, 3 is much too young for a movie at the theaters. Maybe 4 but I am not sure about 3.
On a side-note I am really looking forward to Puss in Boots!
Another definite “no” zone is on commuter trains (think Amtrak for us Yanks, as opposed to the NYC subway). Chicago has a great network of comfortable and reasonably quiet trains for the 45-90 minute trip to your suburban home – keep them that way.
And just what the heck is that moron in the photo riding? Unicycles are deadly enough when human-powered – one sudden stop, and he and the “whatever” are gonna trade places real quick!
By the by, it IS possible to ride a bike with full combat pack, while hand-carrying either a rifle or (my personal best) a BREN light machine gun. A bit of shtick I used to do in parades (back when I was re-enacting) was to have all my gear on my back, come pedaling into the demo area at top speed (on a one-speed bike, granted), do a J-turn with rear wheel skidding, throw the bike down, yank my rifle off my back (or better yet, have it in one hand), and hunker down behind it like a cavalry trooper from a US Western movie. As if a bicycle could stop a beach ball, much less a real bullet!
I wouldn’t ride this motorcycle. A Trike is more my style. The more wheels the better!
Which war were you reenacting? First my mind went to the Civil War but then I saw that you were using a machine gun.
World War 2, German in particular. The other unit in the area had an assault gun (tank with no turret) and a couple halftracks, and the main US unit had TWO tanks, a halftrack, and some trucks and jeeps. Our unit had bicycles – we were all working class stiffs, so we didn’t have the cash to buy our own wheels! (Well, more than two of them at any one time…)
It sounds like you guys had to be more creative. The poor always are
Our favourite bit of creativity was recreating the “zeltbahn”, a triangular piece of canvas (with a VERY specific camo pattern) that the German soldiers used as ponchos, or buttoned 4 together to form a pyramidal tent. Originals in lousy condition started at $150! A buddy and I found a surplus place online selling French versions in plain tan. He cut out stencils, using an original to get the right shapes, and I rounded up spray paint and fabric dye. A couple days work, and voila! We had repros that most people couldn’t even tell weren’t original!
So, did you actually have reenactments or a parade or both. And if you had reenactments did anybody play the Germans?
And did you have cell phone coverage in these reenactments? I thought I would stay on topic with the post
We did three styles of events. Parades (usually just marching, though our group put together a little “running battle” with a group doing British), public re-enactments (the usual campsite show-and-tell with a shooting match in an open field) and “tacticals”, where no public was permitted and we did live-action wargaming. All the fun of real war, but no live rounds.
)
And I was one of the group playing the Germans, at least for a while. I then moved over to the Brits, then (just before my health crashed) was helping a group get a Polish Para unit going. Plus I had a US Army Air Corps uniform for airshows, and a US Signal Corps get-up for hanging around the US groups. And last but not least, a solo gig I did as a Royal Hamilton Light Infantry soldier, mainly for our numerous vacations throughout Canada. (I once got mobbed by a group of WW2 vets at a museum, who had great fun adjusting my uniform and gear, in truly minute increments, so I would look “proper”. Fun but strange. I was also bought lunch by a small group of actual Hamilton vets after explaining I was doing research on their unit, and had driven “all the way from Chicago just to see their museum”. That, and about a dozen OTHER stops we had planned, but it sounded good!
And most of our sites were outside cell range, not that any of us had money for a cell phone. I DO still have about a dozen US field phones and a switchboard. (Field phones are the “phones in bags” like they used on MASH. Except MASH never had them wired in, so they wouldn’t have worked. OOPS!
Thanks for a complete detailed report of your hobby on my hobby (blogging).
Your health crashed? What do you do for a hobby now? Oh, and cell phone something or other (I have to stay on topic)
If you want the long-form history, write me on the side – it’ll take too much space here. Short-form – I’ve suffered from bouts of migraines for decades, they come for a few months, then disappear for a few years. Last batch arrived in 1999, and haven’t left. Got so bad, I can’t work, am on heavy pain meds (Vicodin), and ended up losing both my job and house in the Chicago suburbs. Moved in with friends in this area in 2002, ended up staying here when they moved to Alaska. Haven’t re-enacted since then, my job is now housekeeper, my hobby is annoying folk on the Net. You’re my latest victim!
Sorry to read about your condition. I can’t imagine having constant pain in my head.
Glad to have you here to annoy all the great readers of Dummies of the Year!
The biggest pain (pun intended) is the heat and exertion make the headaches worse – hence no running around in the summer, wearing 70-year-old wool and slinging rifles. So I turned to the Net to find stuff about old board wargames I used to play (Avalon Hill and SPI,for you fellow gamers, as well as the great Steve Jackson). I found stuff related to a role-playing game called Traveller which allowed for building of starships, then managed to stumble on a discussion board for WW2 warships that were designed but never built. That led to a couple blogs, and I keep branching out onto new (to me) blogs. You, if I recall correctly, are a 5th level branch, from the lovely lady at Young American Wisdom back to Tori Nelson’s “The Ramblings”, back to Jamie Shea’s “The Life of Jamie”, back to Mark Pakulak’s “The Idiot Speaketh”. (Of course my root node would be an Idiot!
)
Hey, when you have to hibernate all summer long, ya got plenty of time to meander. And I am a world-class meanderer!
The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry? You’re kidding! That’s where I’m from! What museum did you mean, the Warplane Heritage Museum?
Binky- Meet me at the bottom of the post – my replies are getting smushed, and my computer ain’t happy with it!
“UNICYLCE” I haven’t heard of that word…haha
Only time I have an issue is the jerk on the plane who thinks the turn off your cell phone so we can take off doesn’t apply to him because his business is more important than our being on time.
Thanks for that pointer, Bearman. I have a form of “anti-dyslexia” – my brain runs its’ own spell checker. Problem is, it has a few words it just can’t keep straight, like desperate. It wants that second “e” to be an “a”!
Okay, now I see the mistake I made. At least I know that Bearman made it that far into the post.
My friend took a trip with me to Europe and did this. Except he wasn’t talking on the phone doing business, he was listening to music! I told him to put it up and he didn’t until the flight attendant told him a 2nd time.
Honestly, I don’t know how some people survived before the cell phone.
I don’t get it.
But then I’m old.
And was around before the cell phone.
Don’t feel bad, SIG. I remember rotary dial phones, and the huge marketing blitz announcing “touch tone”! I had a real “old fart” moment yesterday – one of the office supply stores has an ad for a 8 Gigabyte memory stick for 6 bucks. It’s half the size of ONE of the chips in my first computer, an Apple 2, which used 8 chips to produce a whopping 16k. Yes, kilobytes. My first I/O device? A cassette tape recorder – no disks, sorry.
Hey, I used a cassette deck on a TI/9a and a Commodore 64!
Hey Binky- Ever play with punch cards? I did ONCE, which was twice too often. I learned programming using 8-hole paper tape to feed programming into a DEC PDP-8E mini-computer – biggest program it could handle was 53K. The I/O terminals were Teletypes, reading in the tape and printing all output onto paper like a printer. A buddy of mine and I rigged a program that emulated normal input, but when you typed “RUN”, the Teletype would go nuts, spooling paper, ringing the bell, printing out tape, and then finally launching into a “You have illegally entered NORAD missile launch command. Enter cancellation codes or missiles will launch in 60 seconds!”
We terrified more fellow students with that….
a
Binky, I have no clue what you just said.
John, with the comments you provide for Dummies of the Year! I am sure to get interesting search terms from Google
If you want, Mel, I can try to come up with a response that uses the words “naked”, “women”, “boobs”, and a few others, with none of the post being rude or unsuitable for children! That should light up the search tags a bit, no?
It sure would John. Only problem I have run into is when a post contains the “P” word. My adsense don’t appear for that post.
For example Conan O’Brien
“P” word? As in a synonym for cat? Or the male dangly bit? Not sure what “P” word you mean. Though if products and/or celebrities gain you points, I suppose I could write a tale of how Stephen Colbert invented Coke so Charlie Sheen could drink with Barack Obama and John Boehner in between rounds of debt ceiling negotiations.
That was real creative. Hey Google spiders, did you see what John wrote?
If you want to know which “P” word I am talking about then click on the Conan O’Brien link I gave you.
The punch-cards were a bit before my time, but my brothers used them for some programming at the university. I did do a punch card once for a math class (just the card, no computer to run it!). The program you wrote sounds like something I would have done.
I did write a neat little piece that would act exactly like the terminal itself, all the way down to listing the whole program or specific lines. When you typed “RUN”, though, it ate the program without a single sign. I even managed to code to intercept the “CTRL C” (stop or interrupt in BASIC) without killing my program! I did that one after some idiot started bragging about how much he knew, trying to impress the other kids. I was a year ahead of my class, mooching off a kid who was a year ahead and teaching me one hour after he learned for HIS class. The NORAD one was always my fave, though. The computer was in a little windowed sub-room off the main math “study lab” room, so we could watch the terror that ensued. Most kids would just get frantic and ask the teacher’s aid for help. One kid actually ran from the room screaming!
I got picked on a lot as a kid, though I could defray most of it with humour, hence my current state of borderline insanity. When I found something with which I could deliver payback, I went EVIL!!!
I really like dehydrated apple chips. We’re talking about snacks, right?
I was around before them also. Before Nintendo, Biggie Size, DVD Players (now it’s Blue Ray), When Michael Jackson was black, The Cosby Show was a hit, but not before Pinball Machines.
I’d type a nice witty reply here, but I’m driving my car and on my cell phone and listening to some MP3′s and can’t do everything at…Stupid drivers!!
I should have put a picture of you Binky on one of my points up top.
Good post.
In Iceland it is also illegal to drive and talk on the phone. There is low tolerance for jerks that talk on their phones in the cinema and in places where phones aren’t allowed, but there are always some jerks that have no appreciation for others and talk anyway.
Iceland sounds a lot like Germany where I live. I’m from America though, where it is not illegal (at least the state where I am from) to talk on one’s phone.
Oh, and Iceland was my 3rd favorite entry in the European Song Contest.
A few weeks ago a kid was killed after stepping in front of a car. He was listening to his iPod and texting
How sad. I know profs in college who read books while driving and walking. I kind of wonder if the same thing could happen using older technology.
Dead serious here – I used to see people driving their cars at over 60mph (on a “mini-freeway” where I used to live) while reading a newspaper. A full size newspaper (The Chicago Tribune). Although my personal anti-favourite was the idiot who almost rear-ended me, driving his BMW with one hand on his cell and another holding his coffee while reading something in his lap. Thankfully his car’s driving skill far surpassed his….
I can’t even handle a full size newspaper when I am sitting at the dinner table let alone if I was driving 60mph. Good grief!
Binky- The museum I “drove all the way from Chicago” to see is the RHLI museum at the John Foote VC Armoury on James Street North. We did (and do on every trip) also swing through the CWH museum. We first saw it back before their terrible hangar fire, where they lost a Spit and a Hurricane, and almost lost the Lanc. We’ve also dropped in to the RCAF Museum at CFB Trenton (I adore Trenton, I’d move there in a heartbeat if I had the money), and I got mauled (“adjusted”) at a tiny museum in Brantford. I think that covers it all.
Do you still live in Hamilton? We never really got the chance to wander the town, and would still love to (especially now that I have infinite time, albeit zero spare money). And if the politics don’t get straightened out down here, well, I may just be contacting the RHLIs to see if they need a full-time, live-in docent for their museum. Among many things I learned while re-enacting, is to sleep VERY rough. A cot in the gymnasium of the Argyll & Sutherlands area of the armoury would do just fine!
I’m still in Hamilton, and only a few miles from the Armoury, but have never been to that museum. The Warplane museum is pretty neat. Never been to Trenton, either, actually. Hamilton isn’t a great tourist town, but we have a few things like Dundurn Castle, a Destroyer, and the Lion Safari. Toronto, though, has enough to keep you busy for a long while.
Ques que c’est Destroyer? Which destroyer, where? Buffalo (NY) has a nice waterfront museum, with a light cruiser, a DD named after the 5 Sullivan Brothers lost on the CL USS Juneau, and (if I recall) a Gato-class fleet sub. Ottawa has a nice air museum with some REALLY rare birds – I believe they had both a Heinkel 162 and 219, the first a first-gen jet fighter that just missed WW2, and the later an excellent night fighter that Goering kept suppressed ’cause he didn’t care for Ernst Heinkel. And if you ever find your way down here to Ohio, it would be my honour and pleasure to take you through the USAF Museum in Dayton at Wright-Patterson Air Base.
The RHLI museum isn’t terribly large, but it covers the Regiment’s entire history, and focuses on their “moment of glory”, the horrifically-misplanned Dieppe invasion in August, 1942. John Weir Foote was the unit Chaplain, and volunteered to say behind with the wounded when the main force retreated back off the beach. He received the VC for doing so. The RHLIs also made the greatest progress of any of the units hitting Dieppe, going farthest into the town before the recall order came.
So – can you tell I have a wee bit of a soft spot for my Rileys?
The destroyer is the HMCS HAIDA. (“She is the last remaining example of the 27 Tribal Class destroyers built for the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy between 1937 and 1945.”) It’s down at the waterfront, where we now have a few nice parks. She was in Toronto in the 70′s, and came to Hamilton about 10 years ago. Haven’t been on it in about 30 years!
I should check out the RHLI museum one day; apparently you have to make an appointment. The armoury is a beautiful building.
Maybe one day I will make it down to Ohio, thanks!
I enjoyed you observations at the mall. lol.
Nice observations but it bored me to tears. Thanks though
Gosh Mel, do you know how hard it is reading such a long post while I’m riding my motorscooter to work??? But seriously this issue needed adressing & I’m glad someone finally had the guts to do it. I’ve nearly been hit a number of times by phone talking drivers. It’s illegal here too & has been advertised a lot on tv. People know it’s illegal but when they get busted for it it’s a case of cry & moan about how the cops are just revenue raising. People/morons just don’t seem to understand how dangerous it is.
One I hate is when I’m serving a customer at work & they answer their phone during the process. To me that is the height of rudeness.
Motorscooter? I thought you guys downunda hopped to work on your kangaroos.
Same goes here in Germany. People look at the law as a suggestion. The 10 Commandments are The 10 Suggestions. Absolutely so respect for authority or authority figures (though that Hitler guy didn’t win any points for authority figures).
I bet your blood pressure goes up a tad bit when they answer their phone. Just pass gas the next time a customer insists on being rude. Even make a sign warning them what will be the consequences if they don’t just let it ring.
man, you are right on about all of them!!! Even worse are those who text while they are driving! and the cell phone light in the movie theater? Man, that is a big NO NO! Glad you brought this up. btw, so Twitter is not big in Europe? didn’t know about that.
People will text here but I don’t know (personally) one person who has a twitter account.
I’m the US by the way. Its late at night so I apologize for any bad grammar. This post is exactly on par with my annoyances. Everywhere I go I make a point to see how many people are on their phones recently. Restaurants and Movie theaters are the worst! My husband and I people watch. And seriously, people don’t go out on dates to talk to each other, they go out on dates to stare at their phone instead of their partners! This happens with almost every young couple we see. People can’t wait in line anymore without reaching for their phone. Whatever happened to having your brain relax? Its like people have to be entertained every second of the day! Just the other day I went to IHOP and sat on the waiting benches across from 5 girls that walked in together and sat down. All of them had 2 things, their wallets and cell phones. Each girl was not talking to each other, but on their phone texting/gaming/tweeting. They did this for like 20 minutes, with not a word to each other! (Then I left so who knows how long). I think this is a huge problem, we need to start teaching our kids not to be on the phones so much, its seriously dumbing down our society. Are parents not realizing this? Sorry for the rant, this is just something that cheeses me off.