Once upon a time I understand the men and women of this so-called human race were virile, fecund, lush of womb and testicle and procreated like their survival depended upon it, and it did, back then. With time and such little effort, they copulated without a care or a thought to encumbrances due to an excessive abundance of resource, varied fare of receptacle and stick, and of bountiful provender and refreshment in fruit ripe or barely so, plucked with great abandon, cherries popped with the shout and pomp of uncorking of champagne bottles at a ball and they proceeded to choke the earth full of their mostly proscribed offspring.
This is happily no longer the case, with the introduction of the mobile microwave, sorry, mobile telephone, gynaecologists and some folks whose titles rhyme with proctor have assured me that this device makes you increasingly senile each moment you use it and shortly after you stuff it into your pocket next to the family jewels they are cooked to a fine consistency, or for the ladies whose telephones reside in purses hovering about their ovarian sacs are treated to a reheat cycle of their progeny accompanying their walk across town.
In the past few months I have observed a number of humans and I have noticed a few things that i find rather deleterious in their behaviour when they happen to be in possession of or in close proximity to this gadget;
1. Fire! More fire!
These are the ones who due to insufficient signal strength due to the judicious placement of base-stations at the maximum possible distances from each other to maximise coverage while minimising the perspicuity of conversations held on said network while enhancing profits by ensuring the first five minutes in every conversation are spent yelling, “Hello! Hello! Can you hear me? How about now?” while walking every which way but straight up into the stratosphere, or holding the phone over their heads, much like revellers at a concert when the artiste on stage beckons them to add more fire or something to that effect, trying to determine where the signal is strong enough to sustain a conversation before gathering the pluck to attempt said and shortly venture upon pleasantries.
This method also works for messages “stuck” on the network days after the sender has called and concluded the business that was being conveyed in the tardy message. The same herd of humans are those who shall not rest till they see that all the bars on the signal meter are lit up indicating maximum possible level. They are to be seen shuffling about tripping over potted plants and squishing previously much loved pets and knocking unfortunate trinkets and family photos off shelves and window sills while hunting for the one elusive bar. They may mark ‘X’es on the spots with full or greater signal strength for future reference. In a corner of their living rooms there lies a piece of furniture which gallantly tried to support their weight on one such sojourn but fell fantastically short at the task.
2. Really? Hun, did you pick up my Mercedes from D.T. Dobie?
There are those extremely annoying ilk that are gifted with the gift of gab. One sided of course. Others might expound and proceed to refer to them as kings and masters of monologue, works of art, which they share quite liberally with everyone within and way past a reasonable range of earshot. They take immense pride in name dropping or adding choice phrases into their conversations in a spirited endeavour to elevate their social standing.
I demonstrate; “I thought told you this morning to send the driver to pick up my Mercedes from D.T. Dobie!” or “Sure honey, could you tell Nameless to move up our dinner from Thursday to Wednesday night? Do tell him that we would quite welcome Wahu and the little one, in fact I insist that they must come with her!” leaving the audience with no doubt that they are indeed a person of prestige, then at that instant the instrument they are busy talking into starts ringing loudly. I strenuously recommend that you dispossess the offender of the instrument and introduce it to non-pliant areas of their anatomy ensuring that said device meets their person at speeds greater than terminal velocity.
3. Mobile, mobile telephone warehouses.
I have observed with increasing trepidation the progression on the promulgation of mobile telephone handsets and the unremitting growth and increase in the number and variety of telephone companies peddling lines, made worse by new tariff structures which prove advantageous at certain times of the day forcing the hapless consumer to buy several handsets in pursuance of the cheapest possible phone call at any particular time. I have observed a victim juggling four telephone handsets, three of which were engaged in a ringing competition while he was trying to dismiss a fourth caller, and a fifth who was on call waiting on the same line.
There are the closet warehousers that choose to hide theirs under their sweaters, in the various pockets of a coat, in the dark recesses of their humongous bags, or secreted in their socks. I have had the misfortune run into one, in a most undignified fashion when they stopped dead in their tracks, right in front of me and bending over to retrieve the instrument from the woolly extremities forcing me to bump into their posterior, which I must say was rather too pliant for my distinguished tastes. They do not fool me, every time a phone rings they pat themselves down or dumpster dive in the purse so efficiently that they should be employed by the night clubs who at the moment are finding it hard to find well trained staff capable of finding whole litre bottles of cheap vodka on the persons and in most handbags conveyed by their patrons.
4. Who is the fairest of them all?
In my extensive travels I have found that there are some members of this incredibly fascinating race who still insist on carrying this instrument around even when they do not receive more than one text message or call in a given month. Instead they carry about a fully charged example of the instrument to provide a source of light to bring emergency source of light to dark corridors, steps and selected streets that when the city council in its eagerness to light up the streets end up lighting them on the wrong side of moon. Said specimens have shown that they are not averse to using said object in a dimly lit club, to ascertain the time on their wristwatches; does the phone itself not have a built in clock? Oh, then this lot will walk around patting themselves hoping to find a new email, text message or call vibrating the instrument. I propose that the vibration that this device engages to alert them of an event provides a sensation that may not be polite enough to be mentioned on this blog. Ahem.
Then I met a number of them who every three seconds would pull the phone out of its receptacle, wherever that was, and proceed to poke and prod it searching for a text message or call that they might have missed. I wonder if this is actually to see whether they did receive a text or is it attention-seeking behaviour, which would ultimately ensure that all present in the room shall have a good view of said instrument, more than once every five minutes. I would also endeavour to include the sods who on arriving at a meeting, be it in a restaurant, conference room or even in a garden setting shall proceed to empty their pockets onto the table, lining up the devices and then looking across to you with a triumphant look in their eager eyes. Trump these ones by not adorning the table with similar instruments, better still, you could introduce a big red rotary telephone and plonk it as hard as you can muster on top of theirs. Why remove them from their perfectly cosy perches and proceed to perch it on hard, cold surfaces exposed to extremes, and increase their chances of taking a sip of your spilled coffee?
5. Zombies, the unreachable and electricity thieves.
There is this lot who are still confused as to whether their heads are receptacles for their limited volume of brain matter or the essential bits of a ramrod. These are mostly found ambling aimlessly around in a semi stupor running into all forms of road furniture benches and trash cans are not spared the carnage as they are mercilessly kicked under passing buses.
This is the same specimen who can text so fast and effortlessly that they are rumoured to be all thumbs. Imagine that, ten thumbs, the possibilities for texting, chat and checking and replying to email are virtually infinite, so are the hospital bills and their new insurance rate after they put in a claim to their insurance broker, on more than one occasion claiming injuries related to walking out of a moving bus while otherwise engaged in replying to an email that would have well waited till the bus was stationary.
There is another misguided group of this herd which always fails to charge their instrument on any one evening and spend most of their day looking for a socket to plug in their charger, which they never fail to ever carry for some reason, or their phone over-stretching the resources of their service provider as the lady in the exchange keeps telling their callers about how the telephone is off or out of coverage area, sometimes in more than one language!
Villains and Zeroes
There are those who text while driving and those who play music without the facility of headphones needed to ensure private listening. I need not mention these miscreants as I understand they have a price on their heads and several strapping bounty hunters are searching for them and they are preferred dead on delivery as they would not be paid otherwise. We need not encourage them, at the moment they are an endangered species, their elimination is the sure goal that we strive to achieve.
Natural selection hopefully shall eliminate these ones before we do get a go a them though.
| Underneath Your Clothes ^ Shakira [acoustic]|
Comments on this entry are closed.