Do I REALLY Have To Tell You....? Well, Apparently, At Least Once More!

Ladies & Gentlemen,

I'm always amazed at the incredible stupidity of people.
Not ALL people, of course. But the number of imbeciles per capita is rising at an alarming rate and the ratio of people who could find their hindquarters with both hands and a flashlight to those who couldn't is dwindling dangerously.

My personal pet peeves have got to be...well...people -  although I'm sure it seems to you that I have more peeves (both pet- and otherwise) than anyone on earth!
I do tend to go on and on but only in hopes that the situations will somehow change for the better.
So far? No such luck.

Here's a rather abridged listing of suggestions by which I've been plagued in only the last few days:

1. The overture is part of the performance.......when the lights go down and the music starts STOP TALKING.
2. A library, a church, a synagogue, a museum. All these places are designed for quiet contemplation, worship or learning. When you enter these hallowed halls STOP TALKING.
3. Planes, trains and buses are meant for the use of many individuals at once. Most of these people that you'll meet on these conveyances are strangers to you (unless you happen to be traveling in a group) and being strangers, are not interested in sharing every little detail of your day, be it in the form of your personal conversation or your phone call. STOP TALKING; at the very least STOP TALKING so loudly.
4. There are many things which amaze me (in a bad way) these days. One of which is the fact that I have a hearing loss in my right ear from a childhood infection and I STILL keep my voice steady and at a public decibel level that would not make an acid rocker weep in pain. When in a public place - ANY public place - keep it down. Your companions are RIGHT NEXT TO YOU. Why scream? 
5. Jae and I only half jokingly talk about someday coming into a windfall of money and investing in hearing aid research. It seems to us that all these kids who are playing their ipods, car radios and sound systems SO loudly are all going to be young to middle-aged deaf people who are going to want tiny, cool looking hearing aids and we could be on the ground floor for making a fortune! Playing your music in public is for your enjoyment only. TURN IT DOWN at least enough so I can't hear every single (and I use this term loosely) lyric and bass beat. It can't be doing your ears any good at all.
6. When I was in college I had a job singing in the choir of the First Methodist Church of DeKalb, Illinois. The reason I mention this is that I was in awe of the church planners for building a sound proofed room with windows looking into the sanctuary and rocking chairs and other seats and speakers piping in the service so that the mothers with crying babies could attend the service without their child's distress interrupting other people's worship.  If your child is crying and will not stop TAKE HIM OUT OF THE ROOM, the theater, the doctor's office, the - whatever - until you can calm them down.

These things are not terribly difficult and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure them out. Just be open to the thought that you (or yours) could be responsible for annoyances that are easily remedied. PAY ATTENTION to those around you and your environment.

- SSG

Thinning the Herd ... Sounds Nice, Doesn't It?

Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Today, I'd like to talk again about cellphones and the potential they have to do what plagues, siroccos, hurricanes, tidal waves and other natural disasters can do...THINNING THE HERD.

I am completely convinced that the best thing about combining technology with stupid people is the almost certain possibility that technology will go on and the stupid people who don't know how and when to use it will....well....NOT.

Cases in point:

What is the best possible outcome if some troglodyte crosses a busy intersection AGAINST THE LIGHT while texting?

You betcha! Idiot soup.

What is the best thing that could happen to a child's future with a mother so amazingly brilliant as to push a stroller with one hand and talk on a phone with the other?

That's right! The child who is most likely the spawn of the moronic mother leaves this earthly plane not being able to grow to adulthood to produce an even thinner and murkier gene pool than the generation that brought him into the world.

How about the outlandishly thoughtless individual who uses a public bus to tell the world the most private things about his or her life AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS?

Perhaps relegated to the specific circle of hell that is determined to house the foolish souls that impede countless others on their quiet journeys toward inner peace - or just their own jobs and errands of the day? I say, BRAVO!

Sound a bit harsh? Well, I hastily admit that I would be happier thinking that these people were learning how insane, stupid and dangerous their actions are.....But apparently THEY'RE NOT.

What is it about these people that convinces them that situations that used to be havens for quiet, reflection and decorum should now be defiled as their own personal phone booth?!

The theater - both live and cinema. Museums. Public transport. The streets. Even libraries and churches have become scenes of flamboyantly rude and possibly dangerous behavior using cell phones (and personal music players and the like).

One major thing to say right here:

NOT ONE PERSON - NO MATTER HOW BRILLIANT OR COORDINATED - CAN MULTI-TASK WELL ENOUGH TO USE ONE OF THESE DEVICES IN PUBLIC WITHOUT IRRITATING OR ENDANGERING THEMSELVES OR SOMEONE ELSE.

NO ONE.

Here are a few things I'd like to suggest - STRONGLY:

• If you feel you must make or take a phone call while walking down the sidewalk...STEP ASIDE and let the pedestrians around you get on with their day. People who talk on their phones tend to slow their pace dramatically. Pay attention to those around you.
• DON'T text while walking. Just don't. It's stupid, careless, inconsiderate of those around you, potentially dangerous and just NOT NECESSARY. Nothing isn't important enough that you can't stop, step to the side and finish your "conversation" without pissing off others or getting run over by a passing car or truck.
• Turn off your phone AS YOU ENTER any building where your father or your grandfather would have taken off his hat. For those of you whose relatives never wore hats, here's a somewhat comprehensive list:

Churches
Synagogues
Theaters
Schools
Libraries
Courtrooms
Hospitals
Weddings
Funerals
The Opera
The Symphony
The Ballet
Movie Houses

Anywhere you can imagine being pissed off by the intrusion if it was someone else's phone and it was YOUR event that was being interrupted.

Turn it off. Not just on vibrate. Off means off...no calls, no listening to messages and, for the love of God, no texting! That light bothers people who have something else on their minds other than your pathetic little life and how in demand your attention is. Even brain surgeons, whose lives save lives can leave their phones with the house manager at the theatre to be contacted in the case of an emergency. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that all of you who are reading this are not brain surgeons. For those who are, I apologize, offer you a mulligan on this and, again, suggest the house manager thing.

• When you step on a bus, in a city like New York - or anywhere actually - and there are other people around you SAY GOODBYE. Promise to call back. Do NOT continue your conversation as if you were alone at home or in your office. For one thing, it's rude. For another, the people around you just don't care about you or your life and are just trying to get from one place to another and have paid their fare - just as you have - to ride in peace.
• Imagine that you were working as a cashier at a bank, or a waitperson, or a receptionist or one of a million different service oriented careers. Go ahead, imagine....I'll wait......okay, are you there in that world? Great. Now imagine - now this won't be hard at all - that someone comes up to you while you're doing your job brilliantly (because I know that if you were in one of these positions that required you to be polite, kind and cheerful to strangers you would be brilliant, right? Of course you would. Why wouldn't you be?) and this person had a cell phone seemingly surgically attached to their ear and was completely ignoring you while they talked to whomsoever was on the other end of the call. How would that make you feel? Angry? A little hurt? Full on pissed off? Okay. Imagine that person on the phone and ignoring the waiter or the cashier or the receptionist was YOU. What? You say that that person IS you?! Well, STOP THAT!
• Elevators. Yes, they LOOK sort of like phone booths but, surprisingly, THEY'RE NOT. Before stepping onto a crowded elevator tell the person you're talking to that you'd appreciate it if they could hold till you get to your floor or offer to call them back when you reach your destination. It makes most people uncomfortable to listen in on a conversation that is meant to be private. 

I know I could go on for days and days and days and days and days and days...oops, sorry!

But, here's the thing...there are a lot of ways that technology has helped and continues to help our society, but there has to be some way of tempering the use of it to fit in with acceptable social mores. In other words, PAY ATTENTION to how your use of these gifts effects the people around you. It's more important than you may think. People are getting more and more crowded into less and less space and we all have seen what happens when the "herd" stampedes. Be a force for intelligence and good manners in the world and I can guarantee it will become a better place. Well, for you and me, anyway. And, dear readers, aren't we just that little bit more important than the rest of the herd?

As always, dear readers, I encourage your feedback and comments about these subjects and my opinions about them. Please, tell your like-minded friends about my little forum and have them join in as readers, followers and friends of the more genteel of the urban idea makers.

- SSG

Yes...Hello? No, I'm not doing anything...EXCEPT BEING RUDE!!! - The Modern Cellphone Debacle

 Ladies & Gentlemen,

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

To talk of many things

Of shoes, and ships and sealing wax..."

...Of obnoxious people who have no idea how to act  in public with a piece of machinery that, I'll wager, if Lewis Carroll knew would be in existence and so misused, it would have been he, and NOT the Queen, screaming, "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!"

Yes, my friends, the time has come to talk about the illustrious, phenomenal, horrifying, satanic, convenient, awesome, dreadful, brilliant, stupid, terrifying, marvelous....Cellular Phone.

A mobile communications tool that has changed the world in which we live...and NOT always for the better.

Now, I want to go on record first by saying that I am more than a little happy to say that the cellphone has been very good to me and I was proudly carrying one way back when they were the size of a small Volkswagen. However, even though the world's sense of decorum hasn't caught up with technology, I always used the utmost thoughtfulness and control when using it in public.

For clarity's sake I'm going to say now that when I refer to "cellphones" in this blog post I am referring, not only to phones, but also to PDAs, Blackberries, handheld gaming devices and everything else that makes us focus on our hands and ears and not to the world and the people around us.

Let it be said that I love, love, love my phone and, yes, I feel sort of nekkid when I don't have it with me. But I come from a time - and I feel incredibly old when I say this - that when someone wanted to get hold of you on the telephone and you weren't actually at home, they - get this - WOULD HAVE TO CALL AGAIN!

I KNOW, right?! Unheard of! The phone in your home would just ring and ring and ring. There were no answering machines, no voice mail...almost like caveman times, right?

Nowadays (and isn't THAT an old folk's term - Hey, Sonny, fetch me my teeth from that glass over there!) people will actually get angry if you don't have voice mail at the VERY least.

I'm all for progress but I'd also like to see it tempered with a little intelligent thought and courtesy when it comes to taking advantage of these new amenities in public. Again, let me remind you, dear readers and followers that I don't consider manners to be a club with which to beat society into submission. No, I just think that everyone could be a little happier in this world if we thought about the other guy every now and again.

 

So, anyway...

TO BE CONTINUED.......