It's bad enough that we take away most of their limited attention span with an audio demand on their measly little brains. Now we're going to have them "just glancing" at their mail as well. I know how compulsive I am about coming home and first thing going over to the computer and checking my email. There's something about electronic mail that is so captivating. I even go to my computer before I swing back outside to check my snail mail. So if I had it on my cellphone -- if I had a cellphone -- I imagine I'd be glancing at that thing more than my rearview mirror. So what are we going to do with "Vision" too?
"Vision" is what they're celling to everyone on this new plan. Surprisingly, it doesn't mean anything like clairvoyance or prophesy, or even simple foresight. It just means all these little games and color email and still-picture transmissions. The things even an idiot could see are going to end up putting unsightly tire marks on every Jersey barrier from here to, well, Atlantic City.
But we'll be safe for a little while longer. The plan I read about in the Costco circular only allows 2MB of email "Vision" service a month. Broadband full motion video is still a couple of years away (I hope). We have some safe time before mini- cameras on the sun visor and earphones on the head allow drivers to send moving pictures back and forth of their non-moving vehicles on lonely commutes.
I guess I understand the motive. It really is lonely in bumper to bumper non-carpool gridlock traffic. And vision email on your cellphone is one further step towards bringing people closer together. Unfortunately closer together is most likely to mean one guy's front bumper in the next guy's back seat.
And I don't know about you but judging by my experience in rush hour traffic there's only one attachment that could really induce me to buy a cellphone. A portable urinal.
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I had a person the other day spout one of those universal generalizations that always gets me cranky and contradictory. Nothing more likely to make me contrary than a blanket statement made by a blithering idiot. This gal was talking to her boyfriend while they were picking out a tuxedo for homecoming. She kept saying things to him like "Everybody gets sparkly vests," and "Nobody wears black anymore." I could tell that the guy wanted to disagree with her but was holding off while he still entertained the hope that "homecoming" meant what you do after rounding third. But finally I had had enough. She was looking at a tux picture with a vaguely Hispanic looking model in it. The tux was called the La Viva.
"Oooh," she cooed. "I just love Latin words, they ALWAYS sound so romantic.
"Yeah," I said, "Like, uh, gonorrhea...."
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Lastly, I was talking to a friend of mine on Saturday. He has enjoyed any number of body adornments in the last few years. Tattoos and piercings and such. He has a LOT of piercings. If he takes out his various nose, ear and forehead rings, studs and barbells he can't hang his head out a moving car window without sounding like an eerie combination of Zamphir and an air raid siren. Dogs start wincing for blocks. So when he suggested to pierce-free me the other day that I get at least an earring I respectfully declined.
"Rick," I said, "I couldn't get anything stuck in me without you looking down your multiply pierced nose. You're so smug already. The last thing our friendship needs is me having to put up with your holier-than-thou attitude...."
