Cell Phones
Earlier today I was chatting with one of my many brother-in-laws (brothers-in-law?) and I was reminded of a pretty good story that I realized I had never shared. This happened while we were at "Paint Your Wagon". In the middle of the play I heard some faint music. Just then the actors on the stage said, "Can you hear that?" So I figured that it was part of the play, that perhaps the lead actress was supposed to be off in the distance singing. But the music started getting louder and the louder it got the less it sounded like part of the play. But the actors kept acting like they were listening to something off stage. But soon they clarified that they heard a coach off in the distance. Well whatever else could be said about the music it did not sound like an approaching stage coach.
Well as you can guess, it was a cell phone with some song (a recent pop song, by the sounds of it, but I have no idea which song it might have been.) And I guess it was on a setting where it started out relatively quiet and then just keep getting louder and louder. Of course you would expect that in a theater that first off people would turn off their cell phones, or at least set them to vibrate. And failing that, that they would turn it off pretty quickly once it started ringing, but this just keep going and going. I leaned over the edge of the balcony to see if I could figure out who it was, and it didn't take me long, there in about the middle of the loge, a young lady was ripping her purse apart trying to find her phone. She was eventually successful, but I would guess that it probably rang for a full minute or even a minute and a half, which when you're in the situation we were seems like an eternity.
The thing that brought it up was this video my b-i-l sent me. It basically goes through all the different varieties of annoying cell phone user, the too loud ring, the "hands-free guy". Still they missed the biggest one of all, the driving cell phone talker. I can't remember the last time I was annoyed by some driver and when I pulled even with them they weren't on a cell phone (yes I know that's a double negative, but hopefully it still makes sense).
Yeah, yeah
Well as you can guess, it was a cell phone with some song (a recent pop song, by the sounds of it, but I have no idea which song it might have been.) And I guess it was on a setting where it started out relatively quiet and then just keep getting louder and louder. Of course you would expect that in a theater that first off people would turn off their cell phones, or at least set them to vibrate. And failing that, that they would turn it off pretty quickly once it started ringing, but this just keep going and going. I leaned over the edge of the balcony to see if I could figure out who it was, and it didn't take me long, there in about the middle of the loge, a young lady was ripping her purse apart trying to find her phone. She was eventually successful, but I would guess that it probably rang for a full minute or even a minute and a half, which when you're in the situation we were seems like an eternity.
The thing that brought it up was this video my b-i-l sent me. It basically goes through all the different varieties of annoying cell phone user, the too loud ring, the "hands-free guy". Still they missed the biggest one of all, the driving cell phone talker. I can't remember the last time I was annoyed by some driver and when I pulled even with them they weren't on a cell phone (yes I know that's a double negative, but hopefully it still makes sense).
Yeah, yeah
posted by DireKobold at 1:48 PM
4 Comments:
Drivers on cell phones? What's that about people in glass houses?
Yeah, but I had a faithful co-pilot who I knew would spring into action at the first sign of trouble.
I've tried a couple of times to commit to stop talking on the phone when driving, but it sure is hard to ignore your phone when it's ringing and you're 30 minutes from where you're going and you don't want to have to go through the hassle of listening to the voicemail or returning the call. My glass house is surrounded by a rock garden.
It's "brothers-in-law." Same with "attorneys general." I would say this is because the second part ("in-law" or "general") is actually acting as an adjective. Since we don't tend to have adjectives in English at the tail end, but before the word modified, it tends to look strange to us.
In some other (I would say more advanced) countries, you can buy a device that jams the carrier signal for cell phones at low power -- handy for places such as theaters and churches. They're illegal in the US, though. Dagnabit.
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