Mobileless on Planet Earth
This past Friday, at exactly 4:04 in the afternoon, I officially became the last person on the planet not to have a mobile phone. The news was delivered to me not by any formal ceremony or letter, but by the sound of Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” emanating from somewhere on Mrs. Taylor, my 81-year-old neighbor, who I ran into at that time by the front door of our apartment building.
“No, I want you to short 10,000 shares of SXB on the NYSE and I want you to do it now. You call yourself a broker,” she belted into her sparkling new mobile device.
“Excuse me,” she said when she saw me, placing her Nokia back into her coat pocket. “My grandson and his fiancée bought this silly contraption for me last Christmas. I didn’t want to be the last person on the planet to own one, if you know what I mean.”
“Incidentally, why is it I never see you carry a mobile phone?” she asked.
Nowadays it is clear that it is not merely a matter of my being the last human to store a mobile on his or her person at every hour of the day and night. Judging by the news accounts one reads in various segments of the popular press, many an animal has mastered the ability to dial on a digital numerical board to rescue families from hurricanes and fires, as well as book a two-week winter vacation in Hawaii.
It would appear that in the very near future instead of having to rely on fingerprints and retinal scans for identification, it would be far easier for federal agencies to supply all the inhabitants of a country with a personalized, individual ringtone.
I have not always held such antediluvian opinions on the subject of mobile phone. In the mid-1990s, as the first in my circle of friends to possess a cell phone, I held various delusions at the time of being on the cutting edge of a trend, quite an accomplishment for me as I am usually on the edge that doesn’t cut.
Indeed, in the time before cell phones had hit their stride I would frequently be the only person on a bus jabbering away with my distant interlocutor — while having to use both hands to hold the ancient device — in a conversation that usually went something like this: “Hi Bob, can you hear me? I’m on a bus. I’ll call you back when I get off the bus.” Today I am leading the way by being the only person on a bus not talking to some unseen third party about what I had for lunch, what a jerk so-and-so is or intimate details of my private life at a volume audible to all my fellow passengers.
Likewise, I was at the forefront of the ancillary text message craze. Back in 1999, I spent four hours drafting the following SMS to one of my friends: “Out. Back at 5. C U then.” These days I clearly stand out as someone whose fingers can remain relatively stationary for more than ten minutes at a time, refraining from any impulse to text a message to my wife such as “Don’t forget to take the peas out of freezer” – a message which I had already posted on our front door, on the fridge and at 50 other assorted locations in the apartment before I left home in the morning.
While perhaps not the ultimate geek when it comes to numerous other aspects of technology, I hardly consider myself a Luddite. In fact, I have two websites, I am regularly on Facebook and I reveal every minute, trivial detail of my life on Twitter. The difference between unveiling information about myself on these forums is that others can choose whether or not they wish to watch the latest video of my cat playing with a bottle cap, read my recipe for Moldovan dumplings or discover my innermost thoughts about Sarah Boyle.
Whereas with mobile phones, trifling tidbits of the lives of strangers follow me wherever I go: on the aforementioned bus rides to movie theaters, restaurants, at work, baseball games, even while I was recuperating from appendicitis in the hospital. There is no escape. Certainly one cannot find solace from the mobile epidemic abroad where the citizens of most other countries make mobile phone usage by North Americans look tame and tranquil by comparison.
Notwithstanding the anti-social annoyances – which incidentally every mobile user in the world seems to agree are annoying when they are not performing the annoying acts themselves – are the costs of using the darn device, a device that in 99.9 percent of cases serves as nothing more than a spousal GPS system.
Unless the vast majority of the world’s cell phone users have connections I don’t, the money saved by not joining most calling plans would be enough to take Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen out for one night on the town each month. But then again, she probably wouldn’t want to be seen with a guy who doesn’t own a mobile.
Top 5 Most Bizarre But True Stories
by Eric Cho
Only in Australia.
Water Buffalo Takes the Plunge!
Earlier this month, a Howard Springs man finished mowing his lawn and noticed a water buffalo casually strolling up the driveway. Karl Stowers was stunned as he watched it jump in his pool and swim. Mr. Stowers yelled at it to no avail and then lured the beast out of the pool with food. It proceeded to run across his freshly mowed lawn and roll around in a mud puddle. The buffalo may be the same one spotted strolling around in the yards of other Howard Springs’ residents.
Love Soars to New Heights!
A few days after Christmas, a North Cairns police officer heard voices from above and spotted two people climbing down a crane access ladder over a construction site. Elisha Walker and Nigel Meighan were each recently released on a good behaviour bond after they plead guilty to the stunt. Mr. Meighan told the magistrate it was just a silly thing he and Walker thought up when they saw the crane, and they had not considered the consequences since they were drunk at the time.
Praying Mantis Becomes a Video Star!
A Brisbane couple, Maria and Rod Thompson, has captured amazing video of a praying mantis chasing a computer mouse cursor around the screen. Mrs. Thompson said the mantis was seen in the home before, and one night it poked its head over the computer as her husband was checking email. When the mouse was bumped, the praying mantis surprised them by leaping at the cursor. This began a twenty-minute game, and the couple filmed the unusual spectacle that can now be seen on YouTube.
Truck Driver Gets Stuck on the Phone!
43-year-old Darwin truck driver, Gye Gardner, broke his mobile phone’s headset and repaired it with superglue. His boss called before it dried, and it stuck to his ear. He said he usually kept the headset in his ear most of the day, and friends even jokingly suggested that he leave it stuck and plug his ear into the power point at night to charge the headset. Gardner scraped the earpiece from his ear but several pieces of skin were left stuck to the headset. He said removing it was painful, but it did not hurt as much as his pride!
Man is all Thumbs!
Semi-retired gun salesperson and firearms inspector, Geoff McLaren, now has his thumb replaced by his left big toe after his thumb was blown off in a recent workplace accident. Surgeons at Sydney Hospital performed the delicate microsurgery. McClaren says he loves to wear sandals, so a missing toe may cramp his style just a bit!
There are always strange stories to be told and you can find these bits of wonderfully strange news on BigPond News!
World Ice Golf Championship Canceled Again
One athletic competition that has been suffering the consequences of capricious weather in recent years has been the relatively obscure sport of ice golf.
This year’s world ice golf championship, which was scheduled to have been played in Greenland in March, has been called off — as was the 2009 tournament – because the temperature were not, as the organizers say, “Greenlandic”. Greenland is experiencing its warmest winter in over 50 years – making a golf competition on ice too risky for those competing.
The tournament has not been played since 2006 in Uummannaq.
Though a mostly unheralded sport, ice golf does have its loyal devotees, including some top amateurs from the grassier version of the game. In the early years of the noughties, Drambuie sponsored the World Ice Golf Championship.
The tournament, the organizers say, is being postponed until temperatures return to the level Greenland is accustomed to, ie, extremely cold.
Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson Super Bowl Picks
From the totally surreal department …
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson, as two of the people most responsible for bringing the world’s financial system to the brink of the disaster and creating a bailout that mostly benefited the already rich and powerful on Wall Street and that will burden future generations with untold debt and all the while an enormous percentage of the population struggles to hold on to jobs (if they have not been lost already) and homes (ditto), it would be remiss of me not to ask you whether the Colts or the Saints are going to win this year’s Super Bowl.
And the American people have such a low regard for the mainstream media because … ?
Gyula’s Renaissance Carnival: The Party Few Are Familiar With
This online journal hates to keep secrets. Thus we shall let you in on one. Gyula is the name of the secret and it is a gem of a town situated 200 kilometers southeast of Budapest, an area which seems virtually uncharted by English speakers, or for that matter speakers of other languages besides Hungarian.
This weekend Herr and Frau Chortler awoke briefly from their winter hibernation – which traditionally lasts from late September to early June – and descended upon the annual Renaissance Carnival in Gyula. You can see photographs of their sojourn here and here.
This most enjoyable affair saw the virtual pair consume copious amounts of the region’s famous sausages, which were in turn washed down by an equally copious amount of local wines and, for Herr Chortler, stronger libations.
Gyula has other events on the 2010 calendar worthy of a visit. Coming up March 19-21 is a sausage festival, April 16-18 one can partake in a palinka (Hungarian brandy) festival, and in the summer – June 29 to July 12 – a Shakespeare festival will be held with this castle as its backdrop.
