Shut Up and Drive
Bernie drives 40 miles to, and then from work through bumper-to-bumper traffic five or sometimes six days a week. He is able to make up for time lost to driving by conducting business talking on his cell phone while he drives to and from work. Sometimes he spends 36 hours in a week commuting, and it is a hardship, as it is for many in this world of freeways, traffic jams, and bluegrass music jams, and has become a serious detriment to Bernie’s career advancement and overall LSQ (Life Satisfaction Quotient). The cell phone has released Bernie, he can work his normal 50 hours a week, plus another 36 getting to and from work, as it can now be productive. And Bernie is very productive. He sells cell phone systems to businesses, so he is easily able to use his experience and success when he gives his sales pitch to prospective buyers. Bernie is very successful, drives a nice new Honda Accord, and lives thirty miles outside of the city, in a development of new upper range homes called Camelot Country Acres. But that’s only thanks to the cell phone he uses to conduct his most successful sales summations, all while driving.
Two weeks ago Bernie was involved in a minor fender-bender traffic accident. Bernie was traveling along I1113 in Poshie County, following the line of cars traveling into the city, nose-to-tail snaking along at a steady 35 miles per hour. When Bernie slowed and stopped as the cars in front had done before, he was struck by a mini-van packed with eight unruly 12 and 13-year-old boys, and driven by a harried soccer mom. Bernie did not panic stop, he was fully aware of the slowing traffic. Mrs. Mini Van, though, resorted to a tried, true, and extremely effective stopping system; she hit the back of Bernie’s Honda, stopping her with no problem. When his car was struck Bernie almost swallowed his Bokia phone when his head hit the headrest. The phone did remove an eyetooth that Bernie was sure to have dental problems with later in life, so the results were not all bad, but he bit his tongue, teeth snapping with the force of a pit bull, releasing a torrent of red crimson blood, gushing into the mouthpiece of the Bokia, shorting out some tiny circuit inside, and terminating the sales call he was engaged with. He had been talking to a client in Japan that was ready to order a system of phones for his worldwide corporation. Bernie had been soliciting this gentleman for over two years and had finally been able to establish a sort of dialog, making use of Bokia’s fine, hand-held, translator phone.
The lady and the kids? They were fine, only a bit banged up, a few cuts, a bruise or three, though the van did lose some teeth in its grill much like Bernie. None of the van fares suffered, and their lives continued as always. Bernie though, lost a tooth, an account, a company phone, as well as a thirty-five hundred dollar bill directed to his insurance company for rear end damage to his Accord. He even lost ten C/Ds in the trunk mounted C/D player that was damaged and could not be opened, swallowing Bernie’s collection of classic sixties rock that he had studiously downloaded on Napster and transferred to C/D.
But Bernie got a ticket for the accident. You see, driving while wrestling with 12-year-old boys is lawful, but selling cell phones while steering is not in New York beginning this year. And Bernie freely admitted, “Yes I was.” That being an answer to the question asked by concerened State Trooper Jeeves, “Were you talking on the phone?”
You see the great state of New York, in their vast wisdom, gained after days of polls and surveys, has outlawed the use of phones while operating a motor vehicle. Brian Kolb, a dissenting Assemblyman in the New York State Assembly said when queried, “We seem to be reacting to polls more than relying on scientific evidence.” But Brian was being interviewed while on his cell phone, and he had yet to experience cell phone induced wrecks.
Another report of entirely dubious origin, tells of a man who is associated with the Friends of Liberty, a grassroots offshoot of the Earth First Gun Owners Association, saying, “If you outlaw phones, then only criminals will call.” The message is clear, but now the government is looking into cell phone records to determine if its citizens are dialing and driving, now known as DAD.
When awakened by reporters, the National Association of Governor’s Highway Safety Representatives cleared their collective throats and replied, “misguided.” The NAGHSR (naygazer) denies any involvement in rational thought, and declines to amend their collective statement.
Bernie sued Mrs. Mini Van, and evidence was procured that said she was surfing the Internet, reading the grocery ads in the newspaper, and pulling on her jeans, all while driving the boys to their soccer match.
Another Assemblyman, Patrick Mannington, said to reporters with his tongue firmly in his mouth,” It’s still legal to use a laptop, read a newspaper, and change pants while driving.” As he turned away from reporters Mr. Mannington failed to negotiate the stairs and tumbled down to the lobby, landing on a news rack at the bottom of the staircase, scattering quarters all over the tiled marble floor.
But there may indeed be good reason for alarm. “Surveys indicate 85 percent of wireless phone owners use them while driving.” And it is common knowledge that 85 percent of anything leaves 15 percent from a solid 100 percent, bringing us to my contention; Americans will answer any poll, and they will dial and drive to their destruction.
Getting to studies, as opposed to the surveys mentioned in the last paragraph, the New England Journal of Medicine says that cell phones are many times used by surviving car accident victims to report accidents, and subsequently response times are quicker in getting emergency crews to accident scenes. They do not, however report survey results for non-surviving accident victim’s calls.
It is said by technology proponents that phones are no more distracting than listening to the radio, eating food, or even gazing at your face in the vanity mirror, and the biggest problem is created when a DAD is fined for cell phone use, and can’t pay his cell phone bill.
The debate rages, aided with fuel brought to he negotiations by press and media hype, the justice system, and other various soothsayers of ill-repute, and it promises to last deep into the night until the proponents, participants, and components fall asleep, closing their collective eyes.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Hope they Do It BetterT
In my high school years between 1969 and 1972, I was known as a hippie or a freak, those being the opposite of a redneck. In Mississippi you were one or the other. Unless you were black, (now re-named African Americans as if re-naming a race could make up for terrorizing a race for centuries). Freaks had long hair, smoked pot, wrote poetry, befriended blacks, and protested the war in Vietnam. The rednecks, drank beer, played football, drove fast cars, and beat up blacks and hippies.
We hippies, being the new wave revolution, could see that life on Earth was becoming a threat to life on Earth. We were killing people in Nam, on the highways, and at the gallows so to speak, and we were tearing up the land and all of the Earth’s resources. I remember being saddened by the loss of anything in this world, a tree, a bush, or a life. And we stood to be included in the movement of the time to revolutionize America again, and revert to the wise and better ways our American forefathers had envisioned in the eighteenth century.
The freaks talked about revolution and we sided with the militant black groups, the war protesters, and any offbeat group or movement we heard about. In Mississippi we were a decided minority then, and many of us wanted to move to California where the movement was huge and the people were so much more tolerant of our views. We thought.
Mostly I remember talking about the war, and I had a reason to hate it. I would turn eighteen in 1972, and the draft was still in effect. I had known people who had been drafted, and left to fight that war, some coming home, and some not, some without legs or some gone blind. I never admitted it but my main problem with the war was not the killing of people and the destruction of that country, but the fear of my being killed in it someday, or even worse coming back a cripple.
Our revolution didn’t turn out like we envisioned it. There was no armed uprising. We all grew up. Our voices did light a fire for Americans, and the country sickened by the ever-lasting “Police Action” in Southeast Asia, finally forced America to abandon its futile effort to make those citizens of the “Nam” free like us.
We did enjoy some success. Our world began to be more concerned about the planet, the people, and our world. We closed the war in S E Asia. But seems human propensity to destroy is beyond our ability to save, and we are arguably in worse shape than ever.
When did we sell out? Was it when we got our first real jobs and started saving money, buying cars, houses, and gas and food? Were we afraid that we couldn’t continue our fight to be better people because we might have to give up some of the things we had grown accustomed to? Could we have been mistaken in our ideals in the first place? I know we all say we want to save the world, but are we willing to sacrifice so that we may? In 1972 we had been more than willing. We fought on the campuses and at the rallies, speaking our indignant minds, and railing for freedom.
Today the heroes of my generation run businesses, live in expensive homes, burn outrageous amounts of precious fuel in SUVs, and save for retirement. We don’t gather for protests, in fact most of us side on the other side today against those that protest. We don’t expand our minds with poetry, art and abstract ideas. We listen to the music that we have sold ourselves, we watch the news that we make, and we live in the comfort we have designed and marketed. We have conquered so many things, and we have begun to rest on our laurels, not half way to the ends we dreamed of.
Kids today look at us like we looked at our parents, and like our parents looked at theirs; they protest our way of running this world, and they should. We haven’t done so well in many respects.
We were aghast to learn that a president could stoop so low as to break laws and cover his tracks when Nixon resigned the Presidency in 1972, but now we don’t do more than write blogs or rants on Craigslist about the incredibly stupid things we do while we shape and run our world
Those avante garde heroes of the sixties are now Senators and Congressmen, as well as doctors, lawyers, and chiefs of industry and commerce. We run the world, and we live among our best efforts, just trying to stay afloat in a world gone crazy with possessions and comfort. And the few that still stir the muck about the injustices of our world are decidedly outcasts, called, derisively, tree-huggers by the very ones that protested excesses back when we were kids. The best we offer, as the leaders of the world, is an opportunity to vote for, (for the most part), either a so-called liberal Democrat, or a so-called, conservative Republican, neither of which is interested much in the betterment of our world, only the betterment of their personal lives. And in many cases we don’t even vote. And there might even be a strong case for not voting, what difference does it make?
We had high hopes and dreams 40 and 50 years ago, just as our children do now. Hope they do better
We hippies, being the new wave revolution, could see that life on Earth was becoming a threat to life on Earth. We were killing people in Nam, on the highways, and at the gallows so to speak, and we were tearing up the land and all of the Earth’s resources. I remember being saddened by the loss of anything in this world, a tree, a bush, or a life. And we stood to be included in the movement of the time to revolutionize America again, and revert to the wise and better ways our American forefathers had envisioned in the eighteenth century.
The freaks talked about revolution and we sided with the militant black groups, the war protesters, and any offbeat group or movement we heard about. In Mississippi we were a decided minority then, and many of us wanted to move to California where the movement was huge and the people were so much more tolerant of our views. We thought.
Mostly I remember talking about the war, and I had a reason to hate it. I would turn eighteen in 1972, and the draft was still in effect. I had known people who had been drafted, and left to fight that war, some coming home, and some not, some without legs or some gone blind. I never admitted it but my main problem with the war was not the killing of people and the destruction of that country, but the fear of my being killed in it someday, or even worse coming back a cripple.
Our revolution didn’t turn out like we envisioned it. There was no armed uprising. We all grew up. Our voices did light a fire for Americans, and the country sickened by the ever-lasting “Police Action” in Southeast Asia, finally forced America to abandon its futile effort to make those citizens of the “Nam” free like us.
We did enjoy some success. Our world began to be more concerned about the planet, the people, and our world. We closed the war in S E Asia. But seems human propensity to destroy is beyond our ability to save, and we are arguably in worse shape than ever.
When did we sell out? Was it when we got our first real jobs and started saving money, buying cars, houses, and gas and food? Were we afraid that we couldn’t continue our fight to be better people because we might have to give up some of the things we had grown accustomed to? Could we have been mistaken in our ideals in the first place? I know we all say we want to save the world, but are we willing to sacrifice so that we may? In 1972 we had been more than willing. We fought on the campuses and at the rallies, speaking our indignant minds, and railing for freedom.
Today the heroes of my generation run businesses, live in expensive homes, burn outrageous amounts of precious fuel in SUVs, and save for retirement. We don’t gather for protests, in fact most of us side on the other side today against those that protest. We don’t expand our minds with poetry, art and abstract ideas. We listen to the music that we have sold ourselves, we watch the news that we make, and we live in the comfort we have designed and marketed. We have conquered so many things, and we have begun to rest on our laurels, not half way to the ends we dreamed of.
Kids today look at us like we looked at our parents, and like our parents looked at theirs; they protest our way of running this world, and they should. We haven’t done so well in many respects.
We were aghast to learn that a president could stoop so low as to break laws and cover his tracks when Nixon resigned the Presidency in 1972, but now we don’t do more than write blogs or rants on Craigslist about the incredibly stupid things we do while we shape and run our world
Those avante garde heroes of the sixties are now Senators and Congressmen, as well as doctors, lawyers, and chiefs of industry and commerce. We run the world, and we live among our best efforts, just trying to stay afloat in a world gone crazy with possessions and comfort. And the few that still stir the muck about the injustices of our world are decidedly outcasts, called, derisively, tree-huggers by the very ones that protested excesses back when we were kids. The best we offer, as the leaders of the world, is an opportunity to vote for, (for the most part), either a so-called liberal Democrat, or a so-called, conservative Republican, neither of which is interested much in the betterment of our world, only the betterment of their personal lives. And in many cases we don’t even vote. And there might even be a strong case for not voting, what difference does it make?
We had high hopes and dreams 40 and 50 years ago, just as our children do now. Hope they do better
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