Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is, “One of my pet peeves”. I don’t need to think about it. It’s cellphones. I hate cellphones. I don’t mean “Ugh, cellphones annoy me”, I mean part of my brain actively wants to do violence when I am in a restaurant eating and someone has decided they need to watch videos at the table. (Specifically, taking their cellphone and throwing it into traffic.) I HATE CELLPHONES. I hate CONSTANTLY having to listen to people’s annoying ringtones and notifications everywhere — in the library, in the restaurant, at church, at funerals — I hate having to listen to their one-sided conversations everywhere, especially the boring ones. (If you’re going to impose noise into my life, at least make it fun, like city hall gossip or some wild anecdote I can steal for a story.) I hate it when I’m standing in line and the noise goes off and the person starts talking on the phone instead of handling their business and the clerk behind the desk just looks dead inside because he’s basically being treated like a human NPC whose existence is contingent on the Main Character not having a phone call when they’re in the middle of transacting business. I hate seeing people walking down the street staring down like they’re trying to reverse evolution by becoming knuckle-draggers again. You are a human BEING, dammit, your ancestors built cathedrals and wrote hymns and went to the Moon! STOP SCROLL-SLOUCHING!
I. HATE. CELL. PHONES.
And now with off my chest, let’s do WWW Wednesday! 🙂
WWW Wednesday
WHAT have you finished reading recently? William Henry Harrison, Gail Collins.
WHAT are you reading now? 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR: Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny. David Pietrusza. A lot of very granular Democratic primaries talk mixed in with Hitler sounding psycho.
WHAT are you reading next? I began looking at 1929 on Friday, but that was during a day when I’d only had four hours of sleep and was too exhausted to keep up with the narrative that kept bounding back and forth between different timeframes and viewpoint characters. Amity Shlaes’ Forgotten Man history of the Great Depression is far more likely. I’ve already read and enjoyed her, despite the fact that she wrote 600 pages about a man obsessed with budgets.
I agree with the phones. It seems as well, at least where I live, that people are just walking about with their phones on loudspeaker so that we’re all involved in the conversation.
My spouse will sometimes join in on other people’s conversations if they’re on speakerphone or talking loudly in public. 😀
I agree with cell phones. Yesterday, I was in a waiting room at the hospital, while my husband was having a procedure, it was very quiet, the TV sound was off, we were 4 people, and were all reading or working on computer. And here comes a woman, right there speaking super loud on her phone scheduling something for a celebration. We could hear all the details. I was in a corner, I got up to see where this was coming from, stood and looked at her, but apparently that didn’t bother her, she kept going.
My best use of my phone is reading ebooks. Super convenient and free ebooks from my library, using the free kindle app. I like it because I can change the font size and highlight things to include in my reviews. No need of an expensive ereader.
I also listen to e-audiobooks from my library on it
I have been tempted to do that! The most I’ve done I think is if I’m working with someone and they decide to go on a phone call, I switch to the next person. I am NOT putting the day on pause because someone decided to answer the phone because Billy Jo got bored and wanted to know what she was up to.
Oh I forgot:
Last #book I finished: Envers et contre tout, by #VictoireSentenac
#Amreading: The Penguin Book of Japanese #ShortStories, edited by Jay Rubin #Amlistening to: La Fille au pair, by #SidonieBonnec
#TBR Reading next: The Reluctant Murderer, by #BerniceCarey
People are selfish. Really, really, really selfish. Cellphones enable that.
If I’m elected Dictator for Life, (all hail the name of Bookstooge!), one of my first acts will be to declare cell phone usage worthy of a bounty. You get evidence of someone acting like how you describe, I’ll give you immunity AND $500 once you bring the body in to the local policestation 😉
Also on the list will be not using your blinker. Ohhhhhh, that gets me so bad…..
Ave, Bookstooge! A thousand year empire of peace, quiet, and people paying attention to each other!
And they’ll read books and like it!
or else 😉