Ring Tones

In this age of technology, you can hear the most popular and inane tunes when a phone rings. In fact, you can typically hear an obsure tune play instead of the typical electronic rings on a cell that you used to hear when they first came out. What I'm puzzled about is the inablilty to actually program a recorded voice to play back that's linked to caller ID. Invention (you heard it hear first) alert: Why don't they set up a way so when a caller calls, a voice prompts you that "it's your battle axe of a mother-in-law calling, please ignore the fat tub of goo!" or the more telling "it's your sexy nymphomanic girlfriend, drop everything and answer before she changes her mind!" Imagine the possibilities, if your boss calls: "Mr. arrogant bastard is checking up on his minions, better answer and break out the chapstick because he's gonna need a kiss-up" or the bill collector: "thank you sir, may I have another!"

There can be no end to the creative madness!

Driving Me Crazy!

Growing up as a precocious child, I was always curious about driving a vehicle. My first recollection was riding a bus, and being amazed at the enormous size of the vehicle. After dropping in the fare into the glass coin box, I sat in the front seat and watched a huge black man steer the bus into the traffic. As he made each stop, he was careful to open the door and greet each customer with a smile. My most vivid memory is actually the steering wheel, and the drivers ability to move the wheel with great effort. Not only was power steering probably a luxury, I'm not sure if it was even invented at the time, so a driver must have been pretty strong to overcome the physics of steering a bus of such size and weight. To compensate, I believe each bus was outfitted with a larger than life steer wheel. In fact, I think it would be difficult for even Atlas to be able to carry it on his shoulders. I imagine such a steering wheel would be protruding from the side windows in a normal car today.

I often think about how much easier and fun it would be to drive with such a large steering wheel. Only a few inches of movement would surely allow one to make a 45 degree turn. I couldn't even imagine how large an air back it could contain, probably an air mattress, so you can believe that it would be safe! I would even bet that it could serve as a hula hoop and snare a thrown driver in the event of a front end collision. Imagine being saved in an accident and being able to compete in Ringling Bros. at the same time!

Pardon My French!

I've never cared for the expression "pardon my french". Naturally, to show my disdain, I began to use the expression myself with what I hoped was a sarcastic tone. It now occurs to me that the subtlety of my tone may be lost on the casual listener - I could be one that others look upon with the same disdain that I have.

All I can say is "L'enfer avec cette merde". I don't think FreeTranslation.com quite handled my expression correctly though. Oh well, pardon my french!

Scratch Pad

I was having a meeting with someone I hadn't met before, and for some reason, during the middle of the conversation, I completely forgot his name. I typically would like to mention a person's name in such a meeting to further a point, but simply could not figure out who he was. I tried to cheat to see if I could read his ID badge but unfortunately, it had been turned in such a matter that it was impossible to read. I wanted to resort to looking him up, but could not do so nonchalantly during the discussion. He also liberally mentioned my name during our discussion, and it started to become awkward when I just kept interjecting, "you know," in place of his name.

What really worried me, however, was that with the onset of fall's colder temperature, I realized that my skin was getting dry and increasingly itchy in the low humidity in my office, particularly in the deep recessed channel of my back where you just could not humanly reach unless you were a certified circus acrobat. As I became fidgety in my chair, I wanted to ask my cohort to scratch my back, but thought the better of it since I could not remember his name. The mere thought of someone putting their unsanitary hand down my back to scratch somehow seemed unappealing until I realized that I REALLY NEEDED this itch to be scratched!

What would you do?