Friendly Observation

February 25, 2005

If you believe an insouciant allusive  hip-and-elaborate cellphone ring tone impresses the rest of us...

Reconsider.

An observing European, perhaps before he has enjoyed his morning Starbuck's, writes:

[There] seems an inverse relationship between the length and complexity of the ringing set for the cell phone and the importance of the conversation - i.e. if the ring is a setting of Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, the full opening exposition repeated three times before the person picks up, set at maximum volume, the conversation will be about a sale of eye liner at the Wal Mart, or if the lodge is having that fish fry this week-end or next week-end. People look at me like the crabby Scandanavian when I opine that only people who trade currencies for high flying mutual funds or work in inner city trauma centers need their cell phones constantly on [in libraries] for a ring....what is it with the need for noise 24/7? It is it to fill an empty brain?

How about birdsong? We awake to dulcet whistles and chirps (the rooster emerging from the henhouse only when our sloth is obdurate).  What about a cardinal, or a mockingbird call, for the phone? Better yet, what about a program that translates overheard banal conversations into ocean waves, or cricket-signal?

We regret to learn that illegal cellphone jammers are selling briskly in New York.  We regret understanding their appeal.

Via The Corner.

Comments

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Right on! Thanks, Dilys, for this and so many other cultural and intellectual alerts that other sources pass by. For instance, Peggy Noonan's unblinkered comments on Hunter Thompson, linked to in your previous post. As for the Sanhedrin and the Anglican Church -- I'm out of my depth in both waters.

[Dilys]

Thanks as always for your educated kind words, Richard. It's a nifty enterprise we're all embarked on from 360 x 360 degrees of POV, and different depths on different seashores.

Brace yourselves, folks, Richard's metaphor may have called up from the depths the hitherto-secret Dilys Dunking Postage Stamp.

Continuing, stay tuned.