From Lileks:
Café, afternoon. Waiting for Gnat’s class to finish, working on a column. I have my headphones on; all hail iTunes radio, because the lady at the adjacent table is yelling into her cell phone. She does not realize that she is compensating for the lack of auditory feedback you get with normal phones. It’s why I make a point of talking softly on a cellphone in public, just to balance it out. And no one ever says excuse me. There’s also a guy pacing the aisle of the café, talking on a cell phone. He’s very important. I wouldn’t have known that if he hadn’t stood and started talking. I’m glad he told us. I feel better just knowing that meeting is going ahead as scheduled. The entire café feels better. The entire café would also feel better if the skies parted, an angel descended, and smote him with a terrible flaming sword. Of course, one of us would have to pick up the phone and say “better reschedule. Bob has been cleaved in twain by heavenly justice made flesh. Uh – hold on.” Mr. Angel, are you flesh, or some sort of divine phlogeiton arrayed in mortal form?
“Pretty much the latter.”
Okay thanks. “Not really flesh, but, uh, more like dense holy smoke compacted to deal vengeance. I’d snap a picture on Bob’s phone but small insect-like demons are already disassembling it and jamming the pieces in one another’s orifices, laughing and screeching. It’s creepy. Anyway, I gotta go. Bye.”
By now the woman at the next table would have wet herself, wondering if she was next. The angel would probably wag a finger and head back up. And she’d never make a cell phone call again. In one year she’d be arrested at the mall for knocking people’s phones out of their hands and stepping on them. Two years later she’d bomb a Verizon store.
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