Welcome to annoying new electronic age
THERE is a new distraction — grownups and kids who go about life gaming or texting. In sweaty palms, they cling to their PDAs, or personal digital assistants. That means sending messages (texting) on cell phones or spending every spare second playing pocket-size video games.
“I attended the Moline Boys Choir concert in Centennial Hall at Augustana College,” says Mary Hyslop, Davenport. “The concert gave me the chills, they did such a good job.
“I was very disheartened and angry to see that I had to look past about seven people with phones texting and playing games during the concert.
“One adult took the phone from a child and I thought, ‘Good, she’s going to put a stop to it.’ But no, she began texting!”
I KNOW what she means. In the Adler Theatre audience for Darrell Hammond, the “Saturday Night Live” star, people were texting/gaming all over the place.
One young man, just a seat away from me, devoted at least half the show to playing a basketball game on a phone device that created a disturbing glow. In front of me, two grown men were intent, before the show began, on gaming or texting. One was playing solitaire; another was texting, writing someone. At intermission, they couldn’t wait to get out their phones to go at it again.
Then, there was the woman who kept holding her phone aloft during the performance to record and film the comedian. It set off a soft glow, irking those nearby.
A story on today’s Page A1 tells what damage this craze is doing to common English usage. So does a new book, “K.I.S.S. Keep It Short and Simple,”
“In texting, the kids aren’t learning to spell. They’re learning acronyms and shorthand,” says author Jacquie Ream, a former teacher. In her new book, she says text messaging is destroying the way our kids read, think and write.
So, this is the brave new world. Game Boy may be our 2008 version of going out and shooting hoops, and probably is no harm other than producing couch potatoes. But texting is wrecking our writing. If there is a future Hemingway out there, the text word to be written for “sorry” would be “SOZ. ” That is not flowing prose.
It’s a new life out there, Alfie. We’ll all have to get with it. TTYL or L8er.
Lost and found: Dentures in the theater
One of the deputies on duty at Showcase Cinemas tells of a moviegoer losing his teeth in the theater. The way the story goes, the fellow had been eating popcorn, and the little niblets kept jamming his dentures so he took them out and put them in a coat pocket. When he was getting out of his seat, the uppers and lowers apparently slipped out of his pocket and fell to the floor. The wearer was halfway home until he realized he didn’t have his teeth. An usher found them while cleaning up between shows. The owner came back; the dentures were returned.
Last joke of the weak
It’s supposed to be rainy today; the temperature is to chill, so this one fits:
A curious fellow died one day and found himself waiting in the long line of judgment. As he stood there, he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the pearly gates into heaven. Others, though, were led to Satan who threw them into the burning pit of Hades.
But every so often, instead of hurling a poor mortal into hell, Satan would toss the poor soul to one side into a small pile. After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow’s curiosity got the best of him. He asked Satan why he was tossing some people aside into a pile.
“Oh, those,” Satan groaned. “They’re all from Iowa and Illinois. They’re still too cold and wet to burn.”
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.