Sh*t I Don't Understand: Bluetooth

Ever wonder why, whenever you see or hear stories of alien visits to Earth, these aliens never stay? I'll tell you why. Because the people on our cozy planet have a unique ability to be f*ing unbearable at the drop of a hat, or, in the case of our topic for today, the clip of a device to an ear. Like we've said several times in this space, you give the general public some new freedom or convenience (via technology or however), and that proverbial inch turns into a proverbial yard faster than you can download a Lady Gaga ring tone. Such is my disdain for the Bluetooth.

I get how the Bluetooth is supposed to be such a life saver when it comes to people talking on phones while driving, but even that postulate is debatable. The "hands-free" aspect still doesn't eliminate the fact that you're engaging in an outside activity while operating a 3,000+-lb moving machine at the same time. But my real issue with the Bluetooth is when people choose to use the things outside of the car, whether they're at work or just walking around in public. Is it me, or is this just douchebaggery to the umpteenth degree? It's bad enough I have to be subjected to the crap you insist on putting into my face when you're actually in the car, but now I'm privy to your phone conversations when all I'm trying to do is walk from Point A to Point B? You think no one will mind listening to your pointless, self-important blabbering? I mind, man. The Dude minds.

I wonder what the thought process is that leads to a person deciding they should walk around with one of these things. I can't be certain, but I think the following is a good stab at it:
"Do you have any idea how important I am and how valuable every second of my day is? Not only must I be on the phone for 75% of my waking hours, but reaching into a pocket to make or receive a call is simply out of the question! I need this bad boy clipped to my ear at all times, otherwise the rest of the world is way too far away from me!"

Talking on a cell phone in public can be as harmless or as annoying as you choose to make it. But when talking on a Bluetooth, you feel like you have to yell into the thing to be heard on the other end. So there you are, in a public place while everyone else is trying to just go about their lives, speaking with your voice at "the band just went on at the bar" volume, most likely smacking away at some mundane conversation about where you're going for dinner that night or the yardwork you plan on making your husband do tomorrow. Now, I have some unfortunate news for you if you're one of these people: nobody gives a damn about your goings-on. Nobody. You are not interesting, and even if you are interesting, talking on your Bluetooth about the time you climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro is obnoxious nonetheless.

I laugh to myself whenever caught in a situation where I'm standing in the vicinity of a BlueDouche and, not having seen the person to know that they're talking on a phone, I get the impression they're talking to me. One time I was in front of a Cherry Hill soccer mom in line at the food store, and it sounded like she was questioning every item I was buying. I place the Red Bull on the counter and hear "no, I don't think so." I put the oatmeal up there and hear "I just don't think that's a good idea." At that point I had to turn around and say "excuse me?" only to get the patented "startled/perturbed look and smartass point to the centipede on your ear to indicate you're in the midst of a phone conversation" reaction from the Queen of Suburbia yapping on her Bluetooth about letting her kids go out that night. Or at least that's what I gathered from her conversation, since she continued to yap away for the remainder of my time standing 3 feet away from her.

Here's my thing - I don't care how far our technology goes, 2 out of 3 conversations we have during the course of a day can afford to wait. Just because you can talk to a person with the touch of a button doesn't mean you need to be talking to that person at that given moment, especially when activities of normal existence are consuming you. And most of the time, if the phone call you are about to make or receive is really that important or necessary, then you shouldn't be be trying to squeeze the call in while you're in the gym locker room, the post office, or some other transient state.

There Are Basic Freedoms Here (And Let's Keep Them Basic)

A decent rule to live by is that you can do what you want, as long as it doesn't severely bother other people who are minding their own business. We have basic freedoms in this country. You can practice whatever religion you want, but just please keep it out of my face, ok? You can assemble in protest in front of a Hooters if you want, but don't get in my way if I'm trying to walk in. If I choose to take heed of your picketing and wailing about the plight du jour, I'll walk over to you myself and listen to what you have to say or read some of the literature I'm sure you brought along with you.

If you want to have a phone conversation while walking down a sidewalk or through a crowded mall, that's fine. It's a public place where people are mostly in transit anyway, and no one ends up being privy to your verbal exchanges for very long, so no harm (although you're still likely a douchebag, especially if you walk around talking on a Bluetooth. Ease up on the self-importance there, Mr. Lumbergh). But if you are on the phone in a place where others are planted for an extended period of time, like on a train or at the office, then you are committing a heinous social crime.

My desk is a place where I must be in order to accomplish the tasks of my job, just like my seat on a plane or train is a place where I am designated to be in order to serve the purpose of my being on such a conveyance in the first place. I am either there to work or to simply get from Point A to Point B. Overhearing your obnoxious cackle of a voice engaged in what you consider meaningful conversation was not what I came here for. If you are on the phone more than 2.5 minutes and it's not an emergency or other pressing situation, you've stepped over the line.

Most workplaces have a rule of thumb regarding personal phone calls and cell phone use, but some are most sternly enforced than others. Too many people think it's OK, while sitting at their desk within earshot of numerous others, to blabber on about how they started the wrong tight end in fantasy last week or whether someone needs to pick up bread on the way home or who's picking up their son JoJo the Idiot Circus Boy from practice tomorrow night. Most offices have break rooms or lounges or some place that you can carry on those conversations until the cows come home, or until the sun and moon align and you actually get your lazy ass back to work, whichever happens first.

And I hate to have to go in this direction, but I'd be holding something back if I didn't. General phone courtesy rules still apply to you if you speak another language. In fact, it's twice as annoying to listen to people at work thunder away on their phones in their foreign tongues. And it's not the foreign languages themselves; I don't want to give that impression. It's that, for some reason, whenever someone is speaking in a foreign language, their voice seems to amplify like they're James Hetfield or something. Holding a conversation in a language other than English does not exempt you from respecting those around you. Do they not have inside voices where you come from? I took four years of French and it was never presented as a linguistic norm to speak at a booming volume and pitch - I doubt any language really calls for this in its vernacular. I've had to listen to so much Russian at work in the past few years that I'm debating giving my first child the middle name Sputnik.

What gets me even more is the tolerance level a lot of people have for those who are on their phones way too much but speak in a different language. I get it if your family is on the other side of the world and you only have a certain window of time during the day that either party can talk to one another without interrupting sleep, but give me a break. Do you think if it were me, or any other English-speaking person talking on the phone for upwards of 30 minutes a day during time I'm supposed to be working, it would be looked upon the same way?

There are obviously exceptions to these rules, like if you have a family member serving in the military and any time you get a call from them, you take it and talk for as long as you can because you may only get to speak to them once a month or so. No one's ever going to take issue with that. Just like many other courtesies or small freedoms we have in day-to-day life, it's those who are given an inch and habitually take a yard that ruin it for everyone else. Just like we learn in 3rd grade social studies, every right has a responsibility that comes along with it.

Saturated

This week we plunged deeper into the doldrums of winter with only the faux hope of "Pitchers and Catchers!" on our tray. Great, pitchers and catchers reported, that gets you excited for about 15 minutes before you realize it's still 25 degrees outside up here and the real season is still 6 weeks away. The Winter Olympics hold my attention for about 76 seconds a day. With nothing going on, there's nothing to talk about, which brings radio hosts, newspaper columnists, hood rats drinking MGD in a dive bar, and everyone else with an opinion and a forum back to the same tired, beaten-to-death-and-back topics that I just cannot take anymore.

I'm saturated. There is nothing more to absorb. Or I'm like those stain-defender Dockers where the grape juice just bounces right off the pants in the commercial. Either way, hearing or reading any discussion on these issues are an immediate trigger to the tune-out button.

(Speaking of which, how great would an actual tune-out button be in real life? You get buried in a boring conversation or pointless meeting at work, and you can just hit a button and in one ear you get to hear music from your iPod, or some George Carlin stand-up, or whatever you want to actually be listening to? When we all have computer chips in our brains someday I hope this gets invented pronto.)

I digress, but that's why parentheses exist. The following is a list of subjects more tired than Forrest Gump after running across the country 4 times.

-Tiger Woods
-Steroids
-Brett Favre
-Joba Chamberlain - starter or reliever? (Reliever. If you want 2,000 words on why, I do take individual requests)
-The annual "Donovan McNabb -trade him or keep him?" debate
-Sarah Palin
-Tim Tebow's draft status
-Which team "might offer Johnny Damon a contract this week" (EDIT: Enjoy Detroit, Johnny.)
-The price of gas
-Snow
-Any and all celebrity couples
-The movie Avatar

And coming soon:
-NCAA tournament bubble teams
-Stats and scores from spring training games
-The NFL's impending labor fiasco

The moral of the story is, just let these subjects play themselves out. Brain-piercing repetitive discussion has no impact on anything. But it does give me an excuse to channel Marlo Stanfield's first spoken line in The Wire - "Do it or don't. But I got someplace to be."

Pillars of Meaningful Conversation

Have you ever been stuck in a conversation with someone (co-worker, relative, significant other, stranger you just met at a bar and now regret walking over to, etc.) and been so disinterested that you'd consider trading places with this guy just to get to hell out of there? I feel like I have been on the receiving end of entirely too many of these exchanges in recent years. Here are a few pitfalls that can make people sound like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a yipping 9-lb terrier dog.

1. Understand if you are not interesting -- There is nothing wrong with being on the plain or boring side when it comes to personality. There really isn't. But if you can not recognize that you will not exactly be having Dos Equis commercials made about you anytime soon, then you are now committing a punishable social offense. There are a few interesting things about myself, and otherwise I'm not that exciting of a person. I can live with that. But does it get much worse than people who feel obligated to tell you, without being asked, about their trip to Florida last week, or how they cooked the crab legs they had for dinner the other night, or what time they get up in the morning? Oh wow, so you went on vacation to Florida and it was really warm, huh? You had martinis while lounging under a palm tree? Phenomenal! That is so great you brought that up, because 24 years of life and 16 years spent in school somehow earned me the ability to infer that it's warm in Florida and that makes for an enjoyable time more often than not. Now, if you met Jack Nicholson while you were on vacation, or you swam with dolphins, that is actually interesting. What you had for breakfast, however, is not interesting. Please learn that difference.

2. Talking about people you don't know -- You get this a lot with relatives telling you about their grandkids, who are your 5th cousins or whatever, and in that case you just have to feign interest and deal with it. Oh, so my 2nd cousin once removed whom I've met once and who lives 2000 miles away got a B in high school chemistry? Oh wow, I wonder what the going rates are for billboards, I gotta announce that shit to the world. This happens a lot on holidays and whatnot and usually there's some beer around and something on tv, so you can get through it.

When non-relatives do this, it is 20 times worse. You get this a lot with the self-important career types. I've never met your boss or these 9 co-workers you are talking about, so what significance does this rambling hold for me, your audience? Am I just supposed to be impressed because you had a conference call this morning with these faceless names about cc'ing people on emails? I have an ex-girlfriend (and if you're reading this, which I doubt, well, I don't care anyway) that once cornered John I for half an hour on this rant about how her parents loved her sister more than they loved her, blah blah blah blah blah, while John (who did not know any of the people she was bitching about) and I were trying to watch a baseball game. It got so bad I had to apologize to John afterward for subjecting him to such drivel. Even if he had known any of the people she were talking about, what could he possibly do about the situation? There was no meaning behind that 30 minutes' worth of hot air other than casting a lure for sympathy.

3. Complaining about everyday things -- We all have to deal with traffic. We all have to deal with the cold in the winter. When it rains, it rains on all of us. We all pay more than we'd like to for gas. None of us particularly like getting up for work in the morning or working long hours. We've all waited in a long airport line or had a train get delayed. SUCK IT UP. There are few larger turnoffs than a person who acts as if any sort of transgression or inconvenience that goes against them is the biggest catastrophe in the world. Just because the traffic light turned red on you does not mean that the transit authority has a vendetta against you. On the other hand, maybe they do, if they've ever heard you talk.

4. Overuse of superlatives -- I did not major in English, nor would I consider myself anything resembling a linguist. But what I do know is that the words in our language have stand-alone meanings intended for the efficiency of communication. For example, ever hear someone, often times a newscaster or other dim-wit, exclaim they are "absolutely amazed!" The word "amaze" and all its forms are superlatives - they stand alone. There are no separate levels or degrees of amazement, there is just amazement itself. Saying another word in front of it is a waste of time and of breath. There are other examples - "that was a very key play in this game," "I was totally shocked," "this pizza is so awesome!" "what an incredibly perfect throw!". Those who overuse superlatives or try to further pump up powerful words are often compensating for and/or navigating attention away from the fact that the rest of what they have to say is garbage.

So, until next time, just remember that just because something happened to YOU, does not necessarily make it engaging subject matter for other people.