a grumpy old man speaks out on flibberty gibberty whizbang doodads

Those phones are very handy if you are traveling. Debbie and I were visiting friends in St Louis a couple years back, and there was a matter of a couple streets that just changed names willy nilly somewhere along their route, and convenience store workers who were eager to help out, but it turns out they didn’t know shit, and if we didn’t just happen to have a borrowed cellphone and were able to be talked in like a lost airliner, would’ve drove aimlessly all night.

Well not all night, something would have happened, nobody ever really gets lost and ends up starving in the woods. We got by before Super Duper phones. One of the things I like about the Ten Cat is that they never turn up the sound on the tv (which is only on for sports events). The thing about a bar is that if you are by yourself once you get tired of counting the bottles behind the bar you get bored and you start talking to the guy next to you. That’s how you make friends.

But a lot of these places, they leave the tv all the time, and no matter what is on it, it sort of draws the customers to it. Even if it is nothing they are interested in they tend to glance at it, and then glance longer, and nobody talks to each other and nobody makes friends.

Not a problem at the Ten Cat, where as I told you, the sound is always off. But what happens nowadays is the first thing somebody does when they sit down, before they even order a beer, is whip out their cellphone and then they are all plinka plinka plinka on the tiny keys and their faces are illuminated by that ghostly glow, and nobody talks to each other and nobody makes friends.

And you know me Beagles, I am not much of a go getter, but when I get going I like to be going, and I don’t like bumping into idiots who are plinka plinka plinking all over the sidewalk. I dodged one of those guys some years ago just to encounter another guy just like him, and wishing to offer the fellow a bit of advice I told him he ought to take his head out of his phone and watch where he is going. “Fuck you,” he explained. Anymore the whole sidewalk is filled with them and I don’t dare say anything to them or they would beat me to death with their cellphones which once were so tiny but are now growing larger.

And don’t get me started on GPS. I love those big colorful maps that once unfolded are impossible to fold back up, and looking in the little index and getting a code like R2, and finding R and tracing it rightward with your finger to the 2, and there is Palookaville. And then you trace through the maze of lines towards where you are coming from, and you pick out the fattest lines and maybe mark a couple intersections with red circles and off you go. There may be a few missed turns, a couple heated arguments with someone else if you are not travelling alone, but you end up seeing more of the country, and it is all one big adventure.

GPS though, all you have is a list of roads and distances and which way to turn, and the whole trip you are like a rat in a maze, looking for Hazel Street where you will turn left in .7 miles. You are like in one dimension, you don’t see anything on either side of the road because you are always looking straight ahead for the next turn. A whole big country out there and all you see is the center line.

Of course I don’t understand hunting at all, and I really don’t understand those hunting and fishing aids. Isn’t it supposed to be hunting, as in searching, and fishing as in fishing for something? If your device tells you where to go why don’t you just go to the grocery store?

I understand you don’t go traipsing around anymore, but I allow as how sitting in a blind and waiting still has some of that hunting aspect. You have to trust fickle fate to propel bambi into your range, and you have to be awake at the time to notice. What if you had some device that attracted deer so that they lined up within range to and maybe some laser sight so that you couldn’t miss, would it still be fun?