Cellular Cancer

We live in a world of traffic lights, department stores, sidewalks, and of course, cellular phones. Well, we call them “cell phones” or “cells” for short, which is really stupid if you think about it. It’s not a cell. It’s a phone. A cell is one of those microscopic parts of an organism that makes up a whole organism.

However, there are some single-celled organisms, and I am not a biologist or anything, but I am fairly certain a cell phone is not one of them. There are also battery cells and jail cells. These are cells, and I hope I stay familiar with only one of them (I can’t figure out batteries for the life of me). Cell phones are not cells. They are cell phones, a type of phone. Everyone has one, so everyone should know what they are.

That’s what I want to talk about. Everyone has one. No one can leave their home anymore without worrying about who’s going to call them. Is every call you get that important? Are you expecting a call about your rich uncle dying to leave you his fortune? Is Denise Richards going to give you a jingle at some point today? You can jingle yourself all you want, but that fantasy is never coming true. You never get a holler from Jimi Hendrix back from the dead or a ring from a secret society of sorcerers who want to reveal to you all the mysteries of the universe. It’s never anything important. It’s just a continuous rampage of unnecessary calls.

Do you really want to be at a bar trying to get some ass-ction and suddenly get a call from your grandmother? Fuck that! Grandma can leave a message! That’s what answering machines are for. The answering machine, sitting safely back at home, can listen to Grandma’s repetitive rambling of senile claims of a martian living in her refrigerator, eating all the apple turnover. I’m looking for another kind of pie to put something alien into. I can call Grandma in the morning when I’m telling Rosy Palms she’s not getting breakfast.

It’s already bad enough you can’t find a phone without an answering machine anymore. I figure, if I’m not home and someone calls, if it’s important enough, they’ll call back. Then I can answer and drive across town to see the inchworm a drunken friend has spotted on the window sill and absolutely must show me. With a cell phone, I would have to answer this obnoxious call, but I don’t have one. When I’m sitting at home listening to voices in my head telling me to eat dog food, then I’ll answer the phone. Save the dog food for the dog. However, while I’m elsewhere, doing something else, without my inchworm-obsessed comrade’s presence in the same building, I could not give two shits and a fuck less about the inchworm. I’m busy. I don’t want to talk to you.