Our Annoying World

In honor of the great response I received regarding my blog post on  tipping etiquette I have deemed myself the Dear Abby of the new millennium.  My next topic of etiquette: texting.

Please feel free to submit your questions and I will—

Oh lookie! Already — my first question via Time Travel Twitter (a new service that allows impatient Tweeters who are so bored with the present to Tweet into the future)

Dear David,

I’m attending the funeral of my beloved grandmother. Unfortunately my sister is in Bolivia getting some low-cost gum rejuvenation surgery and won’t be able to join us.  Is it impolite to text my sis during the funeral and let her know how it’s going?

Signed,

Grandmotherless

Dear Grandmotherless,

First of all, my condolences.  Now, on to your question.  If at one point during the service you’d like to keep your sister up to date with a text that simply reads something like “Grandma still dead” I see no harm in it.   But definitely avoid updating your Facebook status until the casket is at least 2/3′s of the way in the ground.

By the way, since we’re on it — other things to avoid doing at funerals: three-way conference calls, synching your iPod, filing tax returns, shadow puppetry, checking for ticks, tuning your guitar, most yoga poses, flossing (and gum massage), giggling.

Congrats on being such a classy granddaughter,

David

Oh neat.  Another question…

Dear David,

What are your feelings about texting during open heart surgery? I’m minutes away and would love to hear your opinion.

Signed,

Have a Heart

Dear Have A Heart

A couple of key things to consider here.  Such as… are you the surgeon or patient?  If the answer is “patient”, then okay, go ahead and text.  As the great Leslie Gore once sang on her classic hit (and I’m paraphrasing a little here) It’s your chest cavity and you’ll text if you want to.

Well, wait, on second thought I just realized something: if you’re capable of texting during the surgery than go ahead and text your lawyer because it seems as if your doctor has forgotten to give you anesthesia!  Ouchie!

And lastly, question #3…

Dear David

I’m, like, 16 years old and have had my driver’s license for over 3 hours now.  I hear it’s illegal in California for me to text while driving until I’m 18.  That seems like, totally unfair to me.  What do you, like, feel about this, like?

Signed,

Every teenager

Dear Every Teenager (and fan of “like”)

I, like, totally agree with you.  Let’s face, experienced driver’s like yourself shouldn’t be limited to doing only the really lame stuff in a car — such as steering, watching for pedestrians, not crashing.  My feeling is, as long as “not driving into stuff” is one of your top three priorities while driving a car I don’t see the problem with texting, Tweeting, Facebooking, online banking, selling your underpants on eBay etc etc.  Of course not everyone is as texting-savvy as yourself.  So here’s what I propose should be the new “Texting Law”:

If you get into a horrific car accident while texting, you must immediately text someone within 5 minutes of the collision in order to prove that you’re completely capable of multitasking and that stupidly futzing with your iPhone had nothing to do with you slamming into a tractor trailer at 80 mph.  Something short and pithy with do: “Sitting in burning car. LOL.”  “Impact of Steering wheel has collapsed my left lung. WTF!” “Am running late. ROTFL.”

This new law should weed out the weaker ones.

Best of luck with your – WATCH OUT!!! TRUCK!!!

Just kidding.  LOL

David

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under I'm just sayin', Technology Out Of Control. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.