Now That's More Like It

You know how the new iPhone 4S has that "cool" Siri feature that lets you talk to it and it will talk back to you with an appropriate response? You can ask Siri questions about the weather or directions. You can also ask Siri to send lovely text messages to other people for you and have Siri read you their responses. Yeah, that all sounds fine and good. But what I'd really like is for the commercials to be a little more realistic. And I guess that the fine folks over there at College Humor must have felt the same way because they have put together a lovely little parody of those Siri commercials that is just what I was looking for. Enjoy.

See all the CollegeHumor Original Videos here.

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I DVRC U lol

A few days ago, we were reading about the 13-year old girl who sent over 10,000 text messages in one month to the tune of about $4,800. Once again, a texting story makes the news, only this time it's because of some bass-ackwards form of Islamic Sharia law which essentially allowed a man to divorce his wife by texting her. Wait. Wut?

Correct. A man in Saudi Arabia has divorced his wife via text message. That's according to Arab News ("The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily", doncha know.) in an article (which doesn't give nearly enough information) titled "Shariah court approves SMS divorce". Nice.

Apparently, the husband was "...in Iraq to participate in what he described as 'jihad' " So basically, he's heading off to fight against the Iraqi forces and the US troops over there. Can't let something as pesky as a little marriage get in the way of your jihad!

The man was already in Iraq (getting ready to get all jihad-y) when he sent his wife, er, now ex-wife a text message that basically told her that they were no longer married. After sending her the text, he then used his phone to phone two of his friends "...who witnessed his marriage and told them that he had divorced his wife." So his wife gets a text saying "I divorce U" or some crap like that, but his buddies actually get a phone call from him where he just tells them that he divorced her. By text message. All rightee then.

It was after that unexpected event that "The woman had approached the court and asked for an official document proving she was divorced." You think?! I'd probably do the same thing. I'd be in front of the judge with my cell phone that had Lame-o's text on it and say, "Would you look at this sh*t?! Can he do that?! What's that? He can? Really? Oh." I'm sure it probably went something similar to that as it was.

See, now if that were in the US or any other civilized part of the globe, those on the receiving end of the "I just divorced what's her name by text, dude" phone call as the comedic ramblings of a fellow who was overly intoxicated at the time. That would be the normal response to a phone call like that. But not in Saudi Arabia! Nope. There it's all fine and good that he sent what's her name a text and was divorced. How does that work again?

Well, in Saudi Arabia (where the Islamic clerics are the equivalent of a judge in US courts and preside over the hearings) under the bass-ackward and rather strict form of Islamic Sharia law, a man can divorce his wife by saying "I divorce you" three times. It doesn't say if he has to say all three directly to the woman, or if he has to say at least one to her and the other two to other people. I'm guessing that other people have to be notified of his intention because the "...court in (the city of) Jeddah summoned two relatives who had received telephone calls from the man confirming his wish." Once they had confirmation of that "The judge approved the divorce and told the woman that she did not have to go through the iddah (the post-divorce waiting period stipulated by the Sharia) as the marriage was not consummated." Hold on a minute. They didn't make soup and so that's why the divorce was granted? Oh, wait. That's consomme. Never mind. Carry on.

The article doesn't say just how long they were married. I'm guessing not very long, if all of the consummating hadn't taken place. (Around here, for something like that to happen, or to not happen, you'd be looking at a time frame of about an hour. Max.) I would like to know more about what their deal was, however. Why did they get married in the first place? Why can't he go all jihad over in Iraq and still be married? Why would she still want to be married to him? So many questions.

I really don't think I'd have too much of a problem with this whole procedure if it worked both ways. If the woman was allowed to say "I divorce you, you jackass" (I sort of tweaked the original version. What do you think? Can you tell?) and be divorced, then I think I'd be all for it. It would certainly save a lot of time and money that's being spent in divorce court these days. But under Sharia law, woman have little to no rights to do anything. They are basically seen as property (if that) and their own well-being would be at risk if they were to step up to the keypad and text their divorce away.

But seriously, what the heck is going on over there? Who makes this crap up? The part about how they have to say it three times? How hokey is that? It's like a witch's spell or something. "Eye of newt, tongue of frog, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you! Abracadabra! POOF!" And then they're divorced! But wait! Is there a magic lamp involved as well? Did he fly over to Iraq on his magic carpet? Was the woman Barbara Eden? Again, so soooo many questions.

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My Hammer-Wielding, Cell Phone Bashing Hero

Text messaging has become a rather popular part of the cell phone laden lifestyle that most of us are living with today. Some people text more than others, with younger age groups tending to far out-text older age groups. I don't know what it is about people, who are above the, say, 12-30 years old category, who have an aversion to texting. Texting is great. Fab-u-lous. It enables people to constantly and continually have dialogue and conversation with other people that they have NO interest in actually talking to! Granted, it would seem a bit easier to just stop talking to those you don't want to talk to. But the problem with that is it takes two to tango. You might want to stop talking to that person (and really, who wouldn't? God, they are annoying.), but does that person want to stop talking to you? Nooooooo. You are, apparently, just that fascinating! Embrace it! Or just text the moron instead.

But back to the teen texters. I think it's a safe bet for me to say that I send and receive probably a total of over 500 a month, the majority of which are to the same couple of people (and they're actually people I do want to talk to), but that's still a hell of a lot of texts. And while I'm agile and adept at the little keypad (and other things as well. Just throwin' that out there, in case anyone cares.), I'm not quite as fast as those little teenage bastards that can just text at the speed of light. Part of that is because, apparently, they just can. The other part of that is I refuse to use text-speak, I adore punctuation, always use proper capitalization and I am an uptight stickler when it comes to spelling. In short, I am a hoot! Oh, yeah. That's me.

The point is that if I didn't know that a teenager could text so rapidly, I would most likely not believe this story out of Cheyenne, WY that was covered by 9News in Denver, CO where a one 13-year old Dena Christoffersen sent over 10,000 text messages in one month! If you do the math (another one of my very exciting personality traits), that comes out to 333 per day in a 30 day month. Let's say that you're conscious 14 hours out of the day. That equates to 23.78 texts per hour. That's one text every 2 minutes and 32 seconds. That might not seem possible, but you have to realize that a lot of teenage texts consist of things like "Yay" and "omg" and "RU L8" and "<3> Unfortunately, the majority of these 23.78 texts per hour came when young Dena was in school. And while that's bad, it might not be the worst part of this technology gone awry tale.

Dena's parents thought (key word in that sentence: thought) that the texting feature of their cell phone plan had been disabled. I'm going to assume that they thought that if they hadn't signed up for it, it wouldn't be available to use. That is a reasonable assumption to make. But it doesn't work like that. Instead, if you haven' t signed up for text messaging and someone sends you a text, you are then charged for that text that you didn't want and didn't sign up to receive. Of course, that makes sense.

No it doesn't! They do it to screw ya. You don't see HBO leaving their channels all watchable and everything and only if we watch HBO do we get charged for it. No, if we don't sign up with HBO and we try to watch HBO, we will be watching HB-NO, as in "NO, you can't watch this channel, you haven't signed up for it yet." But I digress.

Dena's parents Gregg and Jaylene Christoffersen, were rather "surprised" when they got their monthly phone bill from Verizon detailing Dena's adventure into the electronic communications foray. "Surprised" is in quotes because I think to say one is "surprised" is an understatement if you are opening your cell bill and it tell you that you owe them $4,756.25. OMG!

Gregg said, "It just hit us like a rock, like you're stepping into a bus." I'm going to assume he meant "stepping in front of a bus" or "being hit by a bus" or something of that nature. But all is forgiven because he just opened a cell phone bill that was almost five thousand dollars. He can mix up his idioms and metaphors and similes all he wants with a five thousand dollar cell phone bill. Holy crap, five grand would cover my cell bill for almost four full years! But that's only going to cover one month over there in the hands of Texty Texterson.

In case you're wondering what all of that texting does to one's grades, Gregg said, "She went from As and Bs one semester to Fs in two months." Also, if you're wondering what all of that texting does to one's social life, Dena has been grounded until the end of school. But that's not all that came out of all of this.

Enter Gregg the Hero and his big ol' hammer. According to 9News.com "Hours after the enormous bill arrived, Gregg Christoffersen took a hammer to his daughter's phone." AWESOME! I wanna see it! And you know that you do too! Behold!

NOW it's disabled.

Awesome. Just awesome. Over there at 9News.com is the video of their news report on this story. And I came away with a couple of impressions about these people. One, the Christoffersen's seem like good folks. Two, their daughter seems like a normal kid and probably a pretty good kid. Three, you could tell that Gregg was mad. Man, he was pissed. But what I liked about these guys was that they actually did something that was reasonable and expected. Their daughter has a severe consequence. School isn't out until June, so that's a good two months of being grounded. When you're 13, it might as well be forever. Gregg took his anger out very appropriately on the phone and smashed the holy Verizon right out of it. AND the story also said that Verizon has been willing to knock the bill down to a reasonable level. (Nice job, Verizon.)

It didn't say what "reasonable" was, but these people knew that they were ultimately responsible for that bill and for their daughter's actions. They weren't whining or complaining about how their daughter shouldn't have been able to send texts if they didn't sign up for it. These people were normal! Why does that surprise me so much? It probably shouldn't, but it totally does!

I wish the story had focused more on the aspect of how Dena was able to send 23.78 texts an hour while in school. And while you could reasonably argue that the school not intervening when Dena was texting in class was essentially enabling her to rack up such a huge bill, you didn't hear that out of the parents. Just take responsibility for yourself and your kid and move on. But not before smashing the holy bejeezus out of her cell phone with a hammer. :::sigh:::: My hero.

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The AMA - More Diverse Than You Thought

Well, here's a headline you don't see everyday (thank God).

"AMA acts against trans fats, texting while driving"

Um, what? Trans fats and texting while driving? Weren't we already aware of the 'trans fats are bad' message? I think that we were. Were we bad? Why are we being told again? Oh, wait, they're just supporting the bans on trans fats that are already in existence. Good Lord, they need to hold a meeting and vote on this crap? They weren't supporting the ban before? Is there some movement afoot that has set out to overturn the trans-fat bans and they need doctors to support it? Aren't they supposed to be working with the sick, the dying, the weak? I'm pretty sure at least one of those groups needs a doctor.

Now, as far as the texting while driving "warning"? I'm pretty sure that I can figure out on my own that it is not safe to basically, operate a typewriter while simultaneously operating my motor vehicle at a high rate of speed. Yeah, I think I can grasp that concept without the AMA's help, thank you very much. There's even a little link on the side of that article which reads "Texting while driving is bad, doctors agree." Is that supposed to mean something to me? That doctors agree that texting while driving is bad? Not race car drivers or bus drivers, but doctors. Hey, you know what? Anyone with half a working brain could agree with that statement. I'll bet you that electricians agree that texting while driving is bad. I'll bet you that scuba divers agree that texting while driving is bad. Bakers, butchers, candlestick makers, all of them will agree that texting while driving is bad! (Baristas at Starbucks might be a different story. They've got those made-up names for the sizes of coffees, not to mention the made-up names for the coffees themselves. What the heck is a Carmel Macchiato anyway? =) But everyone else is in agreement.)

According to a story from the folks over there at the AP, the American Medical Association "...took a stand against two unhealthy habits — eating foods made with artificial trans fats and text-messaging while driving." An unhealthy habit? Texting while driving is an "unhealthy habit"? No it isn't! It's not "unhealthy"! It's unsafe!! I don't hear the folks over at MADD saying that driving drunk is "an unhealthy habit"!

And really, I wouldn't care if the AMA thought that texting whilst driving was an "unhealthy habit" or if they thought that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Which, might I point out, is also not a medical issue that should be of concern to the AMA!) But I do care because at their semi-annual powwow that they held in Chicago on Monday, they "agreed to lobby for more state legislation banning text-messaging while driving or operating machinery." Are you kidding me?!

There already IS legislation against texting while driving or operating machinery. It's called "distracted driving"!! It's basic premise is to not do things that are not going to distract you while you are driving! Hence the name! Are they going to propose legislation for each and EVERY INDIVIDUAL action that can distract someone while driving? A no putting on make-up law! A no eating nachos law! A no playing with the radio law! A no shaving law! A no reading law! A no yelling at your kids who just won't shut up law! Are they going to have all of those?! NO! Because they're covered under the term "distracted driving"! WE DON'T NEED MORE LAWS THAT WILL DO NOTHING EXCEPT FOR COST THE TAXPAYERS MORE MONEY!! Sorry I was shouting. I realize that there's no need holler. I apologize. But I'm still torqued.

According to a one Dr. Peter Carmel, an AMA board member, "Texting while driving takes the driver's attention away from the road, which can lead to accidents." It does?! For reals? No S, Sherlock. In other news: Water? Still wet! The sun? Still hot! Back to you.

"Under the new policy, the AMA also will encourage doctors to educate patients about the risks of texting while driving." I'll tell you what, if I go into see my doctor and he tells me, "Good news! Your leg isn't broken, it's just sprained. But if you were texting while driving you could have lost your entire leg and maybe more!" I'm going to have to hurt someone. Why is it that doctors are educating people about the texting while driving thing? Has the DMV not taken the reins on this one for some reason? Are the doctors also going to remind me to change my oil AND the filter every 3,000 miles, making sure I don't forget about the filter?! They better not.

If the docs want to roll out a public service announcement, I'm good with that. I have zero problem with that and think that it's a fine idea to educate the public in a way that will not cost the public money AND in a way that might actually do some good. We really don't need an individual law for every little thing out there. We don't. I swear. Trust me. Just once. Please?

One more thing on their list of things the doctors are going to do that has very little to do with being a doctor? Go on. Guess. If you guessed "Global warming" you're correct!! If you said, "Global warming? WTF?" you're ME!

The AMA adopted a policy that will "Encourage doctors to take a stronger role in promoting "green" polices to fight global warming. The policy acknowledges that extreme weather and temperature changes could lead to heat-related illnesses and increases in infectious diseases and respiratory problems." No word on what those "green policies" are that they want to promote. And I can't even fathom a guess, it's so bizarre! So, what, they all got together and said, "Yep, when it gets really hot, people might get sick and they might get infectious diseases and they might have problems breathing. Yep." Is that what they're telling me? (Don't answer that. I know it is. I just can't stand it.)

Have they found a cure for cancer? Did I miss that announcement? Why are they talking about this? How long was I asleep? What is going oooonnnnnn?????? (My head...my head......)

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