Hooked on Phone-ics

When people ask you for your telephone number, how do you answer? (assuming you are American ... other countries have different exchanges and sequences).

Most people will give the number in the standard sequence of three then four. As in one two three ... pause ... four five six seven. Or, with apologies to Tommy Tutone, 867 - 5309.

Other socially acceptable ways are to combine the last four digits to make two pairs of numbers. Thus, eight six seven ... pause ... fifty-three oh-nine.

Of course, when adding the Area Code most people say it in a three, three, four. Or, 555 - 867 - 5309.

Then you get the oddballs. The freaks of nature who do not have telephonic rhythm. Those technological throw-backs who recite their numbers in ways to make your ears twitch and your brain bleed.

Case in point, a man at the doctor's office where one of the kids went for a check-up and shots ( a whole 'nother story, that) was giving his number to the receptionist. This was how he gave it:

Fifty-five, fifty-eight, six-seventy-five, thirty, nine.

That's not his real number, obviously. I am again using the "Jenny" number, but his did end with a zero and a nine. (I should use his real number and hope my readers call him and set him straight on proper phone-number-giving etiquette!)

Even were you to write the numbers as he states them, you'd end up a number short.

55 58 675 39 (555-867-539_)

He knew what he meant. He knew that thirty and nine were two separate numbers. But they sounded as one ... thirty-nine.

The receptionist asked him multiple times to repeat his number with the same result. She stayed calm, the freak of telephony was getting agitated. After the third time repeating his screwball litany of numbers, he acidly asked the girl if she knew how to write numbers down. To her credit, she answered she was having difficulty typing them in and asked him to write the phone number on a scrap paper so as to make sure she did not make a mistake.

I stayed out of it, though I itched to storm up to him and blast him on how to give a phone number like a normal human being. I gritted my teeth and was restrained by my mother's hand on my knee. Oh, if I'd been that receptionist ...

So, after that debacle, she asked for his work number, if any.

Mistake ...

Three fives, eighty-six, seventy-five, three-oh-nine

Not even the same asinine cadence as before!!! (This one didn't end in zero nine).

I understand this may be the only way this guy can remember his phone numbers; by grouping the numbers in those sequences. It just goes against all things natural. Like gnarled fingernails scraping down the telephonic chalkboard.

The receptionist was onto the guy though, and seemed to get the number in one go. She was still nice and pleasant, still sitting with a smile on her face. I was contemplating if I rammed my cellphone in his ear if he'd get the whole numerical telephone sequence thing or not.

He wasn't any better when it came to his home address ... One hundred one thousand three hundred fifty two Ear Lick Arr Dee.

Wha?

First off, again with the odd numerical sequencing. Most people would have said one-oh-one, three-fifty-two ... or one-hundred-one, three-fifty-two ... even one-oh, one-three, five-two. Not this guy. He has to give it in long form notation.

And the road he was speaking of is Ehrlich (sounds like Uhr-lick) Road. I suppose calling it Ear Lick may be some cutesy family name for it, but I've lived near that road for most of my life and never heard it called that by anyone. And it was not an accent thing. He spoke Ear Lick as if it were two separate words.

Don't get me started on the whole Arr Dee thing. =/

By this time I was not agitated (and really wasn't as bad as I make myself out to be ... poetic license ~.^). But I was shaking my head in disbelief that anyone could be so ... abnormal on simple things like phone numbers and addresses.

Maybe it was karma was the whole pizza thing the other day. >_>

Anyhow, as a treat for listening to my rant about telephonic etiquette, here is 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone done in clay!


And as an extra special treat, you can read about the guy who tried finding Jenny at any 867-5309 number in the US.

Who Put the PU in My Supper?

I'm at a restaurant yesterday, taking my mother out for some lunch, and just as we are seated at a table, a nearby woman uncaps her lotion bottle and begins lathering the pungent cream all over her hands.

She is a mere few feet away and the sickly sweet smell quickly roils over to invade my rather sensitive nostrils. I try to ignore it. It doesn't work. The woman spreads even more noxious slime across her raspy knuckles and the fumes waft over me in waves of excruciating reek. I literally begin to gag.

Now, I am pretty sensitive to strong odors. Specifically floral and other "sweet" smells. Not everyone is, I understand this. But, more than a few are. I am seconds away from reversing the natural digestion of my earlier breakfast. My plan is to aim it Lotion Lady's way.

Instead, I grab my menu and previously delivered beverage, and move to a booth a few dozen feet away. I gasp for fresh air, as my mother explains to the waitress why we moved. Lotion Lady and her husband are looking our way ... laughing.

Other than the laughing, this is an all too common scenario for me as I go out in public places. Mostly it occurs in restaurants, but even trips to the grocery store, mall, or Wal-Mart assault my senses with women laden in lotions, poured in perfume, or clouded with cologne.

Typically, it is one of three demographics who are walking miasma clouds; teenage girls, "desperate" housewives, or old women.

I think the teenagers bathe in the perfume to cover up the un-washed smell of themselves. Teen boys also do this with colognes, but it is far, far less noticeable to me. In the hot Florida weather everyone sweats, and no girl wants to smell like dirty socks. So they pour perfume on themselves to mask the stench. This only makes them reek in a different way.

Yuppie women, the desperate housewives, also seem to delight in making themselves into walking perfume counters. My theory on this is that the yuppie penchant for having aromatic candles burning in their houses, scented bath products, and designer perfumes, their sense of smell has been so overwhelmed that, instead of a moderate amount of scent, these nasal terrorists require massive quantities to be able to smell it.

Old women are in a simimalr position. Your sense of smell fades as you age (one of the reasons food seems to get blander, and spicy food tastes better, even if your heartburn tells you not to eat it). Therefore the older women use more product to be bale to smell it. This explains why scents popular with older women seem to come in huge bottles. They need the quantities it hold so they can get enough to smell it themselves.

Several years ago, I had severe respiratory problems. I'd miss weeks of work at time fighting off lung infections, double pneumonia, and excruciating asthma attacks. Just as the doctors would clear me safe to go back to work, I'd come down with another go-round of problems.

One doctor asked where I worked. I figured he wanted to make sure it wasn't with harmful chemicals or other toxic fumes. I described my open air phone center, with it's rows upon rows of low-walled cubicles. He nodded and asked me if there were many women who worked there. Around 80% were women, I answered. He asked how many did I see using lotions, spritzing perfumes, spraying desks with sanitizers, hair spraying their coiffures.

I paused ... most of them.

And that was my problem. I was breathing in all this chemical garbage for 9 hours a day. It aggravated my weakened lungs and immune system, setting off a chain reaction of bronchial inflammation, mass mucus generation, and other nasty reactions in my chest and throat. It also pushed my allergies to the limit.

Government has banned smoking in most public places, and I applaud that. But I sure wish some restrictions on the use of perfumes, lotions, and other scented products would be imposed.

How do you feel about strong scents in public places? Does it bother you? Do you get sick from them? Do you contribute to it with your own barrage of aromatic concoctions?

Blogger has a new Polling feature I have taken advantage of. Please take a moment to answer the poll to the right, in the sidebar. It's near the top, so you may have to scroll up.

Answers are anonymous, and no personal data is gathered by clicking on it (maybe your IP, though). I dunno if any cookies get transmitted.

The poll will up for a week, after which I'll revisit the numbers in a future blog post.

Until then, you got a spare clothespin on you?

Blogger Must Die

Blogger's new and improved system to auto-save posts to drafts just destroyed my post I had spent the last few hours working on.

I'm so angry right now.

I'll try to redo it tomorrow as it was long, full of pictures.

Usually I take periodic copies saved to Notepad, but I mistakenly put my trust in blogger to do the saves for me. Grrrrrrr

Where There's Smoke ...

This post may piss off some of you, my fine readers, but it is something which has been gnawing at me for years.

Smokers.

More specific, smoking habits.

I am a non-smoker. I've tried it once or twice, just to see what the attraction to it is, but I got no joy or sense of well-being from it. I got a nasty taste in my mouth, coughing fits, and a sense of why-in-hell-do-people-do-this being.

I don't care that people smoke. It's your lungs. The data on smoking's effects are widely known. What you do in your own house, or in your car, is your own business.

But, something I've noticed, even smokers seem to not want the lousy things in their car.

Watch as people drive down the road. You will see hands casually flipped out windows, cigarettes tightly clenched between two fingers, ashes and smoke drifting back in the rush of wind. Then, many exhale the smoke they just sucked from their paper-wrapped stick of chemically enhanced burning plant matter out the same window.

The smoker doesn't want the smoke in the car -- and not just because a non-smoker may be traveling with them. Most are by themselves, or the passenger also has their tobacco rocket hanging outside the car on their side.

Why is this? The smoker inhales the foul fumes voluntarily. What difference does it make that the smoke from the lit cigarette wafts about the cabin of their vehicle? Does it clash with the smell of the green paper pine tree dangling from the rearview mirror? Maybe the smoke stains on the cloth roof header, or the fine layer of carcinogenic particulates drifting lazily down to the dashboard and leather upholstered, heated, massage, bucket seats are to blame.

Then, when the cigarette is down to the final burning embers, nicotine stained fingers casually *flip* the smoldering stub out the window to land in the gutter ... or maybe the tinder dry grass on the median. Is the ashtray in the car not good enough? Are they afraid of taking their eyes off the road and causing a horrendous wreck by flipping up the ashtray lid and stubbing the cigarette out?

I think those rude people are just too damn lazy to clean their discarded detritus from those admittedly cramped butt holders (err, the ashtrays, not the actual seats). I feel they don't want to have trash in their nice, clean cars, so the spent cigarette finds its way into the environment one mile at a time.

Of course, that theory doesn't quite explain those beer-bellied, truck-hatted blue-collar smokers whose pick-em-up trucks are so crammed with undone paperwork, old fast food wrappers, and last weeks laundry that keeping a flaming object in the cab poses a serious fire safety hazard.

Smoke it if you must, but keep it in your own vehicle.

And for the sake of tired lungs everywhere, if you are at a non-smoking place of business, and you find yourself desperately in need of inducing smoke into your body, don't do it in the freakin' entrance of the establishment. Now you just made everyone who goes in or out have to breath that crap whether they wanted to or not.

This rant was brought to you by the person who had had to walk through a miasmic cloud of foul fumes to eat lunch, and later had a carelessly flicked cigarette butt skitter blazing across the windshield of her car at a stoplight after.

Makes me want to do a little smoking of my own ... out of my ears!

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Today's Penny Doubled Daily Cumulative Amount for 100 days is:

$12,676,506,002,282,294,014,967,032,053.75