Whip Out Your Shit

Time for another rant

You may want to skip this if you're tired of my observations, because that's all that this post is.

You have been warned.
I'm blogging one evening with my brother and I'm busy putting words to paper. That was when he reared back in his chair, dug into his pants pocket and produced his cellphone, carefully laying it down on the edge of the table. From time to time he would refer to it to get the time from its face. This was of no big deal to me. I assume that it's easier to check the time from the table than it would be to dig into his pocket every time that he needed to refer to it.

That was until I was sitting in Starbucks. Yes that's right, I spend entirely too much time in Starbucks. So much so that it's becoming my own little world. But besides that, I was sitting in Starbucks right, and a group of executives take up seats around a table, and several of them, the first thing that they do, is take out their cellphones, PDAs, IPODs and other assorted electronics and rest them on the edge of the table.

Now I'm wondering why. Why in the world would you take out your electronics and lay them beside you? I have an MP3 player and I don't lay it on the table beside me. It stays in my pocket, ready for use from there. Well, it's for the convenience of use, I say to myself. But some of these electronics were taken from the breast pockets of jackets. And isn't the 'vibrate feature' supposed to make for a more quieter world? What's the purpose of this sorry assed display of hardware? Is it a status symbol, because it's all lost on me. I know nothing about the cost of anything these days.

Yeah, that's right...it's been that long. I don't know the cost of anything, just in a relative sense. I know socks cost $5.00 for a pack of six. I know a six pack is less than six dollars. I know slacks cost $12.00, but I get them for free. I know I can get a sandwich at Gristedes for Six bucks...but how much is an IPOD? How much is a Motorola Cell phone going for these days? Or a Sidekick? What is the cost of a good suit? A flat screen television? A fucking game cartridge for a PS3?

I've lost track of things that cost money. Not cash. Money. And I've explained the difference and I'll do it again. Cash is what you get out of an ATM machine. Money is what you get in a paycheck for a weeks work. Money is rent. Money is cash multiplied by a hundred. I have a pocket full of cash, you have a bank account full of money. Or I hope you do. With this economic meltdown, who the fuck knows? But I hope you can now see the difference.

But going back to the fucking electronics:

It makes me think of Buzzard on Sundays, when he appears at Astor Place Starbucks, early in the morning and lays out a bunch of hardware on the table and begins to charge each one at a nearby outlet. Buzzard is so homeless that he sits in parks and stares at nothing ALL DAY LONG. And yet early in the morning he can join this exclusive club of hardware displayers.

I have my laptop, maybe that counts. Maybe not. Probably not.

I'm going to lay out my MP3 player just as a notice. I want to be part of the club too.

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