Welcome to the Matrix

Cell phones.

I hate them, intensely. I hate hearing them ring in stores, in meetings, in movies, in restaurants, in church.

I hate talking to someone who stops, reaches for their phone and holds up one finger to silence me as they turn away to talk.

And I hate hearing people talk on them. Everywhere I go, someone is talking on their cell phone, reporting on their current whereabouts like an obsessive-compulsive lemming: “Yeah, I’m at the grocery store right now, going down the pasta aisle, and I’ll probably be here for another ten or fifteen seconds before heading over to produce for a few minutes…”

Don’t call me to say “Yeah, I’m about five minutes from home” — just get the fuck home, jackass.

And every day on the way home, I find myself pinned between two monstrous hunks of glossy chrome and metal being driven by fat rich bastards in their loose-fit Dockers and business casual golf shirts babbling away on their cell phones, trying to show the world that they’re so fucking important that they have to keep working while the rest of us are just trying to make it home alive without getting crushed between the aforementioned rich bastards who haven’t paid attention to the needs of another human being since they chose to register Republican with their fraternity brothers back at Whitey U (Class of ’87).

Well.

I have succumbed. I have fallen.

I now have a cell phone.

I stuck it out for a number of years, completely resisting on sheer principle — we are now, as a species, the stupidest-looking animals on the planet, walking around with our hands glued to the sides of our heads. I didn’t want to contribute to the downward spiral.

But I have a cell phone now. My phone is small and silver, like a robotic apricot. It has a delicate quality that makes me fear for it’s safety.

And thus I find that I have turned out to be just another stupid human being.

Yes . . . I am now an official coppertop in residence inside the Matrix.

Lawrence Fishburne? If you’re out there, please call soon.