This is how I know I’m getting older: One day last week the fellas at work and I were getting ready to break for lunch, and the subject briefly came up. If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be?

I’m not interested in flying anymore. What I want, in terms of superpowers, is very simple: I want to single out one car at a time, and it’s okay with me if it has to be within fifty feet or so…I want to be able to point at it…and instantly jam any and all sound-producing electronic devices within that car into complete silence.

“Wesley” (not his real name) sarcastically intoned that maybe I’d like to wave a magic wand and wish little kids off my lawn, too. That’s Wes for you, he likes to sarcastically intone things. I’ll get there, I’m sure. But for now, that’s all the superpower I want. Point at something, and suddenly, from that direction only, there is silence. Not just with the mind-numbing “boom boom boom” coming from convertibles with the tops down, but television sets too. I don’t even wish to thwart the will of anybody else, necessarily. I’m referring to commercials that cut in on the program I, myself, chose to watch. Ever have that happen? Like, you crank the volume up to about 60 or 70 so you can hear what people are saying — I dunno, maybe, revealing the “real killer” during a thriller/mystery — and some ass comes on and spends thirty seconds bludgeoning you into coming down to his used car lot at MAXIMUM volume.

As in…the walls shake.

Here you are, getting a migraine and/or giving one to your neighbors, listening to some dickhead from whom you didn’t want to hear in the first place.

As I get older, I get more sensitive to this. I don’t know why. Maybe it has something to do with these foot-long gray hairs coming out of my ears. Or, maybe my age is only part of the problem; maybe it’s environmental. Maybe the signals really are getting louder. Cars, radio, television.

Waitaminnit — kids aren’t electronic, are they. No. So, we don’t want my superpower to have anything to do with electronic devices. Just noise. Like, I’m the Invisible Girl, just not as good-looking, and I can throw down a “cone of silence” on things. Not block bullets, not project force fields, not turn myself invisible. Just throw that sound-proof bubble around one thing or another. That’s all. I’d give up immortality, immunity, rapid healing, super-strength, all that just to wave my hand at something and — poof.

It’d be great. One thing, though…rapidity would be key. I don’t want it to be like waiting for a badly fragmented computer to boot up. I’d want to stop people in mid-syllable; I get those migraines pretty quick. And I’d want to be conspicuous. None of that “Bewitched” nose-twitching thing. The boom-box or car or whelp makes noise, Morgan waves his hand, and — we can get back to the conversation we were having.

Ever do that with your car radio? I’m sure everyone has. The guy comes on, gives you the phone number at super-speed…does it again…does it a third time…does it a fourth time…gets ready to do it yet again and you mutter “aw, shaddap” and snap the thing off. It’s a great feeling. You can’t help but fantasize that the radio people are choosing that exact instant to monitor who’s listening and noticing that you chose that exact instant to tune out, and ultimately decided to fire whoever was responsible. Yes, it’s a highly unlikely and extravagant daydream. But I’m not the first person who ever had it, and I’m sure I’m not the last.

This weekend I decided my answer to ManBearPig is WAGTOCPAN.

The woman and I drove up to the boy’s mom’s place, and dropped off the boy. Then we went on a shopping excursion which would be concluded in the evening at Wal Mart. In Folsom. On a weekend. And while I’m wondering, how is it I continue to be talked into this, I’m seeing WAGTOCPAN everywhere. There’s more of it than there was a week ago, more of it last week than there was a year ago. It’s got a chokehold on us, WAGTOCPAN does, and it’s going to eventually destroy us all.

I’m talking about Women And Girls Talking On Cell Phones About Nothing.

How is it any skin off my nose? Because WAGTOCPAN is freakin’ everywhere. The whole does more damage than the sum of it’s parts. It’s a form of pollution. There’s a kind of exponential or second-degree curvature to the damage they do; put more simply, it seems to take four times as long to cut through a crowd with twenty WAGTOCPAN, as it is to transcend a crowd with only ten WAGTOCPAN. Rudeness decides the Darwinism; the right-of-way goes to whoever seizes it, and the tendency is for the seizure to be done by whoever is female, and engaged in an electronic conversation elsewhere.

How do I know they’re talking About Nothing? I can see it in their eyes. People have a certain look on the face when they are saying, or listening to, important things. These girls aren’t showing it. They just aren’t. And then there’s the quantity. Quantity, you know, eventually defeats quality. It has to. I see five randomly-selected women in Wal-Mart, three of them are going to be gabbing away on a cell phone. With that glassy “not very important” look in their eyes. Five years ago, it would have been one outta five. Ten years ago, it would have been one outta twenty. Now…it’s a majority. And of course, if we had been shopping on Saturday, about ten to noon or thereabouts, it would have been more than that.

What the hell are all these women talking about? Are they a bunch of Jack Bauers, each one of them helping to interrogate a terrorist or defuse a bomb?

I’m just not buying it. They’re talking about crap. And you know, that’s just fine with me. To each their own, libertarian leanings and all. Except, there is that pollution factor. Walking through Folsom, or driving through Folsom, or doing-whatever through Folsom…lately, on a weekend, it’s like swimming through a hive of angry bees. Everywhere you look, WAGTOCPAN — blah, blah blah. In enormous gleaming metal vehicles. Looking where they’re going? Really?

They don’t appear to be. And they’re in command of awesomely heavy and hard objects on wheels.

And here’s something else to think about, something that leads me to believe it’s all about nothing. We’re in Folsom…land of gadgets. People just love to buy gadgets here, from the latest Lexus to the latest iPod accessory to the latest — you name it. Everyone wants to prove they have arrived. Folsom, where the price of your iced-coffee drink is drawn in large neat numbers on the dome of your plastic cup, so everyone can admire that you paid $4.75 for it. Folsom, the valley of “I’m Not Spoiled, Just Loved” bumper stickers.

A hands-free device costs between ten and fifteen clams. Mine was fifty, because it’s a bluetooth model; you can get it now, for half that much. But you don’t need bluetooth.

How come Folsom, land of the six-bedroom houses and jewel-encrusted cell phones, is flooded with so many women holding the appliances up to their ears? If it’s a serious conversation and they have to have it all the time, wouldn’t they eventually adapt to having it?

You know how scary it is to pass a woman in a big truck, on the left, when she’s holding a cell phone up to her left ear? And supposed to be paying attention to what’s going on?

Al Gore wants us to measure our “carbon footprints” and based on the size of same, feel guilty. Or buy something. Or both. (I think mine was 6.75 or thereabouts.) Seems to me it’s an idea right for other walks of life…like WAGTOCPAN. Oh, how I’d love to see an article appearing in a glossy magazine somewhere containing the words “According to experts, there are several things the average person can do to bring her WAGTOCPAN under control…”

I should hasten to add something. In all my years on the planet, I’ve seldom seen women-and-girls pick up a bad habit that wasn’t started by the guys first, and I doubt this is any exception. And I happen to know MABTOCPAN is indeed a problem. I’ve seen it happen. Furthermore…guys, it seems, are on balance far less decisive about what speed they want to drive, when they chatter on their cell phones. They chew someone out, they go faster, someone else chews them out, they want to slow down. But if I were to do a count of how many people are chattering away on their cell phones when they should be watching where they’re going — this is a female thing. I know the men are equally guilty, it’s just harder to catch them in the act because their conversations are shorter.

This is another reason I know the conversations are meaningless. Men and women have different habits with their social customs, but not with how they send and receive important messages. This has little to do with important messages; it’s a social custom. I’m serial. Super-duper-serial.

I just wish people, regardless of whether they wear skirts or trousers, would watch where they’re going when they engage in it. Now excuse me, I have to take this…

Update: As far as MABTOCPAN goes, here’s an example that borders on the surreal…

Timothy Michael Seibert was in the midst of raping a 49-year-old woman, according to police, when he answered a cell phone call from his wife.

The woman was so close to the phone she could hear Seibert’s wife yelling at him, asking him where he was and what he was doing, according to arrest documents filed by Silver Spring Twp. police.

See, gender doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it. The cell phone thing, in general…it’s just gotten way, way outta hand. “Hey, whaddya doin’?” “I’m watching a movie, this dude sitting next to me is getting really pissed about my cell phone.” “Yeah? Cool.” “What are YOU doing?” “I’m mugging some guy, getting ready to steal his car.” “Hey, cool.”

Cell phone calls of the “What Are You Doing” variety, have got to be the plague of our times. People who take such calls, have got to be on the most shallow end of the gene pool. Raping women is worse, of course. But taking a cell phone call about what you’re doing, and making a conversation out of it, is a crime in itself.

Thanks to Trip at Webloggin, and Miss Cellania for the nice Christmas cards.

My nine-year-old was the oldest one in line at the mall to see Santa Claus. We were actually there to have a nice lunch together, and we didn’t know Santa would be stopping by. We became aware of it when one of the younger toe-heads was done with telling Santa what he wanted…except…he didn’t think he was done. Jeebus, you talk about LOUD. You’d think someone was pouring boiling water all over his bare ass, you know?

So the dad tries to calm the kid down by hauling him off somewhere and letting him cry it out. Where all parents take their bratty kids in situations like that. Close to ME.

And the kid’s just yammering away. Yammering, yammering…like this…

Dad decides to try a different tack. No, not the one I would have done. He hauls the little shit back in to see Santa again! And we can hear the kid in there, screaming in poor Santa’s ear. One minute turns into two…two minutes turn into three…it goes on and on and on. And I’m thinking, hmm, there’s a career choice I need to remember to pass up even if it means living in a cardboard box.

And so, on a lark we decided to see Santa.

Now, Santa’s little helper has a nice digital camera, and they’re charging five bones a pop for a picture of your kid with Santa. One problem: The card is downloading or something…so there’s a delay. So my son gets a little extra time to tell Santa about all the crap he wants. Blah, blah, blah. Well he gets to the end of the list…card is still downloading.

Santa needs to stall for time. So he asks the boy if he’s been nice all year. My son says absolutely yes. And Santa smells some bullshit, because y’know, he’s Santa…and there is some…anyway, that’s what I think. So the grilling continues, and they start to have a conversation about how much niceness you need to get your list taken care of, and what some naughtiness does to it. And how you should always tell the truth to Santa, because he knows anyway.

So he’s got my son on his lap and he’s reminding him it’s okay if he had a little tiny spell of naughtiness sometime this year. Because that’s all right, you know…happens to everyone.

My son looks right up at him, steals a glance at me, looks back at Santa…and he says, so that all the parents and kids in line behind me can hear every syllable…”Well — my Dad’s been naughty.” Of course I could feel my ears burning as the crowd roared with laughter.

Way to throw the ol’ man under the bus, kid.

So that’s how mine went. Hope yours was merry too.

Update: Here’s to best wishes for what remains of ’06, and for the New Year and many months thereafter. Hope the best of dreams of everyone reading this, and of everyone who never will, are realized in full and may the wind blow gently at the backs of all humanity…except for the stupid bitch who took trotted her sick kids around and gave my girlfriend the flu. Her temperature is about 101.5 and it’s a lotta fun. Oh well, we had good Christmas in spite of it. I think the squeeze was a little depressed that her physical strength just flat-ass gave out in the middle of the gift exchange, and she had to go to bed ’cause she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. And I’m the one who got coal in his stocking, huh. Someone’s out there spreading a virus because she can’t do her Christmas shopping when the hubby or boyfriend could watch the kids…or doesn’t want to bother with getting a sitter…or is simply inconsiderate. And I’m the one who gets coal. Santa, your lists need some work.

Update: And an extra helping of Christmas itching powder down the underpants of all the snotty atheists who think they’re so much smarter than everybody else, spurred by their sense of right-and-wrong to leap into action when “IN GOD WE TRUST” is found on our money, or when bus drivers wear Santa hats. — BUT — won’t get off their conceited atheist asses to keep a single McDonald’s open on Christmas Day so I can get my kid a happy meal. Isn’t it funny? There is a principle at stake in keeping church & state separate, always, until such a fracas might possibly have a side-benefit of convenience for the rest of us…like having mail delivered on December 25th for example. And then, they’re nowhere to be found. Politically active only when they’re being a pain in the ass. Atheists make me sick. Show me ten atheists, I’ll bet I can show you at least nine assholes who put out a Christmas stocking — and probably eight who screamed and yelled like a red-headed stepchild when they didn’t get what they wanted. Coal for ME, Santa? Why? Why are we putting up with the atheists at all? EVERYBODY ELSE…Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Update: And whoever drew up the plans for my son’s toy. An air-pressure powered styrofoam rocket that’s supposed to go 120 feet in the air. Kinda blips up somewhere between eight and ten INCHES, if that. Hey thanks guys! Well, we got to spend some time together exploring trails, kinda doing guy stuff as father and son. Good Christmas all in all. Would have been even better with a rocket that did what it was SUPPOSED to do. Screw you guys. You’re ripping of little kids on Christmas, charging good money for toys that don’t work. And I get coal. Everybody ELSE, I wish a joyous holiday season and the upcoming year brings you everything you want, and none of the things you don’t.

What’s going on in my old stomping grounds of Kirkland? This happened right at the mid-point of my old commute on I-405.

Kaisa Lauren Larson…had been asked to leave the bar by tavern employees earlier in the evening but was hanging out in the parking lot. She “was very intoxicated” and was “getting in the way” as officers attempted to investigate the assault complaint, Rudeen said. Officers called Larson a cab that was to take her to a friend’s house in Lynnwood.

As the cab traveled north on I-405, Larson became agitated and the cab driver pulled over on the shoulder in an attempt to calm her down, Rudeen said. Larson, who was wearing dark clothing, jumped out of the cab and began walking across northbound lanes. She made it halfway to the median when she was struck by a car and fell to the ground about 1:35 a.m., Rudeen said. She was then hit by two other cars and died at the scene.

Ba-bump, ba-bump, smoosh. That’s always been one of my phobias, having a drunk in dark clothing run out in front of me at one in the morning. Kinda freaky reading about it actually happening, right where I used to live.