House of Eratosthenes

We were at the drive-in last night with a good hour to spare before the start of the show, and my head was chock full of The Adventures of Shush Man because his help was so desperately needed. Some dickhead was up a row or two with that heavy bass booming along rattling everything. Headache inducing.

Shush Man is one of my other personas. I know I’m getting old, because if you offered me only one sampling out of a whole smorgasbord of super powers that included flight, super-speed, telekinesis, magic lasso that makes people tell the truth all the time…the one power I would have over anything else is to wave at persons and things and make them shut the hell up. Shush Man isn’t really about the power itself…it is about the desire to have it. You start out wanting to be Superman, when you get a little bit older you think the super power fantasy is a little juvenile, and Batman has a certain appeal for you. Then you hit a certain age and your ideal hero is Shush Man. Shush Man is your last one. Once you like Shush Man, you never go back. And I’m there.

Wow, I really could’ve used his help last night. Boom Boom Boom Katchoom Boom Boom…

I tried lots of Shush Man substitutes. I tried calling the administration office by cell phone; they did not pick up. I cranked up my own volume to 40 and put in Beethoven’s Ninth. The next step was to make a long journey up to the concession stand and report him…being a man, of course, I wasn’t going to do that so I marched out to right the wrongs myself. And I did. I implemented Shush Man’s super powers in a purely-manual mode. Intimidated the hell out of the poor guy. He promised to turn it down right away.

Once back to the car, we realized I had busted the wrong car. Oh, dear. That ain’t him……and I wasn’t going to find the right one, either. You know how that ultra-low ultra-bass thing is. It sinks into the ground and bubbles up out of it again. Goes around corners. It looks & sounds like an easy proposition to home in on it. Well, it isn’t.

I began to dream up new superpowers for Shush Man. Shush Man would obviously have to have some powers to hunt perpetrators down, powers that I don’t have. Bionic hearing or something. Explosive hydraulic foam was another idea…once Shush Man zooms in on that sonofabitch, he could conjure up bubbly pink foam out of the ground with such force that the car would flip over and be consumed by it. Or by an orange goo.

But in real life, Shush Man doesn’t exist. And I’d already collared an innocent man, did I want to go reprimanding another? Boom…boom…katchoom…boom…boom. So between the two options left to us — go on a witch hunt, or wait it out for the remaining ten minutes — I was persuaded to choose the more passive option. Fortunately, we had only another five before security made their regular rounds, and my lady flagged ’em down and alerted them to the problem.

It became clear their younger ears could seek out things that my older ones could not. It did take a few seconds or so…but the photon torpedoes did find the two-meter exhaust port, and the deed was done. Glorious silence followed. We applauded. We were not the only ones.

I bring this up because…well…once again, I just think it’s interesting. We don’t have any blood-sucking lawyers calling me up to find out if I’m “allergic” to Boom Boom Katchoom Boom Katchoom ultra-low frequency ultra-high bass rap music. And it really does induce painful headaches…

…but lookee what we have here…

A group in Santa Fe says the city is discriminating against them because they say that they’re allergic to the wireless Internet signal. And now they want Wi-Fi banned from public buildings.

Arthur Firstenberg says he is highly sensitive to certain types of electric fields, including wireless Internet and cell phones.

“I get chest pain and it doesn’t go away right away,” he said.

Firstenberg and dozens of other electro-sensitive people in Santa Fe claim that putting up Wi-Fi in public places is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Arthur Firstenberg, your lawyer is obviously hungry. Maybe he’s my Shush Man; he and I can help each other out. Have him give me a call.

Otherwise, I think I have another case of “discrimination” I’d like to report.

Look at what you’ve got going on here. We’re giving our poor, poor “disabled” people “chest pains” when we use WiFi. To…complete some term papers. Find something in an electronic almanac. Look at porn? Mmmm…I’m inclined to think that’s what a home broadband connection is for. WiFi is…to find out if the movie we just pulled in to watch is any good. Or? …look up the phone number of the administration office of a drive-in to report some boom boom katchoom dickhead in Lot 5. Generally, to expand our knowledge base — our minds. Lawyers are mobilizing to get us to stop.

What does the boom boom katchoom itself do? The opposite. Turns your brain to mush. Give people headaches. WiFi may or may not be about exchanging information, learning things from your fellow man, offering him something in return. It might not be, but it might. So it stops. Boom boom katchoom has nothing whatsoever to do with the exchange of information. And, better-than-even odds it will everlastingly interfere with your brain’s ability to process information that is passed to you in the future…

Where’s the battalion of lawyers mobilized to put the kibosh on that?

Suspiciously, MIA. And this is what I find fascinating — more than a little. With apologies to Arsenio, it’s well into the territory of Things That Make You Go Hmmm. Make yourself better stronger smarter, there’s a lawyer to stop you. Your freedoms must be curtailed, so that the “rights” of others float onward unscathed. Make yourself into a drooling idiot, and suddenly that is what freedom is all about — all those around you just need to learn to deal.

MOST interesting.

H/T: Anti-Strib.

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Allergic to Wi-FiMonday, May 26th, 2008

Allergic to Wi-Fi
Monday, May 26th, 2008