Happy Talk

Mobile phone use does not lead to a greater risk of brain tumour, the largest study on the issue has said.

This news from the BBC prompted me to go a-hunting for a fitting geurrilla image pasted up at several strategic intersections in the Bay Area. What I found, to my delight, was this:

Its source is Yellow Pages Commando. How had I not found this hilarious blog before? I think the site is supposed to be about advertising and marketing but this guy Dick Larkin goes so far afield he makes my allusions to comic books and jazz footnotes seem like direct quotations from a Piaggio factory manual. Makes for a good read, though, don't it? His, I mean -- me, I'm just getting started still. Anyway, the pic here is from a 2003 archive and, in a momentary deficit of commentary the only context he has is This sign is popular everywhere except New York. Now it is this week's brain teaser for me. I don't get it. Maybe Mr. Larkin thought New Yorkers were upset a whole two years from being the first State to mandate hands-free phoning while driving (that is to say, you can't be holding a phone in your hands -- you're not required to use a phone at all if you don't want to). Trust me, Dick, New Yorkers moved on. Since then, only one other State and the District of Columbia have enacted similar laws. Many cities have done it, and more are working on it [2004 reference: Seattle Post-Intelligencer]. Man, though, California, I gotta say, of all places, I mean, I've been known to espouse the wonders of modern telecommunications on this site because, yeah, it's great but, geez, California, WAKE UP, HANG UP AND DRIVE. The image I was originally looking for is of a skull with a cell-phone in its skeleton hand. Make no mistake. Mobile technology can kill people in quicker ways than with cancer.