Whirled Views with Dan Burrell

I haven’t done a “Listomania!” in a long time, but I was thinking recently (always a dangerous thing) about how cell phones have changed how I live and thought I’d put a list together.  I actually remember my family having a “party line” when I was growing up where we had four different people sharing the same phone line.  Before you dialed (rotary, of course), you had to check for a dial tone as one of the other families could be using the phone and you’d have to wait until they got off the line before you could call someone.  (You could also very carefully listen in on their conversations as well.)  We finally got a “private line” when I was nearing our teen years, but my family didn’t get a push button phone until after they moved to town and I had already left home.

My first “cell phone” was the size of a piece of firewood and if you had baggy pants, you could stuff it awkwardly in your back pocket, but then you’d walk funny.  It was around 60 cents a minute to use it on top of that, so you had to be very careful or you’d have a phone bill the size of a car payment.

Now, of course, my children have grown up in a world where they don’t know of a world without cell phones and my blackberry/storm gets my email, updates my Facebook account, allows me to Twitter while waiting at traffic lights, can surf the net and has applications I will never, ever use.  It’s just a different world since the arrival of the cell phone.

So here’s my list of 10 ways in which the cell phone has changed my life….

1. I have been known to call my kids on their cells from my recliner rather than to walk upstairs to talk to them about something.

2. I frequently suffer from “false vibration” syndrome where I sense that my phone has vibrated indicating a call or incoming text/email only to find that it was nothing.

3. I generally check my phone for messages (text/voice/email) before I get out of bed in the mornings.

4. I use my cell phone as as my alarm clock.

5. I have texted my kids at the dinner table to tell them to quit texting at the dinner table.

6. I have left roaring messages on my kid’s cell phones about the fact that I pay for their cell phones and yet they still didn’t pick it up when I called knowing full well that my kids never listen to their voice messages anyway and simply check for missed calls.

7. I don’t remember the last time I used our land-line at home to make or receive a call.  If it wasn’t part of our cable bundle, I’d get rid of it.

8. I have a panic attack whenever I drive through a part of the country where there isn’t Verizon service.

9. I once got caught playing BrickBreaker during a staff meeting — and I was leading it.

10. My children and occasionally their friends sometimes send me heckling texts while I am speaking at large meetings and I repeat an illustration they’ve heard before or I make a grammatical error.

I actually could do about 20 more of these, but I’ll stop here and let you add yours.  How has the generation of Cell Phones changed YOUR life?  Share in the comments section below.

I think I finally have enough things jotted down here and there to do a full-blown “Rant”.  To new readers of this blog, from time-to-time I just unload a rapid-fire list of thoughts, irritations, vents and musings that clears both my chest and my desk.  So here’s my latest…

• I have a bad habit of counting people’s verbal ticks when they talk to me.  One of the most irritating ones is people who say “you know”. Caroline Kennedy’s worst interview when she was thinking about trying for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat included so many “you know’s” in it that it pretty much ended her hopes of moving to Washington.

• I have my own “ticks”.  Recently I found that when I speak in public, I put my left hand in my pocket all the time.  I need to stop that.  Years ago, I would touch my glasses too frequently, so I had someone count how many times I would do that in a sermon and then would try to reduce that number each week until I had it under control.

• I really hate it when I’m talking to someone and they keep saying, “Know what I mean?” or “Do you hear what I’m saying?” over and over and over again.  I want to scream, “Dude, I’m not deaf!  Of course I hear you.  If I can’t hear you, I’ll let you know.”  It’s also a guise for getting someone to agree with you.  In my head, even when I politely say, “Yes, I hear you”, I’m also thinking, “But I don’t agree with you.”

• I’m generally uncomfortable with the idea of people giving standing ovations to musical numbers performed by “artists” in church.  I don’t mind respectful applause.  I don’t even mind an appreciative “amen”.  But really, do we need to jump to our feet and cheer when someone holds a note for more than ten seconds at the end of a Southern Gospel song or does more runs than a jackrabbit at the end of a Gospel number?

• I’m seriously considering scheduling a technology fast from time to time in my life.  So much of my work is done via computer and blackberry anymore, I’d like to experience the solitude of a day or two without running to the internet every few minutes.  I think I’ll call it going “techno-Amish”.

• Mark my word, if Obamacare passes, we will be having the same conversations regarding euthanasia within a generation as we’ve been having regarding abortion.  That’s not a prophecy; that’s a promise.  When the government has to choose who gets the kidney transplant, a 60-year-old grandma or a 16-year-old kid, whom do you think “loses?”

• I feed a little flock of ducks that gather on my porch and peck at my glass door until I give them bread.  They were so cute when they were little.  Last week, I opened the door to feed them and they all ran into my house and pooped on the floor and pecked my toes.  Kind of reminds me what the government does once you invite them into your back yard.  Next thing you know, they are sitting in your living room telling you to quit eating potato chips, vaccinate your daughters, buy a smaller car and that you make too much money.  Then they poop on your floor.

• Every time that I drive by some little white-knuckled, bespectacled whimpy fellow driving a Prius Hybrid up I-75, I get a little thrill by blowing past him in my gigantic suburban.  Hybrid drivers always just act so smug and buttoned-down.  Kind of like the kid in junior high who wore bryll-cream and his top shirt button buttoned and who took names when the teacher left the room.  He just kind of makes you want to shove him in a locker or hang him by his belt loops on the back of a door.

• I think Glenn Beck is one of the most mentally unstable conservatives on the air today.  And THAT’S saying something.  I’m shocked that he’s not a liberal as irrational and hysterical as he can be at times.

• I think Professor Gates from Harvard set race relations back a decade last month.

• At the same time, I’ve met some over-the-top obnoxious cops and government employees who think they possess all the authority in the world and aren’t afraid to flaunt it.  They do make you want to scream at them.  But if I did it, you bet I’d get arrested and the President wouldn’t invite me over for any (root) beer, you can be sure.

• Why is it that when Christians vote in a block for someone or in supporting a party, they are labeled, “simple”, “unthinking”, “sheeple”, etc…  But when Hispanics support a Supreme Court nominee simply because she’s Hispanic or when Blacks support Obama simply because he’s black — even though in each case the candidate represents a different philosophy than they hold — it’s considered understandable and even “historic.”  (Note:  I voted against Jimmy Carter and didn’t vote for Mike Huckabee — both whom are evangelicals.)

• The office of Pastor is undergoing such rapid changes due to the demands and expectations of the postmodern generation that I can’t keep up with it.  Frankly, I don’t see much Biblical basis in the changes.

• I’m as uninspired by the Republicans today as I was the day I decided to switch to “unaffiliated” last Spring.

• “Nothing could be finer than to live in Carolina….”

• McDonald’s Sweet Tea is an overlooked treasure in the Fast-Food world.

• I wish Florida Senator Mel Martinez was running for re-election so I could vote against him.

• Same thing goes for Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

• This year’s Big Brother 11 is DULL.

• I cannot bring myself to watch a single minute of the Bachelor/Bachelorette no matter how little is on TV during the summer time.

• I think I think too much.  I almost never listen to music because when I can understand the lyrics — I usually disagree with them, over-analyze them and find them philosophically or theologically unsound.

• I am grateful for Facebook.  It has revealed to me that my quarter century of ministry has not been a total waste of time.

• Facebook has also reminded me that often the kids you think are beyond hope are often the ones in which you should have the most hope.

• Why do tomato growers not comprehend that we’d rather have tasty tomatoes than pretty tomatoes?  So quit gassing green tomatoes to make them sickly red and figure out a way to ship ripe tomatoes that are edible when they get to the market.

• So the government is giving people $4,500 to trade in the “clunker” just like they permitted people who didn’t qualify for a mortgage to get houses they couldn’t afford.  And like the trained monkeys we’ve become, Americans are mobbing auto dealerships getting new tin-can cars and monthly payments they didn’t previously have.  Shall we now place bets on how many of those cars get re-possessed in the next six months?  No thanks, I’ll continue to drive one of my 100,000+ mileage cars with no payments.  I hope everyone’s grandchildren enjoy paying for the debt we’re wracking up with assinine gimmicks like this.

• I do sort of wish there was a cash-for-big-ol’-honkin’-TV’s exchange so I could get a kewl LCD or Plasma flatscreen.

• I don’t care how old I get, I’ll never really figure out most people.

• I don’t care how great a speaker a guy is, I’m really not interested in going to church for a video sermon.  I think I’ll just wait until it comes out on You Tube or free TV or just not at all.

• It seems like since the TV stations switched to digital that my television reception has gotten worse.  I’m always getting these little weird looking boxes that look like a pay-per-view scrambler in the middle of my regular shows.

• I’ve had to delete several bullet points on this list because they just sound too snitty and I’ve been in kind of a foul mood.  So glad that I’m at least coherent enough to delete them.

That’s all folks!