The playing ape: stuck between progress & cliché
‘What will people come up with next?’ they say.
Well, this, for instance:
You know what a bother it is to carry both your MP3 music player and your Taser gun?
Worry no more.
Today at CES, Taser International introduced the Taser MPH — the first combination hand-held music player and Taser.
The player, which has a 1-GB capacity that can hold about 150 songs, is embedded in a holster that slips on your belt. Feel the need to zap someone and you can unholster the Taser, use the built-in laser pointer to aim, and blam — a couple of darts carrying 50,000 volts hits your victim.
And you don’t have to miss a beat.
Yes, and then people say there is no progress.
Still, most of the time the playing ape (aka homo sapiens) behaves in a quite predictable manner. With grown-ups obsessing about colourful shiny things (and beating the crap out of each other) and their offspring doing anything it can to avoid going to school.
Mind you, some of the ways it tries to do the latter can be quite innovative:
MONTERREY, Mexico (AFP) — A 10-year-old Mexican boy glued his hand to his bed to avoid going back to school after the Christmas break, authorities said Monday.
“I thought if I was glued to the bed, they couldn’t make me go to school,” the boy, Diego, told AFP. “I didn’t want to go, the holidays were so much fun.”
“I remembered my mom had bought a very strong glue,” he said of the industrial strength shoe glue he used to stick his hand to the bed’s metal headboard, where he stayed stuck for two hours.
His mother Sandra Palacios was unable to free him and called paramedics and police to help. Diego watched cartoons while they worked to unglue him, eventually using a spray to dissolve the chemical adhesive.
“I don’t know why this happened. He is a very good boy,” said his mother.
Diego eventually made it school a few hours late.
Still, most of the time people are ruled by cliché. Not that these tired old saws need to make much (or any) sense, of course.
Ever heard the one saying, ‘There’s no accounting for taste’?
Now, there’s a very silly saying for you.
When people are not fighting over land and bright & shiny things, taste is about the most popular thing to fight over.
As a certain chef turned builder found out at a quite impressive personal cost:
A pastry chef chewed off part of a builder’s ear after an argument about reggae, a court has been told.
Michael Jenkins, from Neasden, north-west London, was on a career break working as a builder when he had the row, Southwark Crown Court heard.
The 25-year-old was hit over the head with a spanner by Levi Edwards, before he chewed off part of Mr Edwards’ earlobe in September 2006.
He pleaded guilty to wounding and was given a 12-month suspended sentence.
Jenkins, whose venison roulade won him dinner for two at one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, decided to swap the “high pressured” environment of the kitchen by working on a building site.
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January 8th, 2008 at 19:21
Glued his hand to the bed huh?
My mom would have sent me to school while still attached to it.
She’s mean like that.
January 8th, 2008 at 19:25
Your mom and mine…
J.