Saturday, August 11, 2007

No.. No no no no NO no no!

Ken's got a little contest going over what to rename the iPhone in the face of some truly moronic behavior regarding it.

Now, I posted my entries before I clicked on the link. I figured it was some kind of typical stupid cell phone behavior - like someone talking all the way through a funeral service or something.

Nope. They are having their bodies SURGICALLY ALTERED to better use the damn things.

Dear God, no! No no no no no no no no no no no no no NO! Aaaaaugh! No! Wrong! The guy gets himself surgically altered so he can better use a flipping PHONE?

Oh, every part of my body that can cringe or pucker is cringing and puckering right now. I am actually vaguely nauseated, thinking of it.

Seriously - I hope that turns out to be a story from The Onion. I can't help but think it MUST be an Onion story, not just from lines like,

"While Martel's new thumbs now appear small and effeminate in comparison to his otherwise very large hands, he says he can still lift "pretty much anything I could lift before the surgery - though opening spaghetti sauce jars has been a problem. That was a big surprise.""


...but also from the sheer horror of what he actually had done (disclaimer: I am very medical-averse. I'd rather use a home-remedy or live with a problem - like, I have arthritis in one ankle that I've been told could be helped a little by cortisone shots - than submit to whatever pain). But, ew. I think even non-medical-averse people would be a little creeped out.

(Because, if it's real, you KNOW in 10 years there will be subtle and not-so-subtle pressure in the workplace to have that surgery, or others, done to "boost productivity."

Here's a thought: why not re-engineer the DEVICES to work better with HUMANS, instead of re-engineering HUMANS to fit better with DEVICES?)

Oh, that idea - that someone would have the surgery and that a doctor would willingly do it - is wrong on so many levels to me. It's like the women who get their feet shaved down so they can fit better into their Jimmy Choos.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The thing that really kills me about this isn't really the surgery itself; it's that the guy is probably so addicted to having that iPhone permanently attached to his hands - and after owning it for so brief a time - that he would consider having his body physically altered to accomodate his habit. After all, it isn't just a phone. It's a juke box and internet connection as well. I think it can do everything short of copulating to reproduce.

But if there's one thing people should have learned by now in regards to technology, especially this fellow who apparently can't do without it, is that it has consistently become more affordable and user friendly. The iPhones that people camped out for weeks to buy at upwards of $500 will cost half that in a few years, do three times as much at a greater speed and become easier to handle while probably becoming even smaller. This surgery will have been for nothing. It's especially freaky to learn how it's handicapped the man in so many other ways - all for the sake of a gadget, since the inevitable iPhone Super-Extreme X2010!!!! will no doubt solve this minor inconvenience of having to keep track of a stylus.

Anonymous said...

Sadly, it turns out to have been a "satirical" story. But who can tell, these days?