Sounds of Silence

Every morning and evening I travel on the bus to and from work. Every morning and every evening my quiet contemplation is wrecked by a multitude of boring (though occasionally way too explicitly intimate) one-sided conversations as commuters use their cell phones to "keep in touch." I put that in quotes because I think what they are actually doing is conversational masturbation to pass the time in the absence of anything else to do -- and like all masturbation, this is something that I believe is best done out of the public gaze.

This won't be a problem in North Korea, though, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Having allowed mobile phones in November 2002, the commissars have decided that their introduction "caused floods of foreign culture" to invade the country. Mobile phones were, therefore, banned in May of this year.

And you thought there was nothing we could learn from Comrade Kim!!