Tweet of the Day (Greg Schindler, Imagining ‘The Breakfast Club’ Remade)

“If The Breakfast Club were made today, it would be a silent film about five kids staring at their phones.”—Greg Schindler (twitter handle: schwindizzle), tweet of Jan. 9, 2015

Don't you forget about me. Unless, that is, you're thinking about how to respond to the latest text message  you got...

Quote of the Day (Rob LaZebnik, on Why Cellphone Users Are Like Ewoks)

"People talking on cellphones enter a sort of cone of narcissism, unaware of the world around them. They're both incredibly irritating and oddly vulnerable—like Ewoks.” ―Rob LaZebnik, “Moving Targets: A Little Latte, Please, With a Dollop of Quiet,” The Wall Street Journal, June 14-15, 2014

(The photo of Rob LaZebnik—a writer for The Simpsons, incidentally—was taken at  the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2011, by Gage Skidmore.)

Quote of the Day (Ellen Goodman, on Cellphones)

“When did I first come down with cellphone rage, you ask?’’—Ellen Goodman, “The Latest Rage,” Boston Globe, March 21, 1999, reprinted in her collection Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times (2004)

Unlike Ms. Goodman, the crucial question for me is not when I first felt cellphone rage—ancient history, as far as I’m concerned—but when I'll stop feeling it.

The recently retired Globe columnist’s beef was with cellphone users who simply had to share their lives not only with the other person on the line, but with everyone within listening distance. Mine is more fundamental: With the technology.

Today, for instance, for no apparent reason, after I turned on my phone, it asked me for a security password. It never required it before in the month or so I’ve had it. Why, in heaven’t name, did it do so now?

Grrr....