Culture Kill Art Kill Culture

NORTH CENTRAL- I travel light. My messenger bag slung over my shoulder, and against my back,  wind in my face, and the sheer exhilaration of biking through the burrows of this fine city.

Not today, though. I was almost killed today by a thirty-something business women who weighed no more than one hundred pounds. Her car was much heavier, and the conversation intoxicating her awareness of the road seemed to have held just as much weight.

I am not a sexist, not would it ever occur to me to insult a female just because of her chromosome count. It’s just that every single time this situation presents itself, it’s my quick thinking that saves my life, or at least an extended hospital stay. Two variables are always the same; me, and the woman. Sure, men yell at me from their one-ton trucks, flip me the bird, or lay on the horn, but it always seems to be a lady immersed in an engrossing (hopefully) phone conversation on her way from work to palates that gives me a scare.

The Internet is a vast universe of whinny people who feel their opinions carry greater value than others. They think that by personalizing their rhetoric, an anonymous slew of faithful readers will take what they have to say seriously. To Hell with that. I am not speaking as one person, but as the faceless thousands whose lives are mercilessly put in dangers by these self-absorbed, Lakeview residing, yoga-doing, late-brunch eating women who can’t wait the twelve Goddamn minutes between destinations to carry on whichever asinine conversation they make it a point to kill time with everyday.

Notice the lack of exclamation points amidst my sentences. I’m not yelling, or wagging a finger in the air. This is all based on a series of experiences many of us have had with in two-wheeled transit. Though it’s obvious men also discuss stock-broking, manicures, and tennis lessons while steering their automobiles to and from their homes, my experiences have only been with women. Call me a bigot. Call me a sexist. Call me names.

Feminism is in my blood. Ask my mother. Ask anyone. Maybe these happenings have merely been an allotted slew of circumstantial coincidence. Who am I to say?

Let’s just hope this message has been made clear: Get off your Damn phone, and listen to the radio, an Oprah-endorsed book on tape, or even the wind flowing through the fucking window. Do whatever it is you have to do to keep that phone from being perched between your shoulder and those delicate ears.

Oh yeah, and it’s against the law. That’s something, right?

Look, I promise to look the other way and not report you if you can promise me one thing: Just don’t kill me.

*Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal’s publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

*-http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html