A few minutes with Jakie Rooney...

OK, here's my Andy Rooney rant for today.

Don'tcha just hate it when you are right in the middle of a conversation and somebody says, "Hang on...I'm getting a beep," and then treats you to dead air for five minutes? Unless somebody is dying, forget it. Gossip later. We are talking here.

I'm getting fed up with those ubiquitous cell phones anyway. Oh, they serve a purpose. But, I swear, some people use them to the point they might as well be another appendage. We somehow managed to survive for thousands of years without them, anyway.

I don't want to try to talk to you during dinner while you are blabbing away on your phone. I don't think it's humane to keep chatting while a sales clerk or drive-thru attendant is taking your order. Hang up. Show some respect. They aren't your servants. They are people.

And, while I tweet and text myself, I shudder at the thought of what this is doing to the English language, which is already an endangered species. I'm sorry, but "C U L8ER" is not a sentence. It barely belongs on a license plate.

If you are at a party and your cellphone rings, let it go. If you are sitting alone at a restaurant using your cellphone, don't ruin my meal by talking so loudly I can hear every syllable of your argument with your significant other or the fact that you need to pick up a loaf of bread on your way home.

I couldn't care less. Let me eat in peace.

If we are in the theater watching a movie, turn the damn phone off. I want to see the celluloid. I don't want to hear you. I don't want to see the light flash when you tweet vapid verbiage. And if you have the temerity to let your cellphone ring during a live play, you should be swiftly executed.

And if you are driving? Don't even think about it. I don't want to become roadkill because of your fear of silence.

One of these days, we are going to forget how to carry on an honest-to-God eye-to-eye conversation with one another. Some of us are already there.

Put the cell phone away. Just. Put. It. Away.

C U L8ER.