Now, you may be wondering why I’m running a story that concerns happenings in the ol’ US of A. You may be wondering why I’m writing about something that is completely unlikely to affect us over in Blighty. Well, all I can say is… read on, you’ll see in a minute. Or you can work it out from the pic on this blog. It ain’t too hard. As for the story itself, according to Yahoo News, a representative for the state of Maine is going to be suggesting a law to make mobile phones carry warning labels. I’m guessing like they have on cigarette packets, only here, they’ll be shouting that mobile phones cause brain cancer.
Now, there are many reasons why I could’ve chosen to write about this particular story…
I could have, for instance, decided to write a shouty rant at the legislator who’s suggesting it, reminding her that there’s no proven causal link (and no actual hard evidence of a link, come to that) between the two. I could have used it to implore people to stop being scared of everything. But no, a different angle presented itself. Y’see, I wanted to look at why the legislator may be suggesting it.
I also figured it would be a good idea to know a bit about Maine itself, to put the story in some sort of context. That’s when the reason became clear to me, when I realised that the only thing I know about Maine is that it’s where Stephen King’s from.
Yes, that Stephen King, possibly the world’s greatest living and most renowned horror author (as well as being the scribe behind the utterly incredible Shawshank Redemption). And then, I remembered that one of Stephen King’s most recent novels was the horror novel Cell.
Ah. Now it becomes clear.
For those of you who don’t know, Cell is the story of what happens to humanity when a mysterious signal, called The Pulse, spreads out through mobile phones, turning people into ultra-violent psychic zombies (the are probably my favourite words I’ve ever written on this blog). In that novel, mobile phones are the agent of The Pulse, turning people into monsters. And it was written by Stephen King. Who is from Maine. Which is where the legislator’s from.
Ah…
So, is it possible that she thinks someone’s Nokia N900 is going to turn them into a ravening, telepathic killing machine? Well, no, probably not, but if I lived near Stephen King, I’d be scared of everything, too, including evil sewer-clown-demons, rabid dogs, footballs with teeth that eat time, mist, toilets, and Sissy Spacek…
Yes, a plate of virtual jaffa cakes to whoever spots ALL of those references…
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