The following is best read in a voice akin to that of Don “The Voice of God” LaFontaine:
IN A WORLD where people have forgotten their manners, made deaf to their fellow citizens by ipods sprouting from their heads, apathetic to those around them: one man stands alone, willing to fight for truth, justice, and the social contract. Impoliteness is his enemy, and his weapon is 24,000 volts of pure blue truth. Mild-mannered electrical engineer by day, by mid to late evenings he roams the streets of Boston, seeking vengeance on those who are unaware of the fact that they are not the only people on the planet. He is… Tazer Man!
A man at the mall stops right at the top of the escalator, deciding that would be a good place to continue his cell phone conversation, clueless to the people piling up behind him. Zap! Man down! He won’t need to charge that cell phone for another week. Thanks, Tazer Man!
It’s rush hour. A group of three teenage girls are gossiping cluelessly in the doorway of the Red Line subway, oblivious to the passengers trying to push by them before the door closes. Zap, zap, zap! No, he does not dial down the voltage for the young! “The younger they are, the more they gotta learn,” is Tazer Man’s motto.
A stock broker in a BMW sees the “left lane closed” sign, but does he merge? No, he drives past half a mile of people who don’t think they’re above everybody else, and cuts somebody off right at the last minute. He thought he got away with it. Maybe the last hundred other times, but not this time. Not today. Today he cut off the wrong guy. BMW guy doesn’t know that there is a complete electrical circuit between the metal interior door handle of a 2002 BMW 330Ci coupe and the chassis ground. But you know who does? Tazer Man does! ZZZZZap! Now two people know. Good thing leather cleans up well.
A twentysomething rides by on a skateboard. He stops at the front door of a bank, and quickly slaps a sticker on the side of the building, advertising his band “Shades of Moon.” Tazey has a special setting on his ‘gun’ for people like this. It’s called “Nobody cares about your stupid emo band so quit defacing public property with your infantile self-promotion.” Just kidding. That would never fit. It’s just called “High.”
When a broken social code has seemingly left us with no consequences for asocial behavior, Tazer Man is here to show us that there is a price to pay, and that price is 45 seconds of pain and possibly momentary incontinence. So the next time you are in public, remember your manners. And if you ever forget them, you may hear the faint whining hum of an electrolytic capacitor charging. That’s the sound of justice brewing, and it’s the last thing you’ll remember for about two and a half minutes.
7 responses to “Tazer Man!”
I hasten to add pepper spray particularly bear spray is far more reusable (up to 30 spontaneous “audits” of anti/asocial behavior) and likely more agonizing. Fox Labs makes the good stuff.
Maybe Tazer Man needs a female side kick whose specialty is long range pepper spray applications to people caught spray painting buildings? Her trademark could be “tagging” the perps by writing her logo on their foreheads in pepper-spray-induced rash. Anyway, I see TM as having a specially modified tazer (he is an electrical, after all) that exceeds normal commercial guns in terms of both capacity and application of current. “Putting the lethal in non-lethal” would be his other motto.
Oh, man! My new hero! A friend of mine turned me on to a group on Facebook “I Secretly Want To Punch Slow-Walking People In The Head” but a rabbit punch just isn’t enough.
I have several of the same pet-peeves: people that stand in doorways, people that stand to the left on escalators, and people the try to get on the elevator before letting others off. I think all of these would be good candidates for Tazer Man’s brand of cosmic justice.
I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to scream to SO many people, “NEWS FLASH! OTHER PEOPLE EXIST!”
Thank you, Tazer Man, wherever you may be.
Alain: Based on your blog entry from Sunday, which I completely agreed with, we can add “the parents of kids who won’t behave in theaters” to our list of pet peeves in common.
[…] I mention all of this is not to complain for the sake of complaining. That is something I would never do! I decided to write about this because the switch to digital will potentially be such a disaster […]
All great examples, albeit a bit focused on recently invented acts of social rudeness. Let’s not forget about the classics that appeared in our parents or grandparents days, like supermarket shoppers who park their cart on one side of the isle and then stand BESIDE it, rather than behind or in front of it, fully blocking the isle, while they scrutinize the product labels, oblivious to the gridlock of shopping carts piling up in both directions. They can kick that up a notch by responding to the polite “excuse me’s” with an “I’ll just be a minute.” These are usually the same people who leave their cart in the middle of the corner intersection of two isles blocking both, while they meander away to find something, usually in some distant corner of the market. There are a glut of infuriating behaviors committed in the checkout line alone. Leaving the cart to grab a forgotten item and returning after their turn to check out has passed leaving everyone wondering if they should wait, move the cart back one space, or hide it somewhere diabolical. How about starting their search for their checkbook after everything has been rung up and bagged. These people often don’t even have check cashing privileges at that store and become indignant that the store would have the audacity to insult them by refusing their check. Worse yet, those who try to pay with a third party, post dated, out of state check. Perhaps the original sin, buying more than they have money to pay with, which sends the checker searching for a manager to ok the over-ring. Obviously, I could go on and on. Heck, the supermarket alone could supply enough fodder for a book or two, big thick books with very small print and no pictures. My credo for living is “stay out of everybody’s way.” We should never make people have to slow down or wait needlessly. Oh, and let me just add, if we all helped bag the groceries, there would almost never be long lines at the checkout.
All very good examples. A trip to the grocery store usually sends my blood pressure up a few inches of mercury. Did you mention people who leave their cart blocking a parking space because they are too self-absorbed and/or lazy to return it to the cart stand?
Maybe a second episide of Tazer Man is in order, wherein he brings an extra couple sets of high current batteries to the local A&P.