AMERICANS WIRED FOR RUDENESS.

Byline: Phil Perrier

YOU can't even talk to people any more. Everyone is wired up to iPods and cell phones and Bluetooths and BlackBerrys. If you try saying ``hi'' to people at the gym, they look at you, as if slightly annoyed, pull out their earplugs, rearrange various wires and say, ``What?''

``I said, `Hi.'''

Then they look really annoyed, as if to say, ``You made me do all that to say `Hi?'''

Then they plug back in their equipment and return to the Black Eyed Peas, like it's the most important thing in the world. Sometimes they even sing along. There is nothing as hellish as the caterwauling of people listening to music on earphones; it's like karaoke on crack. The late-night screams in a Turkish prison sound soothing compared to the bleating of some iPod geek on a Stairmaster, ``my laaaady lumps ...''

Then there are the cell-phone exhibitionists. People who didn't get enough attention from Mommy when they were children, who now make the rest of us listen to the intimate details of their lives at full volume. On a recent night at the gym (a national chain of health clubs, which will remain unnamed, though it rhymes with Rallys), all of the sudden came, ``Gas money? You want gas money? Reggie, I told you I only had a quarter tank in my car! You must be out of your damn mind!''

And it went downhill from there; more talk of ``gas money'' and what a ``fool'' and a ``jackass'' Reggie was.

Within two minutes, 30 or 40 exercisers learned that in addition to being a blabbermouth, this woman is in a bad relationship, has car trouble, money trouble and that Reggie is the root of all evil. I wondered where Reggie was torturing his captive audience. Starbucks? A line at the grocery store? Night court?

Cell phones are the cocaine of the new millennium. Just as cocaine turned parties into narcissistic paranoia fests during the 1980s, cell phones are doing the same thing today. In a culture obsessed with ``being in the moment,'' nobody is in the moment. Everyone is a million miles away in their own private cellular Idaho. If a UFO landed at a gym, and Liberace and Jimmy Hoffa emerged and sang a duet of ``Stardust,'' nobody would even notice. They'd all be too immersed in their own gibberish.

Like cocaine, it's all about the next fix. How many times have you heard, ``Gotta go, got another call!''

In other words, ``Someone else is calling and they are more important than you.''

As if attention spans aren't short enough already, now text-messaging is all the rage. Recently, I was talking to someone on the phone and I could tell she was distracted. So I tried a little test. ``I just captured a baby Sasquatch,'' I said. ``Right on,'' came her reply.

When someone says ``Right on'' today, it means ``I am not listening to a damn thing you're saying.''

Then, she admitted she was getting a text message. So I hung up on her.

The ultimate rudeness trifecta would be talking to someone on a cell phone, while sending a text message and instant-messaging someone on your computer at the same time. The transcript of it all would go something like this:

Cell phone caller 1: ``Hello? ... Hello?''

Text message: ``Right on.''

IM: ``Totally.''

Cell phone caller 2: ``Right on.''