Carl "Crotchety Ol' Codger" Kruger, who lives in that mysterious house down by the water retention pond and lets the grass grow tall enough to cover his solid-steel front door, is known around town for a variety of reasons. Not only for the time he called the cops on trick-or-treaters three years in a row, nor merely for the time he is rumored to have stood completely naked in his garage, alternately weeping and growling until the neighbors clothed him and coaxed him to his bedroom. He is also esteemed among acquaintances for his key role in American politics as an influential New York state senator.
Senator Kruger deals with masses of people on a daily basis from all walks of life, trying to internalize the myriad needs of his community while staying true to his personal moral compass. That is why Kruger has decided to propose a bill that would ban the use of iPods and cellphones while crossing traffic. The fine would be a tidy amount of $100, which, in relevant cases, would be in addition to fines for jaywalking. Perhaps you thought jaywalking fines were a myth, but you would be wrong. The deadly kind of wrong.
"We're talking about people walking sort of tuned in and in the process of being tuned in, tuned out," Kruger told WCBS-TV in a Joycean spew of language brought to its final breath. "Tuned out to the world around them. They're walking into speeding cars. They're walking into buses. They're walking into one another," he went on, WCBS reporters horrified and looking desperately at one other. "Tuned in to the music, tuned out to the real world, know what I'm saying Janet? I'm talking about a group of slithery snakes just slithering their way along the roads and into the roads, of the roads, looking for a quick fix, see what I'm saying here, I'm saying a little something about a quick fix, that's the sort of thing I'm talking around, up, down, sideways, and ass-backwards is the kind of world we live in today people, do I hear a stir, I said do I hear a stir in the heavens, going once going twice, sold to the highest bidder, oh take me home Lord God on high." Kruger then thanked the reporters for their time, found a nickel behind his own ear, and baptized the man holding the boom mic.
If passed, the fine will apply only to Buffalo and New York City, because the people getting hit by buses in Albany, frankly, deserve it.