Does anyone else find musical ringtones annoying? You're in a meeting, or a church service, and somebody's phone goes off with a a vaguely familiar tune. It's loud, and the person takes forever to silence the thing. A few weeks ago in church, we heard Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" several times (since the phone's owner was out of the sanctuary at the time). Ringtones are like fonts--there are zillions available, and you've got to try them all. So the theory evidently goes.

But the advance of technology has now created something even more annoying. At BP stations, when you start pumping gas, a voice from a speaker at the pump intrudes into my personal space with verbal advertisements. Thankfully, you can hit a "mute" button to silence the voice, an option I always take (as I did this morning). But I find this intrusion to be entirely diabolical and evil.

I thought nothing could be more annoying than pop-up ads. Then along came ringtones, and now these spoken ads at BP stations. I can hardly wait to see what's next.