Now hear this, you annoying blabbers on the bus

(By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST)

A little poetic justice may be in store for the next long-winded cell phone shouter who plops down next to Esther Rousso on a Metro bus. Matching the decibel level of her yakking seatmate, Rousso may pull out a book and start reading aloud. A slim volume of poetry ought to work, she says.

I think Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," described as the "saxophone cry that shivered cities," would do the trick. Or maybe the insipid watercolor word play of Rod McKuen.

Rousso was just one of a busload of readers, bus riders and drivers who wrote and called with some downright devilish solutions in the past week following last Friday's column on bus-riding loudmouths and the drivers who fear to tame them.

She got the idea from a story about subway cell phone incivility in The New York Times. As a subway rider's voice rose, his seatmate began reading aloud, raising her pitch as he raised his. Eventually "the cell phone culprit complained to the book reader that she needed to stop because he couldn't hear his cell phone," Ruosso chuckled.

The reader agreed she would snap her book shut if the cell talker would hang up. . .

poetry will work, but think about singing!