New Jersey transportation officials say a year-old state law banning cell phone use while driving has resulted in nearly 109,000 summonses issued in the past 11 months.

That’s almost double the amount of tickets handed out during the previous five years for the offense.

A state law signed on March 1 last year makes talking on hand-held cell phones while driving a primary offense. That means police are now able to stop motorists just for talking on the phone.

Division of Highway Safety director Pam Fischer says the primary law is making a difference, resulting in about 10,000 tickets a month.

New Jersey is among four states and the District of Columbia that have made using a cell phone while driving a primary offense.

Alright. I call bullshit on this law “working.” What measure, exactly is being used to judge whether or not this law is working? Go ahead – go back and reread the article and tell me how we know the new law is working. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Did you see anything? More tickets being written? Yeah, okay. And? What does this prove? Nothing!

I hate this type of crap because today’s society is so consumed with doing a million things in a day that it is a rare thing to read and critically review information that is presented to us by the media. This is the main reason why the mainstream media is garbage and there is a rising class of entertainment-as-real-news that is taking over the ratings.

Most people will read this post on My FOX NY and just read the headline and scan for a quote from someone official affirming or refuting the headline. In other words, there are probably masses of people out there who saw this bogus article and now, in passing, would comment that the cell phone ban in New Jersey is working. Let’s shed some reality on this situation…

Nearly everyone in New Jersey has a cell phone crammed in their ear while they are driving or their thumbs are going a mile a minute texting away in traffic. Don’t deny it, my fellow Garden Staters – you know that you’re guilty of this in the car. Don’t deny it! And that includes some of the worst offenders – our law enforcement officers!

Anyway, this cell phone ban is not working. And for the love of God, just because more tickets are being written does not mean that a piece of legislation is success! Just like most of the other traffic-related laws on New Jersey’s books, this cell phone ban is yet another way for local municipalities to raise more money off of the already broken backs of our overtaxed population.

In the mean time, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!

One of my new favorite places to go to read about events in the student loan industry is Student Loan Stories. This is a great blog that covers student loans from all angles and was good enough to post the story linked above regarding how student loans are not eligible for bankruptcy. As someone who still owes six figures in student loan debt, trust me when I say that I knew about this years ago! But this is the type of information that isn’t shared nearly enough with college graduates in terms simple enough to understand. And we all know the garbage that has gone on with the student loan companies and certain colleges being offered kickbacks to recommend one company’s consolidation services over the others.

Disgusting.

Anyway, just putting out the grim reminder that you can’t put your student loans into bankruptcy. Sorry!

However, why does ESPN feel the need to ask questions on Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter like, “Next on SportsCenter: Are the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox the new “Sox-Yanks rivalry”? What the hell is that? The Red Sox and Yankees have been bickering back and forth and annoying to baseball fans across the country for decades. The Rays and Red Sox are battling in 2008 for the first time and played a close game on the last day of June. Calm down. Why must be everything be so hyperbolized? Fernando Vina and Chris Singleton are telling me that the Rays will definitely win the division. It’s 83 games into the season. The trading deadline is 30 days away. Way too much can happen to definitively assess a team’s chances moving forward and to do so is foolish. And anyone who puts stock into this drivel is an even bigger idiot.

Discuss what these teams may do moving forward, their strengths and weaknesses-that’s what these shows are for. But why, after 83 games, does ESPN feel inclined to talk about the Devil Rays like they are Big Red Machine of the 1970’s? The programming in Bristol is simply becoming more irresponsible and less educational by the day. It’s lazy, cheap, and says a lot about what they think of their average viewer.

I also darkened the background of the site because I didn’t really care for the bright off-white color any more. It’s boring, you know?

Plus, you’ll notice the stagnant “JerseySmarts.com” 468×80 banner has been moved from right above the first blog entry to the bottom of the main page. That site (which is essentially this blog in a different format) is ranked higher than this blog by some rankings! What total BS! I think that Joe’s Journal is hurt by not having a specific “.com” name, but since joesjournal.com appears to be owned by a marketing company, I think purchasing that domain is out of the question. Anyway, the Google ad above is an adequate replacement and what’s better – it pays!

For those of you who are tech-heads out there, Joe’s Journal is still operated on the WordPress 2.3.3 database system. JerseySmarts.com is operating on the new 2.5.1 system and the internal Control Panel is a complete disaster. The engineers at WordPress ruined the posting page so that you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find certain options. Garbage. I have no intention of changing the Joe’s Journal internal structure until WordPress fixes the debacle that is 2.5.1.

The only other change that I made was to make one of the stock text advertisements at the very bottom of this page a little bit smaller. Truthfully, it looks better with smaller text. I might set it off in it’s own box, too.

I hope you enjoy.

It’s a joke. This phone is a damned joke.

So I called Verizon Wireless a little while ago and to make a long story short, there’s nothing they can do to help me with this phone. After some discussion with two folks who, by the way, were very pleasant I asked this question: “I have a phone that I can’t use, I can’t replace, I can’t return, and I can’t fix. So are you telling me that I have a $500 paperweight here?” And God bless the Supervisor I was talking to because without actually saying, “Yes,” she said, “Yes.” That’s skill right there!

She made a point about what other business allows you to return a device months, even years, after you bought it? A clever ploy on her part which I’m sure confounds many people, but I came back with the fact that there are lemon laws in place where if your purchase is faulty you can return it. After reminded her that this would be the FOURTH replacement for this phone in an 18 month time frame, she dropped that argument. But she still saved Verizon Wireless some money because in the end – and without actually saying so – she suggested that I dump this device in the garbage. And there you have it, folks. I have a $500 paperweight sitting on my desk. If you’re interested, I’ll let it go for a mere $400…

At this point, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll stay with Verizon. It’s extremely insulting to have them come back at me with, “There’s nothing we can do. Sorry.” I’ve been a loyal customer who pays his bill EARLY for almost a decade and these bums can’t do anything for me? That’s not right. It used to be that the customer was always right – within reason. I believe that I am far within reason on this issue and that Verizon is trying to save themselves from having to give back a few bucks (or even from replacing this phone) from the consumer. It’s a shame, really.

Apparently my business isn’t worth much to this company. But of course, everyone I know has Verizon so if I go to a different carrier my bill will undoubtedly go up due to the fact that I’m on a new network.

I’m incarcerated by my mobile company!

And now I put this out to you folks – what do I do with my phone? Do I bag it up and demolish it with a hammer? Do I box it up and send it over Verizon Wireless and tell them to keep it? Do I donate it to some group when I know that it doesn’t work? Let me know what you think!

I’m being held hostage by Verizon Wireless.

The problem this time around is that my touchscreen seems to work on all parts of the screen, except the middle. So this means that any time I put the stylus on the center of the page, the phone doesn’t recognize it. And what’s so bad about that? Well, the obvious – I can’t get this thing to work the right way and I spent over $600 on the package when I purchased it.

But through some no-good online help, I’ve managed to reset my phone and gotten it stalled out where it asks me to “Use stylus to tape center of target one last time.” And where does this target appear? That’s right – the exact middle of the touchscreen!

So I have a stalled out, piece of garbage phone. Not only is this the worst phone that I’ve ever purchased, but I am going out of my way to dissuade other people from buying this piece of shit. I’ve already gotten two people to stay away from this phone (and the now-tarnished Palm brand) – here’s hoping that this post gets more people to stay away from this brand.

Well, remember the stories that we had over the summer months coming out of Ocean Township:

• Car Burgalries
• Child Predators on the Loose
• Slumlords not being dealt with
• The Dirty Developer who Ruined Local Home Prices
• Underage Drinking Problems (non-college!)
• More Underage Drinking Problems (non-college!)
• Poor Planning in the Senior Development
• A Growing Drug Trade Problem
• Even more non-collegiate underage drinking problems!
• And yes, yet even MORE underage drinking problems that have nothing to do with the local university (though this writer feels the need to mention that the university is close by)
• A Pirated CD Ring Busted
• Sketchy Little League structure (even little league is screwed up here!)
• Gas station robberies
• One of the biggest stories of the summer – the capture of a pedophile who had over 400 counts of sexual assault against him
• Purse snatching, marijuana arrests, and more
• Even MORE burgalries
• A massive “summer tenant” party that got busted up as the local police THOUGHT they had their first college party of the year…
• Utility problems in Ocean Township

Yes folks, that was just the crap that took place in this town over the summer months! Now I ask you – with all of this garbage going on in Ocean Township, New Jersey, do they REALLY have room to complain about college students? I think not. As a matter of fact, I think it’s obvious that they put the blame for all of their ills on the backs of college students from September through May. It’s disgusting and it’s blatantly obvious to anyone who actually looks at this stuff to see that this town has got a serious “good old boy” problem that needs to be fixed.

What prompted this post were the following stories:

• Underage Drinking on the Rise
• Peeping Tom Gets Caught

Are you serious? These assholes have the audacity to say that underage drinking is on the rise because of the college? Read your own stories and you’ll see that that’s not true!!!

And the second story – there was a peeping-fucking-Tom staring at people through their windows! Isn’t that a little more serious than some high school kids having a beer (I say high school because the drinking problem is NOT college-related, that’s just the media taking an easy shot at the university)?

Oh, but it gets better. Another local paper publishes the following:

• Prostitution Ring Broken in Ocean Township
• Investigation Continues in Cindy Lane Fire

That’s right, folks. Not only is there that gigantic list above of completely ridiculous problems from the summer months, but now we also have prostitution and 14-year-olds setting fires in town!

But hey…gotta go after those college students, right?

Ridiculous.