Hello? Hello? Is Anybody There?

In ancient times, biblical prophets looked far into the future to denounce something they called The Abomination Of Desolation; they referred, or course, to Automated Telephone Answering Machines.

Yes, I spent Thursday playing phone tag with various doctors’ offices which are equipped with these machines. “If this is an emergency medical situation,” the machine said, “Punch 666 now and hold on till Hell freezes over”.

Finally, I got hold of two live human beings in various offices; both of whom had taken assertiveness training classes for dealing with pesky callers. “Someone will call you right back,” they chuckled.

I anchored myself to the phone.

Hey, I even carried the phone with me when I took the garbage to the curb so I’d be sure to hear the thing ring. I may as well have put the phone in the can with the other trash.

No call back.

I did get hold of my oldest daughter who said she called the electric company yesterday about her bill. Their telephone machine has a special feature to enable the company to handle more callers – it automatically hangs up on anyone who has been on hold for ten minutes.

How convenient.

On a happier note:

When I went to update my website yesterday, the pop up menu said, “Access Denied”. Silly me. Why would I think I could get into my own website?

Anyhow, Donald to the rescue.

He came over after work and, in the light of my recent surge in book sales, refurbished my Bluefish Books Storefront.

He restored the lovely photo of the grinning blue fish logo; this statue was a Christmas gift from my youngest daughter who knows my taste in aesthetics and fine art. So I decided to use that statue as a storefront logo to attract cultured, refined readers, the sort noted for their exquisite taste in art and literature.

Donald solved the site access problem; he determined that the only thing wrong is that the server computer personally hates me.

But by the time he solved the problem, I felt too weary to update the site anyhow.

Maybe this weekend.

Meanwhile, I’m changing the message on my own answering machine so it will be classy like the ones the doctors’ offices have:

Hello. You have reached John Cowart’s Automated Telephone Answering System especially designed to screen out calls from riff-raff….If you are Riff, press One….If you are Raff, press Two. …All others please hang up now to clear the line for more important callers.