Are they yet another nostalgic feature of a recently vanished world; back when the household landline telephone held all the intrigue and mystique of a miniature Easter Island statue perched in the corner of the room- but now holds all the menace of an unripe aubergine... only with less relevance?
It seemed there was a time when you'd have at least one phone call from a fruitloop every third of a year or so (they used to be particularly prevalent around holidays somehow; owing perhaps to people being bored and at a loose end while at home from work with no more jigsaw puzzles to complete or board games to play and the holiday food shopping already done and thus free reign given to indulge in their mischievous alter-egos and/or major psychiatric disorders. There was a period of a few years when Christmas just wasn't Christmas for me without a phone call in the night from a raving lunatic or at least a heavy-breather.
I remember one year in the mid 1990's our crank/creep caller was particularly fond of calling our landline number late at night in order to play recorded and spliced-up scenes from violent Tarantino-esque movies at full volume down the phone. That particular series concluded with some old-timey Country singer yodeling from speaker system to receiver and we figured the crank/creep was rather creative and entertaining in a drug-addled sort of way.
Nowadays our idea of a nuisance phone call is someone in an extended broom cupboard in Mumbai pretending to be from Dell or Sky TV or someone called Jodie asking whether you were recently involved in a vehicular collision; and even these are relegated firmly into lesser standing by the far more common scam and spam texts on the mobilus phonus. Yes, they have the fear factor.... but where's the personality?
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It seemed there was a time when you'd have at least one phone call from a fruitloop every third of a year or so (they used to be particularly prevalent around holidays somehow; owing perhaps to people being bored and at a loose end while at home from work with no more jigsaw puzzles to complete or board games to play and the holiday food shopping already done and thus free reign given to indulge in their mischievous alter-egos and/or major psychiatric disorders. There was a period of a few years when Christmas just wasn't Christmas for me without a phone call in the night from a raving lunatic or at least a heavy-breather.
I remember one year in the mid 1990's our crank/creep caller was particularly fond of calling our landline number late at night in order to play recorded and spliced-up scenes from violent Tarantino-esque movies at full volume down the phone. That particular series concluded with some old-timey Country singer yodeling from speaker system to receiver and we figured the crank/creep was rather creative and entertaining in a drug-addled sort of way.
Nowadays our idea of a nuisance phone call is someone in an extended broom cupboard in Mumbai pretending to be from Dell or Sky TV or someone called Jodie asking whether you were recently involved in a vehicular collision; and even these are relegated firmly into lesser standing by the far more common scam and spam texts on the mobilus phonus. Yes, they have the fear factor.... but where's the personality?
:##: