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Strange to say but my Internet is working and my telephone is not. I ought to say telephones, as I have two, and both are silent, without the familiar buzz that indicates a potential connection to the world. This afternoon my Internet failed for a while, and when I found the telephones also dead I supposed that it was all one problem, probably incurred as a result of the squirrel-chewed cable from my house to the pole at the street. But this evening my Internet returned, and the telephones remained inert.
WTF? What are the odds that two telephones would both go bad at the same time, or that their independent jacks would do so, or the separate cables connecting them to those jacks? Not great, I imagine, and so I am left with a puzzle. I am also left without my modern connection to the world other than the Internet. I find this strange and disturbing. No dial tones! What if my house catches fire? What if a murderer breaks down my door? What if I have an irresistible craving for pizza which can only be acquired by telephone-ordered delivery?
The collapse of modern civilization is not what I expected to encounter today, but here it is. I am in the dark ages (electricity, cable television, Internet, flush toilet, refrigerator, electric oven, microwave, water heater, gas range, furnace, and a few other items excepted.) How will I cope? What are my chances of survival? Someone could be trying to call me right now and I, a bloating, telephoneless soon-to-be corpse would never know!
Such a tragedy gives one pause. Being cut off so is such a challenge, will I be able to rise to it? Can I be like Lewis and Clark, confronting the mysterious and threatening wilderness? Like stout Cortez, silent on a peak in Darien? Like Odysseus, storm-tossed, shipwrecked, yet determined to reach his home? I guess I'll find out, though I have no idea what is wrong, and since the Internet (and thus the squirrel-chewed cable) still works, it is none of AT&T's problem and I must deal with it myself.
Oh, the humanity!
( Sunday Verse )
WTF? What are the odds that two telephones would both go bad at the same time, or that their independent jacks would do so, or the separate cables connecting them to those jacks? Not great, I imagine, and so I am left with a puzzle. I am also left without my modern connection to the world other than the Internet. I find this strange and disturbing. No dial tones! What if my house catches fire? What if a murderer breaks down my door? What if I have an irresistible craving for pizza which can only be acquired by telephone-ordered delivery?
The collapse of modern civilization is not what I expected to encounter today, but here it is. I am in the dark ages (electricity, cable television, Internet, flush toilet, refrigerator, electric oven, microwave, water heater, gas range, furnace, and a few other items excepted.) How will I cope? What are my chances of survival? Someone could be trying to call me right now and I, a bloating, telephoneless soon-to-be corpse would never know!
Such a tragedy gives one pause. Being cut off so is such a challenge, will I be able to rise to it? Can I be like Lewis and Clark, confronting the mysterious and threatening wilderness? Like stout Cortez, silent on a peak in Darien? Like Odysseus, storm-tossed, shipwrecked, yet determined to reach his home? I guess I'll find out, though I have no idea what is wrong, and since the Internet (and thus the squirrel-chewed cable) still works, it is none of AT&T's problem and I must deal with it myself.
Oh, the humanity!
( Sunday Verse )
