All Telemarketers Must Fucking Die

August 17, 2008

Die die die. Die a skeevy nasty searing death, all you fetid bottom sucking parasites.

Die die die die, fucking die.

And furthermore...

Die!!!!

Are you dead yet? Suck it and die. Get a life, and then Fucking Die you worthless over-grown cum-stain. I hate you all.

Die.

The most recent call to infect my aura is a recording from some company that wants me to extend our car's default factory warranty - on my cell phone - on my way home - with caller id blocked.

A recording. You can't kill a recording.

When I do answer, in vain hope of being able to actually to cuss someone out, all I get is that soulless soul-sucking robot. Once, I finally listened to the message all the way to where I got to press 7 to decline the offer. Then it called again. Then again. And it won't go away.

Jesus, I'm Sarah Conner.

Why do we have to put up with this when there is no doubt a very simple technological solution here? It's not like some series of tubes and gimbles couldn't simply shunt these worthless calls into the nether regions of electronic limbo.

It's even worse on land lines. You get to pay extra for caller id, or some wonky service called privacy manager. It's a start, but why can't I just have a white-list like with email? Or a completely different protocol for incoming numbers based on area code, stored number lists, time of day, day of week, and whether the caller is a person, business, or another fucking recording. All we get are phones that let you program in a short list of numbers and assign a few ding-dony ring-tone kidnapped from a 1986 video game.

Maybe there's just not much of a market for a fully configurable phone system that you control through a USB port on your computer. Certainly there is nothing left to invent here.

I guess I should be lucky to have even this rudimentary mnemonic memory circuit built from stone knives and bearskins. Look back only a few more years where there's no cell phones, no caller id at all, no ring tones, and - luckily - no reality televion.

I guess that's the real moral of the story. The reason telemarketers are so annoying, apart from the fact that they are unapologetically rude and noxious by their very nature, is that we have come to expect more and more control over our lives, who we talk to, when, where, and exactly how.

Which brings me to the point of my post.

The level of control we have over our cell phones and related communication can't help but spill over into our digital video recorders, our home thermostat units, and our most beloved droid of all, the family car.

Again, there is nothing left to invent if what we wanted to build was an open-platform electric hub-wheel chassis that could be augmented with a variety of after market power plants, communication plug-ins, and sport packages.

The automobile industry - or should I say the flagging, withering, relic from last century - is utterly tied to the old gas-burning, big steel, paradigm. The car paradigm was perfected by maverick companies who had to produce everything from the tires to the repair tools in the field, and who created whole city-sized factories to bring into existence a marvel of the modern world, when the only other option was a hayburner or your own tired feet.

But a big engine and shiny chrome isn't what draws us in anymore. Horsepower and bright paint just won't suffice for an interconnected, digital, configurable world. We will soon want our cars to be as programmable and personal as our ring-tones.

The entire internal combustion world is on the brink of utter collapse. Electric cars will work better, be easier to maintain, and ultimately will be much cheaper to build and throw away.

We will be able to plug them in, run diesel or gas or corn, maybe even plug in a Mr. Fusion one of these days. We will have more internet, GPS, and cellular streaming media into and out of the cars than we have for our own homes. Commercials will be selected and custom delivered based on our current GPS location and whether there's a Taco Bell around the corner.

And then those little fuckers are going to start calling our cars, I just know it.

Copyright 2008 Daniel LaFavers