The Sound Of Silence

There are subtle things about any house. Like its smell. You get used to your own house smell, but other people notice it. It's basement fust, or mold puppies, or fossil baseboard grunge, or termite farts, or sheetrock exhalations, or something. I know my house smells because I sometimes detect it when I come in after it's been shut up for a while, but pretty soon the brain determines it's Familiar and Non-Threatening and filters it out and that's that. I don't know what my house smells like. I only know it's not cleaning products.

Now there's something different about our house. It's subtle too. You have to be in here for a while to notice. About an hour would do it.

Yes. It's the sound of the goddamn phone not ringing.

Pulled the little stinker's umbilical right out of the wall, I did. All of a sudden, just like that. We've been wondering whether or not to ditch the landline for a while. Nobody ever calls us on it who doesn't know another way to reach us. But it's a giant gaping portal for the undesirable commercial world.

Some of the same people have been calling at least once a day with the same routine for years. Years. Same. People. Same. Routine. Daily. Middle of the night, sometimes.

I guess there are reasons to keep a landline. One: the sound quality is better. This is true, but I don't need to hear Jason calling from Windows all that clearly--it's still the accent that throws me. Two: if you call 9-1-1 on a landline, the 9-1-1 folks have a better idea where you are. They can't home in on the cell phones quite as well.

Great. But if I've fallen and I can't get up, and I'm more than three feet from my landline, they're not getting any call from me.

Three: Something something something.

Here's the main reason we still pay for the landline. Our number is cool. It sounds like we picked it out ourselves. It's so cool, it's just one number off from a medical clinic. A lot of people who misdial the clinic are old. We used to try to give them the proper number, but too many of them couldn't understand why we answered the phone if it was the wrong number. Now we just listen and give medical advice.

We got this number in 1978 when we moved in. Your range was only as long as your cord. Mostly people had push-button phones by then. That's a good thing because there are two zeroes in our number--just like my childhood number--and people hated that. It's an easy one to remember, but if you're in a hurry, your finger might sail out of the rotary dial before you get it all the way around and you have to start over. Now, of course, nobody has to remember any phone numbers. Theoretically that should free up some brain space but it doesn't. "Build Me Up Buttercup" will just pour into the vacuum and stay there on a loop.

Oh hell, I'll tell you how cool it is. Privacy be damned. It's 282-4900. Right? Go ahead and call. It won't ring on my end.

(My Social Security number is even cooler. It's

And I haven't missed it at all. I can plug it in if I need to, but I'm afraid. I think there is a whole Fibber McGee closet full of solicitations backed up to our phone cord. It would be like if I answer the door and there are five thousand people on the porch who all start talking at once. A quarter of them are from Windows Technical, a quarter want me to know there's nothing wrong with my credit card, and the rest want to sell me Medicare.

I don't need no Medicare. I'll just call my own number. They give great medical advice.

He Wouldn't. Would He?

I got out of the habit of paying attention to the news every minute during the previous administration because it ruined my health. So it was a few days before I discovered that the top story now is the allegation that Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York) has tweeted his penis to a college girl in Seattle. I don't know all the ins and outs of this development, but the congressman claims someone hacked into his Twitter account and inserted a penis. That caused half the press corps to black out, hearing a sentence with "hacked" and "penis" in it, but the other half has kept this ball in the air for days. I find it equally plausible that he might have tweeted his penis or that he might have been hacked. It would be stupid to tweet your penis and try to run for mayor, but penises, on the whole, are notably lacking in political astuteness. On the other hand, hacking is just the sort of thing that deep pockets in the health insurance industry might come up with when threatened. "Someone is trying to stand between us and making all the money in the world," the health insurance industry would reason. "So let's hack a penis into his Twitter feed." It's the same old story. It's been going on since Lancelot told everyone that King Arthur's sword slipped out of the stone.

If this really was a hacking, it was brilliant. The penis in question is by all accounts a splendid one, and Mr. Weiner is hard pressed to state forcefully that it is not his. Some worry that this will derail his mayoral aspirations, but I think the photo might have gotten him some votes. He may yet get the job.

Others decry the fact that this matter is getting too many inches on the front page day after day. We have more important matters to discuss, they say. Can we still afford to provide a measure of medical security to our elderly citizens, or will we be better off funneling the old dears into the marketplace with some scrip and our best wishes? We need to study these things to come to a consensus. Is our debt unsustainable? Does Medicare foster overuse of medical services? What do we know about the penises of the major players in this debate? And is there any other way to rein in health care costs?

The debt is at fourteen trillion and rising; economists disagree on the significance of this; we've got hold of some solid evidence on Congressman Weiner's penis; and tort reform has been suggested as part of the solution.

Excellent! Let's see what you've got on Weiner.

[pause]

This is just a picture of a penis. In underwear. Are you serious?

It may or may not have been tweeted to a woman he doesn't know but is not married to.

Come on, man! This is health care reform we're talking about! I need the debt-to-GDP ratio, the position of the A.M.A., a verifiable inappropriate liaison including evidence of fluids, and the numbers on insurance premium growth.

[pause]

It was a gang-tweet.


Oh, well, then. Let's gut Medicare.

.

We have a lot of serious issues before us in this day and age, and we need reliable information about those we entrust to work them out. We have way too little to go on. I say we get all the penises out there; let's let the majority Whip earn his title. Let's get them all out on the table and start banging some gavels until we have everyone's attention, and then maybe we can get some work done.