< PREVIOUS ] [ 2001 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
American life has been so disrupted during the past five weeks that I thought I had permanently lost contact with my favorite inside source: Ananias Ziegler, media relations director for the Committee That Really Runs America.
But the call came. He wouldn't tell me where he was calling from, although I thought I heard Dick Cheney's voice in the background.
I knew you'd be concerned,
he said, so I sent
you an email.
His emails always had return addresses like
aVnonX349LZ47@hotmail.com
and the address changed
with every missive. Unable to tell his important messages
from the useless or dangerous junk shooting through
cyberspace, I had been deleting them unread, lest some
trojan horse, virus or worm infect my computer. I wasn't
sure even that drastic step would prevent contamination,
but on the other hand, it spared me the time I would have
otherwise wasted opening offers for Viagra, hot teen sluts
who wanted to chat with me and a variety of on-line
off-shore casino games.
Fair enough,
Ziegler said. Everybody's got to
be careful these days. But what about the fax I sent you a
few days ago? Did you get it?
Our machine seems to work only for junk faxes that offer low-cost Caribbean cruises and discount office supplies. The others seem to lead to paper jams or the phone ringing constantly at 3 a.m. because for some reason the automatic switch can't tell it's a fax then even though it works fine during normal waking hours.
Okay, I understand that,
he said, but why
don't you just get a dedicated fax line?
Because I can't afford one.
There's another service that could help you. It's
called 'distinctive ringing,' and you should look into
it.
I had, I told him, and even though I had a letter from
Qwest that called me a Valued Customer
and assured
me that the company was delighted to have the
opportunity to serve you in the future
-- the fact was,
Qwest isn't offering any additional services I want, like
distinctive ringing or DSL. It tried to sell our exchange,
the deal didn't go through, and Qwest isn't going to spend
a nickel adding features to rural exchanges.
That's because they're patriotic,
Ziegler said,
and they're following the President's request that
Americans go about business as usual. And for Qwest,
neglecting rural customers is business as usual -- they
need to put their investments in cities where there's
competition, not in the boondocks where you've got to do
business with them whether you like it or not. And
besides, even in your backwater, there's competition of a
sort -- why can't I find your pager or cell-phone
number?
Because I don't have a pager or cell-phone, I told him, as I've told many others, who then insist that I really do have those things, and if I trusted them, I'd give them the numbers. But the truth is that when I'm away from the phone, I want to be away from the phone, not at the beck and call of anyone who can tap in some numbers.
Quillen, I never took you for a Luddite,
he
fumed.
I have nothing against technology, in its place, and its place wasn't on a back road. Isn't there some kind of right not to be disturbed?
He moved on. What about the regular first-class
letter I sent?
There wasn't any mysterious white powder, or at least none that I could notice. However, there was no external return address, and my security system -- a 12-year-old chow mix who faithfully guards our doors when she feels like it -- sneezed when I wafted that letter under her sensitive nose. And by holding the envelope up to the light, I could tell it didn't have a check inside, so it wasn't worth the potential risk of opening it. The unopened envelope went straight to the firebox of the wood-burner in the living room.
Maybe you're taking that a little too far,
Ziegler cautioned. After all, if you give in to fear,
then the terrorists will have won.
But us media types seem to be the target this time around, I responded, and caution seems to be in order.
On the other hand, as good Americans, we're supposed to be going about business as usual, and how was I supposed to do that when I was also supposed to be concerned about viral e-mail, anthrax-infected postal mail, a quirky fax-line switch connected to a jam-prone fax machine, and even hidden or coded calls to action when that Osama bin Laden video appears on one of the news channels?
You missed a few other possibilities,
he noted.
What happens if there are so many calls about powdered
pudding in a post office, or a piece of pipe on the street,
that they can't respond properly to a real problem?
Good question. And I presumed the Committee had the answer.
No, we don't,
Ziegler said. But we're working
on it, and we'll let you know.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2001 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >