Answering Machine Messages

I find it interesting that the conventions in answering machine messages that were set 2o years ago when they 1st came out, have remained virtually unchanged almost 20 years later.

Everyone still says, "Hi this is John, I cant come to the phone right now so please leave a message after the beep."

Oh, is that when I leave it? AFTER the beep. I was wondering ya know, until you cleared up that foggy grey area about what to do and when to do it. Thanks John.

This mesage format literally stems for the age when people didn't know what answering machines were, and so you had to walk them through it.

-ring... ring... Hi. You've reached John--

-"oh, wow! Its not actually John on the phone right now! This is some kind of recorded tape playing! Cool! So now what?"

-Please leave a message after the tone and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks, have a great day.

-"Oh ok, its going to record ME now, and John will listen to it later. I get it. So when I hear a beep, that means its going to start recording my voice for John. And I guess I just hang up when I'm done. Rad. Next time I save up $350 Im going to buy one of these cool new devices."

This isn't the 1st time I though about how weird it is to still give instructions 20 years later. I've felt kind of weird saying the standard model for a while, but I still use it on my voicemail. But if you assume that the callers knows WHO they are calling, and you assume they know THAT they are supposed to leave a message, and that they know to do that AFTER the tone, then what else is there to say? I have tried just saying, "This is Chris, leave a message." Buts that's still too much information. This leaves us with having no message, ONLY a beep. But that's so cold and impersonal. There must be some kind of a message that doesn't state the obvious that is still pleasant and formal enough for business calls.

I would think that like all other art forms, the answering machine message would evolve through the different periods. Classical, Modernist, Post Modern, etc. And I suppose it has to a certain extent. People have tried to get creative, which would qualify as the modernist phase, by doing things with music or sound effects or jokes or whatever. And the post modernist phase would be when people get self-reflexive, "This is Alex, you know what to do!" or "Hello?.... Ah! Tricked ya! This is Alex leave a message." But we've entered a post post modern phase where its lame and even campy to have such a message. So its come full circle back to the Classical period. If you were one of those people that ever left in the 1st place.
I suppose the most logical thing would be if it just went like this:

ring...ring...ring..."This is Chris Sowick's voicemail"-beep. But somehow, that still doesn't seem right.

No I Didn't Wash My Hands

After a man urinates I see it entirely illogical to wash one's hands unless you actually get urine ON your hands. Even so, urine is actually very clean in my understanding, throughout history it has been drank for various "health" reasons. If anything, I would think urine would actually kill bacteria on you fingers, but in Western culture, urine is gross, so I can understand why one should wash their hands if urine is actually on them. But barring this shlamazle incident, why does one need to wash their hands after going pee? Long ago I mastered the skill of completing a urination session without touching anything but my pants. Just pull down the waist-band, let that huge penis flop out, and unload. The huger the penis, the harder it is to get it back in without touching it, but if your pants are loose enough, it can be achieved with little difficulty. If you are actually one of the .000001% of the population who actually undoes the button and unzips the zipper, then there is no excuse for having to touch your penis while urinating.

But say that I'm the other 99.999999% and I'm wearing a suit that day, so my pants have no stretch factor to them, and I actually have to grab my penis to get it out. This still does not warrant a germ cleansing afterwards. My royal penis is clean sire. Its perhaps one of the cleanest parts of the body. Its certainly the most protected, and most covered part of the body, and comes into the least amount of contact with the least number of different surfaces throughout the day, barring perhaps, the feet. But the feet sweat, and then bacteria grows, that's why they stink after a long day; my penis never stinks. So the way I see it, my hands are probably dirtying my penis when I touch it, not vice versa. We should be washing our hands BEFORE we pee, not after.

So when I go to take a piss during my workday, I try to pull it off without finger/penis contact, and if this must happen, I don't ever get urine on my hands, and if this should happen, then I will customarily wash my hands, even though the urine is probably CLEANING my fingers, not dirtying them. The fingers are the DIRTIEST part of the body, barring the anus and the mouth. And all this sterilization is for moot when you touch the door handle to exit the bathroom. (I use a paper towl to opne the door.)

So when I see some poor misguided soul scrubbing his hands furiously for 5 minutes with tons of soap, I don't understand. I've actually entered the bathroom to find some guys scrubbing; I go up to the urinal, take car of business, and make my exit, the whole while this guy is still scrubbing. I can only conclude he got shit on his hands.