Because We Just Can’t Leave Megan Alone

Orange Stoli Martinis in the morning are delish!Our favorite blogger, Megan McArdle, has, I think, outdone herself today with a particularly hilarious example of her own trademarked style of fact-free, vodka-soaked blogging. Normally Megan makes up facts about stuff which she has no reason to know and no desire to learn, which makes sense if the whole point of her blogging exercise is to see how many Stoli Orange Martinis she can drink in the morning before anyone (other than her persecutors at Sadly, No!) notices. But today she makes up stuff that she really ought to know, unless she has completely lost her long-term memory, which is, of course, a distinct possibility in Megan’s case.

For reasons that are not completely clear, Megan decides in a post today about the Supreme Court to talk about rotary phones — of all things — and says this:

I remember 1980 [That remains to be seen – ed. note]. You young people may not realize it, but back then, we didn’t have these crazy touch-tone telephones you like to use to fax all your friends. We had rotary dials, with little holes for each number that you had to stick your fingers into and drag them all the way over to the right, where a touch bar known as the finger stop would register each digit.

She’s kidding, right? Touch tone phones were first introduced in the 1963. There were tons of them around in 1980. More of them than rotary dials if my memory serves and it should since I drink less than Megan. And never at work.

And what’s this about “touch-tone telephone you like to use to fax all your friends”? To be certain, Megan probably has to call the Geek Squad to reboot her computer, but surely even she must know that you don’t use touch-tone telephones to fax things. Or maybe not.

So, kids, next time you think that another blueberry mojito or vodka appletini sounds like a good idea, just think of Megan and do the right thing.


Gavin adds: There’s also this, apparently in reply to us:

More Big Con Blogging

I have to admit to a bit of private hilarity at the multiple accusations that I couldn’t possibly have read Jon Chait’s book because a mere thirty six hours before I posted my review of it, I complained of not having a copy. I hadn’t realized that so many people considered reading a 250-page book, set in the EZ Reader Xtra Large typeface popular among political polemics, such a heroic feat. I’m sorry to disappoint, but shortly after that post, I borrowed a copy from my colleague Matt Yglesias, then sat down and read the book.

Um, wait. Let’s slow down a bit and get this timeline straight.

1) Complaining about not having copy of book

2) Borrowing copy from Matt Yglesias

3) Reading book

4) Posting a review of the book without any reference to anything in it, instead expanding on earlier arguments detailing her personal views on what she previously imagined Chait was saying

So okay. To be rigorously fair, maybe she read it but all the boring words just bounced off.

 

Comments: 96

 
 
Trilateral Chairman
 

Oh pish. At worst, this is a bad imitation of a crotchety old man. The misuse of technological terms is just part of the shtick. She’s made statements that are far dumber and far more worthy of ridicule.

 
 

If I think of Megan, I then the right thing to do is drink. Drown, bad thoughts, drown!

Next week, we’ll hear about how she used to play 8-tracks on her phonograph.

 
 

Yeah, I think this is humor. It’s kinda hard to tell because it isn’t funny, but that’s what it looks like to me.

 
 

Also, what’s this about the “touch bar known as a finger stop” registering the digits? The finger stop stopped your finger. The digits were registered by the number of pulses sent as the dial rotated back to the starting position — the audible clicks that you heard.

 
 

She sounds like this guy:

“We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time I took the fairy to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. Give me five bees for a quarter you’d say. Now where were we, oh ya. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because if the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.”

 
 

And another thing, back then, we didn’t have female orgasm because the radical feminists hadn’t invented it yet.

 
Incontinentia Buttocks
 

In fact, back in 1980s basic phone services often set up to respond to touchtones, so most pushbutton phones had little switches that would allow them to send pulses instead of tones.

True dat.

 
 

In fact, back in 1980s basic phone services often set up to respond to touchtones, so most pushbutton phones had little switches that would allow them to send pulses instead of tones.

What a thrilling age, in which dialing one takes the same amount of time as dialing zero.

 
 

quick question – how does everyone know that Ms. M is a big drinker?

 
 

While I, remembering 1980 well, had access to touchtone phones, my grandmother still used a rotary dial, and my father’s sister, who was several years older than he, was old fashioned and didn’t get touch tone until, I think, the 1990s (and I believe she still does not use credit cards).

So it’s entirely possible that Megan’s parents were rather retro. She is in her late 30s, and if her parents were older, it’s possible. But that’s more of a sign that she grew up more out of touch than other people her age.

Also, you could dial pulse by repeatedly pressing up and down on the phone’s receiver. The number of taps corresponded to the number you were dialing with “0”, of course, being 10 taps.

 
 

I’m with Trilateral on this one. Bad humor. Let it go, fellas. Isn’t there something funny going on at Townhall? Has Jeff Goldstein gone mute? Someone somewhere is saying something even stupider than Megan McArdle, I’m sure of it, and needs to be told so. While I wish your non-stop mockery could engender a tiny bit of humility in the lass, when you make fun of her dumb jokes, she just thinks *you’re* the humorless one. Give her up, boy-os. She will not slink off into the night.

 
 

The phone thing isn’t even the dumbest thing in that blog post:

It seems stupid to have to point this out, but on a number of issues the public has moved rather rightward over the past generation Naturally, the court has moved rightward too. It is not demonstrably out of step with the public on “liberal” questions like homosexuality, abortion, affirmative action, various sorts of environmental and business regulation, civil rights, campaign finance, separation of church and state, and so forth. If anything, the court is still to the left of the public on these matters.

Que?

 
 

Um, I had a Superman touch-tone phone in 1980. Problem is, I wanted the Han Solo version, which may or may not have existed in anyone’s mind but my own. Don’t get me wrong; I liked the Superman phone, but I really would have prefered Han Solo.

 
 

The fair maiden Atlantic Monthly Circa 1954 has had her honor sufficiently jousted for.

 
Incontinentia Buttocks
 

Cagrejero,

If you just substitute the phrase “my unsubstantiated opinions” for “the public” in your quotation from Megatron it starts making a little more sense.

 
 

Yeah, I think this is humor. It’s kinda hard to tell because it isn’t funny, but that’s what it looks like to me.

Actually the complete lack of teh funny is how you know McMeg is attempting humor.

 
 

Big Worm – Have you read her output? I think the jury is in one that one.

 
 

I remeber bitching about the lack of a preview buttion. And now that it is present, do I use it? No.

 
 

t4toby,

But i imagine heroin, acid, whatever, would yield similar results. How do we know it’s appletinis and not the yam-yam?

 
 

OK, I call lying Megan.

I remember 1980

Megan’s Atlantic bio quite consciously relegates her year of birth, and the year she earned both her degrees to the mists of time, but there are a couple of little traces of things on line where this info can be found.

Like this:
Lively conversation

She says she got her BA in 1994 and her MBA in 2001. She also, in April of 2006 claimed to be in her “late 20’s”.

Well, if she was 29 in 2006, she was born in 1977.

However, if she was 29 in 2006, that would mean she got her BA at the age of 17, which I doubt. Why do I doubt it? Well, for many reasons, but the main one is that if Megan had been a child prodigy, she would most certainly be bragging about it.

She also claims, here: What’s your story? to have been hit by a cop at a protest in 1991. Which, had she been born in 1977, would be a shocking thing, for a 14 year old to be hit by a cop.

So let’s assume instead that Megan graduated at age 2 or 22, the age most people get their BA. So she was born in 1972 or 1973. A little more realistic to think of her out on the streets getting hit by cops at 19.

So, in fact, she’s probably old enough to remember 1980. She would have been 7 or 8. And yeah, probably her Upper West Side family had dial telephones in their apartment.

OTOH, if you’re writing to the world in 2006 that you’re in your “late twenties” and you’re really 34…… 35 in 2007….that’s some pathetic lying.

 
 

She probably meant “text all your friends” and not fax? Or it was an attempt at humor, like imitating a ditz who would make such a mistake? Or imitating… a drunk blogger with not much to say?

 
 

Back in 1980 we had rotary preview buttons. With finger stops. And pulses. Of course that was back before the kids had their heads messed up with all this Cartesian dualism.

 
 

So let’s assume instead that Megan graduated at age 2 or 22,

obviously, should have been “Megan graduated at age 21 or 22…”

 
 

We have a serious lead, folks.

Gathering of Eagles were the ones who threw punches on Saturday in DC. Get on it.

http://gatheringofeagles.org/forum?forum=3&topic=1002&page=1

 
 

Megan is 35 years old. Like Tyra Banks….she’s the voice of my generation.

 
 

They threw punch? Shocking. Rum or Hawaiian?

 
 

I remember when you used to blog about me, Ann Althouse.

Of course, back then, this board was filled with people claiming to be me, Ann Althouse.

I, Ann Althouse, have noticed that despite all the attention you give to Megan McArdle, there are still no faux Megan McArdles commenting on this blog. Unlike the many despicable impersonators of me, Ann Althouse.

But I still don’t think of myself as the blonde one. That was always my sister!

 
 

That stupid bitch…

I was 5 in 1980 and I remember the touch tone phone right by the fridge on the wall…

Hell…that fucking lime-yellow phone is still fucking there. 27 years and it’s not been replaced.

 
 

Incontinentia Buttocks:

How silly of me to forget that in her mind, the US is nothing but a bunch of Megan clones.

Dhalgren:

GOE link is dead. Did they punch their server ala Fonzie in an ill-fated attempt to make it work?

 
 

GOE link is dead.

Try refreshing. Worked for me.

 
 

Ann, we did blog about you, but those days are gone. You see, Ann….I don’t know how to say this. You’ve been so great all these years. When we were in school, struggling; building our careers – ah, those were the days, remember? ….but – and you must admit it, to, mustn’t you? – lately, we’ve just been feeling we need more, something we can’t get here at home with you. We’re still vital bloggers, Ann, we still have things to say and do in this world, and we just need….more, Ann. Megan….she’s younger and so alive, and ….well….she just gives us what we need. Ann – you’re not giving anymore. You’ve become bitter. Ann, let’s face it, the magic went out of our relationship long ago. Ann – we’re leaving you. For a younger woman.

 
 

No McArdle fatigue here. I can’t get enough of the giant elf.

Big Worm, there is just something about Megan that screams gingertini, like althouse’s aura of empty wine boxes in the corner with the bag of cat food. There doesn’t seem to be enough introspection or ennui to suggest acid or heroin. She probably started drinking heavily around age ten, giving her a rich palette of hazy, sickly-sweet, self assured life experiences to draw on.

 
 

Never mind another; a blueberry mojito or vodka appletini is never a good idea. It’s the drunk’s equivalent of Hawaiian Punch.

 
 

Nevermind that the fax machine was invented by the French… well before the telephone.

oh, you think i kid?

 
 

Also, to this day, you can take pick up the customer service phone at some ATMs, and with a little practice you can tap out a phone number with the receiver. I called a friend in Europe a bunch of times in the 90’s.

 
 

I had a rotary dial slim-line phone.

Mine was red

 
 

JK47 said,

September 20, 2007 at 20:06

She sounds like this guy:

“We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time I took the fairy to Shelbyville….”

Aww, that was sweet. Did the old man and the fairy have a good time?

 
 

Well, it IS worth mentioning that while Teh Sadlys investigate the deepest details of the train wreck that is McArdle, over at s.z.’s place, they’re finding exciting new wingnuts with even wackier messages. I can’t help but be concerned Sadly, No is falling behind.

And as far as that Gathering of Idiots link goes, god I hate right wing sites. They all write with the same self-righteous, stilted tone. It’s as if they can only frame any discussion in an internal fantasy where they are all good, all knowing, deadly warriors and everyone who might disagree with them in any way is the embodiment of all that’s evil and traitorous, and needs only to be dealt with the way they would deal with all their enemies. In this case, stealing a man’s photo of his son, the one that was killed in Iraq? That’s completely ok. But when he reacts to the theft, and attempts to recover his property, HE is the crazy one.

These are sad, pathetic little boys, and yet the damage they and their heroes have done to America and the world is immeasurable. I find it almost impossible to listen to the certainty with which they describe their black and white world view…

mikey

 
 

Mdhatter, a pantelegraph sounds like a way to send trousers long distances via wire.

 
 

Can we get Megan one of these?

 
 

Mm, that children’s book at s.z.’s place must be a parody site.

I couldn’t open the GOE link. Are they hanging out at the Eagle’s Nest these days?

 
 

In Concord, Ca. where I lived, the phone company issued you a rotary phone, but one could buy all sorts of great touch-phones, clock-radio phones, Cinderella phones, and so on. I was quite happy with the rotary phone, tho I love my wireless phone these days. It’ll do things I never heard of.

 
 

I just noticed that the graphic at top looks like the body of Michelle Malkin is offering me a martini garnished with an orange slice and a McArdle head. This doesn’t mean that it’s any less appropriate.

 
Fishbone McGonigle
 

Hell…that fucking lime-yellow phone is still fucking there. 27 years and it’s not been replaced.

Where the hell do you shop that has yellow limes?

 
 

Isn’t there a Meagan drinking game where everytime she back-pedals on something while explaining to you that she isn’t actually wrong because she meant to write the correct thing and you’re just misinterpreting it anyway, you take a drink.? And if she ever actually admits to being wrong about something you finish the bottle.

 
 

BTW: Congress passed the “MoveOn Is Bad” statement! 20 Dems voted in favor. Pigs!

 
 

I’m pretty sure my touch-tone phone was build before 1980. Let’s see, I stole it from the office 9 years ago. . .

 
 

Fishbone, when they ripen on the tree they get yellow.

 
 

I have a big, black, uh, rotary phone. got it at a garage sale about 10 years ago. I’m sure it was one of those that the phone company owned since it has a sticker on that claims it is the property of the Bell company. Still runs good, as they say in the classified ads.

 
 

Let it go, fellas.

Noooo!!! The world insists on kicking me in the teeth for nothing, so I will kick at someone who causes me brain damage with her inane sputterings on health care. That she gets paid to write, no less.

 
 

Ds voting “yes” (to condemn moveon)

Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Salazar (D-CO)
Tester (D-MT)
Webb (D-VA)

Ds not voting;

Biden (D-DE)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)

no Rs voted “no”

 
 

Feinstein. Arggghhhh!

 
 

Do the Dems win some sort of prize if they push congress’s approval rating into single digits?

 
 

If Obama was present to vote, but abstained, I’ll have to reconsider supporting his candidacy.

 
 

Yuck, that Flock of Seagulls thread reads like the men’s room wall at the very unsavory establishment down the street from me – where the regulars begin drinking and chain smoking before I leave for work in the morning.

 
 

Yuck, that Flock of Seagulls …

Ha!

 
 

In 1994, when I moved into a new apartment, my mother gave me an old pink rotary slimline phone. I plugged it in and later moved my bed over it and forgot all about it. That is until about 2 a.m. one night when I was sound asleep. It had actual metal bells, and my mother had left the ring volume all the way up because, well, that’s how mothers like their ring volumes. When it rang, I ended up ten feet away from the bed before I realized I was awake and what had just happened and then I couldn’t remeber where anything was in a strange apartment or which way I was facing for several minutes. My story really has nothing to do with anything except now that I think about it, I have the same feeling sometimes while reading Megan’s blog.

 
 

Just curious, have any of you ever faxed your friend anything? With the exception of maybe a scan of your ass cheeks, no one ever faxes their friends.

But I remember 1980. Those rotary dialed fax machines, and those wacky telegraphs we used to send our friends. “IDK, my BFF Bradrocket. Stop. We LULZ’d MAO. Stop. Bleep Bleep blurp. LUL WUT? Stop”

 
 

Oooooooo. I beat Gavin for once. (Tho Fishbone beat me.)
Meggie did herself one better today.
She showed all of us who doubted she read the Chait book who’s boss, and it only took her 9 days.

 
 

re: the update. I fear Megan’s flexible use of time and conditional phrases is tenderizing my brain in some sort of sinister preparation for her ultimate argument. resistance is futile..

 
 

Evidently these are pics of the Seagulls beating the man described on the Flock’s website; http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/carlos/index.htm

 
 

I would like to Ghandi-stomp those seagull mouth breathers.

 
 

So okay. To be rigorously fair, maybe she read it but all the boring words just bounced off.

If she thinks she found an egregious misunderstanding in the book it might have been smart to, you know, talk about it at TPM Cafe.

 
 

The phone in the house I grew up in (my grandparent’s) was a heavy black rotary phone. They got it when they bought the house in 1950, and it was there until the day my grandmother left for the nursing home, in 1989. It was also, until 1978 or so, a party line. (My uncle, who lived in the country, had a party line until the 90s.) Needless to say, when I was a teenager in the 70s it was very stressful not to know if the love of your life had been trying to call all day and been unable to get through because the lady down the block had been blabbing away to her best friend Millie about venetian blinds all day. (Etiquette was that if you picked up the phone and someone else was on it you quietly replaced the receiver, but of course as kids we listened in.) Also, until around 1985 or so, one only had to dial the last five digits of a phone number on a local call. Truth. And this wasn’t a tiny village, it was a town of around 28,000.

Ah, nostalgia. And I remember that first fax phone we got. I spent the whole night sucking down apple pucker shots and faxing all my best buds.

 
 

Completely OT and open-threadlike, here’s an example of how absolutely ANYTHING can be made into a peg to hang marketing on (courtesy of drugstore.com):


Simper is better! Shopping for Kleenex® Coldcare® Tissues with Menthol is now even easier. The same great tissues are now simply called: Kleenex® Brand Tissue Menthol.

Sources say that next year, they’re rolling out Kleenex® Brand Tissue Ultra Lights and Kleenex® Coldcare® 100s.

————————————————–
The OJ Simpson Case III: Vegas 07!

 
 

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Dana Carvey as the Grumpy Old Man:

I’m oooooold! And I’m not happy! And I don’t like things now compared to the way they used to be. All this progress — phooey! In my day, we didn’t have these cash machines that would give you money when you needed it. There was only one bank in each state — it was open only one hour a year. And you’d get in line, seventeen miles long, and the line became an angry mob of people — fornicators and thieves, mutant children and circus freaks — and you waited for years and by the time you got to the teller, you were senile and arthritic and you couldn’t remember your own name. You were born, got in line, and ya died! And that’s the way it was and we liked it!

Life was a carnival! We entertained ourselves! We didn’t need moooovin’ pitchurrrres. In my day, there was only one show in town — it was called “Stare at the sun!” … That’s right! You’d sit in the middle of an open field and stare up at the sun till your eyeballs burst into flames! And you thought, “Oh, no! Maybe I shouldn’t’ve stared directly into the burning sun with my eyes wide open.” But it was too late! Your head was on fire and people were roastin’ chickens over it. … And that’s the way it was and we liked it!

 
 

You kids are too young to remember, but we used to use these old-fashioned things called cassette tapes to play our music… hey, these pomegranate martinis are awesome!

 
 

“Cassette tapes?” Feh! All one needs to appreciate music is a good Victrola. Seventy Eight RPM or nothin… hey, this rubbing alcohol is… who turned out the lights?

 
 

Evidently these are pics of the Seagulls beating the man described on the Flock’s website; http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/carlos/index.htm

Thanks! I’m on it…

 
 

I can still remember my family’s first North American rotary dial phone number. The year was 1961 and the number was 828-2454.

I’ll take that vodka tonic now!

 
 

I remember when you used to blog about me, Ann Althouse.

Of course, back then, this board was filled with people claiming to be me, Ann Althouse.

Ann Althouse,

You, Ann Althouse, are still in our thoughts. Consider this a missle of affection aimed at you, and only you, Ann Althouse, aka “bloofer lady.”

 
 

Oh Johnny Coelacanth, thank you for that. It’s actually funnier in print!

 
 

To show just how young I am, the big phone event in my childhood was when we got a cell phone (just one). It was a Motorola MicroTAC, which was known as a “flip phone” and actually quite a bit smaller than the phones that had preceeded it.

The service was with Ameritech (nee Bell Ohio) and the number was 620-1052. It was metered at sixteen cents a minute and there was no concept of “plan minutes” in those days. You paid for what you used. You paid handsomely for long distance and service outside of your local area, as well.

When we came into the digital age, when I was in high school, my parents gave me the old, deactivated phone. As many cell phones still do, this model had maintenance/service access codes that you could punch in and access special features of the device. Believe it or not, there was a generic “listen mode” in which the phone acted basically as a scanner for the cell phone bands. This was a later revision of the hardware, so the feature had been limited to just a few channels, but it indeed let you do what you’re thinking: listen to people’s calls. Back in the days of AMPS there was no scrambling or anything on the voice channel, so it all came in loud and clear. Despite this being the early 2000s, digital was still new, and many people still had analog phones or phones that dropped back to using the AMPS network if whatever digital technology their phone had couldn’t get a good signal. I can’t say I heard anything interesting, but I spent many days in the yard of my Catholic high school with a friend of mine, listening for anything interesting.

 
 

You’re welcome, Snowwy. I actually cut two paragraphs; you can read the whole thing here. Scroll down a little more than halfway, to avoid the Dennis Miller.

 
 

I’ve always had scanners, and while they’ve been cellular blocked for quite a while, they are all capable of monitoring cordless phone freqs. Most of the time it’s either excruciatingly boring or in chinese, but I did have a neighbor who was a regular user of phone sex lines. That was eye-opening.

I also had an apartment in Santa Rosa in the late eighties where the building managers were a young married couple with a newborn. Their baby monitor was always on, and he’d get blasted at night and they’d fight like cats and dogs. Sometimes entertaining, mostly just depressing…

mikey

 
 

I was in kindergarten in 1978 and the phone company came in and did a presentation to us about how to use the telephone. That was the first time I remember ever seeing a rotary phone, because we’d always had touch-tone at my house.

But hey, that was 1978. Maybe by 1980 touch-tone phones had been un-invented so they could be re-invented later.

 
 

“So, kids, next time you think that another blueberry mojito or vodka appletini sounds like a good idea, just think of Megan and do the right thing.”

Yup. Slam that sucker down!

 
 

I am surprised to see that Megan doesn’t have an entry on Wikipedia yet. I would have thought that some as famous as her should have one.

 
 

I think I still remember my phone number from when I was 8.

When we moved into our current house – this was in 1996 – the house still had 2 hard-wired black desk model telephones working.

Where I live, everybody has the same telephone number prefix. So neighbors just exchange numbers by giving 4 digits.

It was a real bummer when Verizon made everyone go to dialing 1 + area code. But even now, the local pizza parlor knows who’s a newbie and who’s not, because when you place your order and they ask you for your phone number, you just say 8550.

 
 

We got our first “push button” phone in 1966. Maybe Megan was raised in some tool shed on a back road somewhere….

 
 

The idiot with the beret is Chris Hill, National Director of GoE.

 
 

Dear me. My dad, who was public cheapskate no.1 got touchtone phones for us in 1976, and better still added a second line into our home. We finally got off the annoying party line and didn’t have to listen to a bunch of old ladies (practically the only people apparently allowed on party lines) prattle on and on about nothing at all.

 
 

So apparently Boxer showed up for the MoveOn vote? Nice to know there’s something important enough to get her out there … even if FISA wasn’t it. For a while there I figured she had died but no one had told her.

 
 

To be rigorously fair, maybe she read it but all the boring words just bounced off.

Hey, how do you think Dubya “defeated” Rove in their adorable little Reading Competition? You think Commander Codpiece could peruse all the actual *words* in a Shakespeare play, much less Camus, without his brain exploding? Unka Karl explained that under the new Repub Rules, actually opening every single page in a book would qualify as having “read” it, as long you didn’t cheat by flipping.* Megan got quite the workout, turning over all those leaves in Chait’s book without spilling her rocky-road-cosmo-tini even once!

*Of course Dubya cheated anyway, which gave him the kind of warm glow of accomplished knavery usually confined to dogs and very young children when they think they’re outsmarting The Big People.

 
 

If anyone still cares, Answers.com gives Megan’s b-day as 29 January 1973.

 
 

My day just got a lot brighter — thanks to “these crazy touch-tone telephones” — I thought they were just dumb old boring phones. Now, I know just how wacky they are. I can now look forward to hours of just crazy office work on that crazy touch tone phone.

 
 

I think I’ve figured it out. McArdle wants to be Eve Harrington to Ann Althouse’s Margo Channing. Fasten your seat belts…

 
 

Answers.com gives Megan’s b-day as 29 January 1973

Heh. She’s the same age as my daughter – their birthdays are less than a month apart.

Fortunately, she’s not nearly as smart as my daughter or she’d be automatically disqualified as a conservative spokeswad.

 
 

Touch-tone phones? Oh wouldn’t that be a wondrous thing? If only you could touch sound, man!!

Even better: to touch a vodka-soaked Megan!!! What would that sound like? Like, at a Phish concert??!! Yeah!

Wooooooooooo!!!

 
 

I have in my hand, right now, a touch tone phone made in 1980 … in the shape of Pac-Man. Does it make Pac-Man’s signature “wuckah-wuckah” sound? Sadly, no.

 
 

Where the hell do you shop that has yellow limes?

Southern CA. They’re called Mexican limes. Look like smaller, thinner-skinned lemons with lime-green insides. Not quite as sweet as Key limes, but still good for tarts and pies.

 
 

Technically, the last mechanical exchanges in the US weren’t phased out until the late 80’s… Some were replaced for speed, but others weren’t replaced until the repair cost exceeded the install new cost.

So yeah, in 1980, I lived in a house with a party line and rotary phone. Eventually they replaced the mechanical switch, but we didn’t lose the party line until cable was strung out a few years later and they added enough copper for everyone to have their own phone lines.

 
 

(comments are closed)