When The Real World News Sounds Remarkably Like The Onion

[Tim Strzechowski]

I thought about this, too.  Even went so far as to tell the wife how creepy this whole thing is, how people who call-in for this service not only have the pleasure of no telemarketing calls (telemarketers are forbidden from ever calling those listed, but who's exempt?  Charities and campaigners can still call you), but now their phone # and e-mail is registered out there, somewhere, everywhere, nowhere.  Quite the database that's being assembled.  Wife looked at me like I have three heads. Son refused to play catch with me.  Other son shunned a diaper change by me.  Dog snapped at me.

Let the world think what it wants to.  I smell a big, fat, Texas-sized conspiracy.




  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Elainemmbell at aol.com 
  To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
  Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 6:44 PM
  Subject: When The Real World News Sounds Remarkably Like The Onion


  Okay, let's parse the absurdities here, Fellow Conspiracy-Theorists: sign up now for a government sponsored service to relieve you of calls to your home and give this service, in so doing, your home phone number AND your email!  So now you won't be bothered by $7.00 an hour "Miss Mitchells" wanting you to buy TV Guide, BUT the Federal Trade Commission (and whomever they sell the list to) will have your email and home phone number handy--in case of? What?  National emergency?  Literary transgression?  Diversification into magazine sales?  HOW WEIRD IS THIS?!

  NY times excerpt from June 28, 2003

  People eager to block telemarketing calls overwhelmed a government Web site that began accepting phone numbers yesterday for a national do-not-call registry. From 12:01 a.m. yesterday to 5 p.m., 735,000 numbers were registered through both a toll-free phone service and the Web site, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which operates the registry. 




  Elaine M.M. Bell, Writer
  (860) 523-9225




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