Spawn of Satan Wireless

Mack Hall


Once upon a time there was no 911 service, but you could use the handset of a Western Electric telephone as a club for beating burglars about the head and shoulders. Now an entire telephone is little more than a choking hazard for infants and puppies.

Cell ‘phones, like toilet paper, are useful, but they have acquired such a cultic status that there may soon be an official government holiday dedicated to them. People actually have conversations about their ‘phones, which did not happen in 1960: “I’ve got a ‘phone. Western Electric. Black. It sends and receives calls.” “Me, too. Western Electric. Black. It sends and receives calls.”

I credit the invention of the Princess Phone as the beginning of the end of Western Civilization.

My lights-up-in-the-dark cell ‘phone winked out last week, and I approached, yea, verily, the Temple of Telephones in Beaumont to have the matter remedied. I was in the temple at 0905, and at 0935 I was still waiting to be blessed by the priestesses and my name hadn’t moved from the #4 spot, where it started, on the electric signboard. The Temple of Telephones features seven altars, but the hierarchy hadn’t seen fit to assign more than two priestesses. Two of the faithful were at the two open altars when I entered and were still there when I left, muttering heresy under my breath. As I have often said before, the concept of customer service in many stores in Beaumont is pretty much Ignore-Them-And-Maybe-They’ll-Go-Away. This also applies to nation-wide religions like my cell ‘phone service provider, Spawn of Satan Wireless.

I was not optimistic about the 1-800-What-Do-You-Want, Peasant? number, but I suffered only five minutes or so of advertisements for newer-than-new Spawn-of-Satan Wireless telephones and services when a miracle occurred – a real human spoke unto me. She told me the obvious, that my ‘phone service had been cancelled. I agreed with her diagnosis, and asked her whodunnit. She was amazed that apparently no one had dunnit, it was just dunnit, but that she would reconnect my ‘phone and not charge me a $15 reconnect fee. She said this last bit as if she expected me to thank her and Spawn of Satan Wireless for not charging me to reconnect a telephone that they, not I, had disconnected. She mentioned this generosity twice. I didn’t thank her twice.

And then I got a bill charging me $150 for early termination. Grrrrrrr.

Once again I am wirelessly harnessed to the world on the electronic choke-chain, and can re-join the faithful in chanting “Can you hear me now?” Before Vatican II that was “Audit me nunc?” Old people still maintain that telephone service was so much better when it was in Latin.

I miss Western Electric telephones, those great big chunks of manly, heavy, made-in-America plastic that you could have used as door stops or boat anchors were you so inclined.

I miss staplers, too. When Marco Polo and I were in school together there were two brands of staplers, Bostich and Swingline, made entirely of steel in American industrial cities by World War II veterans named Spike and Rocky who smoked cigarettes and drank cups of Joe in chrome diners. If Bostich or Swingline staplers jammed you simply opened them up and beat on them like the S.E.I.U. beat up Republicans until their attitude changed.

Alas that you couldn’t take a photograph with a steel stapler. In order to take a photograph you had to have a camera. How did we ever live?

Now staplers are made in China of thin, brittle plastic. My previous one lasted less than a year, and I pleaded with the SupplyMeister for a new stapler, which was called (not kidding) EcoStapler. It lasted through exactly twenty staplings and then split down the middle like the temple veil on Good Friday. The toughest part of the EcoStapler was its hardshell plastic bubble, which took the edge off my Gerber pocketknife in a session of cutting, cursing, and bloodletting.

Tape dispensers, too, were once made of steel, with good steel teeth for sundering the tape apart in a most satisfactory way. Now tape dispensers are plastic, which wouldn’t be a bad idea except that they are filled with Chinese sand and soon begin spilling sand all over one’s endeavors. My tape dispenser is mended with its own tape so no more sand will leak out, but the cuts are a little ragged since the Chinese teeth are little inclined to honest work.

Someone said the new staplers and tape dispensers coming out of India will also take pictures and paint your toenails.