tl19891207-000 "Vol. 84 No. 13 ""Required Reading"" December 7, 1989 Published weekly by the students of Towson State University, Towson MD 21204 hell of being dialed up had machines so that they ""wouldn't miss any calls."" Machines acquired personalities of their own, recording some calls, ignoring others. They began to call the shots; ""Have your machine call my machine and they'll do lunch."" A woman I know can't leave the house without the remote for her machine; every couple of hours, or so, she calls in, ostensibly to ""check her messages."" Who does she think she is, Dan Quayle? What possibly couldn't wait? I asked her once if she was aware of how compulsively she called her ma-chine and she looked at me with a Jim Jones kind of shut-up-and-drink-your- Koo I -Aid look that was all the nudging I needed to drop the matter altogether. Other people, and I am not guiltless here, let their machines do the bulk of the phone legwork. Engaged in other, worth-ier activities that bear the indelible stamp of the high human standing in the hierarcchy of the food chain such noble things such as bathroom de-crust-ing, television gaping, middy toe-pick-ing, trashy book reading, etc. -- the machine becomes more than a butler, or an answering device; it becomes a per-sonal secretary, a protector of one's space, a bodyguard, and chief runner of interference. It screens calls. Just try and get past it. No gum-snapping, pencil tapping, moussed-up record company re-ceptionist in L.A. is better at keeping out the great unsolicited unwashed. I love my machine, and the public privacy it affords me. And that, that paradox of the fiercely reclusive and the eternally available, is the signature of the eighties. It was a decade that wanted see DECADE, page 17 by Ellis M. Woodward, Jr. Features Writer ""Too Republican."" That's all she would say. It was highly out of character for this chatty, opinionated, former English professor of mine to be so reticent, but, even when pressed, that was it. I was stunned; I was curious; I was thwarted; I was nervous. I had fully expected to simply ask for her thoughts on this decade, now sipping its nightcap and steeling for the scrutiny of statisticians and scholars, to turn on the recorder, lean back in the Lazyboy, and Ta-Da!, instant article. For her to summarily dismiss the past 10 years in TWO WORDS scared the oat bran out of me. Too republican; fine. I'll do it myself . (. . . he said. That from the famous-next-to- last-words department. Next-to-last be-cause last are invariably, I'm sure, a curse or an invocation of some deity, regardless of what the inflators and air-brushers of history want us to believe.) The 80's -- the dawn of the phone gods. They came to earth and brought with them the Black Death break-up of ATT, and the sinewy viral strains of MCI, and Sprint, and other long distance pesti-lences. They brought the wonders of fiber optics, smart phones, cordless phones, redial, speed-dialing, call for-warding, and call waiting. They brought the computerized phone, er, communica-tions systems, and the ubiquitous car phone, that friend of the businessman, driver's companion, mobile, spittle, gossip, and gab encrusted menace of the public roadways. Ahhh... the lure and thrill of small talk at 65 mph, why, it's phonorgasmic. But the phone gods' finest creation, the one after which a day of rest had been well earned, the brightest light, the hope and the way was .. . the answering machine. A wonder of wonders, it allow-ed us, at last, to be in two places at one time, home and wherever we happened to really be. It gave us strength, and heart, and freedom. It gave ""shy people the courage to do what must be done."" Meek people who, in '83, were too taken aback to even speak into the terse ma-chines they occasionally encountered at the line's other end, and so, hung-up with a vengeance, were creating clever re-sponses of their own by '88. Twenty seconds worth of wit and resourcefulness; we came to be judged by the banter of the phone butler. The dry, perfectly articulated instruc-tions of most of these home-crafter hom-ilies of phone etiquette acquired a certain Twilight Zonish-disembodied-head-on-a-pillar feel by the 1000th or so time that we: (a) hung up, (b) cursed, or (c) waaaiiitted to leave our nametelephone numberand abriefmessageafterthetone. By '87, people who never got calls, or made calls, had machines; friendless, pet-less people without a chance in telephone � INSIDE The Burdick garage opens Friday. TSU hosts the H. L. Menken Tournament. Page 2 Men's basketball team loses to UNC Tar Heels, 87-70. Women lose, 64-61. Page 6 Back to the Future II. Page 16 The real exam schedule. Creation vs. ""Sigh."" The Life of a newspaper. Page 25 .11111n11 111111111MMIIIINIMIN.1111?11.11, "
