Keeping Busy - The Telephone

I've mentioned that Kirk found ways to keep himself entertained at his new job. He had an accomplice in this - they had one of those synergistic relationships where the whole is entirely greater than the sum of its parts. When you think about the mayhem that only one part was capable of, this is a frightening thing.

A favorite pastime was creating phone messages. They started fairly small and innocuous, but when a couple of colleagues went out of town for several days both of them branched out into real genius. Kirk's series of recordings is legend. I have had four people stop me (two of them I didn't know) and act out various parts. Unfortunately it is completely impossible to translate to text - honestly, I'm very sorry about this. The best I can say is that 'Birthday Baba Ganouj' has become a household catch phrase, and I have been given several boxes of Baba Ganouj mix on the strength of the whole thing.

However the friend's effort was pretty good too. The following messages (as near as I can reconstruct) were left on K's phone while she was away for a week:

The first day away: 'Miz X? This is Wayne from Triple A Cold Storage. We've got a shipment for you, says came in two, three weeks ago but my guys say it's been sittin' here a while. Anyway if you could call us back, arrange tah pick this thing up I'd sure appreciate it.'

Day three: 'Miz X? This is Wayne from Triple A Cold Storage. That shipment of yours - by policy we gotta open this thing up, see what's in here if we don't hear from you. Give us a call by the end of the day ma'am.'

Day four: 'Miz X? This here is Wayne from Triple A Cold Storage. We're gonna whoah! Whoah Bruce you open that thing up? My god... damn man that's... Miz X? We [cough, oh MAN] we got your... um... your meat delivery here and it's [cough, cough] oh, man. Okay, we're gonna hafta...'

Return day, knowing she was coming straight to work: 'Miz X? Triple A Cold Storage. We found your home address here on the... on the... on the um package... paperwork, so we're just gonna [no man! You put that in triple bags I'm tellin' you, and you take that truck right out and hose it down after or we're gonna be smellin' like that for weeks], we're gonna just deliver this for you, no charge.'

Click.