Please leave a message after t--*Click*

I'll speak into an answering machine or voicemail if I have to, such as for important business, situations in which I'm calling to acquire a service. If it's one of my lazy friends screening calls, I won't bother. Caller ID is practically standard now; I don't block my information; there's no need to encourage their antisocial behavior.

When you speak into the machine, you're having a one-sided conversation and it's uncomfortable. It's like a tiny audition. You're trying out for the role of "important caller". If you miss the cue or you start rambling, that's it, you're finished. You're not the caller they were hoping to find. Of course, they're not going to tell you this. You have to sit by the telephone in futility like everyone else who blew the message. Weeks later, you run into the machine's owner at a party, you ask him why you didn't get a callback. "Yeah, sorry. We wound up going with the one who had trouble pronouncing 'sausage'." "The lisp guy? Noooooooooo...c'mon!" "Oh, you should hear him do Hamlet. He's hysterical! How could we turn that away?"

[/Seinfeld]

Jam it back in, in the dark.