7.08.2012

Telephones - David James Duncan

Telephones are, without question, useful devices. But they are also, it seems to me, the verbal equivalent of houses without toilets. Telephones allow minds to communicate with minds in clarity or turkoil, in semisomnolence or drunkeness, in lust, joy, hysteria, stupefaction or any other state that fails to render a human physically incapable of holding up a quarter-pound chink of perforated plastic -- which is most every state there is. That telephones can connect us in seconds to any creature on earth foolhardy enough to lift its own chunk of plastic is wonderful. But its also terrible, gven what a lot of people think and feel about each other. Thats why, until theyre equipped with some sort of flush or filter or waste-disposal system for the billions of words that ought not to be spoken, ill not trust the things.


- Posted from the Road