Telegrams and Why, I Guess, They Suck
An "Opiniongram" consists of 1-20 words that you feel you must send to an
elected official. This service costs $9.95. Each additional 20 words tacks on
$3.50. I believe this service is made available primarily for prisoners
requesting pardons at the eleventh hour ("In my opinion, I think you should
SAVE MY ASS from the gas chamber, a lethal injection, or the chair, whatever
they've got cooked up for me, no pun intended" would cost you $13.45, for
example. At this point, I would assume, money would be no object). Actually,
as it turns out, our elected officials, in their infinite, free-franking
privilege wisdom, have assigned different levels of importance not to the
messages contained therein, but their mode of arrival. A telegram is the gold
standard, a letter second-best; a phone call is considered to be 1/100th of a
letter, and email, 1/1000th of a letter. Perhaps voting should work like this.
For example, if you walk to the polling station, which is actually pretty
easy, your vote counts as 1/1000th of a person. But say you rent a limosine
and a trailing conga line...your vote would really count! Once again, the
opinions of the rich and stupid are valued over those of the masses.
A "Mailgram" is 1-50 words that you'd like to send to someone else through the
United States Post Office, and costs $18.95. I'm sure all of us, at one time
or another, have had the desire to write someone but regarded the execution
thereof tiring and laborious. Now, you can just pick up the phone! I'm sure
there's an additional charge for more words, but the crack research team was
interrupted by my comical phone book readings (one HILARIOUS example: "Hey!
Here's 'Taxidermy'!").
The hallowed, historic "Telegram" is 1-15 words that are delivered to your
desired party via the telephone. This will set you back $16.95 (16-25 words
$23.95). If you'd rather have it hand-delivered, that's an extra $13.95. It
will be delivered by a non-hatted third-party courier service (like those maniacal DHL boys, for instance). Well, doesn't
this just Suck. What a pathetic shell the Telegram has turned out to be in
these modern times. Clinging to its last breath, the Telegram demands premium
payment for the redundancy of its existence, and can't even offer the novelty
of a hatted messenger boy you can kick around if the news is bad.
In a way, I emulated the modern-day telegram delivery process with my crack
research team, barking orders over the phone which were then relayed to the
Western Union operator who was on another line. However, my crack research
team refused to ask the operator about "Theragrams" or "Teddy Grahams."
Perhaps I don't pay them enough.
If I ever got a telegram in the mail (or over the phone) from someone, the
first thing I would think would be "neat!", immediately followed by "what an
idiot." So I sent Dominique a Strip-O-Gram.
by Mark Simple
[research: Todd Matthews & Jay Ronan]
95dec23
I've recently taken a shine to a woman with whom I am acquainted. I have not
told her this. As a novel way of broaching this topic with her (although we,
meaning you, all know that she knows, because all women know before men
because men just don't know, and I kind of knew that she probably knew, but
what we, meaning I, don't know is if she's, you know), I thought about sending her a telegram. Something like
DOMINIQUE STOP LOOK STOP A TELEGRAM STOP
I REALLY DIG YOU STOP
UHHHH YEAH STOP
"Wouldn't that be the bee's knees?" I thought to myself. While explaining this
with very little overt exertion of pressure to my crack research team
(Homeslice Pop-Culture Investigations, Ltd), they were immediately on the case
and on the phone with Western Union. WU has come a long way since the first
telegraph transmission in 1794 (Paris, to Lille, France, a distance of 126
miles. One can imagine that telegrams of lesser distances were implemented,
but they didn't make any of the history books I have, and, once again, I do
not hesitate to say that I can only do so much in a Missive, or, more
succinctly, you get what you pay for). Here's how a telegram used to work. You
would go to a telegram place (say, Western Union), hand-deliver your message
and the address of where the message was to be sent. Then they would get on
their little telegraph machine, and tap your message in Morse code along with
routing codes (one would imagine). The station nearest your destination
address would eventually receive the message ("Sent to Chinese a potter's
wheel, good luck") and send a cute lil' Western Union courier (wearing one of
those darling hats; of course, back in the early 1800's, it may have been
tri-cornered. I try not to think about such things) to hand-deliver the
message to the address. It's 1995 now. There are phones. There is Fed Ex.
There is the Internet. Western Union now mainly functions as a money transfer
service, but there are still telegram services. Oh my yes. There's an
"Opiniongram," a "Mailgram," and the standard "Telegram."