The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for February 19, 2021

And Brutus is the first in line!

I wonder what the on-hold music is.

Stay on line. Your call is important to us.

I know someone who’s voice mail starts out, “Hello?”. Then 5 seconds later, "Hello??. Then another 5 seconds, “Please leave a message after the beep”. He says it’s the best call screener he’s ever had.

Veeblefester has caller ID and knows it’s Brutus. That’s not a recording. It’s his way of avoiding the conversation.

I always wanted to record the three tones they play at the beginning of the message for “not a working number,” then put it at the beginning of my voice mail message followed immediately by “Just Kidding!” Real people would get the joke, but machines would hear the interrupt SIT code and remove my number from their calling list.

And Brutus was calling to let him know that he was running a half hour late for work.

at least it ain’t an hour.

Your call will be ignored in the order it was received.

Hang up Brutus.

To shun invalid and unwanted calls, In my greeting, I state a wait time in hours & minutes and then ask for $15 to be sent to this number for faster service. Crap phone calls are way down. The Chinese have not called for several months, to leave messages for I have no idea what.

No it’s not, Good bye……..

It just occured to me, that Ron Howard’s Dad was named Rance, I checked, it wasn’t short for Rancid. Actuallymit was his middle name, probably a family name. To save you the trouble, his first name was Harold.

Rancid …fester isn’t worth waiting for…

Hearing the recorded message is better than having to talk to Veeblefester, so consider yourself lucky Brutus and hang up.