Aerial View was WFMU’s first regularly-scheduled phone-in talk show. Hosted by Chris T. and on the air since 1989, the show features topical conversation, interviews and many trips down the rabbit hole. Until further notice, Aerial View is only available as a podcast, available every Tuesday morning. Subscribe to the newsletter “See You Next Tuesday!” and find tons of archives at aerialview.me. (Visit homepage.)

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September 9, 2014: Don't Ever Call Here Again
We still have a land line at our house. Okay, it's not truly a land line, just a simulation. No copper cable dips from a telephone pole into my house. Instead, a gray box in my basement digitizes all my data - voice, images, etc. - and passes it back and forth on a fiber optic line. But the phone in my kitchen is one of those retro phones, built to resemble an old rotary wall phone (not like the toy phone I'm on, above), and when it rings it's a real bell you hear. Like the past is calling. It usually is. The only calls that come in our home phone are from family, a few old friends and TELEMARKETERS. I received three telemarketing calls this past Friday, my birthday. Each time the phone rang I thought it was someone calling to wish me well but birthday greetings are now the sole province of Facebook.

I'm not one to go for all that karma talk but I wonder if I'm paying for all those telemarketing jobs I held. I rationalized my use of the phone to terrorize unsuspecting souls by claiming I never did the kind of telemarketing I'm subjected to constantly these days. But that's only half true. I didn't call average citizens at home at 7:30 at night, seeking a "contribution". When I called people at home it was to conduct long, boring surveys. And my calls seeking money were always placed to business owners. I was either selling them space in a "yearbook" or trying to get them to buy cleaning chemicals or the like.

The call I received just now, from some poor sap with something called "Firefighters' Burned Children Fund" (I think that's what he said - I tried to call the number back at its California area code but it hung up on me and blasted me with a fast dial tone) was something to which I never sank: calling people at home in the evening, trying to wheedle money out of them.

In a deep, mellifluous voice, the man announced who he was and where he was calling from and began immediately reading from a script. I could tell it was a script because when I interrupted him he picked up from the same spot and continued on. I interrupted him again and told him I used to do what he did. He paused long enough to hear me out but I'm not sure it registered. I told him I used to call people soliciting donations for the First Marine Division and the Vietnam Veterans of America. We sold spaces in a printed yearbook. Your business could provide some contact info, perhaps a brief message, and we'd take your money and give it to vets. Except not really. I found (out after the fact) that less than ten percent of what we took in actually went to anyone in need.

I tried to say this to the man on the other end of the phone, that he should really look into what he's doing, but he barreled on yet again and I hung up on him.

Tonight, let's talk phones. Do you have a land line? Is it an honest-to-goodness POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line from the phone company? Or do you have a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) service? Have you skipped a home phone entirely, choosing to go with a cell phone only?

Let's also talk phone calls. Are you someone who can chat endlessly on the phone? Or do long conversations make you nervous? How much of your day is spend on the phone? Do you get telemarketing calls? Robot calls? Have you ever given money to someone who called you out of the blue? Spend a little more time on the phone and call me at 201-209-WFMU.

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