To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
-- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
Phones?"
