The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Ruru the Guru is the only Telepathic Operator?

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San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —

“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the round-the-clock telepathic answering service!

“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

“Hold it! Hold the phone! I’m getting a telepathic message at this very minute!

“Uh … Uh … it was for me.

“The question was- Ruru, are you the only one that works at Third Ear?

“Well, yes. Yes, I am.

“But you got to realize, the Himalaya Hideaway here exists primarily in the Astral Plane, where as you all know, time flows funny.

“The result is that we can serve you round the clock with telepathic answering service, using no additional staff!

“And you know what? No time, no overtime!

“No overtime, no benefits!

“So who benefits?

“You do!”

Ruru the Guru — Can We Sell Cars?

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San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you’d find listed “Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service” at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this —

“Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the modern telepathic answering service that can help you move your merchandise!

“I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

“Several people telepathed in last week wanting to know can we sell cars …

“Well, we can’t exactly sell them, but we sure can tell your friends and neighbors about em! So here goes —

“1973 Edsel, lo mileage, one owner, sky blue, $525 or best offer.

“We also got a Corvair, rebuilt engine, velcro upholstery, wire wheels. Make an offer.

“Last, here’s a modified ’57 Fairlane, Mack diesel engine, complete with bronzed baby shoes and foxtail. $1500 firm. Man, that does sound sharp!

“You want em? Just let me know.”

Enter Ruru the Guru

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San Francisco, 1981: It was actually because of Lonesome Cowboy Tim.

Lonesome Cowboy Tim was the alternate persona of a disk jockey who’d emigrated from Houston to San Francisco, back back in the days of answering machines, before all this voicemail foolishness.

There was a phone number, and when you called it was answered by Lonesome Cowboy Tim, saying “Howdy, Buckaroos!” and then he’d recount some adventure that he and the prairie critters had experienced recently.

Since it was a single line on an answering machine, after some weeks you’d find the line always busy. Then the number would be changed, and you’d have to somehow find it again. This was a challenge, because it was purely word of mouth, yet somehow we always found Lonesome Cowboy Tim.

When Network started up the Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, we’d not intended to have a phone number at all, since the answering service was telepathic, but the phonebook rep insisted we had to list a phone number.

So I set up an answering machine with Ruru the Guru. Here’s what it said …

“Hello! And thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service. I am your host and operator, Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from our Himalaya Hideaway.

“You know, many people have telepathed in recently, asking me, ‘Ruru, just how does one leave a message for Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service?’

“Well, it’s very simple. It’s just like using a telephone. You just lift your little mental receiver, and you listen for your mental dial-tone …

“Awwooo-ooo-ooo-ooo!

“Then you just mentally dial my number — 426 299737 19937 49972 29973 299 503 — and then I’ll answer, any time, any place. Then you just leave your a mental message for anybody, whether you know them or not, and I’ll deliver it right inside their head, immediately!

“Just remember: it’s mental.”

Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service

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San Francisco, 1981: Every year, to the office of Network Answering Service in the big corner flat on the second story above Geary Boulevard, came Mark Bell, the Pacific Bell Directory salesman. And yes, his name really was Mark Bell.

This was back before Pacific Bell splintered into forty or fifty companies so as to serve you better and save you so much money which is why your phone bill is so much lower these days. This was back before Pacific Bell changed personnel every fifteen minutes. In fact, the same guy came every year. Mark Bell.

He was accustomed to my odd phone book listings.

The first year I opened the answering service, 1976, I didn’t know which name would work the best, so I put five different business names under answering bureaus, to see which one people would call.

Getting the names had been easy. I’d hauled a pony keg of beer up the stairs to my third-floor studio apartment, invited Richard W. and Phil Groves and about thirty other people, and that evening we drank beer and thought up names for answering services. A lot of these names were real stupid.

But I’d settled on five — A Budget Answering Service, Network Answering Service, Sundial, Western Eclectic, and Xanadu Answering Service. As it turned out, people called “A Budget” the most, probably because it came first in the list, but that sounded too cheap so we mainly used the Network Answering Service name.

We did put up posters around town picturing a duck and saying A Budget Answering Service, with little yellow take-one cards. Little yellow ducky cards continued to surface for many years after the posters. People would call to sign up. We’d ask them how they heard of us. “I’ve got this little yellow card with a duck,” they’d say.

After the first year, in the yellow pages we dropped the names except A Budget and Network, but this year I had a new idea, so I gave Mark Bell an additional name.

“It should say Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service,” I told Mark, “and with an extra line that says: We use no phones.”

Mark Bell didn’t even blink; he just filled out the form. “And what phone number do you want to list?” he asked.

“None,” I said, “It won’t have a phone number at all.”

He stopped, raised his head to stare. “I can’t do that,” he said. “It’s got to have a phone number.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because it’s a phone book!”

Hmmm. He had me there. That was a stumper. So I fetched from our records an unused number, and gave it to him.

In September, the phone book came out, and there under Answering Bureaus was Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service. We use no phones. 221-3333.

On that line, I installed a message-only answering machine, and every few weeks I’d change the recording. The phone was apparently answered by Ruru the Guru, who lived in a Himalaya Hideaway, and from the astral plane provided telepathic answering service as a free public service for anybody who wished to send or receive a telepathic message.

We don’t have any real statistics on how much the telepathic answering service was actually used. I mean, just given all the daily work, it’s just so hard to keep accurate statistics, you know?

This Newfangled Daylight-Savings Time

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Changing the Time of Day?Dallas, Texas, Spring 1966: Living in Dunia Bean’s apartment on Gillespie street, I worked at the Cabana Hotel. The Cabana is a clone of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, complete with over-sized statues of Venus, David, and the rest of the crew. Inside, a vast two-story lobby with greenish marble floor and a round sunken area with sofas enough for a football team.

Overlooking this magnificance, our front desk where I worked with Dick and Earl, dignified alcoholics. Dick taught me how to get big tips at crowded times, and Earl as a young actor fought swords with Errol Flynn in the movie Captain Blood. That was a while back.

But this was in the spring, and for the first time since the war, Texas was going to have Daylight Savings Time. We were all abuzz.

Paul the Bellman was a portly fellow, balding and gabby. He made big tips because he knew about health food and horoscopes. This was years before such things were popular. His most popular health food remedy was honey and vinegar; he’d recommend it for almost anything.

On the way to the elevators with the guests, he’d ask about their birth-date and provide predictions and prescriptions all the way to the room. Then I suppose it just seemed wrong, to the guest, to tip miserly to the fellow who’d taken such an interest in their fortunes and their health.

Paul the Bellman was very opinionated, and also had an annoying habit of slapping his hand down on the bellman’s marble-topped desk when he was about to speak. This made a loud pop. I think it was his version of banging the Judge’s gavel before pronouncing sentence.

So, while we were all discussing this radical new change, Daylight Savings Time, and how we would set our clocks before we went to bed, Paul returned to the bell desk.

Slap! went his open palm on the marble desk. “Well,” he said, “I know what I’m going to do.” We all stopped talking. He continued. “I’m going to set my clock for one a.m., and then I’m going to wake up, and set it ahead to two a.m.”

We all stared in incomprehension. “Why, Paul?” I asked.

“That way,” he crowed, “I won’t lose an hour’s sleep!”

I grinned. “But Paul,” I said, “If you’re awake when you move it forward, won’t you lose an hour’s wake?”

He pondered this. “Naw,” he said, “You can’t lose an hour’s wake.” We all nodded.

Slap! went his palm on the desk. He scowled. “But those guys better watch out,” he said.

We looked at each other. He went on.

“Because when they’re changing the time, they’re messing with the sun,” he said. “And they’d better not go messing with the sun!”

Thus came Daylight Savings Time to Texas.

The Skydivers

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Skydiving Wallpapers - Top Free Skydiving Backgrounds - WallpaperAccessMidwestern University, Wichita Falls, Texas 1963: My big plan was to become an engineer, because I thought a slide-rule would look good with my glasses. And so I was in the math class.

The professor was a large, languid fellow with an embarrassing habit of scratching himself absentmindedly, spreading chalk dust on his pants.

On this particular day, he was chalking a proof on the blackboard. “Let’s assume such-and-such,” he said, and then described five or six steps, “and then as you can see, the result is so-and-do.”

Except that something was wrong.

I’m no whiz at math, and I had to struggle and focus. But it just didn’t look right. Something was wrong. The proof and the class ended at the same time, but I remained sitting, going over it.

Me and Bill and Dennis Thought Something Was Off

To my left, Bill the ex-marine with crisp black hair still in a crew cut. To my right, Dennis with wavy long blonde hair. They were staring and pondering, too. All the other students had left the room. The professor looked at the three of us.

“A question?” he asked us.

“There’s just something …” began Bill.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.

“It’s this,” said Dennis. “If your original assumption is correct, then the proof is correct. But if not, then the conclusion is wrong. The proof is circular.”

Professor ‘Fessed Up

The professor smiled a slow, warm smile. “Well, now,” he said. “That’s exactly correct. The real proof requires calculus, which I can’t use here. But without giving a proof, students just don’t understand it. So we use this one.”

Haw haw haw haw haw!

We Started Becoming Pals

Over coffee, I met the boys. They were older. Bill had just finished his Marine stint; Dennis an army tour. Both had been in Japan. “Ohio,” they said when meeting; I think it means hello. “Gomenizai,” they would say, “I’m very sorry.”

Haw haw haw haw haw!

Next semester we shared a drafting class. At that time, there was an adventure with a girl, she missed a period, and I was all uptight. They just laughed. “A woman is not a close-tolerance machine,” said Dennis.

Huh? I had no clue what he meant.

“He means,” Bill said, “that most likely you got nothing to worry about. Just relax.” They thought my expression funny.

Haw haw haw haw haw!

And Then … the SkyDiving Adventure

I neither relaxed nor thought it funny, but they were right, as it turned out. After drafting class was lunch. Over burgers, Bill was talking about El Toro Marine Base, and about skydiving. Really?

By the following week, Bill had found a place where we could go skydiving. It cost $50. Dennis said he was in. I did, too. Bill handed me a piece of paper: a release. “Since you’re eighteen,” Bill said, “you need to get your parents to OK this.” I said OK.

In the evening, I handed the paper to my mother and stepfather. My mother didn’t know quite what it was, and my stepfather seemed uncertain. I explained that it was perfectly safe, and that you just jumped out of an airplane. It was really fun, like flying, and you had a parachute.

They looked at the paper. They looked at each other. They looked back at me.

Haw haw haw haw haw!

How to Save Time with Abbreviations

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hourglassHere’s a handy tip that can yield big savings:

Use abbreviations. For example, when I operated Network Answering Service in San Francisco, we quickly learned to develop standard abbreviations for common things people say. For example, OOT for “out of town”, or WCB for “will call back”.

Other handy abbreviations include PLSC for “please call”, NA for “not applicable”, DBA for “doing business as”, DA for “doesn’t answer”, and OCS for “onward christian soldiers”.

But why limit this to written notes? For example, suppose you want to thank somebody for something, but it’s just a little thing. You want to thank them a little but not a lot. To communicate this precisely, and to save time at the same time, just abbreviate “Thank you” or “Thanks”.

Say: “Thank.”

See, that’s less than “Thanks.”

But wait, there’s more!

You can abbreviate more complex ideas, as well. For example, perhaps you were thinking just now that these are the moments of your life, and this is how you are spending them. Well, in this case, you could save some thinking time by using an abbreviation of “moments”.

For example, you could say “momo”. That would be like one little moment. Or the plural form “momos”, as in “These are the momos of our lives.”

Often the practice of abbreviation yields surprising insights. For example, thinking about how these are the momos of our lives, you might just naturally think about death. And then of course there would be “no more” momos, and you could abbreviate the “no more” as “nomo”.

So you can see, you could speak, or think, very succinctly. You could think about the momos of our lives, and how, when we die, we got nomo momos nomo.

You see how that can save you time?

It can Really Add Up!

Now if you just save a few seconds every couple of hours, then you’ll accumulate several minutes every single week. By the end of the year you’ll have an extra thirty or forty minutes. Over a lifetime you might have hours, or even days, saved up!

And that ain’t bad.

Mick Jagger’s Secret

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San Francisco, 1977. Disco was in full sway, as the Men’s Club — myself, Richard W., Derek S., and Phil Groves — drove to dinner. Somebody was complaining about something.

“You don’t have to do it! Oh, noooo!” I sang, mimicking BeeGees. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Derek had wrangled tickets to the upcoming Stones concert. We were jovial. We were on top of the world.

Earlier that day, I’d visited City Hall. A business license, as I recall. Oddly, there was a San Francisco streetcar sitting on the sidewalk in the square across from City Hall, one of those fake streetcars that run on tires. And a TV crew loitered about.

“What’s going on?” I asked the crowd of gawkers standing on the grand steps leading up to the doorway.

“Mick Jagger and the Mayor,” somebody said. The Mayor. That would be Diane Feinstein. But I didn’t see any Stones, and I didn’t see Ms. Feinstein. My business license beckoned.

When I came out, across the street, hanging from the streetcar while TV crews shot from below, Mick and Diane were chatting it up. Big smiles flashed. Wonderful, so happy, really looking forward. Publicity for the Mayor. Publicity for San Francisco. Publicity for the Stones. Everybody happy.

Huge bodyguards in black suits frowned the casual passersby away. I noticed the long, black limousine parked down below, and made a calculation in my head. Up the block, I crossed the street, and then walked slowly back, on a diagonal crossing the street.

Sure enough, the shoot was done and Jagger, trailed by black suits, was crossing the street. Our paths intersected so we were walking side by side, two feet apart. He looked over at me. I looked over at him. There was something important that I wanted to know.

“How do you stay so thin?” I asked. He nodded.

“Don’t eat much,” he said.

 
 

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