At the Tone, Please Organize Your Life According to Our Numbers

Hello. Welcome to the Postmodern Life Line, a free service of Auto-Brain. If you don’t know the number of what you need to know or if you need a directory to know which way the wind blows, please stay on the line.

However, if you do know what you need to know, please enter the appropriate number here. If you think you know what you need to know, please know that you don’t know diddly.

To use your brain, you must have a push-button touch-tone telephone. You may also find it helpful to have a cerebrum, but that is not absolutely necessary anymore. If you do not have a push-button touch-tone telephone, the late 20th Century no longer has any use for you, pal.

You may also find it helpful to have a pencil and paper to write down what I have to say, but since I am a robot on uppers, I’m going to talk so insanely fast and say so many weird yet intriguing things, each with a three-digit number associated with it, that you will find it impossible to write this down with the paper and the pencil that you may find helpful.

At any time you may interrupt this message or you may go to a new message simply by entering any three digits not associated with any specific other message. Avoid using 666, please.

Or, you may also interrupt this message by simply slamming down your phone, running to the window, tearing at your hair and loudly screaming: “I can’t take it anymore!”

If you would like further instruction in how to use this system, please stay on the line, and in a few years your friends and neighbors will begin to notice that they have not seen you since you got your new push-button touch-tone telephone.

If you know the number of the message you think you want to hear, please enter it during the following brief pause. There is also enough time to grab a snack, do 30 push-ups, eat the snack and do 15 push-ups, or perform a quick reality check by slapping your face five times and saying, “It’s really 1960 and this has all been a hideous dream.”

You may enter that number now.

Thank you for dialing the Postmodern Life Line Directory. The following is a list of subject categories. When you hear the number of the subject you think you need to know, you may enter that number and wonder whether you will ever find the numbers that will get you out of here.

If you think there is a Supreme Intelligence guiding the universe but can’t understand why it’s doing its own thing, please press 1.

If you think finding someone to love will solve all your problems, please press 2.

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press 3.

If you are torn between security on one hand and a craving for adventure on the other, please press 4.

If things didn’t turn out the way you imagined they would, please press 5.

For a list of all the helpful illusions that seem to make other people happy, please press 6.

If you seem to be drifting, please press 7.

If a touch-tone phone is your touchstone to reality, please press 8.

To hear the Great Books on tape, please press 9.

For a list of all the things you can buy that you think will make your life better, please press 0.

If you’re rebelling against the system and still don’t know what you want to know or just need the warm human voice of an actual live operator, please stay on the line.

Thank you for using the Postmodern Life Line. Today is the first number of the rest of your list.