Chicks Dig Phones

“You guys are weird.”

“You guys have some serious problems.”

We only did this twice.

“Hey! Aren’t you the guys with the phone?”

Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.

Okay, three times.

* * *

Alexander Calder, uncredited inventor of the artificial car-phone antenna, died back in 1976, but his prototypes live on. And, by following the simple, step-by-step instructions on Meininger Art Supplies From Around the World‘s Kids Art Activity Center’s Calder Mobile page (www.meininger.comArtEdResPagescalder_mobiles.cfm), you and your spawn can make your own “4D drawings” (Calder‘s phrase), with objects easily found around the home, if you live in a Wandix Zippy Foam factory. (More likely found around the Meininger Art Supplies Online Catalog.)

Har de tænkt over hvilke fordele de har af en telefon? (“Have you thought about the advantage you will have with a telephone?”) If so, visit the Telephone Museum in Hellerup, Denmark. Or at least visit its online slide-show page (www.telefonmuseet.dkukdiasdiasmenu.htm), ripe with controversial telephonic imagery.

Societe Generale des Telephones, formerly the first private company to operate the French telephone network (1879--1889) but presently just Fred’s Old Phone Page (http:perso.wanadoo.frfredouille), has authorized the presentation of one of the Internet‘s most truly frightening index pages with its incongruous animated-blood GIFfery. If you’re not scared away by the blood and the equally frightening illustration that accompanies the first page of the English index (http:perso.wanadoo.frfredouilleindex2.htm), you‘ll be pleasantly surprised to find that Fred the Societe has done a bang-up job of presenting the history of the telephone (in France, mostly, but not entirely) without resorting to further violence. Incidentally, the aforementioned nonbleeding (but equally frightening) illustration is a logo colorized from an early Societe-adjacent electrician’s personal stationery (http:perso.wanadoo.frfredouilleenglishlion.htm). So that leaves only the blood-GIF to fear.