the most unintelligible conversation i have ever heard

Around 11:00 on Saturday night, I got a call from Louise. After I had said two words ("Hello" and "Louise"), my voice went out. I could speak a little bit, but not enough to be heard over a cell phone connection with someone outside a club. I croaked, "I'm sorry, I lost my voice" a few times, but to no avail.

Louise was patient and polite throughout the whole ordeal, though clearly frustrated by the communication gap. Once she said, "I'm sorry, I can't understand you. It sounds like you're almost saying something, Sean." I think she maybe managed to catch the phrase "text message", which only confused matters further. Eventually she said, "I wish I could understand what you're saying, but from the tone of your voice, it sounds like you're not planning to come out tonight."

I got a glass of water, and it didn't help at all. Also, while I nearly always pace while talking on the phone, I also pace while I am unable to talk and on the phone.

"Why didn't you just hang up, Sean?", you might ask. Because hanging up on someone is rude, that's why.

For the majority of the day today, I have been unable to speak above a whisper. This has made women think that I am deep, and made children think that I am retarded. Perversely, I still carried my phone around all day, having learned nothing from my chat with Louise.

In a way, I feel like I'm a more evolved human being, having moved past speech. In the future, all communication is going to happen through blogging. Emails will still be OK, but only because of their similarity to blogging. Verbal interaction will go the way of the passenger pigeon, the telegram, the ICQ chat, and Middle English. There's a reason they call it an internet "connection", after all. What a glorious bloggety day it will be when all of us are as free as I am now, silently sucking down cough drops and blogging, without that goddamn ball-and-chain of a functional larynx holding me back.

I think I resolved the Louise miscommunication with a series of "Cell Phone Mini-Blogs", or as you troglodytes like to call them, "text messages". The title of this post is taken from the confused CPMB she sent after our initial conversation, and I think it is meaningful on many different levels, all of which are blogging-related and glorious. I would explain the levels in greater detail, but right now I must preserve my stand-up comedy career by learning to whisper with a speech impediment.