Presumably they’re repeating a fairly old comic today

Cidu Bill on Feb 9th 2012

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Filed in Bill Bickel, Zits, comic strips, comics, humor, telephones | 31 responses so far

31 Responses to “Presumably they’re repeating a fairly old comic today”

  1. Terry Feb 9th 2012 at 06:23 am 1

    I have three daughters and had five cordless phones. Still have three daughters (for whom I am thankful), but only four cordless phones. One has been missing since 2004. I remain convinced that someday, if I dig deep enough, I will find it lodged in a couch, or in a dresser drawer under a pile of socks.

  2. Charles Feb 9th 2012 at 06:27 am 2

    Find my cordless phone! Now only $0.99 at the app store!

  3. Kilby Feb 9th 2012 at 06:54 am 3

    We have three cordless telephones, and are not infrequently searching for one or two of them (on rare occasions, all three are missing). Luckily, our base station has a button on it that causes all of the phones to beep, until one is found (and the cancel button is pressed). Unfortunately, this simple solution will not work for a telephone whose battery has long since been drained.

  4. The Bad Seed Feb 9th 2012 at 07:02 am 4

    I wasn’t sure whether she just meant that he would be on the phone a long time or that it would get lost in his room, but I don’t get why this would have to be a repeat of a fairly old comic.

  5. labradog Feb 9th 2012 at 07:03 am 5

    Really? You don’t understand this comic?

  6. Its Justme Feb 9th 2012 at 07:16 am 6

    What teenager takes a calll on a land-line cordless phone that has to be flung to them by their mom. Each and every teenager nowadays has their own cellphone. I think that’s what Bill was implying.

  7. Elyrest Feb 9th 2012 at 08:42 am 7

    Its Justme has what Bill was referring to in his title. Jeremy has his own cell phone and it’s doubtful anyone would call him on the house phone. It’s doubtful anyone would call at all as teenagers seem to just text all the time.

    How many of you have a land line anymore? We do, but everyone has a cell phone too so it’s mainly used for calls no one wants to answer.

  8. Morris Keesan Feb 9th 2012 at 08:55 am 8

    labradog, notice the absence of a “CIDU” tag in the list of categories under the comic. That means that it’s not a comic Bill doesn’t understand, it’s just a comic that he wanted to make a comment on — in this case, the point that Jeremy using the home phone instead of his cell phone suggests that it’s an old comic.

    [My son just started reading “Zits”. For some reason, our public library puts all of their comic strip collections in the Graphic Novels section of the children’s department. Prior to this, he was reading a large Wizard of Id collection, and he’s been learning a lot of idioms and cultural references by asking us to explain comics to him.]

    We have a land line. It’s for when people want to call us. The two adults in the family also have cell phones; we turn them on (sometimes, if we remember) when we leave the house, if our child isn’t with us, in case his school/camp/babysitter/etc. needs to reach us in an emergency.

  9. Powers Feb 9th 2012 at 09:40 am 9

    We have a land-line because cell phone audio and transmission quality is poor.

  10. Elyrest Feb 9th 2012 at 09:46 am 10

    Powers - Until recently I lived in a small coastal village in California. There was a cell phone tower nearby, but, for some reason, it never worked at our house. If we wanted to get calls at home we had to use a land-line. I actually had a hard time adjusting to using a cell phone - I over that now.

  11. GROG Feb 9th 2012 at 10:31 am 11

    GROG FIRST READ TITLE AS “Presumably they’re repeating an old fairy comic today”.

    OLD FAIRY COMIC! GROG HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MEANS!

    GROG ALSO HAVE NO IDEA WHY MOM KISS GRAY RAT BEFORE TOSSING TO JEREMY.

    GROG NO UNDERSTAND LOTS OF THINGS

  12. ja Feb 9th 2012 at 10:48 am 12

    It’s not that far fetched. My son (who is about the same age as Jeremy) uses the land line to save on his minutes (he has unlimited texting, but limited minutes). He invariably takes the phone to his room and leaves it there. The other day, I found three of the four cordless handsets in his room.

  13. Frosted Donut Feb 9th 2012 at 11:16 am 13

    In the newspaper, it’s easier to read the copyright date on the cartoon.

    Bill is correct, it’s a five-year-old “Zits” from 2007.

  14. Jeff Lichtman Feb 9th 2012 at 01:20 pm 14

    It’s unlikely that one of Jeremy’s friends would call on his parents’ landline, but it could be a relative, a neighbor, someone from his school. . .

  15. Boise Ed Feb 9th 2012 at 01:34 pm 15

    ja, that’s amazing. Instead of collecting them, you might wait until he’s sleeping, or otherwise not wanting to be disturbed, then press the paging button on the base unit.

  16. Ian Osmond Feb 9th 2012 at 03:21 pm 16

    We’ve got a landline as well as cell phones. And one of our landline phones is actually plugged into the wall instead of being a cordless phone.

    See, a plugged-into-the-wall phone draws the power it needs off the telephone line. So, if our electricity goes out, but the telephone landlines are still up, we’ve still got communication. If the landlines go out, we’ve still got our cell phones. If the cell phones and telephone lines go out, we’ve still got our cable modem.

    If all three go out, we can go outside and, y’know, talk to people. We live right in a small city, so it’s not like we’d ever be isolated, anyway.

  17. Charlene Feb 9th 2012 at 04:50 pm 17

    I had to get a landline (well, VOIP from the cable company) after moving into a condo with thick brick walls that block cellphone signals. “Talking to people” is nice, but it’s not conversation that I want from a phone: it’s the ability to contact emergency services.

  18. Swordsmith Feb 9th 2012 at 05:04 pm 18

    My children would not be caught dead on a landline phone with any of their friends. First off, none of said friends even HAVE our landline number. Even if they did, the caller would have to chance talking to a parent or sibling of the person they were calling… nobody wants to do that! Further, neither of them wants to talk to anyone when they could be texting. The only reason to use a landline phone is to find your cell phone.

    The strip may be from 2007 but the idea expressed dates back to maybe the 1980s

  19. Cidu Bill Feb 9th 2012 at 05:08 pm 19

    To which, Swordsmith, I can only add “and to send and receive faxes.”

    I find it incredible, by the way, that nobody’s come up with a non-landline-based method of sending and receiving faxes. I know the fax is not an up-and-coming mode of communication, but sometimes you just have to fax something.

  20. Elyrest Feb 9th 2012 at 06:04 pm 20

    Ian Osmond - We always had a non-cordless phone in the house for just the reasons you mentioned. We lost electricity on a fairly regular basis and more than once for days at a time. Without that phone we would’ve been cut off from the world and couldn’t even call the electric company to figure out what was going on.

  21. Morris Keesan Feb 9th 2012 at 06:55 pm 21

    Bill, the last few times I needed to do the equivalent of faxing something,
    I scanned the documents in question, and emailed the resulting PDF files.

  22. Boise Ed Feb 9th 2012 at 07:09 pm 22

    Bill, my Mac can receive and send faxes (but I usually just scan the document and email that).

  23. Cidu Bill Feb 9th 2012 at 07:20 pm 23

    That’s fine, assuming the company you’re sending the document to is set up to receive and convert files that way; but they usually aren’t, because faxes are so much simpler.

  24. Jeff S Feb 9th 2012 at 08:31 pm 24

    Elyrest, above you asked, “How many of you have a land line anymore? We do, but everyone has a cell phone too so it’s mainly used for calls no one wants to answer.”

    We do, and each of us also has a cell phone as well. We also rarely answer the house phone. What makes it worse is, the phone is bundled with our cable, so when we get a call, the caller id shows up on the tv screen. It’s a wonder ANYONE still tries to call us at that number because we really don’t answer it if we don’t recognize the name.

  25. FeelinOld Feb 10th 2012 at 01:51 am 25

    Elyrest: We have two land lines (but one is a business line) I’m opposite of the kids, I NEVER give out my cell number, if I’m out and about the ONLY people who can bother me are the select few that have the number unless I’ve forwarded one of the land lines. I don’t WANT to be universally available, the last thing I want when I’m out on horseback is the freaking phone going off.

    As for the wandering handset, there are six around our place and they all tend to migrate (I’m just as guilty on that one, answer the business line and talk to the client while heading for the office)

    Boise Ed: The page feature works great until the battery dies (We were down to 5 handsets for a month before the 6th was discovered in the linen closet of all places??)

  26. Cidu Bill Feb 10th 2012 at 01:59 am 26

    Five years ago, I certainly could have empathized with Walt and Connie: that’s when two handsets disappeared into my older son’s room.

    They still haven’t turned up.

  27. ja Feb 10th 2012 at 09:46 am 27

    @19 “nobody’s come up with a non-landline-based method of sending and receiving faxes”
    There are plenty of internet-based fax services (e.g., efax.com). Basically, they host a fax number for you. You e-mail them what you want to fax (or upload an image/document via a web page). If an incoming fax is received on your number, they e-mail it to you.

    @22
    Any Mac or a PC can send and receive faxes (provided it has an appropriate modem and software), but doing so requires a phone line. A fax– by definition– travels over the phone network.

  28. Cidu Bill Feb 10th 2012 at 10:55 am 28

    Ja, a phone, call by definition, traveled over phone lines as well — but we’re now able to use other methods.

  29. Elyrest Feb 10th 2012 at 10:57 am 29

    I saw a comic, not that long ago, where a child had tied the handset to the base. They thought this was a wonderful idea and why hadn’t anyone though of it before. When I was a child we had a phone in the kitchen that had a long cord - so long that my younger brother could go out in the back hall and go all the way upstairs to the 2nd floor to talk. Everyone tripped over him, but I think it might be a blessing that cordless phones hadn’t been invented yet.

  30. ja Feb 10th 2012 at 03:29 pm 30

    @28…
    Telephone calls still travel over telephone lines… even when the call goes from one cell phone to another. Even if both cell phones are connecting through the same tower. The radio signal connects you to a cell tower that gets physically connected to a mobile telephone switching office, which is pretty much exactly like a good old fashioned telephone central office (like the one that did the switching for PE of “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ fame), except it has to deal with dynamic switching to cell towers and the potential transfer/re-routing of the call to a different MTSO. But from the MTSO of the originator, to the MTSO of the receiver, the call goes over the same public network as “land-line” based call.

    Fax technology was created to allow you to transmit the image of a document over the ubiquitous phone system. All fax protocols were designed to operate over the phone system. Creating an entirely IP-based system that provides a fax-like service is technically pretty straightforward. However, it creates potential security issues, and has limited revenue-generation capability. There are, however, scanners/fax machines that allow you to “fax” directly to an e-mail address, and/or connect via TCP/IP to an internet-based faxing service.

  31. zookeeper Feb 11th 2012 at 12:44 pm 31

    My house is a 1939 model with a “telephone niche” built into the hall wall. Back in the day of party line multiple users it was a Phone Company discouragement of hanging on the phone all day. You had to stand up to use the phone, and it was in the hall so there was no proper place for a chair. My kids got me a cell phone, I’m finally getting to the point of assigning it a pocket when I go out.

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