Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
User Journal

Journal bethanie's Journal: Nostalgia: Voice Mail Greetings 45

Journal by bethanie
Remember when answering machines seemed really nifty? OK -- maybe you don't, since I'm one of the "old" ones around here. But in any case, trust me -- they were pretty cool, and I had endless hours of fun planning and producing my family's messages for years before I headed off to college.

When I headed off to college, I finally got VERY OWN voice mailbox to use (and abuse!) however I wished!!

Here, reproduced in descriptive text, is a transcript of one of my favorite messages from Back in the Day:

[message begins with the following spoken phrase from the song "I Touch Myself" by the DiVinyls, which some of you youngsters may remember from the Fembots scene in the 1st Austin Powers movie]

I want you...
I don't want anybody else.
And when I think about you
I touch myself.
Ooh. Oooh oooh. Aaaaaaaahhh...
[music fades down to low volume]

[in my sultriest, "barely legal" (literally!!) voice]
The lights are off, the door is locked, and I'm not answering the phone... *but* I am thinking about you.

Leave me a message, and I'll call you back when I'm done.

It was a good one, I can tell you. Mom thought I should be charging money for people to leave messages. Go figure. :-)

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Nostalgia: Voice Mail Greetings More

Nostalgia: Voice Mail Greetings

Comments Filter:
  • the best one my brother and I produced was a recording of the "wrong number" tone, followed by a recording we got of the automated operator voice informing the hapless caller of their "error"

    Let me tell you, we didn't get too many messages!

  • Ah, yes (Score:3, Funny)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @01:55PM (#7035517) Homepage Journal
    In college, mine was filled with profanity.... until my mom called.

    Ooops... ;-)
    • You too? Then we got a friend to do 'I'm too sexy for your call'. Right Said Fred, what a nice blast from the past. And then the same guy did a drunken impersonation of Phil Hartman doing an impersonation of the Admiral who ran with Ross Perot. My mother finally stopped calling me at school.
  • OK -- maybe you don't, since I'm one of the "old" ones around here. But in any case, trust me -- they were pretty cool, and I had endless hours of fun planning and producing my family's messages for years before I headed off to college.

    I am that old, but my parents are so techno-impaired they never got around to buying an answering machine until a few years ago. In fairness to them, I still haven't figured out mine, and have to leave it to my wife to reset it. In fairness to me, MIT hasn't managed to get m

  • Was to call clients and see if they were home over summer, no talking just an annoying hang up and check 'em off the list [yeah, I know...rat bugger]. The other end picked up and I heard heavy breathing and oh God moans. A little while into it a womans voice asked "Was that the phone?" and a guy replied "I don't think so.". More heavy petting sounds. Woman: "No, I really think that was the phone." and the guy again "Well if it is they can just leave a message.". BEEP. I wound up leaving a message that that
  • I now have that damned song stuck in my head. Not only am I a horrible singer, but when I sing horrible songs it gets even worse.

    I'll just hum quietly and wish that was before me time...
  • We got rid of ours when we moved to the new house about 2 years ago. What's the point in having one when I have a cell phone now... all we get in the evenings are the moronic telemarketers. Not worth it.

    As an aside on this issue, the DAY we got our phone turned on in the new house, the first call was from the local NEWSPAPER asking us if we wanted to subscribe. And this on an unlisted, UNPUBLISHED number... damn war dialers!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I do have a good phone voice at least.

      Me, too. :-)

      Could've gone "professional," too, I suppose... but that's just a hair too close to prostitution. I was happier giving it out for free. :-)

      ....Bethanie....
    • I used to have a sterile message like that but decided to have a little fun. My message now starts out with a high-pitched scream, then my voice saying, "I'm a little busy right now, can you leave a message?"

      I generally get long pauses or 'wow's before people's messages start.

  • i'm one of the professional-sounding camp; my answering machine politely thanks you for calling and tells you that if you leave a message with your name, number, and a brief description concerning the nature of your call, you will be called back as soon as possible.

    Because my mum does call, and because i love messing with people. It doesn't list my name and i routinely get calls looking for Mr...... (my last name.) Bethanie, you know why this happens to me! And so it screens out everyone who hasn't done t

    • That sounds like a good one.

      FWIW, my message is very professional now, too. Doesn't tell our names -- just the phone number you've reached, so you can confirm that you've reached the number you were calling, and not have any of those wrong-number, second-guessing issues.

      We're in a rural area, so we don't get any telemarketing calls -- I think they focus on the metro area codes.

      Besides, who needs to record funky voice mail messages when we've got our Slashdot journals and sigs to play with!?!

      ....Betha
    • Bethanie, you know why this happens to me!
      What am I, chopped liver? ;-)

      I can see how people would be confused... I still want to hear the story behind that. And why haven't you emailed me lately? Are you cheating on me with Surak? or worse (better?) Bethanie!?! :-)

      • *laugh* oke. i guess i better share this story with the group, then. Sol got asked on a date! *sigh* that's not so nice as it sounds- let me rephrase:

        Sol got hit on by a squidgy, sad, hospital-waiting-room-patient, whom sol has no interest in going anywhere with. Sol was entirely creeped out by the experience, and wonders whether somebody's been slipping ick-attract pills into her tea or something....

        And no, a double date does NOT mean i climb into a hot tub with you and bethanie...

    • It doesn't list my name and i routinely get calls looking for Mr...... (my last name.) Bethanie, you know why this happens to me!

      Ahem. Only *bethanie* knows why this happens to you?

      Aren't you forgetting someone?

      A certain ... Vulcan perhaps? *raised eyebrow*

      • My-oh-my. Look at all the boys get peeved, Sol. They're so jealous of us. Of course, they could never have what you and I have, so I guess they should be... ;-)

        Guys, Sol is just being her typical, gloriously humble self in only assuming that *I* am the one reading her responses. After all, it is MY journal.

        Sheesh, guys. Get a grip. Green's just *not* y'all's color!!

        ....Bethanie....
        • that kind of was the point, i didn't think she was the ONLY one reading, but...it's her journal! surak, you haven't seen my pic and in fact most of you haven't, so unless you've been spying on me and not telling me....

          'looking around for the webcams'

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I spent one year at Salisbury State University, while there, we had a few 'interesting' messages.
    • Salisbury Sperm Bank, you whack it, we'll pack it.
    • Salisbury Morgue, you stab em, we'll slab em.
    • Leave a message at the beep.*BEEP*........*BEEP*....*BEEP*..*BE*BEEP*.... .*BEEEEEEP*

    My personal favorite was one time when someone called a dorm-mate that didn't want to talk to them, he just said... "Leave a message at the beep..... beep" all nochalant and stuff not even trying to sound like anything more than

  • The best one I had on my dorm v/m was the "origins of the word fuck" WAV that was circulating back in the day. The last thing the caller heard before the tone was "Why don't you go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself?"

    beep.

  • When I lived with my parents, the phone number was one digit different than the cable company. Whenever the cable went out we got a pile of phone calls. (This has been greatly reduced since phones got "redial" buttons -- when people redialed manually over and over, they'd eventually get it wrong.)

    Well one day the cable went out and the phone started ringing. We turned on the answering machine but people just started leaving messages about their cable being out. My Dad tried recording an outgoing message sa

  • My favorite message was fairly short on Dialogue.

    "Please leave your name and number at the tone"

    But then there was the music the followed. From the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, the intro to "Time" with all the clock ticking and chiming at the same time.

    Classic.
  • In my own voice, with fake impersonation inflections:

    (high voice) "Captain Kirk, there's a message coming in for Mike and Raymond."

    "Spock, have you located Mike or Raymond yet?"

    (low voice) "Negative, Captain. The logical plan of action is to take a message."

    (fake brogue) "Captain! If you try to cram another message into the machine, it'll BLOW APART!"

    "Mr. Scott, we need this message."

    "I'll do the best I can, sir."

    "Uhura, are you ready to beep yet?"

    "Ready to beep, sir."

    "On my mark....beep!"

    We reg
  • This [farpointstation.org] is what I used to have on my answering machine...far enough back that it was a WAV instead of an MP3, but it's the same message.
  • I liked "Hi, you've reached [insert name] if we don't get back to you in 10 minutes, just wait longer."

    And, one time my friend Rich didn't pay his phone bill and got his line disconnected for a day or two. During that time I snagged a recording of the, "We're sorry, the number you dialed 372-(censored) has been termporarily disconected," and that made for a great message for him.

    Rich would also then take tons of wav files and combine them to make intersting outgoing messages, and sometimes ones that he'd

  • A couple (Score:2)

    by Tet ( 2721 ) *
    The message varies depending on whether we're job hunting at the time. If so, it's a rather boring "please leave your name and number". If not, it's been the last few seconds of Queensryche's "Speak", or an Amiga speech synthesiser saying "You have reached an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone by 90 degrees and try again".
  • so I copied it.

    "You're in, we're out." Beep.

    For some reason, most of my friends didn't appreciate it, so I've gone to a normal one now.

    No you guys all have me wanting to do something more interesting for a message, bah.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained." -- The Tao of Programming

Close