Comments on: 'Vomit, violence, tabloid architecture…' http://www.ballardian.com/vomit-violence-tabloid-architecture Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:59:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Crashman http://www.ballardian.com/vomit-violence-tabloid-architecture/comment-page-1#comment-1573 Crashman Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:05:08 +0000 http://www.ballardian.com/vomit-violence-tabloid-architecture#comment-1573 Sam Newman's open-phone all-answering trope reminds me of the excellent phone answering greeting the great (and bitter, pessimistic, misanthropic, alcoholic, opposite-sex-distrusting) American writer Dorothy Parker. Whenever her phone rang, she would pick it up and say: " What fresh Hell is THIS?" I'm thinking of adopting this myself. For a time, I would always answer my phone with something calculated to throw the caller back on their heels - I would pick up and immediately say in a sepulchral voice "House of Wax".... or sometimes just a snappy, self-confident: "Hall of Science!" I thought that was suitably Ballardian & surreal...(This got me in trouble with one of my employers once...but he was a bastard anyway.) But every time my phone rings I still think "What fresh Hell is THIS?" Sam Newman’s open-phone all-answering trope reminds me of the excellent phone answering greeting the great (and bitter, pessimistic, misanthropic, alcoholic, opposite-sex-distrusting) American writer Dorothy Parker. Whenever her phone rang, she would pick it up and say: ” What fresh Hell is THIS?” I’m thinking of adopting this myself.

For a time, I would always answer my phone with something calculated to throw the caller back on their heels – I would pick up and immediately say in a sepulchral voice “House of Wax”…. or sometimes just a snappy, self-confident: “Hall of Science!” I thought that was suitably Ballardian & surreal…(This got me in trouble with one of my employers once…but he was a bastard anyway.) But every time my phone rings I still think “What fresh Hell is THIS?”

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