I've been victimized by the videophone.

I had the pleasure of enduring an excruciating meeting yesterday with Bob* on the subject of «a new telecommunications system» and it' «person-to-person» marketing system. We met at the coffee shop in the early afternoon for what I thought was going to be a discussion on the subject of communications and a new business he's starting up in the village.

But no. It was a trick, deceit. It was a fucking pyramid scheme. It was about the videophone.
You see, a couple weeks ago, Bob* was walking on the tracks outside the restaurant and minding his baby girl, Bobette*, in one of those turkey/baby-holder jobbies while his partner, Bobelina*, was at the doctor. As I was working on the veranda, I said hi, we chatted for a couple minutes, and he asked me if we could meet one day soon because (I'm paraphrasing here): «I'm part of a company that's bringing a newtelecom technology to Wakefield and I'd like to talk to you about it.»

Here I thought he wanted to pick my brain or something. I thought maybe he's doing his market research and wanted to talk to me since I'm a local. I thought I didn't have «shmuck» written across my forehead. Nope.

As we sat down with our fresh coffees in hand, it took him about 46 seconds before the factsheet was presented (I've since burned it) on which was clearly demonstrated the pyramidal structure of the goddam operation. It took about 1 minute 25 seconds before Bob* whipped out the actual phone and plunked it on the table.

(On the phone's aesthetics: it's probably the douchiest piece of crap I've seen in ages. Imagine those fancy phones from the early 90's with all the memory keys, but with a hinged screen at the top above the keypad, and a cyclops eye camera sticking out from it. Oh, and also it has a receiver attached to it using a spiral cord. I guess its developers have been too busy watching early episodes of Get Smart to realize that wireless technology exists. And it's about the size of an academic's dictionary - i.e. about the size and weight of, oh, 157 cell phones stacked neatly together.)

After listening for about a half-coffee's worth, I told him I had no interest whatsoever in the project. I told him I actually hate technology. I told him he was hawking a pyramid scheme. He then left for his next victimization appointment in Aylmer. The whole thing took maybe 15 minutes. And I'm now working at being ok with the fact that I'll never have them back.

So there you have it. I can now say that I, along with countless other victims of schemes put on by seemingly nice people (the Amway pushers of the world), have had my first run in with a pyramid scam.

So I warn you: forget the swine flu. Forget terrorists. Beware of the videophone!

M.

(*) Names are generic.